@Brainiac: I decided to take everything you get. Now sit in the corner and be happy for nothing.

You can't complain about losing a service that you never paid for. Your subscription to Comcast Internet service (or any other service) really only entitles you to just that: INTERNET ACCESS. They don't have to offer any additional services (whether they are at an additional charge or free). People should be more grateful for what they do get, rather than harping on the things that they don't.

Go to https://www.altopia.com/ for US$6/month Usenet.

Well over a year ago TimeWarner Cable NYC started letting it's newsserver fall apart when at one time is was fairly decent. Most of the binaries were missing and the ones that did come lasted less than a week due to poor retention.

The newsserver was something we as customers were paying for and we complained many times that the newsserver was lousy. They would say that there was nothing that could be done to fix it. At the time I had started using AstraWeb and Giganews premium newsservers and only occasionally checked on the TimeWarner newsserver to see if things ever improved. It never did. Eventually I got a notice a few months ago saying that they would shut it down on account of not many users accessing it. They were a bunch of jerks because we told them it wasn't functioning properly, so there wasn't much point in using it.

So they shut it down and never gave us back any money even though they took away a service that we were entitled to have. I'm sure it had something to do with downloading pirating movies, but that's the breaks.

The ISPs are really getting crappy and now they intend to put limits on how much can be downloaded at a time when download speeds are going up.

One time last year TimeWarner Cable shut down my access to the internet because I was found to be downloading a particular movie on Bittorrent. I had to agree to stop downloading movies on BT and then I got my internet connection back. I never even got a warning they were going to disconnect me and I had to telephone to find out what was going on. I never download U.S. movies on BT anymore. I dislike the idea that they can look into my downloading activities, but what can I do.

I guess the heyday of the internet is just about over.


More that just the MAFIAA are opposed
to the Usenet News: ever fascist on the
planet gets rectal cramps from the concept 
of an information service that cannot be 
censored.

~D

You can thank NYAG Andrew Quomo for this one. In the name of "protecting children" he's managed to cut off all Comcast customers from the internet's oldest area of free speech. 

Quomo won't stop with ISPs. He'll be using this next election. Unless maybe he's another Spitzer but we probably aren't that lucky.

MAFIAA may have played a hand but with a 2GB monthly limit I find it hard to believe it was a big threat to them.

Yea, it's pretty amazing how much fear the MAFIAA spread. Take for instance any DoD office computer. They are so paranoid of the MAFIAA (yes these are people with nukes and missiles) that they panic whenever any office employee downloads a .torrent file (even if it's a torrent file made available on a .gov site for government data). They're not scared of Al Qaeda taking over their mandated Microsoft Windows machines but scared that peer-to-peer torrents will bring ruin to the American way of life.

O2, who bought out BeThere.co.uk in UK, also has no newsgroup access. Most of the other ISPs have newsgroup access.

Newsgroups are very handy, looks like more will switch to using google newsgroups. Maybe it's google pushing the isp's to stop newsgroup access?

I got a note telling me that my Comcastic rates were going up due to "improvements" they have been making. I guess they mean when they dug the crap out of the neighborhood...

Dear MPAA / RIAA.

The internet does not belong to you. All you are doing is hurting Comcast profits and Comcast is stupid enough to follow your suggestion.

I can get around this very easily. Nope, not telling you how... do your own homework fat cats.

This also happened a few years at various US government agencies. The MAFIAA just needed a bigger thumb$crew for Comcast and the other ISPs. Believe it or not, but the same agencies are now blocking FTP (file transfer protocol) - in BOTH directions, inbound and outbound, even anonymous FTP. Sure, this is all about "security". Liars. Let's see how long it takes for commercial ISPs to follow suit.

What is happening to the Internet to please the MAFIAA is just sickening.