James Farrar wrote:

On 19 Dec 2006 08:40:43 -0800, "Mizter T" wrote:

Arrrgh - the curse of using Google Groups to post to usenet strikes
again!

The moral of the story, of course, is to get a newsreader and an NSP.

No, not for me it's not. I use different computers, some not under my
control, when I post here. If it wasn't for Google Groups (GG) I
probably wouldn't be posting at all.

The futurologists increasingly bang on about web applications -
i.e.services accessed through a browser where previously one would have
used a full scale PC application. Webmail is an early example, lots of
the other stuff is at a fledgling stage such as Writely, some offers
simplified functionality compared to the full application (MSN Web
Messenger, Google Talk via the Gmail web interface). I see usenet as a
great example of something that can be accessed via the web instead of
via a full-on application.

The implementation of GG is a bit silly in places, as is what sometimes
seems like a thoroughly misguided attempt by Google to claim usenet for
itself. However given a bit of taming GG is very usable, though it
could do better. The mistake I made above is exactly that - my mistake
rather than that of Google Groups.

If there was some paid-for usenet web service that properly addressed
these failings, I'd pay up. The foreseeable problem is that any such
service probably wouldn't provide anything like an equivalently
powerful search function that GG provides.

Incidentally GG is currently running a new beta service that I haven't
played around with yet, which might address some of it's failings. I
shall investigate further.