Ex_Brit Posted April 2, 2006 Share Posted April 2, 2006 Using Outlook Express as a news server I have news.spamcop.net configured and "Spamcop" as one of the groups I read. The trouble is I can't post using OE as my ISP prohibits Usenet posting. Where is that particular forum here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbiel Posted April 2, 2006 Share Posted April 2, 2006 There are 10 separate SpamCop news groups and they function differently than the SpamCop Forums. The forums do not try to be a replacement for the news groups and as such there is no one to one mapped equivalent in the forums for each of the newsgroups. The lounge where you posted this post would relate to the newsgroup spamcop.social The newsgroup "spamcop" would relate to several different forum sections dependent upon content. The forum sections are clearly defined in their headings while the newsgroups seem to lack any easy to find specific purpose other than the name itself. My understanding of the newsgroup "spamcop" is that it is for any post that does not fit one of the other 9 newsgroups, so as such my answer to your question "Where is that particular forum here?" would be that there is no such forum here. Due to the lack of a clear and easy to find purpose of each of the newsgroups, there does seem to be a lot more cross newsgroup postings with the newsgroup "spamcop" probably getting the most. In the forums, posts in the wrong forum are quickly moved to the correct forum and duplicate posts in multiple forums are not permitted. spamcop.mail would relate to 3 separate forum sections here. I hope that this helps a little. Maybe someone else will have a better answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex_Brit Posted April 2, 2006 Author Share Posted April 2, 2006 Thanks. You confirmed what I already thought. There was a discussion going on in the "Spamcop" OE group which a search couldn't find here using any keyword. The strange thing is that I shouldn't be able to read those groups at all in OE as my ISP cancelled Usenet access altogether. Yet I can read them, but not post to them. Microsoft Newsgroups are fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbiel Posted April 2, 2006 Share Posted April 2, 2006 There are some newsgroup users who hate the forums and refuse to have anything to do with them. There are many forum users who never look at any of the newsgroups. There are a few users who follow and track both. Important topics will often be duplicated in the forums and newsgroups but always reach a difference audience. The newsgroups point to the official FAQ for answers and complain that it is out of date and incomplete. The forum works hard to expand on the official FAQ and tries to overcome its shortcomings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex_Brit Posted April 2, 2006 Author Share Posted April 2, 2006 Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted April 2, 2006 Share Posted April 2, 2006 Thanks. You confirmed what I already thought. There was a discussion going on in the "Spamcop" OE group which a search couldn't find here using any keyword. The strange thing is that I shouldn't be able to read those groups at all in OE as my ISP cancelled Usenet access altogether. Yet I can read them, but not post to them. Microsoft Newsgroups are fine. 41731[/snapback] Semantics, settings, filters are all being mixed in here. Let's start with "cancelled usenet access" .... It may all boil down to this .... Usenet (defined in millions of places) is basically a collection of NNTP posts that get shared amongst servers around the world. There is no one computer/system holding "the" usenet, there are the thousands upon thousands of computers around the globe that (temporarily) hold the contents of some newgroups that the specific ISP/host has dedicated some disk space and bandwidth to. One runs into this situation when finding that "your" ISP/host doesn't carry the various newsgroups dedicated to playing the latest Starwars game ... and that decision was based on someone deciding that there wasn't sufficient interest, or the flip side, it was seen as carrying too much traffic, so those specific newsgroups weren't added into that ISP/host's subscribed/networked newsgroups. Traffic issues come from all over the place, those alt.binary groups that some folks suck the porn off of ... some are high volume in general, some get hammered by things like dipslime/hipcrime/whatever, some ISP/host may set up enough space to hold a week's worth of traffic, some may only hold a day or two ... this gets into a thing called "retention" ... bottom line, how much traffic, bandwidth, and disk storage is someone willing to devote to the storing and handling of this traffic. Oddly enough, though usenet predates the "Internet" .. there are those millions and millions of computer users that have never heard of it ... and as seen in some of the corporate world, there are ISPs that don't have a clue about it either. Then one adds in the possible legal issues of the day, the porn, the sharing of music, the warez being posted, on and on ... add that to the ISP business plan that had users checking e-mail every now and then, maybe doing some web-browsing .... but then finding that there's a dedicated subset of users that delight in the downloading of meg after meg of stuff, consuming bandwidth in an unbelievable fashion .... Anyway, yes, there are some ISPs that are dropping this amazing source of data, either based on some of the above, or based on the lack of use. It's very rare these days to see newsgroup support listed in the hosting advertising. The 'services' offered are almost always limited these days to web-browsing and e-mail (add the hidden words "what else is there?" for some of these hosts) So you may be saying here that your ISP has dropped carrying newsgroup traffic. There are some situations where say your place of work locks out traffic, justifying it as that kind of traffic has no bearing on the work one was hired to accomplish. This later bit comes into play with the way you phrased your situation. Having your employer block port 119 traffic would prevent you from reading/posting via NNTP. Microsoft NNTP newsgroups are hosted on Microsoft servers. The SpamCop.net NNTP newsgroups are hosted on SpamCop.net servers. Neither of these are actually "usenet" .... you need to connect to the servers directly. And that you say you can read both of these but not post suggests that port 119 blocking is the issue. Now this is actually a but confusing, as some (idiot) ISPs handle things strangely. For example, the idiots at AT&T have chosen to "add" the Microsoft newsgroups to their own hosted stuff. This does mean that one can connect to AT&T's newsgroup servers and "read" the NNTP traffic. Where this gets wierd is that Microsoft doesn't "collect" traffic from other servers in the world .. this impacts the AT&T user that posts to that AT&T server ... the only people that will ever see that post is yet another confused user also reading from that AT&T server ... folks with a clue that are connecting directly to Microsoft's servers to read the traffic will never see that post made to an AT&T server, leaving that user more than a bit ticked off as he/she is being ignored. There are some issues with the SpamCop.net newsgroup stuff. Years back, GMane picked up a feed, the premise there being the offering of a web-based interface to the newsgroup. There was a massive outcry about the privacy issues involved and it was 'technically' dropped .... and now there's a bit of an issue with the Google Group stuff .... there is some traffic that somehow got entered into that system, there are users that stumble across that stuff and get excited ... posting their responses there ... which again, don't show up on the SpamCop.net servers. Maybe added more confusion, maybe at least scratched the surface .... bringing up the ages old storyline of the battlelines being drawn up when JT brought this Forum into existence is unfair to the dead horse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex_Brit Posted April 2, 2006 Author Share Posted April 2, 2006 That explains a few things. Pity I can't get around the posting issue. In the case of my ISP I think it is the Port 119 issue. This was their lame excuse for cancelling Usenet access: Internet technology is constantly changing. Usenet was one of the earliest forms of user discussion on the Internet, but today has largely been replaced by blogs, instant messaging, personal web pages and other tools. As a result, fewer and fewer people are accessing Usenet. Therefore, Rogers has decided to stop providing Usenet service to Rogers Yahoo customers effective December 15, 2005. This is from my home by the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted April 2, 2006 Share Posted April 2, 2006 That to me simply states that they dropped the servers involved with carrying that traffic. Nothing there really sticks out that they'd block port 119 anywhere else. But of course, I also don't see how they could say that the stuff I'm always behind on could be considered replaced by any of their suggested tools. If you can 'see' the newsgroups, I'd say that perhaps a look at your settings might be in order. news.spamcop.net for server .. does not require login port 119 - no SSL - my timeout is set at 1 minute Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex_Brit Posted April 2, 2006 Author Share Posted April 2, 2006 Tried fiddling with settings. This is what I get when I try to post: Outlook Express could not post your message. Subject 'test', Account: 'news.spamcop.net', Server: 'news.spamcop.net', Protocol: NNTP, Server Response: '441 From: address not in Internet syntax', Port: 119, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 441, Error Number: 0x800CCCA9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted April 2, 2006 Share Posted April 2, 2006 From: address not in Internet syntax ....????? What have you put in there? Suggested is nobody[at]devnull.spamcop.net (OK, change the [at] sign in that string) .. and that's also making a small assumption that Rogers/Yahoo isn't playing the game of requiring a rogers/yahoo/whatever account in there ... It seems to me that I did up a How To ... thing on this a long time ago, and the only thing I left out was the e-mail address .. and of course that was where that user's problem ended up being .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex_Brit Posted April 2, 2006 Author Share Posted April 2, 2006 Sorry...I am a dumb idiot. I had my usual scrambled name that I use at Microsoft Newsgroups (using AT and DOT etc.). Now it works. Thread closed!! Thanks for the help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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