Microsoft Windows XP Unleashed

In this chapter, I’ll now turn your attention (if I may) to the Usenet service. I’ll give you

some background about Usenet, and then I’ll show you how to wield the newsreader

portion of the Outlook Express show.

NOTE

Usenet began its life back in 1979 at Duke University. A couple of resident computer whizzes

(James Elliot and Tom Truscott) needed a way to easily share research, knowledge, and smart-

aleck opinions among Duke students and faculty. So, in true hacker fashion, they built a

program that would do just that. Eventually, other universities joined in, and the thing just

mushroomed. Today, tens of millions of people participate in Usenet, sending hundreds of thou-

sands of messages a day.

Some Usenet Basics

To get your Usenet education off on the right foot, this section looks at a few crucial

concepts that will serve as the base from which you can explore the rest of Usenet:

article An individual message in a newsgroup discussion.

follow up To respond to an article. (Also: follow-up; the response itself.)

hierarchy Usenet divides its discussion groups into several classifications, or hierarchies.

There are several so-called mainstream hierarchies:

biz Business

comp Computer hardware and software

misc Miscellaneous stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else

news Usenet-related topics

rec Entertainment, hobbies, sports, and more

sci Science and technology

soc Sex, culture, religion, and politics

talk Debates about controversial political and cultural topics

Most Usenet-equipped Internet service providers will give you access to all the main-

stream hierarchies. There’s also a huge alt (alternative) hierarchy that covers just about

anything that either doesn’t belong in a mainstream hierarchy or is too wacky to be

included with the mainstream groups. There are also many smaller hierarchies designed

for specific geographic areas. For example, the ba hierarchy includes discussion groups for

the San Francisco Bay area, the can hierarchy is devoted to Canadian topics, and so on.

newsgroup This is the official Usenet moniker for a discussion topic. Why are they called

newsgroups? Well, the original Duke University system was designed to share

announcements, research findings, and commentary. In other words, people

would use this system if they had some “news” to share with their

CHAPTER 20 Participating in Internet Newsgroups532

colleagues. The name stuck, and now you’ll often hear Usenet referred to as

Netnews or simply as the news.

newsreader The software you use to read a newsgroup’s articles and to post your own

articles. In Windows XP, you can use Outlook Express as a newsreader. Other

Windows newsreaders include Agent (www.forteinc.com/agent/) and

NewsPro (www.netwu.com/newspro/). For the Mac, you can try Microsoft

Entourage, part of the Office 2004 suite, or MT-NewsWatcher

(www.smfr.org/mtnw/).

NOTE

Instead of using a newsreader, you can access all the newsgroups through your web browser by

using Google Groups (groups.google.com). This is useful if your ISP does not offer newsgroup

access or if you would like to read particular newsgroups without having to subscribe to them.

However, if you want to post messages to a newsgroup, you must register with Google.

news server A computer that stores newsgroups and handles requests to post and

(or NNTP server) download newsgroup messages. There are four types of news server:

• ISP news server—Most ISPs supply you with an account on their news

server in addition to your email account. Your news server username and

password are almost always the same as your email username and pass-

word, but check with your ISP. You should also confirm the Internet

name of the ISP’s news server. This name usually takes the form

news.ispname.com or nntp.ispname.com, where ispname is the name of

your ISP.

• Commercial news server—If your ISP does not offer newsgroup access, or

if your ISP offers only a limited number of groups, consider using a

commercial news server, which offers newsgroup access for a fee. Two of

the largest commercial news servers are Giganews (www.giganews.com)

and Newscene (www.newscene.com).

• Public news server—If you are on a limited budget, try a public news

server that offers free newsgroup access. Note, however, that most

public servers restrict the number of users on the server, offer a limited

number of groups, or place a cap on the amount you can download. For

a list of public news servers, try Newzbot (www.newzbot.com) or Free

Usenet News Servers (freenews.maxbaud.net).

• Semi-private news server—Some companies maintain their own news

server and their own set of newsgroups. For example, Microsoft main-

tains a news server at msnews.microsoft.com that runs more than 2,000

groups related to Microsoft products and technologies.

post To send an article to a newsgroup.

Some Usenet Basics 533

20