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Net News

There are thousands of Internet newsgroups, each with a name which reflects the special interest group that it is intended for, e.g.,
                 alt.binaries.pictures.cartoons
                 alt.comp.compression
                 alt.fan.letterman
                 alt.food.coffee
                 alt.security.pgp
                 clari.world.americas.canada
                 comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot
                 comp.lang.fortran
                 comp.sources.postscript
                 cu.mathematica
                 cu.users.tex
                 rec.humor.funny
                 rec.sport.basketball.college
                 sci.astro.amateur
                 sci.math.symbolic
                 trial.talk.politics.peace

Newsgroups can be read using Netscape or using a Unix news reader from among one of the following; rn, nn, trn, xrn. See the manual pages for the reader you use.

Becoming a ``Net News Junkie'' may cause you to lose valuable hours out of each day, so beware! You can learn to sift quickly through the (numerous!) worthless postings which pollute the unmoderated newsgroups, and you may decide to restrict the number of such newsgroups that look at. Learn to use "kill files" to help filter out the stupidest of the postings, the flame wars (exchanges of attacks and insults) and spam wars (a posting to to dozens of inappropriate newsgroups, often followed up by replies to all of the same inappropriate newsgroups, on and on and on). Often these useless exchanges run the same "Subject" line, which makes it easy for your newsreader's filter to catch.

Moderated newsgroups, those to which postings must first get approved by an individual (the newsgroup's owner), tend to have a higher ``signal-to-noise ratio''.


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Bruce.Fast@Colorado.EDU