Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet

LOBAL WAT

eral specific Net protocols. Your host system stores all of its Usenet messages in one place, which everybody with an account on the system can access. That way, no matter how many people actually read a given message, each host system has to store only one copy of it. Many host systems "talk" with several others regularly in case one or another of their links goes down for some reason. When two host systems connect, they basically compare notes on which Usenet messages they already have. Any that one is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa. Because they are computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of these comparisons every day. Yes, millions. For Usenet is huge. Every day, Usenet users pump upwards of 40 million characters a day into the system - roughly the equivalent of volumes A-G of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Obviously, nobody could possibly keep up with this immense flow of messages. Let's look at how to find conferences and discussions of interest to you. The basic building block of Usenet is the newsgroup, which is a collection of

scussions that don't fit anywhere else news News about Usenet itself rec Hobbies, games and recreation sci Science other than research biolog

apartments. A growing number also carry K12 newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and students. And a number of sites carry clari

ATING USE

stems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program. Two of the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no news" - because it's supposed to be simpler to use). For beginners, nn may be

announce

few seconds, you should

ounce.newusers Arti

ene Spafford 353 What is Usenet? h taylor 241 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists i Gene Spafford 585 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I j Gene Spafford 455 >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II k David C Lawrenc 151 How to Create a New Newsgroup l Gene Spafford 106 How to Get Information about Networks m Gene Spafford 888 List of Active

Top 85%--- Explanatory postin

(i.e., SELECTing articles), which key to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles in the newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post messages to it. This is generally limited to groups such as this, which contain articles of basic information, or for digests, which are basically online magazines (more on them in a bit). Say you're particularly i

ews Answers Your Questions

brad@looking.on.c

e: emily-po

91 by brad@looking.o

, consult a doctor or professional comedian. The recommendations in this art

mily Po

on proper net behaviour, gives he

=========================

w long should my signa

our signature as long as you - 09:57 -

on in your message stack that this message occupies, how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen. If you want to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your enter key!) for the next screen and so on u

omp.

cting their letters. If you're in the middle of an article and decide you want to go onto the next one, hit your n key. Now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of particular interest to you.

rep

e interested in. If you use a M

rep

ething that lo

mac.comm comp.sys.mac.databases comp.sys.mac.digest comp.sys.mac.games comp.sys.mac.hardware comp.sys.mac.hypercard comp.sys.mac.misc comp.sys.mac.programmer comp.sys.mac.system comp

hese obviously have

bviously do not; nngrep

st of ALL the newsgroup

em,

p -a

grep

es. If you are in nn, hitting a capital Y will bring up a similar list. Typing "nn newsgroup" for every newsgroup can get awfully tiring after awhile. When you use nn, your host system looks in a file called .newsrc. This is basically a list of every newsgr

ll take you forever. Fortunately, there are a couple of easier ways to do this. Both involve calling up your .newsrc file in a word or text processor. In a .newsrc file, each newsgroup takes up one line, consisting of the group's name, an exclamation point or a colon and a range of numbers. Newsgroups with a colon are ones to which you are subscribed; those followed by an exclamation point are "un-subscribed." To start with a clean slate, then, you have to change a

ewsrc

ile names starting with periods). After you download the file, open it in your favorite word processor and use its search-and-replace function to change the exclam

mprc

ust in case something goes wrong. Upload the temprc file from your co

mprc

ve a clean slate to start

n COM

to it (in lower case). To mark a specific article and all o

type the letter next to i

on Usenet has a unique ID number. Hitting a capital C sends out a new message

to follow up. If selected while in a specific article, will follow up that article. In either case, you'll be ask

ubscribed newsgroup

ious subscribed ne

icl

specific newsgroup. Can

Hitting G brin

group and show

icl

group and show

you've alr

only articles

bj

only articles

rs

recipient's e-mail address and whether you want to add any comments to th

. You'll be asked for

, or e

from the curr

o an article

ce bar brings up the

ext subscribed newsgroup with unread articles. If you don't have any selected articles

n the newsgroup with a specific word

od

immediately and then returns

up a he

revious page in

next page in

e last page

first page i

USIN

efer this old

you

announce

command line, you'll s

cles in news.announce.n

een. If you want to see what articles are available first, thoug

ction to ne

ow to Work With t

at is

o Frequently

writing sty

Newsgroup Hier

Newsgroup Hier

Answers Your Ques

ftware: Histo

ocial Newsgroups

t Information

Create a Ne

of Active

t of Mo

cessible Mailin

cessible Mailin

cessible Mailin

become a

dic Informational

dic Informational

dic Informational

158 (of 178)-

n't tell you who sent them. Article 154 looks interesting. To re

) in news.announce.n

.purdue.EDU (

nounce.newusers,new

What is

Sep 92 04

news.newuse

. of Computer Scie

es:

f-whatis_7155787

e: what-is-

chip@tct.com (C

1992 by spaf@cs.purdu

ident, in spades. In my opinion, more flame wars arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than from any other source. And con

RE-

ou'll go to the next message in the numerical order. To escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until you get back to the command line. Now let's

again. Or just keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a couple of seconds). Eventually, you'll be

ews

d hit enter. You'll be asked if you want

t new

know which newsgroups to subscribe? Typing a lowercase l and then hitting enter will show you a list of all available newsgroups. Again, since there could be more than 2,000

ps related to Macintosh computers). Because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over Usenet, most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks. So if there's a

ile

e message will now be saved to a file in your News directory (which you can access by typing cd News and then hitting enter). Also, some newsgroups fill up particularly quickly - go away for a coupl

n COM

sgroup or reading a specific article. At any point, typing a lowercase h will bring up a li

called up rn, or w

ave to see them again. The system will ask you if you are sure. Can be done eithe

newsgroup, i

ws.g

oing to groups to w

d subscribing

available commands wi

of all availa

ious subscribed newsgrou

a newsgroup. If you are in a newsgroup, it quits tha

hin a ne

ll available articl

f articles as "un-read" again so that

7

ld mark just that art

0-1

ld mark all of those

listings. If already on the last page, di

ibe from th

specific word or phrase in the "subject:" line, from the

E

first article with "EFF

ept it searches in reverse or

n a specif

n such an article into a file you can then download and use or view (assuming you have the proper computer and software). Many times, such files will

cle and then decide i

ystem and hit this.

ing on systems

sponse in the news

copy of her postin

your host syst

does not include a copy of t

article as "un-read"

You do not have

mb

first response to the

is returns you to the

newsg

essage to which the cur

t unread article

xt article in the new

dy re

e current article. Le

sgr

nly, to the author of

py of his mes

except it does not

ti

ame of the file you want to save it to. You'll be asked if you want to use "mailbox" form

. For "user" substitute an e-mail address. Does not

next page of the article, or, if at th

NTIAL NE

own unique Usenet reading list. But there are a few newsgrou

ers This group cons

explain vari

en

ions This is where

how in a bi

et w

k here for information about

any different newsgroups. Learn how to fight jet lag in the FAQ from rec.travel.air; look u

s Looking for someth

ernet?

ce People adding new i

will post d

PEAKI

s to do this. You join an existing conversation, or you can start a whole new thread. If you want to join a discussion, you have to decide if you want to include portions of the message you are responding to in your message. The reason to do this is so people can see what you're responding to, just in case the original message has disappeared from their system (remember that most Usenet messages have a short life span on the average host system) or they can't find it. If you're using a Unix host system, joining an existing conversation is similar in both nn and rn: hit your F key when done w

l-x co

en depress the control key and hit c. Memorize thi

l-x co

e the word "quit" on the bottom of your screen), after which you can hit control-x control-c. But if this still doesn't work, remember that you can always disconnect and dial back in! If you have told your newsreader you do want to include portions of the original message in yours, it will automatically put the entire thing at the top of your message. Use the arrow keys to move down to the lines you want to delete and hit control-K, which will delete one line at a tim

p

's generally a local one (just for users of that system), one for the city, state or region it's in, another for the country (for example, usa), one for the continent (for Americans and Canadians, na) and finally, one for the entire world (usually: world). Which one to use? Generally, a couple of seconds' thought will help you decide. If you're selling your car, use your city or regional distribution - people in Australia won't much care and may even get annoyed. If you want to discuss presidential politics, using a USA distribution makes more sense. If you want to talk about events in the Middle East, sending your message to the entire world is perfectly acceptable. Then you can type your message. If you've composed your message offline (generally

n

nn system, except that you'll be given a list of possible

vilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands o

sure that you wan

d up on every host system within the geographic region you specified that carries that newsgroup. Some newsgroups, however, are moderated, as you saw earlier with comp.risks. In these groups, messages are shipped to a single location where a moderator, acting much like a magazine editor, decides what actually gets posted. In some cases, groups are moderated like scholarly journals. In other cases, it's to try to cut down on the massive number of messages that mi

.sig

sing a file. Now, every time you post a message, this will be appended to it. There are a few caveats to posting. Usenet is no different from a Town Meeting or publication: you're not supposed

ROSS-

importing rare tropical fish from Brazil. People who read rec.aquaria might have something to say. So might people who read alt.politics.animals and talk.politics.misc. Cross-posting is easy. It also should mean that people on other systems who subscribe to several newsgroups will see your message only once, rather than s

olitics.animals,t

t public). It's considered bad form to post to an excessive number of newsgroups, or inappropriate newsgroups. Probably, you don't really have to post something in 20 different places. And while you may think your particular political issue is vitally