giganews active list too big

[Uri Guttman]

i am trying to read giganews (which comcast is using now). mozilla works 
fine but gnus seems to read the active list forever. i have tried many 
variable settings for gnus-read-active-file (tried some, nil and t) and 
others. i can open and connect to the server but when i just subscribe 
to a group i see MODE READER commands (i am logging with 
nntp-record-commands t) forever. if i select the server in the server 
buffer) it does LIST commands forever. this used to work fine when 
comcast ran their own servers. i gave up for a long time and i wanted to 
try it again. anyone have a setting of variables that works with this?

Gnus v5.10.6 GNU Emacs 21.2.1

please cc as i hate using mozilla. just entering this post is painful as 
i need emacs bindings to type properly.

thanx.

uri