[clue-tech] Usenet Redux

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:25:17 -0600
Sean LeBlanc wrote:

> I'm thinking of getting back to reading a bit of Usenet again. Problem
> is, I'm not sure what is the "best" way to do that anymore.

I haven't read Usenet for years. Back when I was doing it a lot, I used
Pan -- was even a beta tester.

http://pan.rebelbase.com/features/

I found it to be quite keyboard friendly. Dunno how it's morphed over the
years though. Not sure about client-side spam filtering. I was doing the
spam-warrior thing back then, so I actually wanted to get the spam for
the groups I was active in.

Yeah, you could set up your own spool, but that might take a lot of
bandwidth and diskspace, depending on how many groups you want. I never
used leafnode or anything like that. I know there's a usenet de-spam
thing called SpamHippo -- again, never tried it.

Pan does do a commercial "Pan Enterprise Solutions Pack 3K" about which I
know nothing. But I found some of the features amusing:

* 'Oil slick, smokescreen, ejector seat, and heat-seeking diddle darts.'

When I was using Pan, I found the users mailing list very good. Of
course, I was also on the developer list, so I got good support there as
a tester.

I'm occassionaly tempted by the thought of sticking my toe in the water
again. But I'd have to buy a subscription to a feed service. I think if I
were to to it again, I'd look for a feed service that already has good
spam filtering in place.

jed