Hello!
We take another venture into this medium we know as the Information Super Highway. This week we look at UseNet News and what it is all about? As far as number counts, back in August of '93 there were about 100,000 sites, 4,000 groups and 2 million users. Just imagine the growth rate!
What is important to note is that Network News and UseNet are actually different items. Though both contain information via messaging (similar to a Message Area on a Bulletin Board System. That is a good way to look at Newgroups as well.), The UseNet has it's own "level" or hierarchy of information. Let us look here at the "Levels".
CORE UseNet
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COMP: Computers
REC: Recreation
SCI: Science
SOC: Society,Politics,Ethnic Groups
TALK: Regular Chat
MISC: Anything not relative to other levels
Other Groups
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ALT: Controversial Topics
AMIGA: Amiga Computers
BIZ: Commercial Discussions
BIONET: Biology
BIT: Listserv Lists
GNN: Free-Software Foundation Discussions
HEPNET: High Energy Physics
IEEE: Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers
K12: K12Net (Parents,Teacher,Students grades K through 12)
OPINIONS: Court Decisions
PUBNET: Public Access
VMSNET: DEC's VMS O/S
Institutional Groups
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UCB: U of Cal,Berkley
SCO: Santa Cruz Operation
BA: Bay Area
CA: California
CHILE: Chile
DE: Germany
FJ: Japanese
RELCOM: Russian
Often FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) are posted in the Groups to answer user inquires. You would normally get access to UseNet through your Service Provider. On a commercial Online Service you can inquire as to whether UseNet News is available as well as on a Local Bulletin Board System or Network. What helps in the reading of Usenet News is message readers, some of which are TIN,NN,TM and RN. Many find that they prefer to read the News Offline. This can be accomplished by using an Offline Reader such as UQWK which can be obtained via FTP at ftp.gtm.com in the pub/uqwk directory. The News is packed and QWK format and your replies packed in REP format.
When reading a UseNet News articles you will encounter number lines of info, before you actually get to the message itself. Such are defined as follows:
Approved: For Moderated Groups
Date: Message Date
Expires: Duration of Message
Followup: If a Follow to a previous Message Posting
From: Who Posted the Message
Keywords: Keywords that can be searched
Lines: Lines of messages Text
Message-ID: Info on origin of message and also used for Dupes
Newsgroups: All Newsgroups who received that posting
NNTP-Posting-Host: Matching posting message,not necessarily Posters
Organization: Organization of Poster
Path: Machines the message has traveled through
Subject: What the posting is about
Often a file resides on your Providers site that indicates which NewsGroups you have subscribed to. This File is called the .newsrc file.
The following steps are taken in creating a CORE newsgroup:
1) Request for Discussion (RFD) is posted to the Newsgroup news.announce.newgroup and in groups or mailing lists relative to you new topic. The discussion takes place in news.groups. Here the purpose is discussed as well as moderated or unmoderated.
2) Next is a call for votes (CVF) is issued in the news.announce.newgroups. Instruction should be included on how to vote . Also Mail Servers for yes/no should be setup. During the voting period, the CFV should repeated.
3) Next is the Voting which goes for about 30 days. The tally of votes and voter is posted to news.announce.newgroup. The percentile needed is 66 percent favorable and 100 more yes than no votes.
It is important to note that even if a groups wins by vote, whether the individual sites will carry it, is another question.
The following will help with your search for more info on Usenet News:
Groups:
news.announce.newusers
news.list.ps-maps
news.newusers.questions
news.lists
news.answers
news.admin.policy
alt.usenet.offline-reader
Software:
tin: ftp.uu.net, cs.oret.edu
nn: ftp.uu.net, cd news/nn
Well we wrap up another lesson! Hoping your CyberTravels are good ones!
Our Tip of the Week
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How can you find out about Interactive (you and your PC against someone else and there's one on one at the same time) Games that you can play on the Internet?
Answer.
Multi-User Dungeons (MUD) Dungeons and Dragons Role Playing Games.
Via FTP. Where? rtfm.mit.edu in the pub/usenet/rec.games.mud.announce
for an Unofficial listing.