n00b perspective on Usenet

Well, I used to be a hardcore public torrent man, but I had a couple ISP security breaches that have left me searching for an alternative. And the idea of extra speed was apealing as well.

I have put a lot of time in the last couple days trying to figure out this whole newsgroup thing, and here is sort of a guide from what I have found to be the best noob approach

1: Client
I started out by acquiring a handful of free newsreaders,as well as a trial of a couple free ones. Verdict: i don't see any reason to use anything other than grabit. Its free, and works flawlessly, seems to be designed well, and

2: Server
I originally tried my charter ISP's newsgroup server, and I was getting around 40-50kb/s. Then I performed a futile search for some free ones... don't bother. I switched to a Giganews trial and was averaging around 900-1000Kb/s and used up my 10Gb trial in a matter of a few hours... Crazy fast and awesome! So a pay news server is definitely worth it. I'd still like to experiment with some of the other premium ones that are a bit cheaper, but giganews performs very well!

3: Finding Files

This is where i hit some snags, until i found this site. I have checked out a lot of sites to find files, like binsearch, newzleech, and a couple of in-client search engines. I didn't really like any of these, the file lists seemed convoluted and limited. I still haven't had a chance to try out Newzbin, but The NZB section on this site is mighty fine, as is the site NZBmatrix. Those are the two best ways to find the files you want that I have found. I am still looking for better ways, so feel free to suggest!

I still have a few files that I could find on torrent, but not on newsgroups, but it also goes the other way, so I think all in all , the switch will be good for me. Now i just need a bigger hard drive. I can download a gigantic 720p - 1080p movie in about the same time as i used to download a standard divx 700Mb movie on torrent... not bad.

Once you join this side you'll never go back..

For finding stuff..

http://filesharingtalk.com/
http://www.newzbin.com/
http://www.binsearch.info/

Those are the only 'sites' I use to find stuff..

I am a header whore.. That by far is the best way to find those gems that don't make it to an indexed site.

Learn which groups have what....

a.b. = alt.binaries.*

a.b.boneless the bone yard.. its probably the biggest group out there..
a.b.mutlimedia
a.b.tv
a.b.dvd (there are a few worth looking at like that)
a.b.sounds.mp3.complete_cd
a.b.e-book.technical

that's just a few that I often check out..

#altbin of efnet has a way of searching and requesting material. Just because you can't find it, doesn't mean that it can't get added.. And quickly I might add..

Basically you can sift through headers and find what you want, or use an indexing site and find stuff that other people are looking at.. You can kind of think of indexing sites, this one newzbin whatever as sort of like digg.com.. It's a social thing, so it takes someones effort to look at those headers and find the files to post here.. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have whoever uploaded the content to post a .nzb for it right away, other times you'll have to just find it for yourself.


Clients... Well I have no idea what to use on windows.. I'm a linux fan, so I use Pan, Icedove (thunderbird) and SABnzbd. Not one fits the bill for a specific task.. Each has it's own job.

Servers... Decide on what RETENTION you need.. that's all that it really comes down to. Retention is how long the material will live on the servers.. old stuff is dropped making space for new stuff. Giganews has 240 days or so.. That cool and all but I don't really need that much retention, and once you've been using newsgroups for a while no one should really.. You'll be after 'new' content most of the time and if it's new and hot, it is posted many many times by a lot of different people. You might even be able to find the same DVD in 3 or 4 groups.. So 240 is overkill in my book.. Astraweb is having some promotion going on (maybe check) for ~ 120 days or close to it for $11USD for unlimited BW. I wouldn't pass that offer up.

too expensive

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Originally Posted by Frankthetank1

too expensive

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Finish High School and get a job.

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Originally Posted by 222MHz

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frankthetank1

too expensive

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Finish High School and get a job.

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lol, yeah, i would tend to agree... and the way i see it, I'm saving money on buying renting movies/ buying games/ software, ect.

20$ a month for super fast downloads of anything you can dream up isnt too bad of a deal. and when i can download a brand new movie thats just in theaters in 15-30 minutes and be watching it in HD through the xbox,on my HD projector, i feel i'm getting my moneys worth.

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Originally Posted by Frankthetank1

too expensive

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Try Astraweb:

$11 for 20 connections ( SSL or not ) no limits.
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

Well worth it.

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Originally Posted by llama85

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 222MHz

Finish High School and get a job.

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lol, yeah, i would tend to agree... and the way i see it, I'm saving money on buying renting movies/ buying games/ software, ect.

20$ a month for super fast downloads of anything you can dream up isnt too bad of a deal. and when i can download a brand new movie in theaters in 15-30 minutes and be watching it in HD through the xbox, i feel i'm getting my moneys worth.

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fuck... think of it as an Insurance policy.. what's the RIAA want now a days?

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"Under copyright law, violators can be held liable for up to $150,000 per violation"

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well.. 150K / 240/yr = 625yr subscription to Giganews.. Double those years for something else or add some violations.. :D That free swarm seems pretty expensive to me.

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Originally Posted by 222MHz

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Originally Posted by llama85

lol, yeah, i would tend to agree... and the way i see it, I'm saving money on buying renting movies/ buying games/ software, ect.

20$ a month for super fast downloads of anything you can dream up isnt too bad of a deal. and when i can download a brand new movie in theaters in 15-30 minutes and be watching it in HD through the xbox, i feel i'm getting my moneys worth.

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fuck... think of it as an Insurance policy.. what's the RIAA want now a days?

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"Under copyright law, violators can be held liable for up to $150,000 per violation"

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well.. 150K / 240/yr = 625yr subscription to Giganews.. Double those years for something :D That's free swarm seems pretty expensive to me.

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Another good point, if you havent got a notice from you ISP for using public torrents yet, your lucky, and you probably will get one eventually, not worth the risk in my opinion. SSL and Anonymity are worth alot on the usenet.

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Originally Posted by xuxoxux

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frankthetank1

too expensive

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Try Astraweb:

$11 for 20 connections ( SSL or not ) no limits.
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

Well worth it.

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hows your speed on that? have you compared it with giganews?

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Originally Posted by xuxoxux

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frankthetank1

too expensive

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Try Astraweb:

$11 for 20 connections ( SSL or not ) no limits.
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html

Well worth it.

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hows your speed on that? have you compared it with giganews?[/quote]

My speed:
1 MB/s ( steady )
I use SSL, if you wanna know.

Havent compared to giganews, as I have not had a reason to switch to anything more expensive. :lol:

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Originally Posted by llama85

hows your speed on that? have you compared it with giganews?

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That astraweb plan has no speed limits, I use it myself. While I am only able to get 3Mbit because that is the speed of my connection, I know someone who can get 60Mbit (his max). All depends on the route it takes I guess, though I suspect the speed will be very similar (if not the same) to that of GigaNews. :)

Sweet, thats what i get with giganews, might have to give astra a try. I thought they had a deal going yesterday, now i dont see it :(

...

Yeah, i found the astraweb deal, i signed up for 11$/mo and ditched my giganews before the trial ran out.

The speeds seem just as good and still ssl secure, i'm lovin' Astra so far!

Any suggestions for different clients... i'm thinking about getting newsleecher - worth it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by llama85

Yeah, i found the astraweb deal, i signed up for 11$/mo and ditched my giganews before the trial ran out.

The speeds seem just as good and still ssl secure, i'm lovin' Astra so far!

Any suggestions for different clients... i'm thinking about getting newsleecher - worth it?

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I use alt.binz and havent had any trouble with it so far.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by llama85

Yeah, i found the astraweb deal, i signed up for 11$/mo and ditched my giganews before the trial ran out.

The speeds seem just as good and still ssl secure, i'm lovin' Astra so far!

Any suggestions for different clients... i'm thinking about getting newsleecher - worth it?

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I would recommend Alt.Binz if you only use NZBs. Faster and uses less resources than Grabit.

You have to donate a little to get the newest version, or you can download it from usenet :P

what the deuce? you can't PM people when they're online..??

llama PM me.

How the heck do you PM people on this site? Apparently its different than on other v-bulletin boards...

no clue.. can't seem to pm people if they are online still.. if your feeing ballzy drop your email here.. I believe I have an invite to newsbin

I'll just edit it out once you get it... post up once you got it.

Edit: Thanks a lot man, i got the invite...

You've got mail! worked.. enjoy.

Yeah, thanks again dude. Do you pay for newsbin?

I don't no. I search to see what something is called, if it's available and then I just see what groups it in.. grab headers and search for it myself.. no reason not to pay for it I guess... It's like $0.25 a week right now..

what do you mean by "grab headers" I'm not even sure what a header is...

usenet is not expensive at all, I have the 40 buck option for 3 months at usenetserver.com. It has ten connections and I split the bill with my buddy. So...I pay 20 bucks/3 months.

What client are you using? I really don't know which in window lets you grab headers..

I'm using grabit right now.

Well I don't know much about windows.. But Xnews looks promising.. Has a 100% GNKSA which is a plus in my book.. http://xnews.newsguy.com/

You can also check out Thunderbird, it will do simple posting to the text groups. Similar to mail lists or forums, you can chat with people around the world on different topics

Headers may be called articles in grabit,

Here is what mine looks like..

http://i41.tinypic.com/282166h.png

those are header, there are 260,000 + there from a few days.. you can search for key words or just scroll through them.

If I were to click on any of the other groups on the left window there, it would ask me how many headers I want to get, n days, n headers, all headers, or all new headers..


And I also have SABnzbd running as a daemon.. so any .nzb or .zip dropped on the desktop is automatically picked up.. This is the web interface..

http://i40.tinypic.com/25pmmah.png


And then use Icedove to post to text to the groups..

http://i43.tinypic.com/260x07m.png

Nice one 222mhz. I never knew exactly how to go about requesting or posting on Usenet, but Icedove looks like a simple way to do it.

Would you mind telling us what you type into it to get to a channel to make a request?

Thanks.

And llama, you've learned a ton in your couple days of using newsgroups. It took me a while to figure out the shit you've learned. Since you're on Windows, I would suggest sticking with GrabIt for right now if you're going to be grabbing articles(or headers). And once you get used to all that, maybe switch to Newsleecher. But if you're not going to do the whole header thing and only download nzb's, then I highly suggest switching to alt.binz or Sabnzbd.

Alt.Binz is what I was using on Windows. But after switching to Linux I moved to Sabnzbd and I'll never use another reader again(unless I want to grab headers and I'll fire up Pan for that). I just love how Sabnzbd works right in your web browser. And it's so freakin' light weight it uses practically no resources at all.

Well for a request I would leave it simple and to the point. so it's just in the subject line.. something like..

[REQ] Usenet For Dummies or any books on Newsgroups t.i.a

or

[Request] date with your sister

You'll see a shit load of them hanging around.. Some places like #altbin the request process is crazy.. but usually if you just put it up to some of the slower newsgroups it may or may not get filled.. and then just make sure to be watching the headers for what you requested.. Posting a request like that to some place like a.b.boneless would probably be a waste of time, and you should check to see if the group as a secondary group with a trailing .d for discussion.. ie.. alt.binaires.games.d

Sometimes it will come back with
filled req or something close.. other times it just ends up posted with nothing so watch the headers if you post a text request right to the groups.

enjoy.

Nice thread, very informative...

Been in the scene for year, went over to torrents and just found out about usenet =) Looks like I'm in for a ride...

Been useing these last days, just like llama85, trying to understand usenet, NZBs and so forth. Going pretty okay so far, thou a lot of stuff I'm not quite understanding in details...

But one thing is for sur, getting that darn invite to newzbin.com or whatever its called, is it org? It's pretty hard to get one, hint hint =)

I will continue my quest for fame or was it information =) into the jungle of usenet, capping down those massive chunks of info.....

I haven't yet found a way to pm users on this board, maybe I need to make some more posts or have been a member for a certain number of days?

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Originally Posted by Azz82

Nice thread, very informative...

Been in the scene for year, went over to torrents and just found out about usenet =) Looks like I'm in for a ride...

Been useing these last days, just like llama85, trying to understand usenet, NZBs and so forth. Going pretty okay so far, thou a lot of stuff I'm not quite understanding in details...

But one thing is for sur, getting that darn invite to newzbin.com or whatever its called, is it org? It's pretty hard to get one, hint hint =)

I will continue my quest for fame or was it information =) into the jungle of usenet, capping down those massive chunks of info.....

I haven't yet found a way to pm users on this board, maybe I need to make some more posts or have been a member for a certain number of days?

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Well, i would hook you up with an invite, but for some reason, i didn't get any, i don't know what makes you get them, but i paid for newzbin for a bit and still dont have any.:unsure:

no worryz, some friendly soul send me one, just need to find out which thread, so I can thank the dude =)

Duh, wrong thread... Sorry for that.