NNTP Newsgroups closing

[Corday]

Quote from Microsoft.
“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups and helping
active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft
forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This decision was
made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and
experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that
address their feedback and needs.”

[Noel Paton]

Post by Corday
Quote from Microsoft.
“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups and helping
active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft
forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This decision was
made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and
experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that
address their feedback and needs.”
--
Fortune favors the bold.

Unfortunately, it's been all too obviously the way things were going for the
past few years. MS have spent large sums of money on the pretty forums, and
almost nothing on NNTP - and then in Win7 took away the means for anyone to
access NG's without a third-party program (or a complex hack to install Win
Mail on Win7), by not including an email/NNTP client.
As soon as that decision had been taken, the fate of the NG's was obvious,
and imminent.
From what I understand, low-volume NG's will be the first to go - and most
of ME's groups are effectively zero-volume.
We can expect to see close-down notices in all the ME groups except possibly
this one, by the first week of June, and this one shortly after - my
understanding is that they want to close the servers before the end of the
year (but whether it's the MS year, the Financial year, or the Calendar
year, I have no idea).

RIP easy-access assistance!

NNTP is dead - long live Forums (or is it Fora?), where control is the name
of the game, and if you speak out of turn, look out!

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Noel Paton" <noeldp(spamless)@crashfixpc.co.uk>

| Unfortunately, it's been all too obviously the way things were going for the
| past few years. MS have spent large sums of money on the pretty forums, and
| almost nothing on NNTP - and then in Win7 took away the means for anyone to
| access NG's without a third-party program (or a complex hack to install Win
| Mail on Win7), by not including an email/NNTP client.
| As soon as that decision had been taken, the fate of the NG's was obvious,
| and imminent.
| From what I understand, low-volume NG's will be the first to go - and most
| of ME's groups are effectively zero-volume.
| We can expect to see close-down notices in all the ME groups except possibly
| this one, by the first week of June, and this one shortly after - my
| understanding is that they want to close the servers before the end of the
| year (but whether it's the MS year, the Financial year, or the Calendar
| year, I have no idea).

| RIP easy-access assistance!

| NNTP is dead - long live Forums (or is it Fora?), where control is the name
| of the game, and if you speak out of turn, look out!


Adobe killed is Usenet.

US ISPs dropped Usenet.

Google Groups has ALLOWED abuse and spam and they are killing Usenet.

Slowly but surely, Usenet as we know, it is be dismantled and killed-off :-(

[Noel Paton]

Post by Noel Paton

Post by Corday
Quote from Microsoft.
“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups and helping
active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft
forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This decision was
made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and
experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that
address their feedback and needs.”
--
Fortune favors the bold.

Unfortunately, it's been all too obviously the way things were going for
the past few years. MS have spent large sums of money on the pretty
forums, and almost nothing on NNTP - and then in Win7 took away the means
for anyone to access NG's without a third-party program (or a complex hack
to install Win Mail on Win7), by not including an email/NNTP client.
As soon as that decision had been taken, the fate of the NG's was obvious,
and imminent.
From what I understand, low-volume NG's will be the first to go - and most
of ME's groups are effectively zero-volume.
We can expect to see close-down notices in all the ME groups except
possibly this one, by the first week of June, and this one shortly after -
my understanding is that they want to close the servers before the end of
the year (but whether it's the MS year, the Financial year, or the
Calendar year, I have no idea).
RIP easy-access assistance!
NNTP is dead - long live Forums (or is it Fora?), where control is the
name of the game, and if you speak out of turn, look out!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20004109-56.htm

[Noel Paton]

Post by Noel Paton
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20004109-56.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspx

[webster72n]

Post by Corday
Quote from Microsoft.
“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups and helping
active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft
forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This decision was
made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and
experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that
address their feedback and needs.”

They have a way to make themselves look like lifesavers and yet, all they do
is,
promote their own interests and financial gain. But that's what they are in
business for, or?
Myself, I couldn't care less. After more than a decade 'on the internet' I
know better.
Any necessary adjustments should come easy.
Thanks for keeping us up to date, Corday.

Harry.

Post by Corday
--
Fortune favors the bold.

[webster72n]

Post by Corday
Quote from Microsoft.
“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups and helping
active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft
forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This decision was
made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and
experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that
address their feedback and needs.”

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspx

Post by Corday
--
Fortune favors the bold.

[98 Guy]

On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups

Yea - on their NNTP servers.

These microsoft.public groups are propagated world-wide. They will
continue to be propagated worldwide no matter what Microsoft does with
their own server.

Microsoft does not control these groups - nobody or no single server can
control a usenet newsgroup or a hirearchy of groups. A lot of people
don't realize or understand this fact.

Microsoft has already been removing newsgroups from their server. They
did it last year - and those groups still exist on the world-wide
usenet.

-----------------
Subject: Household in microsoft.* hierarchy
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:49:54 -0500
Newsgroups: news.admin.hierarchies

Julien ÉLIE wrote:

535 newsgroups have been removed this morning on
news.microsoft.com
------------------

This decision was made in an effort to provide the best community
and support resources and experience to our customers

This decision was made in an effort to cut costs and reduce admin staff
and operational headaches caused by hackers that constantly use
Microsoft servers to emit spam into the microsoft groups, as well reduce
the amount of information being made available to circumvent license
copying, copy protection and product-key sharing.

Microsoft announced a few months ago some new scheme for having MVP's
provide end-user support via some special web-forum or web-site they
were going to set up. I think it involved a way that payment or
renumeration could be funneled to MVP's from end users. I have heard
squat about so far.

It's funny how Microsoft first spun their usenet peering back in 1996:

----------------

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1996/apr96/nwsgrppr.mspx

Microsoft PressPass - Microsoft Announces Internet Newsgroups For
Peer-to-Peer Discussions on Microsoft Products

REDMOND, Wash., April 9, 1996 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the
addition of no-charge Microsoft-sponsored NNTP newsgroups on the
Internet to its family of Information Services offerings. This new
service boosts Microsoft's Internet presence and further addresses
customer demand for one-stop information and services over the Internet.
Microsoft is investing in the newsgroups to create a community in which
customers can share technical information about Microsoft® products and
technologies. Microsoft Newsgroups are scheduled to be live and
accessible to customers on April 15, 1996, via the Support area of the
Microsoft World Wide Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/support/).

[Noel Paton]

Post by 98 Guy

On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups

Yea - on their NNTP servers.
These microsoft.public groups are propagated world-wide. They will
continue to be propagated worldwide no matter what Microsoft does with
their own server.
Microsoft does not control these groups - nobody or no single server can
control a usenet newsgroup or a hirearchy of groups. A lot of people
don't realize or understand this fact.
Microsoft has already been removing newsgroups from their server. They
did it last year - and those groups still exist on the world-wide
usenet.

That's as may be - but the (vast?) majority of posts to these groups comes
directly through MS's servers, which means that when they pull the plug,
most of those people are not going to bother to find the few free NNTP
servers left, and will instead go to the forums. The traffic on the groups
will nose-dive, and they'll be left as a rump of their former selves. For
Legacy products,such as 9x, this will certainly be a death-knell - and since
Win7 contains no way to get to NNTP, we can assume that no new users will
come to the groups to solve problems on their older machines - they'll take
the path of least resistance and go to the forums instead.
Traffic to the MS groups has reportedly dropped by 50% over the past year -
no surprise, since MS has been directing people to the forums, rather than
the groups, and the 100 million early-adopters of Win 7 have no way to get
here anyway, without searching for (freebie) software, and then working out
WTF to do with it.
The rest of Usenet (of which strictly speaking, these groups are not part)
is also suffering a lingering death, except for those groups dealing in file
sharing and suchlike. MS's decision, while unwelcome, has been completely
predictable since the rise of the forum, and MS's decision to spend heavily
in that area while neglecting NNTP effectively made the move not just
inevitable, but imperative.

[Joan Archer]

I'll have to go and see if I can find home on the eternal-september server,
I know Windows 7 is on there, I have a few others as well. Not sure without
looking if the BT server carries it, they have 7.
I'll have to do a bit of digging around, and bring them into my WLM while I
still have the list <g>
--
Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com/

Post by Noel Paton

Post by 98 Guy

On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups

Yea - on their NNTP servers.
These microsoft.public groups are propagated world-wide. They will
continue to be propagated worldwide no matter what Microsoft does with
their own server.
Microsoft does not control these groups - nobody or no single server can
control a usenet newsgroup or a hirearchy of groups. A lot of people
don't realize or understand this fact.
Microsoft has already been removing newsgroups from their server. They
did it last year - and those groups still exist on the world-wide
usenet.

That's as may be - but the (vast?) majority of posts to these groups comes
directly through MS's servers, which means that when they pull the plug,
most of those people are not going to bother to find the few free NNTP
servers left, and will instead go to the forums. The traffic on the groups
will nose-dive, and they'll be left as a rump of their former selves. For
Legacy products,such as 9x, this will certainly be a death-knell - and
since Win7 contains no way to get to NNTP, we can assume that no new users
will come to the groups to solve problems on their older machines -
they'll take the path of least resistance and go to the forums instead.
Traffic to the MS groups has reportedly dropped by 50% over the past
year - no surprise, since MS has been directing people to the forums,
rather than the groups, and the 100 million early-adopters of Win 7 have
no way to get here anyway, without searching for (freebie) software, and
then working out WTF to do with it.
The rest of Usenet (of which strictly speaking, these groups are not part)
is also suffering a lingering death, except for those groups dealing in
file sharing and suchlike. MS's decision, while unwelcome, has been
completely predictable since the rise of the forum, and MS's decision to
spend heavily in that area while neglecting NNTP effectively made the move
not just inevitable, but imperative.
--
Noel Paton
CrashFixPC
Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
www.crashfixpc.co.uk

[HRH The Example John Smith]

Post by Corday
Quote from Microsoft.
“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively closing newsgroups and helping
active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft
forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This decision was
made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and
experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that
address their feedback and needs.”
--
Fortune favors the bold.

Sometimes it favours the bald - but that is just sick.

Lucy

[Noel Paton]

Post by HRH The Example John Smith

Post by Corday
Fortune favors the bold.

Sometimes it favours the bald - but that is just sick.

Nah - just slick :)

[HRH The Example John Smith]

Post by Noel Paton

Post by HRH The Example John Smith

Post by Corday
Fortune favors the bold.

Sometimes it favours the bald - but that is just sick.

Nah - just slick :)

Ha ha. :-)