Accessing Usenet News on the Internet
Introduction
Usenet news is one of the early 'features' of the internet which is not all that well known. One possible reason
for it's unpopularity is that usenet news is mainly maintained by private organizations and universities
rather than commercial sites. Thus, we do not hear of people advertising their usenet groups. In fact, most
people would prefer to keep it a secret so that there are not too many people who sign up for this lists.
When there are too many people on the lists, it becomes less 'professional' with people sending a lot of
irrelevant messages to the list. For example, I used to subscribe to bass-digest in 1995. I used to get
about 5 to 10 messages daily. I stopped for a while then I started again in 1997, but I used to receive
about 20 messages a day and it would jam up my mailbox over the weekend. I had to unsubscribe from
the list.
Usenet versus Mailing Lists
Usenet news and mailing lists may sound the same and it is quite similar. The main difference is that
you pick what you want to read in Usenet news but everything is e-mailed to you in a mailing list. For
usenet news, you need a web browser configured with a newsreader to view the newsgroups. Your
internet service provider needs to provide you with a configuration for a newsreader server. Some
ISPs do not provide this service. Also, some commercial organizations do not provide news servers for
their employees for obvious reasons.
If your browser does not appear to have a setup for usenet server, you may need a standalone
software. There are several free newsreader programs on the internet.
If you don't have a usenet server, you can subscribe to a commercial web server
(check http://groups.google.com/) or there are also some free servers. You'll have to search
for them on your own.
How To...
To get into the usenet group is as simple as clicking your news button on your browser . It would help
though if you already knew which group you intend to read. You can then press the 'add newsgroup'
button and type in the newsgroup name.
To get on a mailing list, all you need is a functioning e-mail account and the address of the 'newsbot'.
Just send them an e-mail from your current e-mail account with the contents stating: subscribe
_mail-list-name_ your_name. You will be added to the mailing list automatically. You may need to search
for these list names and addresses on the internet first though.
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