My comments were addressed more towards the fact that the new bridge was
released to the public yesterday and it simply didn't work. It crashed every
time with a variety of error messages. There were howls of complaint in the
MVP private newsgroups yesterday from other MVPs around the world who were
having the same problems. This morning I haven't checked the bridge yet, but
at least it appears to have downloaded the message headers without error, so
the signs are a little more hopeful.

As for the port, some ISPs and some companies block port 119 to prevent
newsgroup access. Having a configurable port should get around that - but
for others port 119 should still work if the application is re-directed
there - even if other news-servers are using port 119. Most users can leave
the new bridge set with the default port of 120.

My understanding - though again I haven't checked as nothing was working
properly yesterday - is that the Answers forum access has been removed from
the old bridge. I don't know what the thinking behind that was as if you are
not registered with the other services - MSDN etc - , the old bridge should
not be able to post in them.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



"Yves Dhondt" wrote in message
...
The problems with the 'new bridge' will be exactly the same as with the
old one. The only changes are that the port is now configurable and that
it connects to the same service on a different server. Basically they
split the load and that's it. I guess the upside is that there are now
less other forums/threads where your post might end up if it goes wrong
again.

For the people who can't run the original NNTP bridge because they have
already running something on port 119, this implementation could be a
workaround. All they would have to do is copy the files from the new
bridge to another directory, and edit NntpBridge.exe.config. If they
change the ForumsWebServiceUrl to the old one, and set the NntpServerPort
to something they like, they are good to go.

Yves

"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
OK the link to the new bridge is now working - which is more than can be
said for the bridge. Let's hope it is sorted out over the weekend

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
Almost certainly the newsgroups will live on. What is changing is the
link to Microsoft's help forums, which (like many other similar web
forums) have been interfaced with the MS News server so what appears in
one medium should also appear in another. In future that link will be
broken and the help forums will change. NNTP access will then only be
available to the new Microsoft Answers forum via the NNTP Bridge. A new
bridge for that purpose was supposed to be available yesterday, but so
far I see no sign of it at http://connect.microsoft.com/MicrosoftForums/

Because of the way newsgroups are peered in Usenet, they will have a
life of their own even if/when Microsoft turns off their server. You
will of course need to find another text newsgroup server if you wish to
continue using them. There are plenty out there to choose from. Your ISP
may provide a news feed and that would be the first place to look. After
that you need to look for free text based news servers. They should also
continue to be available via Google Groups.

Inevitably as Microsoft steers its users elsewhere for their help,
traffic levels on the newsgroups will fall, and moderation may go out of
the window as Microsoft will not be spam filtering

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org



"Robert Macy" wrote in message
...
How many, which ones, of microsoftusenet groups will disappear?

Will this one, too?