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From: "|--Spike=-" <|--Spike=-@Home.Co.UK>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.documentaries
Subject: Re: Spike - Thanks much!
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On Sat, 01 Oct 2016 15:21:25 -0400, notyet@here.now wrote:
>I wanted to start a new thread since the previous one was overloaded
>with other topics and other folks who might not be interested.
>
>Firstly, in addition to all your efforts to fill this group with
>worthwhile content, THANKS MUCH for taking the time and effort to
>respond with useful tips and suggestions, and the encouragement to
>check the teevee group for more stuff I might like. I had seen you
>mention this group a few times, but had tried one of the movie groups
>before and found it too overwhelming and tedious to process. I
>figured the teevee group would be much the same, and it is. But
>already I have downloaded many things I didn't have and am delighted
>to get, so I thank you for the extra push!
>
>FYI, I use Forte's Agent both as my newsreader and as my news server.
>When I clicked to get the headers of teevee, the status line told me
>it was getting just over a billion possible headers. I knew it would
>take a while, and let the machine run overnight. My download speed is
>3.5 Mbps, so not very fast. After ~9 hours of chugging, the progress
>bar indicated about 10% complete, so I stopped it there to begin
>exploring the group. I had nearly 9 million headers, covering from
>Sept. 2009 to early 2012. Typically, I like to sort by author, and
>try to delete as much crap as possible first, but that isn't practical
>with this much data. I checked and the DAT file was over 40 Gb, so if
>I had gotten all the headers, it would have likely overflowed my 500Gb
>SSD hard drive and crashed. So far, I've just been searching for
>"BBC" and even that can take 10 minutes between finds, and I'm only
>about halfway thru the headers on this simple search... anyway, this
>is why I loved the documentary group so much better, as the vast
>majority of TeeVee content is not something I would watch, even if I
>could just flip on the TV! But since you've got me started, and I've
>already found a few little nuggets of gold in all the rubble, I plan
>to keep going to see what I can find. (it took me about 2 years to
>fully parse all the headers in the documentary group, so I'm caught up
>with that group, at least.)
>
>I had never heard of tweaknews, but it certainly looks cheap enough.
>If I understand you, I just need to get one of the Block Subscriptions
>to upload, and can continue to use Agent for my downloads. As for
>whether my identity would be secure with tweaknews, I just don't know
>enough about how all this works, but odds are, there's probably not a
>lot of copyright concerns for stuff that was on broadcast tv, like PBS
>and the BBC... and teevee might be the better place for me to post
>anyhow, and be lost in the crowd.
>
>I got an ebook, Malware Analyst's Cookbook, and chapter one is about
>how to make yourself anonymous with TOR, and they give links and make
>it all very easy, except that I've only glanced at the book and not
>spent the time actually reading and trying what it says, so I don't
>know if I need to do that or not, but will get to that soon, I hope,
>as it would make me feel more secure about posting.
>
>I love your signature, about the 10 types of people. another favorite
>siggy I've seen said:
>
>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>In practice, there is.
>
>also, fyi...
>
>extra info, if this should be of interest, some tips about Agent. You
>use Agent, i think, right? if not, don't bother reading on.
>
>for example, I now have about 10% of the headers, how do I get the
>rest? first, I must process everything I have before getting any
>more. the reason being that Agent is stupid in some ways. If there
>are any headers in a group on my machine, and I want to get new
>headers, Agent takes HOURS to get very few headers, if the group is a
>large one like teevee or documentaries. If I have processed and
>deleted everything in the group on my machine, I can get new headers
>in SECONDS. Big difference. Thus, I must process everything I have
>from teevee, and have an empty group, BEFORE attempting to get the
>next block of headers. When I am ready then, I need to select SAMPLE
>RECENT HEADERS, and calculate how many days to request. What I have
>ended around February 2012, so I need to count days to Jan 2012, to
>give a little overlap. I calculated about 1700 days to retrieve.
>Since I now know, that I can't handle that many days because of the
>size, I'll stop it after about 10-20% complete, and process that
>before getting the next block.
>
>Agent has lots of stupidities, but I still love it. I used to
>complain to tech support, but gave up, as their stock answer to
>everything I reported was that it was too hard to fix, so I learn
>tricks to manage as best I can. One thing that used to really burn me
>was using the mouse to select things. It is so handy, I still use it,
>but have to be very careful, because stupid Agent has a supposed labor
>saving feature which really sucks! If you are holding the mouse and
>dragging to select, and let it continue for so many seconds, not many,
>but I don't know the exact number... what it does is LOCK Agent, and
>preceed to select everything in the direction you were dragging, which
>can take a VERY LONG TIME, even hours in these monster big group with
>thousands of headers (and now millions of headers!). So my fix, since
>I like to use the mouse as much as I can, is to drag a few seconds and
>stop and back up a tad, then drag some more, but never for more than 5
>seconds in one direction... stupid agent, as this is a worthless
>feature, because there is no need to overload the mouse behavior with
>this, and anyone who wants to "select all" in a certain direction can
>easily do that with the keyboard much much faster, Control-Shift- and
>either Home or End, depending on which you want. I have never ever
>needed or wanted to do this, actually, so it is a stupid, unneeded
>feature some butthole programmer tacked on and refuses to back out for
>fear it would break something else... stupid plus lazy! I am a
>retired software developer, so bad programming practices especially
>annoy and frustrate me.
>
>Also, I hate the fact that the button to thread articles is turned on
>automatically when I select to sort things a certain way, which can
>hide things I'm actually looking for, that often don't belong where
>the threading feature puts them!? stupid Agent! I have to remember
>to always click that off when I re-sort headers, because once it is
>set on, it stays set on. re-sorting a 40 GB dat file is also very
>time consuming. Date sort is fast, but author sort is very slow,
>hours, i suppose, i didn't time how long it took...
========================================================
As mike said... use the 'sample recent headers' option to download as
far back as you Dare, or use the 'catch up' option to not download any
headers but make the groups headers up to date and only get headers
from After the 'catch up'.
I think that the Agent teevee group folder would have been Full long
before you finished downloading That many headers.
I know the teevee group is a drag to start with but if you use the
kill filters you will gradually see the number of daily headers start
to drop and the group becomes much more manageable.
It doesn't sound like you need to do Anything with the Agent setup you
already have. I only bought the Monthly tweaknews account after my ISP
dropped the teevee group. You could carry on downloading as you are
but it would be a safer option to use tweaknews instead of an ISP.
In Agent, you can have both servers and switch between them whenever
you want, it doesn't have to be 'one or the other'.
With my setup...the Posting side of things is separate to Agent, I
dont use Agent to post with anymore (does anyone) !? :), Powerpost
made things a LOT easier. For posting I just use Powerpost and a
protected IP server... a tweaknews block account.
If you plan to buy a block account to post with then I would advise
checking that they still allow unlimited uploads with it, its been a
while since I bought mine and they might have changed the 'small
print'.
Searching for the string 'BBC' will Not find most of the BBC
uploads... they are rarely posted with BBC in the title.
Similar again to 'mike' I use 'Binsearch'...
https://www.binsearch.info/?q=c4tv&max=100&adv_age=1100&server=2
(I used the search string 'c4tv' in the above because thats a group
that rips a Lot of BBC and C4 programmes).
Use the 'search in other groups' option or it wont get teevee posts
You can then Tag stuff from years back, 'create an NZB', Import it
into Agent and let Agent do the work !
TOR is something I have never really looked into but if you plan to
use Torrent sites to download then I think that TOR would be the right
direction to go.
But like I said... I know nothing about what it can and cant do.
Maybe somebody else might be able to help with this area.
Yes, Agent Does have some flaws, I have tried other stuff but always
go back to Agent after a very short time.
Do you mean actually deleting the headers you have read or do you mean
just marking them 'read' ?
I'm not an Agent expert (by a long way) I think that actually deleting
the header would just tell Agent to download it again !?
I just mark them 'read' and let the 'purge' settings sort them out.
My purge settings are ...
Purge Read Messages...
Without Bodies - When message is older than 90 days
With Bodies - On every purge, delete body only
Purge Unread Messages...
Without Bodies - Never
With Bodies - Never
But its different for everybody depending on personal choice and
system set-up.
You have 10% of headers - how do you get the rest.
I believe that Agent remembers where it was up to after the last time
you downloaded headers and so would just carry on from there, but
there are other settings in Agent that can change the way it handles
headers (ie... purging options) and its just a case of looking at
individual setting and reading the manual.
Again... comments, suggestions, corrections welcome from anyone.
The Mouse scroll lock-up... same here ! I also use the same, scroll
for a few seconds and try not to get it wrong :)
For groups with a Lot of long blocks of posts to mark read, I would
normally select the first one, then use the mouse on the side bar to
'page down' when I get to the end of the 'block' then use Hold Shift
and select the bottom of the block with the mouse >>> mark read.
To add to your list of Agent flaws there is also the one that
'ignores' random files that you have Not set to be ignored !
I often download an episode of something and find a rar or two
missing, then have to select view All messages to find the ignored
missing parts.
Like I have said... I am not a Usenet/Agent expert and anybody who has
any comments, corrections or suggestions is welcome to join in.
***************************************************
* 'There are only 10 types of people in the world... those *
* who understand Binary... and those who dont' *
***************************************************
|--Spike=-
|
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