From: Some@Guy.com   
      
   Bill wrote:   
      
   > Using Outlook Express for email and newsgroups. Recently added   
   > alt.usage.english and it displays that it has 1106136 unread   
   > messages - but the group's headers seem to be unavailable. Worse   
   > I can't seem to be able to remove the file !!   
   >   
   > p.s. About the same time I added alt.english usage   
   > and there's no problem with that.   
      
   First thing - change your line-width to 72 characters.   
      
   Second thing - why are you using a paid/subscription-based news server,   
   instead of a free/public server like AIOE?   
      
   I use AIOE.   
      
   As a test, I just added alt.usage.english to my list of subscribed   
   groups.   
      
   My news reader gives me the choice as to whether or not to download all   
   message headers if there are more than N new unread headers.  I have N   
   set to 250, and the server was telling me there was 85,650 posts in that   
   group.   
      
   Turns out the server really had only 11,915 messages (oldest message is   
   May 11).   
      
   AIOE has a retention of only about 2 months - your server (as most   
   commercial servers do) has a retention of a year or several years, which   
   is really a useless retention for text groups.   
      
   OE is probably kaking on the number of posts.  I don't know if you can   
   tell it to only download the last or most recent N headers.   
      
   That said, any group with 6k posts per month is insane and I can't see   
   how anyone can possibly follow a group with that much volume (about 200   
   posts per day).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)