An Excerpt from: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow
Read more hereGovernments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather [...] I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
I've got NL and Sab installed, Newsbin Pro is saved on the drive along with Grabit and Altbinz 0.25...
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I hope you don't carry only one club when you play golf.
There's no such thing as a "perfect" newsreader - they all have their strengths and weaknesss, as well as performing a different set of functions. Some are better for reading/replying to text posts, others make good thumbnail picture viewers, while others specialize in streaming video. Some are "portable" and can be run off a flash drive - while many are not. Some are easy to learn and some highly complicated. No single newsreader even comes close to doing it all.
Even among some of today's "standard" features on binary news downloaders, consider some of the various features that have appeared over the last few years:
Yenc support
SSL encryption
auto-rar
auto-par
NZB downloading
NZB creation
header grouping^1
header grouping^2
header compression
multi-server
fill-server
proxy settings
RSS
bandwidth throttle
scheduler
These feature were introduced one-at-a-time, and most debuted on different newsreaders or add-ons (for example, Stunnel). Historically, the only way to get all the latest advanced features was to have multiple clients installed, and the same is true today. If you don't want to wait months for the latest-and-greatest feature to appear on your favorite client, the only option is to install another newsreader that offers it.
Also, most newsreaders only work on Windows (and most Mac newsreaders and many Linux ones don't). People like myself who don't limit themselves to a single OS will usually have a different set of applications for each OS.
I also happen to like trying out new software. So many people ask "what's the best ..." but I prefer to see for myself exactly what each one is capable of. I might have tried out a hundred different newsreaders in all -- I've completely lost count.
Well I've heard one is the perfect News Reader, Usenet Explorer and hardly anybody has heard of it, even has SS I think you the one that show me the path
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True, I've said that Usenet Explorer is one newsreader that has some of the best features to be found anywhere, as well as having well-written, highly-efficient code. But I don't recommend it for everyone, because Usenet Explorer is probably the hardest newsreader to learn how to use.
There's always going to be a tradeoff: the more abilities, features, settings, and options something has, the more time (and often frustration) will be required to learn it -- and the more things can go wrong. Many people simply don't have the patience -or intellect- for 'geeky' software. (no doubt a big reason why Napster and Kazaa became so popular while older feature-packed P2Ps like Filetopia never did)
A lot of new usenet users just want to be able to grab a file with the least amount of work possible. For them, a better choice in newsclients might be Tamava, because it is extremely easy to set up and use -- a good choice for people who can't handle anything more complex than Kazaa or Limewire. (Sadly, Tamava could be considered 'abandonware', and was still a bit buggy when it was discontinued)
Last edited by zot; 06-05-2009 at 03:40 AM.
I've looked at virtually every reader mentioned in this thread, and each one of them has major limitations. Most don't even run in most versions of windows, require complex setups before doing a single thing, don't support nzb's directly or easily (again, major complex setups), and so on.
Maybe it's just me, but a newsreader these days needs to install straight away, allow one to plug in their news server, grab an nzb, and go.
One should be up and running within a minute. Period. Anything greater, and it shows the programmer had too much time on their hands.
If someone can nominate a program that fits those requirements, speak up.
These might help, maybe not too?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...et_newsreaders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders
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"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music"
All I have to say is thank you for recommending nzbstatus. Works wonders also new versions are now up on Mozilla
(well atleast version that supports FF3.5)
Right now I'm using sabnzbd, but old version 4.11 works very well since I used to use grabit on win, but now I'm on lin.
Then you probably hated Usenet Explorer, as using it for the first time can be like trying to figure out a puzzle.
As I mentioned above, I have yet to see a full-service binary newsreader that (to my mind) is as simple, easy to use and intuitive as Tamava. The programmer even stated that was his primary goal in developing Tamava.
Although the built-in search engine no longer works, Tamava is still usable.
Of the other free binary newsreaders, Grabit is also easy to learn. (I'm not counting the NZB-only downloaders, many of which are even simpler)
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