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Cindy Winegarden MCSD, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
cindy@cindywinegarden.com
>The newsgroups are hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft's news server is
>msnews.microsoft.com. Note that the newsgroup name is "microsoft.public.*"
>and not "comp.*" Your ISP just picks up the groups and propagates them.
I agree with David (who is rarely, if ever, wrong about
these things).
usenet is hosted by a plethora of servers that propogate
messages to other servers. The MS servers are monitored by
MS personel and spam filters, but other servers are not.
This effect is easy to see if you set up separate accounts
to several servers and look for messages that appear on some
servers and not on others.

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Marsh
MVP [MS Access]
'69 Camaro - 22 Dec 2006 20:24 GMT
> The MS servers are monitored by
> MS personel and spam filters, but other servers are not.
And I must say the filters do a bang up job on filtering out the aaroninanities
and whinerisms.
Gunny
>>The newsgroups are hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft's news server is
>>msnews.microsoft.com. Note that the newsgroup name is "microsoft.public.*"
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> to several servers and look for messages that appear on some
> servers and not on others.
David W. Fenton - 23 Dec 2006 22:10 GMT
>> The MS servers are monitored by
>> MS personel and spam filters, but other servers are not.
>
> And I must say the filters do a bang up job on filtering out the
> aaroninanities and whinerisms.
You don't need people to get good filtering, just a decent news
reader.

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David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/
'69 Camaro - 24 Dec 2006 03:32 GMT
Hi, David.
> You don't need people to get good filtering, just a decent news
> reader.
Very true, but I've been away from the newsgroups until recently, and I was
surprised when searching through Google Groups for info that the new troll
aliases peppered throughout the newsgroups are missing (fortunately) from my own
newsreader without my having lifted a finger to filter them out. I have no idea
what has motivated them, but the trolls have dramatically increased production
of troll spit in recent months, and I'm very happy my computer monitor wasn't
their spittoon.
Gunny
>>> The MS servers are monitored by
>>> MS personel and spam filters, but other servers are not.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> You don't need people to get good filtering, just a decent news
> reader.
>>> Well, you've certainly got chutzpah, given these newsgroups are
>>> hosted by Microsoft!
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> The newsgroups are hosted by Microsoft.
Yes, Microsoft hosts a public news server.
> Microsoft's news server is
> msnews.microsoft.com.
Absolutely.
> Note that the newsgroup name is "microsoft.public.*"
> and not "comp.*" Your ISP just picks up the groups and propagates
> them.
Um, yes, because a news server is a news server, and less
propagation is closed to one server, no Usenet group can be said to
be "hosted" by any single Usenet server.
I have never even once used MS's news server -- I have always posted
to MS newsgroups through my ISP's news server.
I suggest you read up on how Usenet works.

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David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/
Cindy Winegarden - 24 Dec 2006 03:06 GMT
Hi David,
>>>> Well, you've certainly got chutzpah, given these newsgroups are
>>>> hosted by Microsoft!
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>>
>> The newsgroups are hosted by Microsoft.
> Um, yes, because a news server is a news server, and less
> propagation is closed to one server, no Usenet group can be said to
> be "hosted" by any single Usenet server.
Doug first used the word "hosted;" I used it again after him. I think what
he originally intended to point out (and I certianly did) is that the
newsgroups were microsoft.public.* newsgroups vice being part of the nine
major hierarchies: alt.*, comp.*, etc.
Also, the newsgroups can be accessed via msnews.microsoft.com without any
charge beyond your basic Internet access, even if your ISP or University
doesn't have a news server of their own. Furthermore, to my knowledge, the
msnews.microsoft.com servers do not propagate any of the nine major
hierarchies.
Finally, Microsoft staff use their microsoft.public.* "managed" newsgroups
as a way of delivering support to those who have MSDN software
subscriptions. (Subscribers are promised a satisfactory answer, either from
the community or Microsoft staff, within two business days.) Although
Microsoft staff might be active in other hierarchies such as comp.* it would
be on their own time and not as part of the MSDN service.
Please forgive my poor choice of terminology.

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Cindy Winegarden MCSD, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional
cindy@cindywinegarden.com