Random Frenquently Asked Questions (FAQs)

My Usenet Postings (Sept-Oct 2001)

My Mysterynet Postings (since late Nov 2001)

Random FAQs

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Johnstexas website

DeSoto Texas USA

What is Usenet?
Usenet is a collection of tens of thousands of message forums called newsgroups. These newsgroups are organized into a number of major hierarchies, including the big-8 (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk) and alt. Each newsgroup in one of these hierarchies will begin with one of the preceding names, for exemple rec, and will be followed with a dot and then another name. For example, rec.puzzles. In many cases, there will be a third or even a fourth or greater level, all seperated by periods. rec.arts.tv is an example of a newsgroup having three levels in its name.

alt is an alternative to the big-8 hierarchy designed to make the creation of newsgroups easier. Most groups are in the alt hierarchy, since these are easiest to create.

Another major set of hierarches are the local ones, such as dfw for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

How do I access Usenet?
There are two main ways to use Usenet. One is through an NNTP server, and the other is through a web based news service.

NNTP is the network news transfer protocol. To use this, you will have to have a client such as Outlook Express, Netscape Messenger, Forte Agent, Pine, trn, etc. and you will have to have access to an appropriate server. Many internet providers such as AOL, Prodigy, Earthlink, Hawk Communications, etc. will offer newsgroups as a service to their customers. Check with your internet provider to see if they offer this access.

If your internet provider does not offer you newsgroup access, you may also use one of the open news servers, such as news://news.readfreenews.net which allows you to read, but unless you have an account set up with them, you can not post. Also, you can get an account with news://news.cis.dfn.de by requesting one. Please see http://news.cis.dfn.de/ for more information.

The final option is to use a web based news service, such as Google groups. Google groups is a news portal and news archiving service that originally began as Deja News and then became Deja before being bought out by with search engine Google. This has the drawback of being slower downloading messages, but since most messages are archived, you can most messages dating back to May 1981 and search for messages on a particular topic. Also, since it is web based, you can access it from any web-enabled computer, not just one set up to access your NNTP server.

To register with Google groups, just go to http://groups.google.com and search for the group you are seeking out. When you first attempt to post a message or reply to a post, it will ask you for your email address and password. If you have never registered with Google groups, it will allow you to create an account and it will email a verification message to your pre-existing email address and when you have clicked on the link in the message, you will be allowed to post and reply, using your email address and password.

email me: jseelige@aaahawk.com