Support Statement

I'm giving this away for free and you expect support too? :-)

If existant at all support will be sporadic. That doesn't mean I intend to ignore any and all questions, suggestions, or comments. It does mean that NewsSpoof comes after demands that my employer, family, cat, and others make on my time. I've got to face up to this reality, so do you! :-)

If you have any problems or comments please do email me. I'll do my best as time allows. My email address is at the bottom of this page and also in the 'About' panel in NewsSpoof.

There are a couple of miscellaneous bits of info that might be helpful so I'll mention them in FAQ form. If you have any other info that might be helpful to others send me an email and I'll add your info here.

FAQS

• I can't use port 1119 (for some unknown reason). Can I change NewsSpoof to listen on another port?

  Yes, NewsSpoof creates an INI in your windows subdirectory (hey, I think the whole registry idea sucks and I chose not to use it). Open up NEWSSPF.INI with an text editor (Notepad is OK) and change the entry for REMOTEPORT in the PORTS section to whatever you like. You'll also see an entry for LOCALPORT. The current version of NEWSSPF always uses port 119 to connect with Personal News Server, the LOCALPORT value is ignored.
  
  

• NewsSpoof is running unbelievably slow, any ideas?

  During development I noticed the same thing right after I installed Windows 98. The problem was due to not having customized the HOSTS file (in the windows subdirectory). NewsSpoof does a reverse DNS lookup to obtain the name of the remote host to display in the panel. When it couldn't find it in the HOSTS file it attempted to go out to the internet to resolve the host name. I wasn't connected to the internet... things were slow because the DNS search had to time out before the program would continue.
  
  

• How does NewsSpoof work?

  It's really a simple idea, so simple that I thought the concept wouldn't work otherwise someone else would already have done it. NewsSpoof is just a 'repeater'. Whatever it receives on port 1119 is sent out unmodified on port 119 and vice versa.