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| acquire - news groups |
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news groups
Newsgroups were around before the world wide web was created, in the form of a bulletin board type system which has evolved dramatically and now become a fast medium for transferring and distributing files.
Unfortunately unless you are familiar with them, navigating and downloading files from the newsgroups takes a good deal more effort than connecting to KaZaA, searching for something, and clicking on the result.
A typical download from the newsgroups will require more steps than other methods because of the numerous newsgroups and the availability of files.
It is however worth the extra effort, with fast, instant and constant speeds of the latest files (usually released before bit-torrent and such) they are a reliable medium that should be used regulary.
Terms
Completion: Completion is simply the percentage of messages that make it to the server, low completion means a server is missing a lot of messages making downloading very difficult.
Retention: Retention is the amount of time the newsgroup takes until it deletes files. For example the alt.binaries.music.classical newsgroup would have high retention as there is not as much activity as something like the alt.binaries.games as the latter has much more activity.
Headers: A header is one post.
One header is one line you see on screen, clearly stated in the specific newsreader tutorials.
News Servers
A news server is a machine that stores all of the messages for the newsgroups that it carries and communicates with other news servers to send and receive new messages. You can gain access to a news server two ways:
1. Use the news server maintained by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Many ISP's maintain a news server that they allow their subscribers to access.
Some are very good servers carrying most newsgroups and have high completion rates.
A news server may require you to log into it using a user name and password.
Usually the news servers run by ISP's do not require you to log on using a user name and password because they assign you your IP address and the server automatically accepts only those IPs it recognizes.
2. Pay for news server access.
There are many reasons for deciding to use a news server that you have to pay to access. You may have an ISP that doesn't have a news server.
Your ISP may have a news server, but it isn't worth much because it's slow, or has a low completion rate, or doesn't carry the binary newsgroups.
Usually in this market, as most, you get what you pay for.
When you sign up for one of these services they will tell you what the name of the server(s) is and issue you a user name and password that you must enter into the news reader.
Some pay servers are Giganews and Easynews.
Free servers come and go, for the latest information and server info posted by members go here.
Newsreaders
A news reader is a program that you install on your computer to connect to a news server which retrieves all of the headers available at the time from the selected news group and allows you to choose the files which you would like to download.
The Core recommends the following newsreaders: NewsBin Pro, NewsLeecher and Xnews.
Newsgroups
Each newsgroup holds files of that certain subject, a good example of this is alt.binaries.music.classical and alt.binaries.cd.image.
Some of the most used newsgroups for warez are alt.binaries.cd.image; alt.binaries.games; alt.binaries.games.encrypted; alt.binaries.svcd; alt.binaries.movies; alt.binaries.boneless; alt.binaries.vcd and alt.binaries.anime to name a few.
Miscellaneous
Newsgroups use RAR files to split up the files into manageable chunks (which you later join together), Parity checks (PAR & PAR2) to ensure data integrity (make sure it is all there and not corrupted), NFO to provide information about the release.
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| tutorials |
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*Tutorials
-Newsleecher - Flash Pop Up
-Newsleecher - Walk Through
-Newsbin Pro
-RAR
-PAR
-NFO
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