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By Edwin Habib, Association President
THE USENET NEWSGROUPS are probably the most interesting part of the Internet. Each group is a forum for the discussion of a specific topic. Some groups are carried all over the world, others of local interest only.
THE NAME OF THE GROUP describes the interest of the group. For example comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc is a group dedicated to a discussion of Microsoft Windows 95. The first word "comp" is called the hierarchy and means that the group is concerned with computers. The second word, "os" means operating system and "windows" refers to Microsoft Windows. Other hierachy names are misc, news, net, sci, soc and talk, with obvious meanings.
THESE ARE MAINSTREAM HIERACHY NAMES, set up according to well-defined rules. There are others that are set up more or less spontaneously and use names like alt, bionet, biz etc. Your service provider maintains a list of a number of these groups.
THE UNIVERSITY COMPUTING SERVICES CENTRE has a list of some 3000 groups. IBM's Advantis lists over 10000, and more groups appear weekly.
To subscribe to a news group, run the Newsreader that came with your internet access kit and select the groups you are interested in from a list. This list will appear by selecting the appropriate menu item. Whenever you start your Newsreader the groups you selected will appear. You may also use a Web Browser like the Netscape Navigator (for Windows) or WebExplorer (for OS/2) but a dedicated newsreader is faster.
MY FAVOURITE GROUPS are the "announce" groups like comp.os.os2.announce. These groups keep you informed on the latest news, technical as well as commercial, in the field. Some groups are moderated to ensure that postings are suitable but many are not moderated.
YOU CAN POST A LETTER to a newsgroup directly from your reader. You can ask advice on a problem, comment on something you have read and give advice. Some news readers and web browers can display the postings in threads that is, all articles on the same subject are grouped together. This makes it easier to follow a discussion.
SOMETIMES UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITIES present themselves. Last year a subscriber from New Zealand asked for volunteers to take part in a test of the programme P2P which came with IBM's bonus pack. Using this programme many users on a network can hold a conference. The display consists of a text screen for typing messages and an electronic chalk board. All participants can see both the text screen and the chalk board. You could bring up a document for discussion and edit it on the chalk board. You could give a lecture this way.
The interesting thing about the test was that it took place on the Internet. The participants were from Norway, Germany, Holland, Canada and the U.S. By the way the moderator of the test came from Sarnia and recently moved to New Zealand. Newsgroups are the most interesting part of the Internet. Enjoy!