Microsoft ending newsgroup support
in [MFC]
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From: Hector Santos on 5 May 2010 22:14 Joseph M. Newcomer wrote: > Sadly, it appears that the NNTP servers will be shut down, and NNTP will simply not be > supported. The problem seems to be that if it isn't invented by Microosft, it doesn't > count. The MS NNTP Bridge is a 3rd party tool. It wasn't developed by Microsoft. Go Figure. :) I think it should be noted that Microsoft is not the only vendor that people have to deal with. The main reason for MUAs is that it allows one the ability to have one mail reader/write for most, if not all, of their communications needs in dealing with technical support issues. Microsoft is breaking this mode with an exclusive MUA method. The bridge is the only redeeming value so all they really need is to expose and API - the hell with OPEN STANDARDS if its requires a committee, that takes too long and always seems to gets watered down. They just need to dedicate one employee for 2-3 months to write up the WEB service/REST/XML specification. BTW, according to the stats on the equivalent MFC forum, it has a 28% response rate (response to no responses), where here I am seeing nearly 100%. Go Figure. :) -- HLS
From: David Scambler on 6 May 2010 02:23 Joseph M. Newcomer <newcomer(a)flounder.com> wrote in news:3hi1u517hmbrh029mfr8sbl0bjimhk7n54(a)4ax.com: > This is sad. What is worse, they have an "NNTP bridge" mechanism (I > found it on http://connect.microsoft.com/MicrosoftForums ) that is > supposed to let us use our professionally-designed and Speaking of adult supervision, who taught the nntp bridge folk to write an english sentence? "In developing this application, our team's goal is to enable a way for our customers out there who wants to participate in the Microsoft Forum communities, but does not yet find themselves comfortable with the transition from the newsreader interface to the Forums Web interface."
From: Hector Santos on 6 May 2010 07:38 Goran wrote: > On May 5, 3:22 am, "MP" <mpNoS...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Microsoft said it plans to end support for more than 4,000 old-style >> newsgroups starting next month, pushing users instead to discussion forums >> such as those found on the Microsoft Answers, TechNet, and MSDN sites. >> >> Although venerable, Microsoft said that so-called NNTP newsgroups are past >> their time in terms of being usable and secure. > > I don't like this one bit. As Joe said, a dedicated NNTP client beats > the hell out of any "forum" software. That's one reason against the > decision. Another is that some people (me included) are accessing this > through Google Groups (and I am sure that there are other sources). I > prefer the format, for familiarity, for one, and also, I don't care > logging on with a Passport account (I have one that I don't use much). > > Perhaps I'll just stop coming here. Oh well. > > Goran. Well, now that I am more aware of the fact there were never any merging of the two storages for what? the past, 3-4 years, the impact should be a lot less. When the transition from made from CompuServ to NNTP, the benefits were immediately obvious: 1) No CompuServ account fees 2) No Dialup required 3) MUA like Outlook Express provided a better view, there was hardly any good MUA for CompuServ, the few out there was very poor. They were True Offline Mail technology where it connected, check for uploads, check for downloads, disconnected, you read, you responded, reconnected and repeated the cycle. and of course, on the down side: 4) It increased anonymous posting and spam. But microsoft always had their own BBS installations too. Let me lookup if they were once our customers ....... HA! CID REGNO DATE CONTACT CORP, CITY, STATE ##### 90-01### 1990-08-27 Stu ######## Microsoft, Kirkland WA ##### 88-00### 1992-11-02 Lincoln #### Microsoft, Naples, ME ##### 93-02### 1993-04-20 Joseph ##### Microsoft, Irving T# ##### 93-03### 1993-08-09 Bill ####### MicroSoft, Irving T# ##### 93-04### 1993-08-12 Jason ##### Microsoft, Bellevue WA ##### 93-09### 1993-12-21 Dave ##### Microsoft, Redmond WA ##### 94-03### 1994-10-17 Brian ######## Microsoft, Redmond WA ##### 94-01### 1994-05-23 Hannes ######### Microsoft, Charlotte NC ##### 95-07### 1995-02-10 Mike ###### Microsoft, Kent WA ##### 96-08### 1996-01-02 Randy ##### Microsoft, Dallas T# ##### 96-01### 1996-04-15 Kristen ######## Microsoft, Redmond WA ##### 96-02### 1996-05-06 Archie ###### Microsoft, Irving, T# ##### 07-05### 1996-11-21 Chris ######## Microsoft, Redmond WA Long time ago! They had the DOS version and finally ended up with the 1996 Windows Version. I'm sure some were for either direct dialup support for customers or employees (Early Work From Home) and also testing at least with the Windows version. Anyway, I honestly felt there was merging the MS Forums with the MS NNTP newsgroups. I'm surprise to realize they were not. Its a step backwards back to their own centralize "BBS" installation but this time with more flexibility to render dynamic displays, plus users bandwidths are higher and almost guaranteed to have a connection to the net. Thats good, but if anything, the MS Forums site will be in a constant flux as they improve it for the "social thing." And IMO, it is not very friendly, and their dependency on cookies and javascript makes it harder to get it right. Expect offloaded native GUI desktop clients to be available soon enough. My advice to them is to publish an API and allow the new industry from here on out to write better or custom interfaces. Otherwise, it will be a constant cost burden to them and no doubt, someone will reverse engineer it, so take control of that by getting releasing an API. -- HLS
From: David Ching on 6 May 2010 10:23 "Hector Santos" <sant9442(a)nospam.gmail.com> wrote in message news:u5Ul6CR7KHA.420(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... > Expect offloaded native GUI desktop clients to be available soon enough. > > My advice to them is to publish an API and allow the new industry from > here on out to write better or custom interfaces. Otherwise, it will be a > constant cost burden to them and no doubt, someone will reverse engineer > it, so take control of that by getting releasing an API. > Microsoft originally had a Windows client written in WPF and in fact it is still available but probably doesn't work because it hasn't been updated to the latest forum API's: http://msdnforumsclient.codeplex.com/ They abandoned this and then focused on the NNTP Bridge. This is in light that people were complaining the UI was inferior to popular NNTP newsreaders. So for once Microsoft listened and gave what was asked for: a way to re-purpose NNTP newsreaders for use with the MS forums. The problem now is the Bridge still has issues with popular NNTP newsreaders, notice how they have "tiers" of support for various newsreaders with the Microsoft newsreaders being in the top tier. Even the top tier newsreaders have issues, the main one getting a lot of noise esp. by our own David Wilkinson is the "mismatched subject and body" problem. As well, users are now saying, "well since this is NNTP why doesn't MS host the NNTP server instead of me running it locally. I don't want to install new software on my PC. And the bridge doesn't work on the Mac." So the bridge is not perfect and may not ever be due to mismatches between NNTP and the forum back end. All this to say: it will be some time before MS opens the forum API's to 3rd parties, if ever. -- David
From: Hector Santos on 6 May 2010 11:04
David Ching wrote: > "Hector Santos" <sant9442(a)nospam.gmail.com> wrote in message > news:u5Ul6CR7KHA.420(a)TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... >> Expect offloaded native GUI desktop clients to be available soon enough. >> >> My advice to them is to publish an API and allow the new industry from >> here on out to write better or custom interfaces. Otherwise, it will >> be a constant cost burden to them and no doubt, someone will reverse >> engineer it, so take control of that by getting releasing an API. >> > > Microsoft originally had a Windows client written in WPF and in fact it > is still available but probably doesn't work because it hasn't been > updated to the latest forum API's: http://msdnforumsclient.codeplex.com/ > > They abandoned this and then focused on the NNTP Bridge. This is in > light that people were complaining the UI was inferior to popular NNTP > newsreaders. So for once Microsoft listened and gave what was asked > for: a way to re-purpose NNTP newsreaders for use with the MS forums. > > The problem now is the Bridge still has issues with popular NNTP > newsreaders, notice how they have "tiers" of support for various > newsreaders with the Microsoft newsreaders being in the top tier. Even > the top tier newsreaders have issues, the main one getting a lot of > noise esp. by our own David Wilkinson is the "mismatched subject and > body" problem. As well, users are now saying, "well since this is NNTP > why doesn't MS host the NNTP server instead of me running it locally. I > don't want to install new software on my PC. And the bridge doesn't > work on the Mac." So the bridge is not perfect and may not ever be due > to mismatches between NNTP and the forum back end. > > All this to say: it will be some time before MS opens the forum API's > to 3rd parties, if ever. I'm currently doing research and I believe it is all already available with Microsoft Live SDK. However, the REST protocol my not be well established yet. Its not like impossible to reverse engineer, in fact, its quite simple, just hover your mouse over the URL to see the common pattern to access a forums list, a forum, a topic, a message, etc and GET the request, and parse the result. I'm sure there is a URL option that defines the output forum, like XML or RSS. But overall, with the diverse nature of users, technically, there should be no problem here. They need experts! I hope this isn't new pet projects for a few employees that have to learn on their own what long understood all the framework issues. You need a "CZAR" that oversees all the different angles. We do it with a centralized backend storage with multiple interfaces: Console Interface (supports the "Extras") Native GUI desktop interface (supports the "Extras") Web Interface (supports the "Extras") POP3 interface (RFC 2822 format) NNTP interface (RFC 2822 format) Microsoft Exchange for Outlook (RFC 2822 format) and we are working on IMAP: IMAP interface (RFC 2822 format, supports "some" extras) (pondering, did I miss any?) Anyway, this is only all possible with a common API. Microsoft can actually make a big play here by offering RFC 2822 eXtended headers to help support the "Extras" because right now RFC based MUAs do not support any eXtended headers. We keep talking about it for all kinds of new MUA interface needs but there is no real push because there is no big SOURCE of information to invest in this development. Web rendering is the only real solution but there is no common MAIL structure for all other than RFC 2822. But if we are just talking about Microsoft, I can guarantee there will be a market for MUA vendors to support "Microsoft Mail Extensions." That is all it often takes when the big gorilla to support new ideas. The MS NNTP bridge developer can expose this information itself and the clients can do it. Or even the MS NNTP Servers if they choose to keep it. -- HLS |