What exactly is the .gz ?

[Truth]

Doing some searches on the web, and I see a lot of messages showing a
link for people to give to their ISPs to add alt.radio.satellite, but
the link has a .gz at the end.

So of course, my ISP added a group with alt.radio.satellite.gz and not
the one without the .gz

I put through one call a day, so I can speak to different people hoping
one will figure out how to add the proper newsgroup, but no luck so far.

[Mark S.]

"Truth" <yenc@sucks.com> wrote in message
news:418FA39B.56B231B2@sucks.com...
> Doing some searches on the web, and I see a lot of messages showing a
> link for people to give to their ISPs to add alt.radio.satellite, but
> the link has a .gz at the end.
>
> So of course, my ISP added a group with alt.radio.satellite.gz and not
> the one without the .gz
>
> I put through one call a day, so I can speak to different people hoping
> one will figure out how to add the proper newsgroup, but no luck so far.

The link is for a compressed file using GZip which contains the control
message which created the group. You can open the file using winzip. It is
basically the same as posting a link here for
blablabla.com/alt.radio.satellite.html and then someone thinking that the
group is called alt.radio.satellite.html and not realizing that the html is
a file extension indicating that it is a hypertext markup language file. It
was probably an honest mistake ... or they're just not the sharpest knives
in the drawer!

--
ALT.RADIO.SATELLITE - Usenet's home for all things Satellite Radio
Ask your news server to add it today!

[Truth]

> The link is for a compressed file using GZip which contains the control
> message which created the group. You can open the file using winzip. It is
> basically the same as posting a link here for
> blablabla.com/alt.radio.satellite.html and then someone thinking that the
> group is called alt.radio.satellite.html and not realizing that the html is
> a file extension indicating that it is a hypertext markup language file. It
> was probably an honest mistake ... or they're just not the sharpest knives
> in the drawer!

Well, I explained this to them, as soon as I first read your reply, and told
them what you said the .gz is and that they made a mistake, but the end result
is that I just got this reply:

We are sorry you have not found a specific newsgroup of interest. We try
to provide our subscribers the most files per newsgroup and the best
availability of material. For instance, we like to carry newsgroups that
store material for more than one day. However, we do have to be
conscious of storage space. Therefore, we will not include a newsgroup
until it has generated a high enough level of interest among visitors.
The newsgroup you are looking for may be too new for us to carry or may
not have enough traffic to justify the space. You may post to
comcast.newsgroup.request in order to request a new newsgroup to be
added.

-----------------------
(no such group as comcast.newsgroup.request exists, and furthermore, why didn't
they just do that for me then instead of telling me to do it????)