>I could not get on on 8/25, so I sent them a message and attached is their response. I was able to enter the newsgroups today.
>-jack
>
>****from ms****
>Hi Jack,
>
>I apologize for the difficulties you ran into at while visiting our site and
>any inconvenience it may have caused. We appreciate you taking the time to
>let us know. I have passed along your note to my colleagues who are working
>to correct the problem. Our server is down so please try accessing the
>newsgroups again later.
>
>I encourage you to continue visiting the MSDN Online Member Community for
>continuous updates, peer support, special offers, and much more.
>
>Thanks for your interest and patience,
>
>
>MSDN Answer Team

There have been some outages. This is due mainly to MS upgrading their servers to Win2K.