This might be a dumb question::::

Or posted in the wrong area.... Or both!

Newsgroups!!!! My boss here at the office is hooked on them. He praises them, and pulls down stuff off of them frequently. He uses them to download stuff. He came over my place and installed some weird programs and tried showing me how to use it... I was more interested in trying to get on the UT2004 game. With that being said.... Can anybody tell me if these "newsgroups" are a good thing, bad thing... Pros? Cons? I am uneducated in this area... EDUCATE ME!!!! Please!

 

newsgroups can be both good and bad. some people start beliveg eerhting they read

 

Well...the binary groups are almost never for legit reasons.

The text ones, well, its not much different than going to a forum, except its usually badly organized, regardless of the reader you use.

I used to frequent the windows support and helpdesk newsgroups, but really, I found that people did not know how to listen, were rude, or were uneducated on how to use their NG reader. It was a waste of time, usually.


With that said, some of the very best technical info to obscure answers I have found over Google groups, which searches newsgroups with your query.

 

Much what Adrynalyne said. I've found 3 Old Time Radio binary newsgroups that I like, and that's fairly safe. And almost any interest you can think of has a newsgroup, or several, dedicated to it, probably with more information, detail, and chatter than you would imagine. Lots of good information on most any topic.

Downside is, a lot of the binary groups ARE anything from to sleazy to obscene, and are the premier place to pick up viruses, trojans, hikackers, and dialers. Mostly unmoderated and uncontrolled. And even in the text groups, finding what you're looking for can be intimidating, as there is a lot of crap to wade through to find useful info. Googling for info like Adrynalyne noted is probably the easiest way to search for data, but even that's liable to leave you a lot of searching.

 

One thing I have found with newsgroups from the past, is to be very careful in using your actual e-mail address when settings things up with your newsgroup reader, otherwise you can receive spam. In particular, after you've posted into the newgroup. I've always wondered how I would get this spam and have suspected someone/body extrapolating (using some program) that info from posts I've made.

 

WORD!

You don't need real names/addys in a newsgroup. Set up a nickname and a phony email address in your newsgroup account. Spammers regularly harvest addresses from them, and you may draw personal attention from somebody that you don't want. My addy is nobody@nowhere.com.

 

Weellllll, I didn't know that at the time - just a noob way back then - learned from experience

 

@Ken3

Hey Ken,

I didn't think there was a word noob when you started? hehehehe

 

LOL ....New on the block........ That's all I can think of right now - wish I could come up something snappier

 

What everyone who posted above said is true, but as also has been said,there is a lot of good information on the newsgroups too. Like everything on the BigBadWeb, you have to use your head in what you download. If you're interested in that stuff, the most used and most reliable news readers are Free Agent by Forte and its companion Forte Agent which costs but has more features (like decrypting yEnCode) than its little brother.