[Sorry, I'm getting cricket sounds when attempting the google group. I'm
cp'ing to c.programming for this reason alone.]



Every time I try to use google these days to look for groups I get a listing
of every podunk personal group with 2 members designed by some inbred
numbnut from EBF.

Is there any way I can use google to return only USENET groups?



--
http://www.allexperts.com is a nifty way to get an answer to just about
anything.

I definitely be interested in an answer to this! If you find one I'll
publish it in GoogleTutor.com.

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005, slobizman wrote:
www.google.co.uk
www.google.ca

Never use the broken U.S. interface. Encourage your friends (and
strangers) not to use it. Send mail to Google and ask them to fix it.


(Someone whose server carries the "google.public" hierarchy, please
repost to that group. Followups set.)

-Arthur,
sometimes the simple answer is best

"Thomas G. Marshall" wrote:
Look about for a file called hostinfo.dat. At least that is what
Netscape maintains here when refreshing the newsgroup list. It has
about 30,000 lines, i.e. entries, here and includes more info than
just the group name.

Why not just get a proper newsreader? Google is pushing Microsoft
for the dubius honor of being the worst.

--
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare

"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" wrote:
I doubt that any ISP carries google.public.*, as it is apparently
not a usenet group. At any rate I just accessed google and the
lists of groups are annotated for existance on usenet. However
they are not very useful, as they just dump out a list of thousands
of groups without even alphabetical sorting.

Google is making a laughing stock of itself with this.

--
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare

CBFalconer coughed up:
THANKS! I'll give it a whirl and see if it does the trick.


Verizon does. It is my original post.


I just don't understand how something so unbelievably simple could have
eluded them.



--
"This creature is called a vampire. To kill it requires a stake
through its heart." "I shall drive my staff deep into its rump."
"No no, this creature is from a dimension where the heart is in the
chest." "....Disgusting."

Demons discussing "Angel", a good vampire from our dimension visiting
theirs.

CBFalconer coughed up:

The world's best newsreader is going to only yield to me what is on my ISP's
news server. Do you mean a proper news service? I'm not sure of others out
there that are as complete as google. Perhaps I just don't venture out
enough.


--
"This creature is called a vampire. To kill it requires a stake
through its heart." "I shall drive my staff deep into its rump."
"No no, this creature is from a dimension where the heart is in the
chest." "....Disgusting."

Demons discussing "Angel", a good vampire from our dimension visiting
theirs.

Thomas G. Marshall wrote:
there are news readers better than Google it's true, the advantage of
using google is that you can be at any machine (as long as it has www
connection & browser) and there it is, with access to most newsgroups.

They do seem to be slowly improving on the 'new' interface, though
still not as clean as the previous one, and i still don't like the
bundling in of hopeless 'yahoo group'-a-likes with the real thing

gswork@mailcity.com coughed up:
They could feel free to do that, but just give us a freaking checkbox to
eliminate the non-usenet. or sort the usenet in front. This design is
evident of a *real* lack of understanding of how the original groups are
used. I smell a drunk marketer somewhere....


--
Puzzle: You are given a deck of cards all face up
except for 10 cards mixed in which are face down.
If you are in a pitch black room, how do you divide
the deck into two piles (may be uneven) that each
contain the same number of face-up cards?
Answer (rot13): Sebz naljurer va gur qrpx, qrny bhg
gra pneqf naq syvc gurz bire.

In article <vXV%d.30774$FB6.23041@trndny09>,
tgm2tothe10thpower@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail.c om says...
I think it's more insidious than that. I smell a desire to take over
and eventually replace Usenet with something completely under
Google's control. Those of you using it daily to post and read are
simply helping that take place faster.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"Making it hard to do stupid things often makes it hard
to do smart ones too." -- Andrew Koenig

Randy Howard coughed up:

Is there a better equivalent out there?

I *like* the www.google.co.uk so far. So glad it was mentioned by Arthur J.
O'Dwyer.

Them good ol' days o' google groups.


--
Everythinginlifeisrealative.Apingpongballseemssmal luntilsomeoneramsitupyournose.

In article <TkZ%d.12969$aS5.4434@trndny05>,
tgm2tothe10thpower@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail.c om says...
I would say that almost ANY conventional newsreader is superior, with
the possible exception of Outlook Express. There are hundreds of
useful features in a full-blown newsreader (such as Gravity). Also,
I despise having to wait for individual page loads, instead of the
near instantaneous access when using your own locally stored articles
(background downloads).

If being able to access it anywhere is useful to you, I would opt for
a notebook computer with a commercial news server subscription, or
the use of an ISP that allows secure connections to their nntp server
when using a different provider.

I'll take a look at it, had not seen it until it mas mentioned here.

*shudder*

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"Making it hard to do stupid things often makes it hard
to do smart ones too." -- Andrew Koenig

Randy Howard coughed up:
Again, what I'm asking about is the news server, not the reading front end
per se, until you run into a problem like I did with google. As I said
before, I can have the worlds greatest newsreader, but it'll still only give
me what is on my ISP's news server. It's the server that is the issue.
Once you have that in place (like google groups), I /then/ need a way of
easily accessing it. And that is where google groups has gone from good to
rotten.

Is there any service comparable to google that does a better job for $0 ?




--
Onedoctortoanother:"Ifthisismyrectalthermometer,wh erethehell'smypen???"

Randy Howard wrote:
The last time I looked at that it apparently could not access the
message being replied to form a quote. Maybe they fixed it?

--
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare

In article <sf30e.15281$ed6.921@trndny06>,
tgm2tothe10thpower@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail.c om says...
I find it hard to believe that any regular Usenet participant could
actually be "happy" with the features (or lack thereof) provided by
the Google interface, but ok.

Ok. I haven't ever been terribly distressed by a lack of newsgroups.
Something on the order of 50,000 seems sufficient for me.

It can be. For example, Verizon has this very annoying problem
whereby they don't sync articles between the several different NNTP
servers they run. The downside, is fairly often some subset of
the subscribed newsgroups will see a batch of "old" posts show up
(and flagged as such by Gravity). I could probably device a rule
to delete them automatically, but they already get sorted such
that I can easily delete them all together. Apart from that,
it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

The gotcha with Verizon is, as you may already know, is that even
though they require secure authentication to their NNTP server, they
still will not let you connect it unless you are using their ISP
service. (I.e. a notebook on the road won't work unless you are at a
location that also uses Verizon). That isn't ideal, but not a real
problem either, in that they keep articles reasonably long, and I've
never been so lucky as to have a vacation too long to read the
traffic when I return.

Hardly surprising. It's difficult to think of why (apart from evil
intentions) they have taken a useful service (an archive of NNTP
traffic) and attempted to turn it into something worse than AOL could
ever even dream up.

It would seem hard to imagine that there is ANY service that does a
worse job than google. However, I have not actively looked for an
alternate provider of stand-alone NNTP service.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"Making it hard to do stupid things often makes it hard
to do smart ones too." -- Andrew Koenig

Randy Howard coughed up:
I only use it for reading. Except for once, when I replied to a thread I
was in in 1997. Just to see how many would remember it. It was a monster
thread that many remembered. The subject line was burned painfully into
many folks minds.


No, no. The problem is server /post/ retention, not the number of
newsgroups. I've seen posts on google groups back as far as 1993. I only
get several months on verizon. For me, it's far easier to do quick searches
on google, and then /post/ via my newsreader to verizon.


I use supergravity from time to time, but mostly for nudie pictures.


I've noticed that with every ISP I've ever been a part of. They just do not
want freeloaders connecting to their servers from a login and password
posted someplace in hackercentral.


Well put. LOL.


I like google for researching, searching, and reading. Their search engine
is wonderful, once you get the hang of it. But alas, nearly anything with
an HTTP front-end is painful to use *too* much, hence my regular newsreader
for maintaining my actual conversations, like this one.



--
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

Thomas G. Marshall coughed up:

....[rip]...

Er, /very/ ironically, within minutes of writing this, I read one from 1989.
It was a post from James dow allen. He placed the link to from a thread
nearby...

--
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

In article <zXn0e.20330$qN3.18342@trndny01>,
tgm2tothe10thpower@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail.c om says...
Okay, I've been misinterpreting your comments in this thread then.
I thought you wanted the ability to post from anywhere for some
reason.

I was not aware that it had any special features that support such
usage. Why is it blessed for that purpose?

Why are they any more at risk than any website that provides services
through a secure login? They could limit data rates on "remote"
connections and it would still be at least usable, albeit slower.

I like it for searching through old posts, but I hate it as a front-
end for reading articles. It is incredibly cumbersome compared to
a real newsreader. It's the poster-app for why browsers are not
generically good as replacements for native GUIs.

We agree completely on that.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"Making it hard to do stupid things often makes it hard
to do smart ones too." -- Andrew Koenig

"Thomas G. Marshall" wrote:
I believe att will allow just that under appropriate circumstances
and passwords. I have never wanted to disturb somebody elses
machine enough to do it, so I just use the web access.
Circumstances include not being a new user.

--
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on
"show options" at the top of the article, then click on the
"Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson

Arthur J. O'Dwyer coughed up:

As it turns out, those two links have now moved over to the dark side.
(beta).

@#$%. Is there no other company that can beat google at this for free?


....[rip]...


--
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"