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HeartlandReggae

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Browser Requirements

This site is designed for versions 4 (or greater) of both Netscape Navigator or MS Internet Explorer.

*My appologies, but the News-group is inactive at this time (30Nov05)*

These forums are running off an NNTP news-server. Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), a messaging service that is almost as old as the Internet itself, certainly much older than the World Wide Web. Because of this, it is an established and robust technology and a natural choice for a high traffic site such as Heartland Reggae. In retrospect, an in-house written service, would not be able to handle the high volume of traffic without a major redesign and dedicated machine.

This news-group is running on its own news-server and is not part of USENET. USENET is a collection of such NNTP news-groups. consequently, in order to access the Heartland Reggae news-server, you must explicitly point your news-reader software to it, obtain a list of all the groups running off of it and select the ones you want, (the Heartland Reggae group ends in "heartland-reggae.com"). For a browser equipped with an integrated news-reader, such as Netscape Communicator, this process is transparent to the user -- you click on a news-group link (Heartland-Reggae News for example ) and the browser knows what to do based on the information built into the link.

There are two potential problem areas with this:

1. Your browser does not have an integrated news-reader
   The solution to this is easy: upgrade your browser or install a stand-alone news-reader and have your browser point to it. A good free stand-alone news-reader is Microsoft's Internet Mail and News, (search for it on thier site), it is a small download at just over one megabyte. We use Netscape Communicator 4.5 which has an integrated news-reader, it is now free from Netscape's site, however it is a hefty download at 16 megabytes!

2. Your computer is behind a Proxy Server or Firewall
   If you are trying to access my news-group from an office LAN then non-USENET news-group access is probably blocked to you. While you may be able to access news-groups in the USENET realm, but the heartland reggae news-group is local to Heartland Reggae and not carried by your work's news service. The solution to this is to ask your network administrator that you need access to the news-server nntp://news.heartlandreggae.com/. Once granted you will be able to access (if 1. is true).

We do have the ability to stream video now with RealNetworks' RealVideo. You will have to download and install the RealPlayer G2. Although I do not have any definite plans for video, the capability is available if anyone sends me tapes. [Back]