How to download USENET News **in-spite** of firewall blocks

[posts]

How to download USENET News **in-spite** of firewall blocks
or
How to circumvent firewall blocks
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[reposted as my earlier post did not show up after 8 hours.
Sorry if repeated]


Hi Members


Forgive my intrusion into your in-box

I'm working from behind a company firewall and looks like my
Admin has blocked port 119 or done something to avoid me getting
to any news server. All I can do for the moment is to use
Google's web facility to read and post to the USENET


Here's my statistics
-------------------------------------------------

OS : Win XP
Browsers tried : Mozilla 1.7.x, Mozilla Firefox 0.9.x
Mail clients available / tried : Outlook 2003, Outlook express
5.x
News readers Tried : Gravity (from SOurceforge) and OE 5

My situation
-------------------------------------------------

I can
- easily browse and send web mail,
- read and send POP, IMAP mail,
but cannot get connected to news servers (I've tried a few from
Newzbot.com)

I can ping yahoo from my command prompt but can't ping news
servers from my command prompt

I've tried to set up news servers on Mozilla and
Outlook Exp newsreaders but get a time out message - I guess
because of something on my firewall


questions
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****Is there a way out ??****. i.e. Is there a way to
- Check which ports are blocked by my firewall
- Connect to some news-server in spite of the firewall blocking
- Read and post to the Usenet
- I don't need binaries
- are there servers that convert specific groups post to mail ?
(reverse of mail2news)


What should I do and where should I begin

I tried a few port scanners like the free ones at
http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2
But I suspect that they are NOT effective as I am behind a
firewall




Regards


........../...........