I can get 1 Gbps fiber for $300/month through EPB, as stated in TFA. But I'm happy with the 50 Mbps (formerly 30) for about $60, since my only alternative is AT&T, as Comcast never wired this part of the county.

It's really funny when AT&T calls to "win us back", usually with an offer for something like 5 Mbps at about the same price as EPB's 50. One guy wanted to know how we were using that much bandwidth, and another just kind of sputtered and apologized for calling.

Another vote for Astraweb here. I signed up with them when AT&T started dropping binary groups last year, and I haven't had any problems. I went with the pay-as-you-go plan, though, since it comes out cheaper if you're using mostly text groups. Right now it's 25GB for $10, or 180GB for $25, headers don't count, and you still get SSL.

In GNOME (or GTK+, I'm not sure), you can get Unicode characters by typing Shift-Ctrl-U, the code, then Space. I found that when I was searching for a way to type ð on a US keyboard.

Here's the page in the Ubuntu Wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey

I can confirm that alt.binaries.* has been deleted from the bellsouth.net servers. Most of the rest of alt.* is still there, though.

It's funny, because there are certainly binaries in other groups that seem to have survived (alt.sex.pictures.*), and there are binary groups with legal content (alt.binaries.pictures.numismatic). Like Time Warner and Verizon, this is probably just an excuse to get rid of MP3s and movies (and the bandwidth they need).

So I guess I'm in the market for a new Usenet provider. I don't really have the option of switching ISPs, though. Where I live, I can get DSL or dialup, and that's about it, since Comcast has said that they have no plans to ever run cable to this part of the county. Anybody have a favorite?

(This is my first post, so please be gentle.)