Just had one rude awakening regarding the binary news servers on Plus Net,
they are none existant.

a.b.multimedia from a total of 4567 binary files 45 were completed.
a.b.multimedia.scifi from 1643 total files 8 were completed.

That is 1% and 0.5% completion ratio that is one trashy service. Question
why do I pay extra for the binary service? Is there any way of changing
from a 1 year contract with binary to a 1 year contract with no binary?

Who in the UK provides decent binary news services at a reasonable price?

Thanks for any help.
One2Go

One2Go wrote:

Don't think they are in UK but Astraweb do a great service. 25 Gbytes for
$10 and 10 day retention.

http://www.news.astraweb.com/



ed

--
"Beer me"

"ed" <ow1@talk21.com> wrote in message
news:bumrh0$jfalk$1@ID-147682.news.uni-berlin.de...
One2Go wrote:

Don't think they are in UK but Astraweb do a great service. 25 Gbytes for
$10 and 10 day retention.

(There US based amd £7 a month to fill 512 connection with unlimited plan
and at the moment have around 5 - 6 days retention)

http://www.news.astraweb.com/



ed

--
"Beer me"

Yet they are able to keep their porn groups together with underage
material - good old plusnet, the peado's first choice in ISP......

In article <j04v00pa3rqpn6g7cnkmruj05ih2o4lj4e@4ax.com>,
Grangpa <newsgroup> wrote:
Providing a good news service for binaries requires a huge investment
in kit nowadays. That needs to be paid for, and the only viable way
to pay for it is to charge for it as a separate premium service.

There's no way the costs can realistically be absorbed into a standard
ISP access subscription, and I wish ISPs would stop trying, as it does
their reputations no good each time it goes pear-shaped. They should
provide text-only news as a bundled service, and those ISPs that want
to can additionally offer a properly funded binaries service at a
viable extra cost.

Cheers,
Tony
--
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony@softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony@mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org

On 22 Jan 2004 09:10:00 -0000, tony@softins.clara.co.uk (Tony
Mountifield) wrote:

Hi Tony,

This is a very fair point. As was announced back in December, we are
planning to overhaul our news service in March and hope to be able to
provide a pretty good news service as a result. As you say though,
providing a decent binary feed is an uphill struggle and I can see
your prediction becoming the case for all ISPs in the future, simply
because the amount of binary content posted to Usenet continues to
grow as more people get broadband access.

Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 06:41:13 -0000, "Amigo Entertainments"
<stinky@poo.com> wrote:

How does our news service differ from that of any other ISP in this
regard? We only carry newsgroups from the 'official' ISC listing and
what articles are posted into those groups is dependent on Usenet
itself. It isn't possible for an ISP to filter posts based on the
content alone and by getting involved in 'censoring' groups ISPs leave
themselves in a difficult legal position.

Obviously we are extremely concerned (Like anyone would be) about some
of the content available on Usenet, but as I see it the only way to
stop that effectively is to stop taking Binary usenet posts entirely.

Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

In article <05iv0015a47mqjgdcfl6uk2lvq8l5h2jv2@4ax.com>,
iwild@plus.net.uk (PlusNet Support Team) wrote:

What 'official' listing.

Does ISC own usenet?

What does ISC have to do with the UK.* hierarchy?

--
Paul Cummins - Always a NetHead
Wasting Bandwidth since 1981

begin Who gives a fuck about Outlook Express anyway.exe

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 13:25 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
agree2pay4uce@spam.vlaad.co.uk (Paul Cummins) wrote:

I put 'official' in quotes because it isn't really official (Obviously
there is no such thing!). The ISC active list is however the same list
is as used by many other ISPs to provide a standardised list of groups
and the list itself does include uk.* groups.

ftp://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/CONFIG/active

Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

In article <OvTPb.18333$tQ6.821404@wards.force9.net>, Alive & Kicking
wrote:
They're not "offering" anything at all. They're communication channels
that are used by the public, and thus their content, whatever it is, must
always be changing.

They don't. They peddle a service to sell accounts. We use the service.
There are so many of us that I doubt anybody could ever know at any moment
in time what all the others are using it for. Anyone found using the
service for anything illegal should be prosecuted, but it is not your job,
or my job, or Plusnet's job, to police this. I wouldn't want to subscribe
to a communication service that was pre-guessing what some people might be
doing with it and restricting my service on that basis.

Rod.

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 21:22:35 +0000, Roderick Stewart wrote:

Er, no. The allegation is that own a hard disk which has pornographic
material of children on it. This alone is enough to cause them to fall
foul of current UK legislation. There are no get out for this by being
a communication service. They are in possession of illegal material.
Though quite how you put a corporate entity on the sex offenders register
is a different matter.

Of course if you actually know that the material carried in the said
groups contains pornographic material of children, which you can only
have done by looking at it, then you are also breaking the law and
are liable to end up on the sex offenders register.

JAB.

--
Jonathan A. Buzzard Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1661-832195

PlusNet Support Team <iwild@plus.net.uk> wrote in
newsthv00t0ork1pf6evbes505kod2jr6m59h@4ax.com:

As comparison I have EasyNet and now I wish I would have stayed with
them. Their binary news servers carry a 4 day retention and a very high
completion ratio. However I am stuck in a years contract and wish you
success in your upgrade. I have no problem paying a premium for good
completion ratio and 5 days of retention. As it is I am not comparing
PlusNet to any of the premium News Servers, just hoped that what was
stated as a service was actually provided.

One2Go

In article <pan.2004.01.22.21.33.14.18741@uk.me.buzzard>, Jonathan
Buzzard wrote:
Clearly, it's a minefield, full of rules and regulations written by
people who haven't a clue how the technology works. The particular
aspect of this that I was trying to emphasise is that a newsgroup
cannot really be said to "contain" anything in the usual sense.
Messages are always passing through, so that what is carried on the
hard disk on one day will be quite different on another day, or even at
a different hour. It thus has more of the characteristics of a
communication channel than a storage medium, the use of a hard disk
simply being a technological detail. It could be argued that electronic
memory "contains" information in the same dubious way.

The question that needs to be settled, if there are any legal experts
capable of understanding all the ramifications, is how long an
automatically managed temporary store (which is really only a dumb
electronic component) has to keep data before it can be regarded as a
container of it, rather than a conduit.

Rod.

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:10:31 +0000, Roderick Stewart wrote:

This particular piece of legislation is particularly blunt so the
ramifications are easy. The mear possession or viewing of pornographic
material of children is illegal - period. The allegation is that
PlusNet have in their possession hard disk that contain pornographic
material. I am surprised they have not had a knock on the door from
the police with a search warrant demanding to know which of their
customers has been downloading from the said groups.

JAB.

--
Jonathan A. Buzzard Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1661-832195

"Mugwump" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a7b2a3f122d8b84989bae@news.clara.net...

I'm sure the post office is also in possession of loads of illegal stuff at
any one time, as are courier services.

It seems to me that it would be impossible under the Law to hold any
"communication" organisation responsible for what passes through its
systems.

(However various news providers can and do refuse to carry specific ng's
that are intended for paedo's. But if there was a lot of that "censorship",
I can only assume that the rest of us would get more of them hogging other
ng's. Perhaps it's better for police etc to try and keep these people in
fewer places..?)

So let me see, If I choose to snort cocain and plusnet only deliver it they
are acting lawfully???

Can you see this an a defence 'I did not think the pictures were illegal as
they can of a uk isp's news server'.

The people who need the legal answers here are plusnet - and fast.

You will note most of the other isp's in the UK DON'T DO binaries NG's. Why
do you think this is???? Those that do, in my view, know exactly what it is
they are offering customers and retain the feature as an 'edge'. But hey,
thats just my view.

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:56:04 -0000, Mugwump <me@privacy.net> wrote:

Right, well... I think there is nothing more to do here than replicate
a post made today to our customers and point out that the groups
mentioned earlier in this thread are NOT available on our service.

"Over recent months, we have been working in partnership with the
Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to help make the Internet a safer
place. The IWF concentrates in combating child abuse images online.

As a result of this consultation, the IWF have provided us with a list
of publicly available newsgroups, which have been highlighted as being
cause for concern. We have now taken action to ensure that these
newsgroups are not available via our service.

We believe the work of the IWF is very important and will continue to
offer our full support and co-operation to them in the future. Further
information about the role of the IWF, and what to do if you are
concerned about any online content, can be found at their website:
http://www.iwf.org.uk "

With Regards,

Ian
--
| Ian Wild Unmetered & ADSL solutions
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet Technologies Ltd. @ http://www.plus.net
+ ------- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -------

"Mugwump" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1a7b6248dfa478a989baf@news.clara.net...
"The majority of the major ISPs carry binaries."

In the UK?
I'd check your crystal ball again and look at the ACTUAL binaries groups
they are carrying.

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 12:56:04 +0000, Mugwump wrote:

No, but

alt.binaries.pictures.boys.bondage
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.early-teans.firsthair
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.early-teans.hardcore
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pussy.firsthair

have the clear intention to distribute material that is not just illegal
in the U.K. but which carries severe punishments, and is considered
particularly offensive.

It is one thing for the Royal Mail to handle envelopes containing illegal
material, it would be entirely another for them to set up post boxes
specially marked for you to put such material in.


JAB.

--
Jonathan A. Buzzard Email: jonathan (at) buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 1661-832195

"PlusNet Support Team" <iwild@plus.net.uk> wrote in message

So you would agree that it would not be proper or legal to offer NG's that
"Contain images of child abuse, anywhere in the world"

As per the IWF frontpage

If this is so then please take a look through some of the erotica.teen
groups you are offering and tell me if you think the content therein is
legal.

Better still - don't bother, as one of your customers Ive already taken the
time to report you with examples from your news server with headers.

Any ISP holding this kind of filth and basically selling it - and any
individual that promotes it (yourself included) rank pretty near plantlife.

I suggest the reason you make it available is you enjoy pulling your pud
over it.