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| An example of an art picture. |
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| Q: | Instead of pictures, I see lines of text (letters, numbers, and punctuation) - what's wrong? |
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| A: | It means that your news reader doesn't have the capability to interpret
the particular form of encoding used. Binary pictures are formed of 8-bit quantities ("Bytes"); unfortunately, the Internet was originally designed to transmit text, and supports 7-bit transfers (with 7 bits - 128 possible codes - you can transmit all of the alphabet - upper and lower case - digits, and a lot of punctuation marks - including spaces, tabs, etc.; since some of these have special meaning to news readers, only 6 bits of printable, graphic characters are available). Thus, in order to get 8-bit bytes through the internet, you have to chop them into 6-bit pieces in some fashion. The way this is done is called the encoding; common encoding schemes are UUENCODE, MIME, and yEnc. Each one has different rules (e.g., UUENCODE has each line start with the letter "M", and all lines are the same length). You don't need to know the details of the encoding (if you insist, do a Google search - for example: uuencode); you just need to know that if you get a lot of text instead of a picture, your reader doesn't support the form of encoding used. |
| Q: | What do those fractions in the subject header mean? |
| A: | Large binaries need to be split up into multiple, linked parts for posting. The fractions indicate the part number. For instance 5/32 is part 5 of a 32-part file. You need all 32 parts available on your server to successfully download the file. You might see multimedia files posted this way. Now and then, you might even see a picture posted in this manner, although it is undesirable. Picture binary files are NORMALLY single-part, thus they all should say (1/1). Note: Many automatic picture-downloading newsreaders need this (1/1) in each message header in order for them to recognize it as a picture post and download it. They will not download a multi-part file. |
| Q: | What does "killfile" mean? |
| A: | All Email and news-group messages have a "From:" field in
the header.
Most Email/News readers have a "kill file" or "Kill filter" (list) that you an add a variety of "From:" addresses to; the reader will then ignore (throw away) all subsequent messages from that source. The purpose (originally): to "eat" recurrent spam. Now days, it's used to discard ALL messages from someone you don't like. For example, if you use Outlook Express - select the menu Tools⇒Message Rules⇒Blocked Senders List, and fill in offending addresses. |
Here's what we know about some ISPs. If you're using a large provider you think is great, but it's not listed, we'd be happy to pass along that information and add it to the list, especially for ISPs outside the U.S. Please Email me.
A list of news-only services follow the ISPs. Take a look at: " AnchorDudes Usenet Newsgroup Server FAQ", which compares usenet news group servers by speed, retention, and completion. {Fettucini}
Some other sites to check:
From news.cnet.com
N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb Usenet access
Posted by Declan McCullagh
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that Verizon Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint would "shut down major sources of online child pornography."
What Cuomo didn't say is that his agreement with broadband providers means that they will broadly curb customers' access to Usenet--the venerable pre-Web home of some 100,000 discussion groups, only a handful of which contain illegal material.
AT&T has dropped ALL support for Usenet effective July 15, 2009!
Verizon has announced that it will be dropping ALL support for Usenet
effective September 30, 2009!
A note on ISPs. Access may vary from location to location. Busy signals, dropped connections due to timeouts, and server congestion vary from place to place. So shop around and take advantage of free trial offers.
When I called and complained to a tech support person about many missing posts every day, I was told that Earthlink's primary concern was email. Further, that newsgroups were low priority if a concern at all. It's as if they want to push people to buy newsgroup support from a third party. Perhaps because of the high volume of traffic supported by broadband.
In any event, Mindspring, aka Earthlink newsgroup support is much less than desireable.
{Jim Smith}
For up-to-date information, go to Newsadmin, which provides comprehensive newsgroup provider comparisons, newsreader software reviews, and an interesting collection of realtime access statistics related to the Usenet community! (NewsAdmin is a free resource that is provided to online users in hopes that they can use the information to make informed choices when selecting newsgroup providers and software.)
Don't be fooled by services boasting high numbers of newsgroups carried, since thousands of groups out there are not even used. They are empty or just full of spam.
Basic Newsguy has a 15Gb/month transfer limit for $8.95/monthDefinitely worth a try for the price. You will get all of the posts you have been missing and messages stay up on their server much longer than on others, almost 30 days retention in picture groups.
Newsguy Express provides for 60Gb/month of download capacity for $10.95 per month (newsgroup access only).
Extra Newsguy provides 50Gb/month of download capacity for $14.95/month - also 5 Email accounts and space for web pages as well.
Unlimited provides for unlimited download capacity for $19.95/month.
Here's what we know about some newsreaders to help you choose. All of these applications will automatically download and decode picture files and most are available for FREE download from the usual software sites. Most have some limits that will be removed when registered (paid for).
There is a newsgroup devoted to News Readers (news:news.software.readers): - ask there if you're having a problem and can't find the solution. (It's a good idea to preface the subject with the name of the reader, e.g. Netscape, Dialog, Xnews, etc.)
I am using XNews, which is a very good free newsreader. It's only disadvantage for people might be the fact that it is an on-line reader, and cannot store more about messages than headers. Otherwise it is good, it is free, it is GNKSA 2.0, it knows about all binary message formats, it is able to show pictures after downloading [allthough these should be [1/1] messages], it can download and decode multiple message binaries [but only show the first one, so only a part of the picture is shown]. Information about XNews can be found at NewsGuy. {Greyked}
The following is a good and concise (6 steps) set of instructions for installing yProxy which operates unseen in the background. I would just add that basically you are telling yproxy your news server address and giving Outlook Express the classic loopback address which is a number that causes your machine to attempt to communicate with itself. Outlook Express reads thru yProxy which interprets yEnc files.
It probably wouldn't hurt to print this off before installing so that you can read it during installation.Begin quoted text
Installing
- Install the program. When you get to the set up screen, push the (next) button, then (I agree) button and then push the next two (next) buttons. You will then get a screen with some options, uncheck the first two options, and put a check in the last option, by doing this, it will ensure that you will be able to view yEnc posts after you reboot you machine.
- Now finish installing the program by clicking on the (next) buttons
Configuring
End quoted text
- Here is where you must pay attention. In Outlook Express click on Tools, then Accounts, find the tab labeled "News", find you news server, push the third button on the right labeled "Servers". Another window will open, there you will find a box titled "Server Name". Write this down, once you have, remove what's there and in its place put these numbers 127.0.0.1 By doing this you are now calling the yProxy program to view your downloads.
- Close out of the account section and start up yProxy. In the news server box of yProxy put in the info you wrote down for your news server. Hit Start and go into Outlook Express and start viewing your yEnc downloads.
- Thats it, have fun, and don't forget to press start on yProxy before you start Oulook Express to view your Newsgroups
I would also add that yProxy can be added to the start up folder by creating a shortcut to the exe and placing it in the start up folder. This fires it up on each reboot, doing away with the need to remember to start it for yEnc downloads.
(originally posted by {PhoneR@nger}. Thanks, PR.)
Mozilla under windows and BeOS 5.1.1 is stable and
does an adequate job of both posting and viewing binary images.
{Bill Benobo}
Look Here - it has a host of yEnc programs for all sort of systems, windows, linux, apple etc. {Sundance}
An excellent newsreader for binaries is
pan.
It works on Linux, Mac, Windows and others.
It even comes with most versions of Linux. I've been using this for a
long time and it's extremely usable and reliable on Linux. On Windows,
the interface feels a bit more clunky.
{Holden McGroin}
| Q: | When I try to download a binary, my newsreader tells me there's no attachment, but I know there is! |
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| A: | Then it's probably MIME base 64 (or yEnc) encoded, and you are probably using FreeAgent or another newsreader that won't decode it. When you learn to recognize mime posts before downloading, your best bet would be to have an alternate free newsreader to use for downloading those. Don't try to use an off-line decoder. |
| Q: | I use Xnews, which distinguishes between complete and incomplete multi-part posts. Lately I've been seeing more and more incomplete multi-part posts, which causes me to suspect that individual message are being lost as well. Why? |
| A: | Blame the increasing popularity of multi-media (music and
video files), and the increasing availability of Broadband
connections. More and more people are posting immense files to
USENET (e.g, people in the newage
MP3 newsgroup regularly post a single MP3 file containing a full
one-hour program of Public Radio's Music From The
Hearts of Space program, which typically runs about 70
Megabytes!!); many ISPs no longer have the capability to hold this
quantity of information (e.g., AT&T said that it had been receiving 4
TERABYTES of USENET traffic per DAY - before
discontinuing all binary news groups!). If you're not getting all the parts of a file, it may not be your ISP at fault. Remember that postings are forwarded from one ISP to another; if one ISP loses a part, it can't be forwarded to your ISP. All you can do is tell your ISP when you're seeing an increase in incomplete messages, so the ISP can try to get alternate feeds for USENET. |
| Q: | I have WebTV What about me? |
| A: | At this time you do not have an option as far as newsreaders or services.
Microsoft has it in the works to offer IE5 and Outlook Express in a bundled
package with Windows CE that they may make the operating system for
WebTV sometime in the future. This would allow you to use real software.
But for now, if you want to be a picture collector, get a real computer.
SPECIAL NOTE TO WEBTVERS: As requested in the answer above, do not request that posters e-mail files to you. If you want to be a real picture collector, get a real computer and the necessary software. Otherwise, live within the limitations of your chosen hardware and software. A possible solution - e-mail (forward) the pictures to YOURSELF from the newsgroup! |
| Q: | Can I use another newsreader with AOL? |
| A: | No and yes. You CANNOT use it to access AOL's news server, but you CAN subscribe to a supplemental news service (or get a real ISP) and connect to that. |
| Q: | Can I use another newsreader with MSN? |
| A: | Yes, but MSN requires the use of a proprietary encrypted password authentication method to access their news servers. Some newsreaders support this and some do not. |
| Q: | Can I get a virus by downloading from the newsgroups? |
| A: | Sure, but not from pictures. NO LONGER TRUE!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to Microsoft, you now can! Here's a link to more info. {Holden McGroin} |
| Q: | How can I avoid viruses? |
| A: | Don't download any executables from the picture newsgroups
(.exe, .com, .dll, .inf, or .bat files, or zip archives containing them).
First of all, they don't belong there, so assume the poster is either
ignorant or a wise guy. You don't want to entrust your computer to
either type! At the beginning of this FAQ are URLs for reliable download
sites for all the recommended software. Invariably, the safest places
to download from are the author's Web or ftp site, or major software sites.
Second best are other reputable host sites. The LEAST desirable are
Usenet newsgroups.
An additonal list of file suffices with potential viruses include .VBX .VBS .VBA .XLS .XLA .XLT .DOT .BAS .FRM .CLS .WLL and .OCX . (Thanks to Frank Mabrey for this additonal list.} |
| Q: | How do people get viruses from zip files? |
| A: | By flying blind. A zip archive cannot give you a virus, itself. It can,
however, contain filetypes (listed above) which can. Get a good zip
extraction utility such as WinZip, and learn to use it conservatively.
Do not let it automatically open files after unzipping. Perform a virus
check on executables before opening them. If a virus is present, the
only way you could activate it is by executing the file.
AOLers: Click on Members | Preferences | Download and remove the checkmarks from "Automatically decompress files at signoff" and "Delete zip files after decompression." Stay in control of your own computer, otherwise you may lose track of whatever executables you've extracted, as well as where they came from and what they are. |
| Q: | I use Netscape - can I download multi-part files? |
|---|---|
| A: | Downloading a Multi-part File Using Netscape:
Not directly. If all else fails:
In Netscape, highlight all the parts of the file (click on the FIRST line, shift-click on the LAST line to highlight all lines between First and Last, inclusive; it will start downloading the first part immediately upon clicking on it, but you can cancel that by clicking on STOP - it will remain selected). Select the "File" menu and select "save message as". It will show an arbitrary name, such as "untitled.txt"; re-name it something, but with a "UUE" extension (e.g., "untitled.uue"). Note - the individual articles MUST be in order, and can't contain unrelated articles. If they've arrived out-of-order, click on the "subject" column of the browser to alphabetize the headers. Once it's fully loaded, just double-click on it to wake up the program. It will be unzipped & decoded w/ the filename the poster gave it. So it doesn't really matter what name you gave it, but use a UUE extension. A little extra work than Outlook Express, but it CAN be done in Netscape. NOTE: The same technique will work to download a series of pictures, provided that they are encoded using UUE compression (mime-64 encoding won't work because of a defect in Expander). This allows you to go off and do something else while downloading (eating, running errands, etc all come to mind).Another alternative is to download UUDeview (either from USA or Germany ) and use it just as described above. UUDeview has the advantage that it can decode not only multi-part messages, but also mime-64 and yEnc encoded messages, both single and multi-part. Unfortunately, it does have the defect that all file names are converted to lower-case.
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| Q: | I use outlook express; how about me? |
| A: | Since you are using outlook express, you can combine the split files
as following:
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