Q: How many USENET users does it take to change a light bulb? A: 435,235 1 to change the bulb 4 to tell him he should have done it differently 365 to point out spelling/grammar errors in first 5 posts 1834 to flame the spell checkers 4598 to correct spelling in spelling flames 6785 to say please move to alt.spelling.lite.bulb 15,467 to say stop cross posting to soc.women and alt.rape.all.men.are.scum, alt.adoption, and s.a.a.(m) 23,456 to endlessly debate which method is superior 236,789 to concatenate all articles to date, then quote them, only to say, "Me Too" 106,345 to quote the "Me Toos" to say, "Me Three" 1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup 89,345 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here 10,584 votes for alt.lite.bulb

I think people read newsgroups for their own interests, like me, I tend to read my local (Singapore related) newsgroups first, like sg.marketplace and soc.culture.singapore. But I also read computer related newsgroups like linux, windows95 and unix groups. I like tin because it is fast, clean and easy to use. I tried Agent but I don't like it, when you read many newsgroups (like 100) the hard disk space drops very fast... Also the problem with usenet news is very hard to find a fast, reliable and good NNTP server. just my .2 cent

What are they talking about on singapore.general these days. Which topic has the most responses? What's the Internet scene like in Singapore in general?

The most talk about tropic was the General Election 1997, which was ended on Jan 2nd. The US even said some comments on Singapore Election which the ruling party (People Action Party, PAP) links voting to upgrading of public housing, ie vote buying and money politic. To bas bad the oppositions only managed to win only 2 seats out of 83 seats and PAP has absolute majority for the next 5 years. Here everything is owned and controlled by the government (PAP) including the Internet, they force all users to use the gaint proxy farm to block access to political and prono sites on the Internet, they can do this because they controll all the ISPs here. Just for your info Singapore pays its ministers very well because the government is PAP, a cabinet minister is paid US$1 million a year before bonuses or perks. The Prime Minister is getting US$ 1.5 millions a years. Things in Singapore are also the most expensive in the world, a new 1,600cc Japanese sedan car is US$70,000 on the road, a 1,000 sq.ft public house (99-year lease, high rise) is US$250,000 and unlimited Internet access is about US$120 a month. Well, Singapore is definitely not for the poor... sad.

But are wages correspondingly high? Ted, would you mind creating a Singapore topic in our travel conference and invite some of your fellow Singaporeans (?) to join it?

Wages for most people are not high, still lag behind Hongkong, US and Japan. Average computer engineer with 3 years experience earns about $35000 a year. Okay I will create a Singapore tropic in the travel tropic soon.

Did he? I use NewsAgent. Very good with a jillion options for subscription - a lot of which you would not want your mother to know about - or your children!

I use tin, which we have on our system. Ted Chong uses the spring for newsgroups only and is the master of tin. tedchong@spring.net can tell you about our newsgroup server, which is really ddc's.

Thanks...I shall contact him at the first chance and see what he thinks. I appreciate your answering my cry in the wilderness for advice.

dejanews.com is now deja.com I believe.

I have noticed that most of the users use dejanews though I have the one I do because it was the one my son uses...are they all more or less the same?

Pretty much. Stroud has a bunch of newsgroup readers on his site.

I noticed. They borrow freely one from another, it appears!

Since ddc is no more for Spring (amen!) who is the official newsgroup now?

Good question. I'm not even sure if the new location has newsgroups. Ted would be able to tell you if there other free newsgroup servers out there, there must be umpteen of them. Maybe you could do a net search on free newsgroup servers and let us know what it turns up, perhaps?

I shall do that for you. Did the one I use cost me? I don't remember. I'll certainly check ASAP.

http://www.freenntp.com/ has lots of things free, including his own stuff. It is also part of the Public News Servers Web Ring. http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=nntp;list lists the sites on this ring. There are lots of them there suggesting that it might be easier for those involved in actually choosing this item to check it out, whereas if I do it, you are going to have to take my word for it, or something. Not sure you want to do that!

http://serverwatch.internet.com/newsservers.html has a list of free news servers none of which I have ever heard of (no big thing, that!) and download links to them as well as to Outlook, Agent, and Express. This list of server links: Cassandra DNEWS News Server INN News Server NetRoad NewsServer Netscape Collabra Server NewsChannel Newstand nDaemon

If I bother to go through all of the news servers and write the pros and cons and present them here, will that benefit anyone other than me? Will anyone be interested in what there is out there? I make new topics and post interesting things all over Spring, but maybe they are only interesting to me, Alexander said. So, if I am using up this conference space with all of the free news servers and you don't need that, please advise. It would be nice to talk to someone other than to myself.

Do some of these carry austin.general and austin.forsale?

Let me check and get back to you. I am loading Agent at the moment; then i will check through the urls above to hunt for others which might. I also have access to usenet through telnet on Hawaii on Line. I'll also check there for you. I am always happy to be of help On Agent I found 16 with Austin in the title. austin.food, austin.forsale, austin.jobs, and austin.general among them.

These are the ones I found on Usenet on Hawaii-on-Line N 11 K austin.announce ??? (Moderated) N 11 K austin.autos Care and (mis)use of automobi N 11 K austin.flame Flamefesting followup for Aus N 11 K austin.food Eating, cooking, and culinary N 11 K austin.forsale Items for sale in Austin, TX. N 11 K austin.gardening Austin and USDA Zone 8 garden N 11 K austin.general Items of general interest in N 11 K austin.internet Discussion of Internet issues N 11 K austin.jobs Jobs available, wanted, and d N 11 K austin.music Music around Austin, TX. N 11 K austin.org.sca The Society for Creative Anac N 11 K austin.politics Political issues in Austin, T N 11 K austin.talk Talk in Austin, TX. N 11 K austin.test Usenet testing in Austin, TX. N 11 K austin.usenet.config No description. N 11 K austin.usenet.stats No description.

Those are the good ones.

It appears that most of the big newsgroups have those Austin topics. It just takes forever to get through the alt.binary stuff (talk about educational?!)to get to them.

Shall I check out specific places to download these Free newsgroups using the Austin criteria as a gauge of worthiness for Spring? Or, is there something else you would rather have me doing?

Maybe post some pointers to the spring on some newsgroups, subtly of course.

Hmmm...Of course, Subtly. To http://www.spring.net or to /public/main? Next is to wade through 30,000+ groups to see which ones might attract the right sort of people...A daunting job at best! I'll do it!