Usenet News
An Approximate Description
Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a set of "newsgroups" with names that are classified hierarchically by subject. "Articles" or "messages" are "posted" to these newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software -- these articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide variety of networks. Some newsgroups are "moderated"; in these newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup.
News Servers
As of February 2007, CIS no longer operates a usenet news server, so this service is not available from the University or the CS Department.
The easiest way to gain access to usenet discussions is via Google Groups. You can search, browse and post using Google's web interface.
A number of ISPs and other service providers operate traditional news servers which allow you to use a news reader like those described in the next session. Most of these charge a monthly access fee. Wikipedia mentions supernews and giganews. A search for "usenet" should turn up many more.
News Reading Software
There are many news readers to choose from, and no one seems to agree on what's best. Here's a list of some unix news readers:
rn, slrn, tin, Gnus, netscape, pine, trn, xrn.
If you don't already have a favorite news reader, talk to your friends
and see what they use. If you don't have any friends, use
slrn.
We don't currently have a news reader under Windows.
Before You Post
Before posting to any newsgroup, you should familiarize yourself with netiquette.
| Page Owner: Kathy Kirman | Last Modified: Tue Jan 16 11:00:50 2007 |