Recommend a VPN

zak88lx said:

Is this still around?
This is the one where you used Outlook Express to connect to groups and download 100's of parts, and then compile them with WinRAR?

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Yes. But that was a long time ago. You need to get Newsleecher with Supersearch so you can easily search for items over multiple groups. The files are split up in multiple RARs and there are PAR files in case some are corrupted. You can recover with Smartpar if you have all the PAR files and not too many missing or corrupt RAR files. These are only necessary for very old posts from a few years back. I rarely download the PAR files because it is not needed. If a file ends up being corrupt I'll grab the PAR files.

I can get content in minutes with Usenet vs hours with Torrent (unless you get lucky).

Here's a screenshot. Searched for Joker 2019. Set time limit to 100 days back. You can go back 3000+ days but then you'll get too many results back.

zak88lx said:

Is this still around?
This is the one where you used Outlook Express to connect to groups and download 100's of parts, and then compile them with WinRAR?

Click to expand...

Did you ever use IRC? In the early 90s there were #warez channels you could join and then request a file that had a list of FTP servers with usernames and passwords. My buddies and I used it for a few years to get games, warez etc.

My computer was once hacked by a guy on one of the IRC channels. He pinged my IP address. Back then I had my Windows set to boot directly into the OS with username / password set to defaults. So the hacker took a chance that my passwords were default and was able to map my C drive to his computer over the Internet. This was in the days of dial up when we did not use routers with firewalls. So all the ports to the computer were open. The hacker then copied a .bat file over my autoexec.bat file. It had a bunch of commands calling for:

del c: *.* /s
del d: *.* /s
del e: *.* /s

All the way down to del z: *.* /s!

So after I was finished with IRC and rebooted my computer I heard the hard drive churning and not booting into Windows. I can't remember if it was 3.1, 95 or NT. I immediately shut the computer down. Turned it on again and pressed Ctrl + Break to cancel the autoexec.bat file. When I edited the file with Norton Utilities in DOS I could see all the delete commands in there. Fortunately I stopped the computer fast enough were I did not lose personal files. I had to reinstall Windows though.

quad said:

I've used PIA also for a few years. In the past I would get authentication / robot issues when doing Google searches. You had to answer the quiz thing before you would get results. I know everyone is on the Duckgo bandwagon but I still use it. Lately Google has not been doing it.

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Sometimes I get the weirdness with Google. Also for a while Craigslist didn't like whatever IP PIA spoofed. Its also fun whenever I go to a page that tries to locate their nearest location and it shows Compton.