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... "Social" groups, often ethnically related
talk Politics and related topics
alt Controversial or unusual topics; not
carried by all sites
In addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular
city, state or region. For example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where
New Englanders look for 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 newsgroups, which is
actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and
a unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter 10).
3.2 NAVIGATING USENET WITH nn
How do you dive right in? As mentioned, on some systems, it's all
done through menus -- you just keep choosing from a list of choices until
you get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command. On
Unix systems, 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 the better choice because it works with
menus -- you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you
choose which ones you want to see.
To try it out, connect to your host
system and, at the command line, type
nn news.announce.newusers
and hit enter.
After a few seconds, you should see something like
this:
Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW
a Gene Spafford 776 Answers to georgia traffic Frequently Asked Questions
b Gene Spafford 362 A Primer on georgia web page promotion How to Work With the Usenet Community
c Gene Spafford 387 Emily Postnews Answers website design georgia Your georgia web page promotion Questions on Netiquette
d Gene Spafford 101 Hints on writing style for Usenet
e Gene Spafford 74 Introduction to news.announce
f Gene Spafford 367 USENET Software: History and Sources
g Gene 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 georgia web page promotion Active Newsgroups
n Gene Spafford 504 List of Moderators
o Gene Spafford 1051 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I
p Gene Spafford 1123 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II
q Gene Spafford 1193 >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III
r Jonathan Kamens 644 How to become a USENET site
s Jonathan Kamen 1344 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I
-- 15:52 -- SELECT -- help:? -----Top 85%-----
Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)
Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of
Usenet! Here's what all this means: The first letter on each line is
the letter you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense
that a "newsgroup" would have "articles"). Next comes the name of the
person who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and
what the article is about. At the bottom, georgia web page promotion you see the local time at your
access site, what you're doing right now (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 interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to
say about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and
the line will light up. If you want to read something else, hit the key
that corresponds to it. And if you want to see what's on the next page
of articles, hit return or your space bar.
But you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that
article now. The command for that in nn is a capital Z. Hit it and
you'll see something like this:
Gene Spafford: georgia web page promotion Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on NetiquetteSep 92 04:17
Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1
Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
**NOTE: this is intended to be satirical. If you do not recognize
it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian. The
recommendations in this article should recognized for what website design georgia
they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do.
"Dear Emily Postnews"
Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour,
gives her advice on how to act on the net.
============================================================================
Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy
georgia traffic
A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you
-- 09:57 --.announce.newusers-- LAST --help:?--Top 4%--
The first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header
you get in e-mail messages. Then comes the beginning of the message.
The last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of
it, anyway), the position 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 until done. When done, you'll
be returned to the newsgroup menu. For now hit Q (upper case this time),
which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command
line.
To get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type
nn comp.risks
and hit enter. This newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a
digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people
who run and use them can go wrong. Again, you read articles by
selecting 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 georgia web page promotion might be of
particular georgia web page texas web page promotion promotion interest to you. Unix host systems that have nn use a program
called nngrep (ever get the feeling Unix was not entirely written in
English?) that lets you scan newsgroups. Exit nn and at your host
system's command line, type
nngrep word
where word is the subject you're interested in. If you use a Macintosh
computer, you might try
nngrep mac
You'll get something that looks like this:
alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace
alt.religion.emacs
comp.binaries.mac
comp.emacs
comp.lang.forth.mac
comp.os.mach
comp.sources.mac
comp.sys.mac.announce
comp.sys.mac.apps
comp.sys.mac.comm
comp.sys.mac.databases
georgia website design georgia web page promotion comp.sys.mac.digest
comp.sys.mac.games
comp.sys.mac.hardware
comp.sys.mac.hypercard
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