OT: what are these

Sun Jun 30 19:37:25 MST 2013

Hey Derek,

On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 4:57 PM, Derek Trotter <expat.arizonan at gmail.com>wrote:

> These usenet index posts and the files they point to are something new.
> Any I've seen only go back a few weeks.  Normally a usenet post would have
> a subject that gave some clue as to what is in that post.
>

Well, they do or must have such - a post can't exist without it.

Excerpt:

Types of newsgroups
[edit<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usenet_newsgroup&action=edit&section=1>
]

Newsgroups generally come in either of two types, binary or text. There is
no technical difference between the two, but the naming differentiation
allows users and servers with limited facilities to minimize network
bandwidth usage. Generally, Usenet conventions and rules are enacted with
the primary intention of minimizing the overall amount of network traffic
and resource usage. Typically, the newsgroup is focused on a particular
topic of interest. Some newsgroups allow the posting of messages on a wide
variety of themes, regarding anything a member chooses to discuss as
on-topic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-topic>, while others keep more
strictly to their particular subject, frowning on
off-topic<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-topic> postings.
The news admin (the administrator of a news
server<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_server>)
decides how long articles are kept on his server before being expired
(deleted). Different servers will have different retention times for the
same newsgroup; some may keep articles for as little as one or two weeks,
others may hold them for many months. Some admins keep articles in local or
technical newsgroups around longer than articles in other newsgroups.

Back when the early community was the pioneering computer society, the
common habit seen with many articles was a notice at the end disclosed if
the author was free of, or had a conflict of interest, or had any financial
motive, or axe to grind, in posting about any product or issue. This is
seen much less now, and the reader must read skeptically, just like in
society, besides all the privacy or
phishing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing>
 issues.

There are currently well over 110,000 Usenet newsgroups, but only 20,000 or
so of those are active.[*citation
needed<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>
*] Newsgroups vary in popularity, with some newsgroups only getting a few
posts a month while others get several hundred (and in a few cases a couple
of thousand) messages a day.

Non-Usenet newsgroups are possible and do occur, as private individuals or
organizations set up their own NNTP servers. Examples include the newsgroups
Microsoft <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft> runs to allow
peer-to-peer support of their products and those at news://news.grc.com.
Binary newsgroups
[edit<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Usenet_newsgroup&action=edit&section=2>
]

While newsgroups were not created with the intention of distributing binary
files, they have proven to be quite effective for this. Because of the way
they work, a file uploaded once will be spread and can then be downloaded
by an unlimited number of users. More useful is that every user is drawing
on the bandwidth of his or her own news server. This means that unlike
P2P<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer> technology,
the user's download speed is under his or her own control, as opposed to
under the willingness of other people to share files. In fact, this is
another benefit of newsgroups: it is usually not expected that users share.
If every user makes uploads then the servers would be flooded; thus it is
acceptable and often encouraged for users to just
leech<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_(computing)>
.

There were originally a number of obstacles to the transmission of binary
files over Usenet. First, Usenet was designed with the transmission of text
in mind. Consequently, for a long period of time, it was impossible to send
binary data as it was. So, a workaround,
Uuencode<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuencode> (and
later on Base64 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64> and
yEnc<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YEnc>),
was developed which mapped the binary data from the files to be transmitted
(e.g. sound or video files) to text characters which would survive
transmission over Usenet. At the receiver's end, the data needed to be
decoded by the user's news client <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_client>.
Additionally, there was a limit on the size of individual posts such that
large files could not be sent as single posts. To get around this,
Newsreaders were developed which were able to split long files into several
posts. Intelligent newsreaders at the other end could then automatically
group such split files into single files, allowing the user to easily
retrieve the file. These advances have meant that Usenet is used to send
and receive many terabytes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabytes> of
files per day.

There are two main issues that pose problems for transmitting binary files
over newsgroups. The first is completion
rates<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Completion_rate> and
the other is retention rates <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retention_rate>.
The business of premium news
servers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_server> is
generated primarily on their ability to offer superior completion and
retention rates, as well as their ability to offer very fast connections to
users. Completion rates are significant when users wish to download large
files that are split into pieces; if any one piece is missing, it is
impossible to successfully download and reassemble the desired file. To
work around the problem, a redundancy scheme known as
PAR<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive> is
commonly used.

A number of websites exist for the purpose of keeping an index of the files
posted to binary newsgroups.

Major NSPs have a retention time of more than 1700
days.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup#cite_note-1>
This
results in more than 9 petabytes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte>
 (9000 terabytes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte>) of
storage.[2]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup#cite_note-2>
In part because of such long retention times, as well as growing Internet
upload <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uploading_and_downloading> speeds,
Usenet is also used by individual users to store
backup<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup>
 data in a practice called *Usenet backup*, or
uBackup.[3]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup#cite_note-3>
 While commercial providers offer more easy to
use<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_use>
 online backup services<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_backup_services>,
storing data on Usenet is free of charge (although access to Usenet itself
may not be). The method requires the user to manually select, prepare and
upload the data <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup#Data_repository_models>.
Because anyone can potentially download the backup files, the data is
typically encrypted <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption>. After the
files are uploaded, the uploader does not have any control over them; the
files are automatically copied to all Usenet providers, so there will be
multiple copies of it spread over different geographical locations around
the world.

Are you sure these are not just backup files?

>
>
> On 06/30/2013 10:15 AM, Lisa Kachold wrote:
>
> Hello Derek,
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet_newsgroup
>
> On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 11:41 PM, Derek Trotter <expat.arizonan at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Tonight I'm messing with a usenet reader and found something I've never
>> seen before.  There are posts each with  a subject like this.  Usenet Index
>> Post 1372363474_2  These are text files.   Open one and you'll see
>> something like this:
>>
>> Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815 - Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815.par2 yEnc
>> (1/1)%122935*Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815 -Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815.part001.rar
>> yEnc(1/622)%217941490*Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815
>> -Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815.part002.rar
>> yEnc(1/622)%217922437*Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815
>> -Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815.part003.rar
>> yEnc(1/622)%217938677*Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815 -
>>
>> The poster is always, as far as I can tell NzbIndexder at followed by the
>> name of the group they're posted in.  Forexample:
>> NzbIndexer at alt.binaries.teevee
>>
>> Then I'll find posts with names like this:Vv0smCatI4I08qoLd815.part170.rar
>>
>> I've seen people here give me tips on usenet harvesting so I'll ask if
>> any of you how I can use these usenet indexposts?  I've read that some
>> usenet indexing sites havebeen forced to shut down.  I'm guessing these
>> files are anattempt to get around the people who are trying to shutdown the
>> usenet indexing sites.  The names of the rar files give no clue as to
>> what's in them.  If you don't know ahead of time what's in these files the
>> only way to find out is to download one, which may be several GB in size.
>>
>> Does anyone know how to use these files?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Derek
>>
>> --
>> "I get my copy of the daily paper, look at the obituaries page, and if I’m not there, I carry on as usual."
>>
>> Patrick Moore
>>
>>
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> "I get my copy of the daily paper, look at the obituaries page, and if I’m not there, I carry on as usual."
>
> Patrick Moore
>
>
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