What news groups would you recommend?
Depends on a few tings really - main one I guess is what do you want and just as important is, does your ISP carry them......forgive me if I'm preaching to the converted but Newsgroups aren't like FTP or the likes of Napster or Audiogalaxy etc....I can only describe it as a thing like email that gets propagated in the background..... It's in very basic terms a load of text or binary that people post to a News server....and that in turn gets posted back to a load of other News servers....the same ones that people post to...p'haps I ain't explaining it very well...what I mean is that it doesn't stay there indefinitely...well, the binary ones don't anyway...by binary I mean things like pictures/movies [porn for example], mp3s, software [anything], Warez, games [PC, Xbox, Dreamcast, PS2 etc etc], and movies [could be anything from a 1mb mpeg or full 3 or 4gig DVD rip]. You could in theory start your own Newsgroup and post to it...and in the fullness of time all the News servers in the world would start carrying it so that anyone could read it.....but I guess it depends on what you're looking for [see above].... Examples:- Playstation 2 Games - alt.binaries.cd.image.playstation2 & a.b.c.i.playstation2.repost or you could look at a.b.c.i.playstation2.dvdiso Xbox stuff is similar, just replace playstation2 with xbox. Porn - alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica and endless permutations depending on your particular bent I guess. Music/mp3s - alt.binaries.sounds.mp3s.2000s and countless others. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Newsgroups on just about any subject you can think of and a few more besides.....honestly, some really weird shit. Not all Newsgroups are binaries though, there are loads of text only ones, basically "discussion" groups.....again, on anything.....want to talk about obscure amiga programming stuff? geeky computer shit [what isn't?], old arcade games from yesteryear, medieval fuckin history...it's all there for the world to post inane shit about. You get the picture I think. The only drawback to it is that a. the binary posts aren't held indefinitely like someone's FTP site for example...get em while you can...some News services have a month's retention, some [not mentioning NTL] are only a matter of hours....it's constantly being pushed off the end by more 0s and 1s vying for it's 10 minutes of fame and b. the other thing is that most of the text only Newsgroups are actually archived [bit like this list] by some method meaning that um that rambling post you made in 1995 about the state of your kitchen is actually still there for people to read if they want....you can search the non binary newsgroups on things like google for example. I didn't know about em until about 18 months ago when I got broadband...but Usenet as been there for yonks as some people constantly remind you. 99.99% of the binary Newsgroup content is highly illegal/questionable mind, I'm at a loss to work out exactly how it's STILL going in these days of the Internet police etc. I mean, you can download a mint DVD ISO of Gangs of New York before it's even released at the cinema or download the latest Xbox or PS2 DVD game from Japan before it's even released in Japan...it opens a whole can of worms on all sorts of levels but it's there. It's kinda like the modern equivalent of that kid in your class that used to bring in fuzzy copies of Terminator and Commando with Arabic subtitles or quite watchable copies of shit like Mobile home girls and Swedish erotica....dodgy shit for a modern generation. It's all monitored too, your ISP is legally bound to keep records of all it's IP traffic, so every inane post to a Newsgroup or download from a binary Newsgroup is logged and filed away for future reference for about 7 years or something. I know someone who is the IT director of the Internet hosting side of a very large ISP and he says it's all there in black and white...very scary. Common sense really, when you think about what's going on in the background. Course, if you don't download owt, you've got nowt to worry about. It's not all bad though, I mean if you can't find the manual for your VCR or can't remember how to tie a Windsor knot in your tie or want to know what the bird out of Demsey & Makepiece eats for breakfast, some geek will know the answer and probably tell you. Weird shit.