[Pan-devel] Re: Huge patch for Pan CVS to update GMime

[Duncan]

Jeffrey Stedfast posted <address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Mon, 07 Jun 2004 00:48:24 -0400:

> I don't think this'll break anything but unfortunately I can no longer
> test my changes since my new ISP doesn't have a nntp server.
> 
> Anyone know about a public nntp server I can use for free? :-)

There are at least two I know of.

1)  I post to this list/group thru gmane's list2news gateway.  Primarily,
they do just that, list2news and back again, and depending on what
lists/groups you use, you will likely need to be subscribed to the list
(but set to vacation mode or digest mode or something, to avoid having all
the mail in your inbox anyway) to post, but can read the lists anyway. 
The server does have a few local groups as well, including the usual local
test and discussion groups, that are not linked to mailing lists.  More
info available at http://gmane.org.  (They also have available an HTML
interface to the same lists, FWIW.)

2)  Some years ago, when I was still on MSWormOS, I used to participate in
the IE/OE public betas (IE4-5.5, didn't do the 6.0 betas as I was busy
researching my break for freedom, tho I installed 6.0 release before I
finally did that break), and was active on their related newsgroups.  You
likely won't be interested in much there, but IIRC they had test groups
and the like, which could be useful.  Try setting up msnews.microsoft.com
as a news server and see if it works.

There are a number of other special purpose support news servers around.

I've read that free (gratis) text-only servers aren't that uncommon. 
Binary servers are usually available as well, often made available for
temporary testing purposes, but they tend to come and go fairly rapidly. 
Access to one for a whole week is considered pretty good, then you are
looking for another one again.

Teranews (don't have a URL but try googling) is said to offer free
(gratis) bytecapped accounts.  50MB/day limit, registration required, but
posting from the account then free (gratis).

Non-free/non-gratis...  Usually, posting is free (gratis) to any paid NSP,
once you have an account.  Downloading is what costs the money.  Thus, the
cheapest byte-limited accounts are generally enough for posting.  Flat
rate all-you-can-download accounts are available at a going rate of
US$15/mo, from NSPs such as newshosting and easynews.  Supernews tends to
have reasonable ($6/mo range, but that's not current info) text-only
rates, 1.5GB/mo capped, text-group only enforced, and are considered one
of the best in the business for that, altho there are better choices than
their binary offerings.

If you can find access to it, the group
alt.binaries.news-server-comparison is a pretty good source of current
news server news, policies, and price information.  You may wish to
consider signing up for a short term subscription somewhere to get access
to that group, read it for a couple weeks, and then decide on a longer
term solution.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html