MacPAR deluxe works for me. UnrarX can be kind of a headache. <br><br><br><br>

I've never had a problem with UnRarX. It couldn't be any easier. You double-click the rar file, UnRarX opens and does its business. Only .0124% of the time is there ever a corrupt or missing segment. Then, and only then, do I take the time to get the PAR files...and that's when MacParDeluxe springs into action. Here again, the mastery of the double-click is the meat and potatoes of the whole operation.<br><br>

I think I'm just always missing rar files...so MacPar picks up the slack. <br><br>Perhaps it's the complicated usage of the "Download" button in Unison that makes Usenet seem so cryptic to the great unwashed. <br><br>

I had tried downloading the first file from a set to see if the quality was good, and it's probably like you said,<br><br> "You can tell UnRAR X to save broken or incomplete files"<br><br> and I wasn't aware of that.<br><br><br>

Before there were web-based forums there was UseNet.<br><br>UseNET consists of newsgroups (think MacMinute Lounge as a newsgroup) categorized. So, for example, all computer related newsgroups were called comp.something. All Mac computer newsgroups were comp.mac.something, and so on.<br><br>Newsgroups are entirely text-based. People encoded binaries into text files (remember binhex? uuencode?) so they could transmit them within binary newsgroups. Some newsgroups only have a purpose of distributing binaries, legal or not.<br><br>The nice thing about UseNet, is that the articles aren't kept in one place. If you post an article to a newsgroup, it is automatically distributed to every single news server that offers that newsgroup. This is why it is hard to shut down an illegal binary news group - nobody owns it, and it is everywhere. Napster was easy to shut down, because there was one place where the indexing went through. Not so with newsgroups.<br><br>The protocol for newsgroups contained support for moderators - where all posted articles had to go through moderators before being distributed to the rest of the world, but the functionality was limited.<br><br>Newsgroups also did not have features like post counts, avatars (well, they sort of got them later with "X-Headers"), or personal mailboxes, etc. that online forums have - this is probably why they aren't as popular anymore.<br><br>However, they were much more efficient. No page reloads everytime you want to reply, no constant ads flashing in your face. You could download the entire days worth of posting in a newsgroup in seconds - even with hundreds of articles.<br><br>My ISP no longer offers Usenet. My friend switched ISPs because of it, because he likes to download binaries. All non-binary newsgroups are available at groups.google.com anyway, so it's not that big of a deal.<br><br>