On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:08:43 +0900, Scott Reynolds wrote:

> Eric Takabayashi wrote:
>> Ryan Ginstrom wrote:
>> 
>>>As I suspect many of you did, I got an email from the German news server
>>>that they are going to start charging a fee as of April 1.
>> 
>> Oh dear.
>> 
>> If you do not mind a lag of a few hours to see any new messages, Deja is
>> still available, right?
> 
> Nope, it's been swallowed up by Google.
> 
> I suppose I am just lucky with my ISP's news server. There's been nary a
> hiccup over the past several years. But then again I do have to use a
> pay server for binaries.

You do? My IP has a news server that gets about ten million more groups
than I care to take the time to wade through, and they don't care if it's
binary or plain text. Never a problem, and it's included with the basic
price (about 3,000 yen a month). However, I've been thinking of changing
because a neighbor works for the local cable company and he can get me
hooked up with a faster connection for the same price, plus all the perks
he can hook me up with for just being wonderful me. The guy practically
insists on buying almost every beer I drink down at the local watering
hole. I refuse, he refuses to accept my refusal, he refuses to accept my
refusal of his refusal, I try to turn the tables on him by ordering two
beers from the bartender, he tells the bartender to put it on his tab... 

Things are a lot different now than when I first subscribed to
compuserve/niftyserve and they thought I would be happy to pay them 500 yen
a minute for a 1200 bps connection!