wrote in
oups.com:

Larry,

Does one have to use a subscription service to access the
alt.binaries.e-book group? I tried it from GoogleGroups and was told
that it did not exist. Any thoughts?

Thanks
Grant



Freebie newsgroup providers usually have no access to binary newsgroups,
like alt.binaries.(anything here)

This reduces their server load to almost zero, allowing them to make some
money off the spammers who have spots on the webpages.

Might I recommend one of the best news servers, www.usenetserver.com for
your newsgroup access? Knology Cable provides this for us in the SE USA as
part of our broadband coverage. I'm on it, now. An unlimited $15/month
personal account can be accessed with username/password from any point on
the planet. Usenetserver keeps no records of what newsgroups you connect
to and unlimited customers have no records of what or how much you get.

As for downloading from binary groups, you need a better newsgroup client
than Micro$not's hacker target, Outlook or Outlook Express. They suck for
binaries. I recommend Xnews from http://xnews.newsguy.com/ Download the
MANUAL WHILE YOU'RE THERE!
Luu Tran is Xnews' author and gives the program away, completely free of
adwares/spywares/anywares. Upon initial boot, Xnews asks you the
nameserver (or IP) address of the news server you use and your username and
password, if necessary. It will then go get the entire newsgroup list,
over 76,000 newsgroups currently and put them in a list for that server.
You look through the list and pick rec.boats.cruising by right-clicking on
it and picking SUBSCRIBE from the picklist (or press + key). This moves
this newsgroup to the top of the big list so you can find it easier. Xnews
displays only subscribed newsgroups when it boots. Doubleclick any
newsgroup on the list and Xnews will download the binary newsgroups'
message list, neatly assemble all the multiple message posts for a binary
into a single line on its message list with a light blue Rubix cube,
indicating all the parts for that multipart binary file are present and
available for it to download. You only need to click on the Q (for Que)
field of the list to add that line to your download que. A number lights
up, in sequence, in the Q field to let you know it is now qued for
download. Incomplete binary files show up as a dark blue partial rubix
cube icon on the left of the entry. You cannot recover those unless the
original poster reposts them. Usenetserver is VERY complete on binary
files and leaves them online for WEEKS, not days like other services. They
have massive server storage over in Atlanta. They also do NOT restrict
binary files to just alt.binaries newsgroups. I could post a binary here
and it would be stored and downloadable on Usenetserver's server stack.

Once you have qued a few binaries in the Q field (numbers showing), you
click the Rubix cube icon along the bottom of that window and a popup
directory select window asks where you want to put all these binaries it
downloads. Picking your directory and clicking OK starts the downloading.
You can go back to the list and add more and more files at any time,
simultaneously while it downloads. Xnews also allows you to have several
newsgroups open simultaneously, downloading from them all.
Usenetserver.com limits their unlimited ($15/month) customers to 6
simultaneous ports, which is more than you have bandwidth for anyways.
They do not restrict how many gigabytes you may download, or what bandwidth
you use downloading, at all, which is very unusual these days.

Once you've picked all the complete binaries and start it downloading, your
usefulness is over. The program will download, ad nauseum, while you
sleep, work or whatever, filling every available megabyte of hard drive
space quite quickly. I have 360GB online that always stays slap full...(c;
CDR manufacturers love me....

For most e-books, that's all you'll really need. But, some binary files on
usenet are HUGE, like the ones in alt.binaries.movies.divx. Over there
you'll see sequences of files with extensions like .rar or .r01 .r02 etc.
These huge files, (700 MB for a movie or more) would be almost impossible
to post as one huge message list. Parts would get lost. So, usenetters
use some more software to do error corrections in the system called PAR
(for parity) files, and WinRAR for advanced compression to reduce the
actual size of the text files posted. (Remember - Usenet uses only 7 bits!
It only can store TEXT. Encoding schemes like Yenc, UUnet, and others
convert the 8-bit original binary file into TEXT that can be posted. Xnews
can read and decode back into the original 8-bit binary all formats
currently used to encode/decode binaries. You're not really involved as it
does this automatically.)

IF the poster has posted files that have PAR names in them, we'll be able
to run a complete parity check on the entire WinRAR stack of files on the
hard drive and be able to RECOVER any errors! I use Quickpar, another
freeware program from the hackers in England. http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
Download and install it and it will associate itself with all PAR files.
To use it is real simple. With your favorite file handler, like Windoze
Explorer for instance, just doubleclick on the first PAR file you come to
and Quickpar will open itself and start the file checking immediately.
Check the box that says AUTO REPAIR and when it gets done checking the
files for accuracy, it will go into repair mode automatically to correct
any errors it found, RESTORE any partial files damaged or even REPLACE a
missing file if not too many are missing that recovery with this many PAR
files is impossible. It'll let you know if it can't repair your files.

OK, we ran QuickPAR on the file stack and it fixed all the file errors, now
what? Now, we run WinRAR on the stack to make the original binary file.

So, you see a book or movie that has many binary file "parts", each part
consisting of many, say 32 for instance, messages. What Xnews will put on
your hard drive is a series of files, not just one file. They'll look like
descriptive filename.part01.rar
descriptive filename.part02.rar
descriptive filename.part03.rar
down to
descriptive filename.part83.rar

To decode this big binary, go to http://www.rarlab.com/ and fork over $21
for the latest version of WinRAR, a commercial program. It's the only way
to decode these proprietary files I know of. UPdates forever are free.

Winrar is easy to use. You have the whole sequence of rar files from
Part00 to Part83 now stored by Xnews in a directory. You point WinRAR to
the Part01 file and click EXTRACT. It asks you what directory you want to
put the completed file or files. (Sometimes the poster has RAR'd many
files together into one RAR compressed file.) You pick the directory to
put the results and click OK. Winrar does the rest and you get that latest
book, song, MOVIE, disgustingly dirty movie of young girls doing dispicable
things to well endowed men you can only dream of being, etc....(c;

Then, you doubleclick the completed binary file only to find out you don't
have the right codec to watch whatever it is. Micro$not Media Player
doesn't play DivX, for instance. You'll find cracked codec packages posted
to the newsgroup you got the file from every so often. For movies, the
solution is easy, thanks to some French computer engineering students.
It's called VLC for Video LAN Client. It'll play anything that moves!
http://www.videolan.org/ It's also GPL freeware. VLC is my favorite movie
play. It also comes with all its OWN codecs, so Micro$not won't be
cancelling them out in some future "upgrade" to Media Player from the movie
lawyers. Download and install VideoLAN if you're gonna take usenet's
movies to sea. I usually go to sea with 300-400 movies, incase we get
becalmed, you see...(c;

Once you get the hang of it, all this becomes rather automatic and by the
end of the week you have used up every available byte of hard drive space
downloading, decoding, assembling and storing all the NEAT STUFF usenet has
to offer....(c; You'll NEVER, even if you have a T-3 fiber internet
access, be able to get everything Usenet has to offer.

If they took away my usenet, there would be no point of even being on the
spam-soaked internet, any more.....

I have over 19,000,000 MP3 files, from Edison's first recorded cylinder to
albums that haven't even been released yet! And I NEVER used a peer-to-
peer file transfer system like Napster or its clones that are the target of
the lawyers....no, no, NO!