Re: does anyone even use usenet

On Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:59:47 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:

On 8/13/2024 7:54 AM, Justisaur wrote:

On 8/13/2024 7:24 AM, Justisaur wrote:

On 8/12/2024 8:00 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:29:14 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>

On 8/11/2024 7:07 PM, Mike S. wrote:

On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 12:43:58 -0400, Danoxary <dbz.1991@aol.com> wrote:

 

I have no real idea what the modern versions of Agent are like. I've
tried their newer editions, but I just /really/ like the no-nonsense
GUI of the older versions. All the toolbars and buttons are very slim,
with very little wasted whitespace. This puts the focus on the actual
content. From what I can tell, a lot of the improvements made to Agent
over the years has been to binary support, which isn't something I'm
really interested in. Certainly not enough to pay for an upgrade.

>
I think one was Microplanet Gravity, and another Xananews.

>
I've tried Microplanet Gravity... it's fine. It's -from what I
remember- a fairly good clone of Forte Agent. It didn't really offer
me anything more than what I already had, though, so I stuck with my
ancient client.

 
So I found some posts elsewhere saying even Agent 8 was still way better
than Microplanet Gravity.  I started looking into buying Agent, and
apparently they're defunct, some people saying it's not possible to
actually get/register a version of it as of May, no response from them. :(

>
Looks like you can still register it if you already had a key.
>
I apparently have it already installed, but I don't have a key (maybe I
do buried somewhere on an old backup, but not for the latest version.)
>
Also found that there's an issue with it that it won't be able to handle
posts on or after 19 January 2038, so mark your calendars, 13.3... years
from now you'll need to get a different newsreader.

Sounds like Agent (or perhaps NNTP?) is calculating its time based on
2**32 seconds. This is a known issue with A LOT of software, and is
similar to the Y2K bug. Programs count how many seconds have passed
since 1 Jan 1970, an calculate the current date from there. The number
is stored in a 32-bit integer. But once that overflows (e.g., more
than 2,147,483,647 seconds have gone by since 1 Jan 1970), computers
will roll-over and think the date is 2 billion seconds (give or take)
BEFORE that date (sometime in 1910, I think).

Like Y2K, the problem is solvable by increasing the size of the
integer being counted. Many modern programs 2**64 seconds (starting,
again, from 1 Jan 1970), which allows a total count numbering in the
BILLIONS of years. Perhaps our distant ancestors may curse us for our
short-sightedness, but that seems sufficient for now. ;-)

This Epochalypse has been known about for years and years (even as far
back as the late 90s, when people were fixing the Y2K issue, it came
up as the next potential snafu in calculating time). Many systems
(including Linux, MacOS and Windows*) have already been updated to
correct the problem but there are doubtlessly thousands of critical
systems that won't get fixed until only a few years before 2038. I
have faith, though, that both Agent and Usenet will see correction
long before that.

Although it'll probably mean that I'll have to FINALLY give up my
beloved Agent 2.x. I'm not happy about it; maybe I'll get lucky and
die before that happens ;-)