CHAPTER 4: USENET II

4.1 FLAME, BLATHER AND SPEW

Something about online communications seems to make some people
particularly irritable. Perhaps it's the immediacy and semi-anonymity of
it all. Whatever it is, there are whole classes of people you will soon
think seem to exist to make you miserable.

Rather than pausing and reflecting on a message as one might do with a
letter received on paper, it's just so easy to hit your R or F key and
tell somebody you don't really know what you really think of them. Even
otherwise calm people sometimes find themselves turning into raving
lunatics. When this happens, flames erupt.

A flame is a particularly nasty, personal attack on somebody for
something he or she has written. Periodically, an exchange of flames
erupts into a flame war that begin to take up all the space in a given
newsgroup (and sometimes several; flamers like cross-posting to let the
world know how they feel). These can go on for weeks (sometimes they go
on for years, in which case they become "holy wars," usually on such
topics as the relative merits of Macintoshes and IBMs). Often, just when
they're dying down, somebody new to the flame war reads all the messages,
gets upset and issues an urgent plea that the flame war be taken to e-
mail so everybody else can get back to whatever the newsgroup's business
is. All this usually does, though, is start a brand new flame war, in
which this poor person comes under attack for daring to question the
First Amendment, prompting others to jump on the attackers for impugning
this poor soul... You get the idea.

Every so often, a discussion gets so out of hand that somebody predicts
that either the government will catch on and shut the whole thing down or
somebody will sue to close down the network, or maybe even the wrath of
God will smote everybody involved. This brings what has become an
inevitable rejoinder from others who realize that the network is, in
fact, a resilient creature that will not die easily: "Imminent death of
Usenet predicted. Film at 11.''

Flame wars can be tremendously fun to watch at first. They quickly grow
boring, though. And wait until the first time you're attacked!

Flamers are not the only net.characters to watch out for.

Spewers assume that whatever they are particularly concerned about either
really is of universal interest or should be rammed down the throats of
people who don't seem to care -- as frequently as possible. You can
usually tell a spewer's work by the number of articles he posts in a day
on the same subject and the number of newsgroups to which he then sends
these articles -- both can reach well into double digits. Often, these
messages relate to various ethnic conflicts around the world. Frequently,
there is no conceivable connection between the issue at hand and most of
the newsgroups to which he posts. No matter. If you try to point this
out in a response to one of these messages, you will be inundated with
angry messages that either accuse you of being an insensitive
racist/American/whatever or ignore your point entirely to bring up
several hundred more lines of commentary on the perfidy of whoever it is
the spewer thinks is out to destroy his people.

Closely related to these folks are the Holocaust revisionists, who
periodically inundate certain groups (such as soc.history) with long
rants about how the Holocaust never really happened. Some people attempt
to refute these people with facts, but others realize this only
encourages them.

Blatherers tend to be more benign. Their problem is that they just can't
get to the point -- they can wring three or four screenfuls out of a
thought that others might sum up in a sentence or two. A related
condition is excessive quoting. People afflicted with this will include
an entire message in their reply rather than excising the portions not
relevant to whatever point they're trying to make. The worst quote a
long message and then add a single line:

"I agree!"

or some such, often followed by a monster .signature (see section 4.7)

There are a number of other Usenet denizens you'll soon come to
recognize. Among them:

Net.weenies. These are the kind of people who enjoy LOWER
CASEDinsulting others, the kind of people who post nasty messages in a
sewing newsgroup just for the hell of it.
Net.geeks. People to whom the Net is Life, who worry about what
happens when they graduate and they lose their free, 24-hour access.
Net.gods. The old-timers; the true titans of the Net and the
keepers of its collective history. They were around when the Net
consisted of a couple of computers tied together with baling wire.
Lurkers. Actually, you can't tell these people are there, but
they are. They're the folks who read a newsgroup but never post or
respond.
Wizards. People who know a particular Net-related topic inside
and out. Unix wizards can perform amazing tricks with that operating
system, for example.
Net.saints. Always willing to help a newcomer, eager to share
their knowledge with those not born with an innate ability to navigate
the Net, they are not as rare as you might think. Post a question
about something and you'll often be surprised how many responses you
get.

The last group brings us back to the Net's oral tradition. With few
written guides, people had traditionally learned their way around the Net
by asking somebody, whether at the terminal next to them or on the Net
itself. That tradition continues: if you have a question, ask.

Today, one of the places you can look for help is in the
news.newusers.questions newsgroup, which, as its name suggests, is a
place to learn more about Usenet. But be careful what you post. Some of
the Usenet wizards there get cranky sometimes when they have to answer
the same question over and over again. Oh, they'll eventually answer your
question, but not before they tell you should have asked your host system
administrator first or looked at the postings in news.announce.newusers.

4.2 KILLFILES: THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YOU

As you keep reading Usenet, you are going to run across topics or people
that really drive you nuts -- or that you just get tired of seeing.

Killfiles are just the thing for you. When you start your newsreader, it
checks to see if you have any lists of words, phrases or names you don't
want to see. If you do, then it blanks out any messages containing those
words.

Such as cascades.

As you saw earlier, when you post a reply to a message and include parts
of that message, the original lines show up with a > in front of them.
Well, what if you reply to a reply? Then you get a >> in front of the
line. And if you reply to that reply? You get >>>. Keep this up, and
soon you get a triangle of >'s building up in your message.

There are people who like building up these triangles, or cascades.
They'll "respond" to your message by deleting everything you've said,
leaving only the "In message 123435, you said:" part and the last line of
your message, to which they add a nonsensical retort. On and on they go
until the triangle has reached the right end of the page. Then they try
to expand the triangle by deleting one > with each new line. Whoever gets
to finish this mega-triangle wins.

There is even a newsgroup just for such folks: alt.cascade.
Unfortunately, cascaders would generally rather cascade in other
newsgroups. Because it takes a lot of messages to build up a completed
cascade, the targeted newsgroup soon fills up with these messages. Of
course, if you complain, you'll be bombarded with messages about the
First Amendment and artistic expression -- or worse, with another
cascade. The only thing you can do is ignore them, by setting up a
killfile.

There are also certain newsgroups where killfiles will come in handy
because of the way the newsgroups are organized. For example, readers of
rec.arts.tv.soaps always use an acronym in their subject: line for the
show they're writing about (AMC, for example, for "All My Children").
This way, people who only want to read about "One Life to Live" can blank
out all the messages about "The Young and the Restless" and all the
others (to keep people from accidentally screening out messages that
might contain the letters "gh" in them, "General Hospital" viewers always
use "gh:" in their subject lines).

Both nn and rn let you create killfiles, but in different ways.

To create a killfile in nn, go into the newsgroup with the offending
messages and type a capital K. You'll see this at the bottom of your
screen:

AUTO (k)ill or (s)elect (CR => Kill subject 30 days)

If you hit return, nn will ask you which article's subject you're
tired of. Chose one and the article and any follow-ups will disappear,
and you won't see them again for 30 days.

If you type a lower-case k instead, you'll get this:

AUTO KILL on (s)ubject or (n)ame (s)

If you hit your S key or just enter, you'll see this:

KILL Subject: (=/)

Type in the name of the offending word or phrase and hit enter. You'll
then be prompted:

KILL in (g)roup 'eff.test' or in (a)ll groups (g)

except that the name of the group you see will be the one you're actually
in at the moment. Because cascaders and other annoying people often
cross-post their messages to a wide range of newsgroups, you might
consider hitting a instead of g. Next comes:

Lifetime of entry in days (p)ermanent (30)

The P key will screen out the offending articles forever, while hitting
enter will do it for 30 days. You can also type in a number of days for
the blocking.

Creating killfiles in rn works differently -- its default killfile
generator only works for messages in specific groups, rather than
globally for your entire newsgroup list. To create a global killfile,
you'll have to write one yourself.

To create a killfile in rn, go into the newsgroup where the offending
messages are and type in its number so you get it on your screen. Type a
capital K. From now on, any message with that subject line will
disappear before you read the group. You should probably choose a reply,
rather than the original message, so that you will get all of the
followups (the original message won't have a "Re: " in its subject line).
The next time you call up that newsgroup, rn will tell you it's killing
messages. When it's done, hit the space bar to go back into reading mode.

To create a "global" kill file that will automatically wipe out articles
in all groups you read, start rn and type control-K. This will start
your whatever text editor you have as your default on your host system
and create a file (called KILL, in your News subdirectory).

On the first line, you'll type in the word, phrase or name you don't want
to see, followed by commands that tell rn whether to search an entire
message for the word or name and then what to do when it finds it.

Each line must be in this form

/pattern/modifier:j

"Pattern" is the word or phrase you want rn to look for. It's case-
insensitive: both "test" and "Test" will be knocked out. The modifier
tells rn whether to limit its search to message headers (which can be
useful when the object is to never see messages from a particular
person):

a: Looks through an entire message
h: Looks just at the header

You can leave out the modifier command, in which case rn will look only
at the subject line of messages. The "j" at the end tells rn to screen
out all articles with the offending word.

So if you never want to see the word "foo" in any header, ever again,
type this:

/foo/h:j

This is particularly useful for getting rid of articles from
people who post in more than one newsgroup, such as cascaders, since
an article's newsgroup name is always in the header.

If you just want to block messages with a subject line about cascades,
you could try:

/foo/:j

To kill anything that is a follow-up to any article, use this pattern:

/Subject: *Re:/:j

When done writing lines for each phrase to screen, exit the text editor
as you normally would, and you'll be put back in rn.

One word of caution: go easy on the global killfile. An extensive global
killfile, or one that makes frequent use of the a: modifier can
dramatically slow down rn, since the system will now have to look at
every single word in every single message in all the newsgroups you want
to read.

If there's a particular person whose posts you never want to see again,
first find his or her address (which will be in the "from:" line of his
postings) and then write a line in your killfile like this:

/From: *name@address\.all/h:j

4.3 DOWNLOADING MESSAGES

Let's say there is an article in Usenet you want to save to your home
computer. There are a couple of ways to do this. One would be to use
your own telecommunication's logging or screen-capture function to
capture the text as it scrolls down the screen. This method is good if
there's just one or two articles you want to save.

But what if there are a whole lot of messages on a particular topic you
want to download, or if you want to temporarily store them online before
getting them? It might make sense to save them all to one file that you
then download.

To do this in nn, hit a capital S while in the article. You'll get
something like this:

Save on (+~|) +alt/internet/services

If you hit enter a couple of times, the file will be saved. But note
those backslashes. That means you'll actually be creating a series of
Unix sub-directories in addition to a file (in the example above, you'd
be creating a directory path called alt/internet in which you'd save the
file called services). This can be a pain! Instead, backspace as far as
you can and type in whatever you want to call the file. Now hit enter a
couple of times, and the file will be saved in your home directory.
Repeat for other articles until done. Assuming you use the same file
name each time, each message will be stored in that file.

Note for you MS-DOS folks: be sure to name the file something you're
computer can handle, for example, manual.txt, rather than something it
can't, such as computer.manual.txt).

To do this in rn, hit a lower-case s while in the article. You'll be
given a default file name in which to save the article. You can either
use that or type in your own name. Hit enter, and you'll be asked if you
want to save the article "in mailbox format." Hitting y or n here makes
little practical difference unless, for some reason, you later want to
view the article from within elm or some other mail program. The article
will then be saved in a file in your News directory (which is a
subdirectory off the normal directory you are put in when you connect to
your public-access provider). To save another
article to that file, repeat the process, and make sure you use the same
file name. The article will be appended to the end of the file you
created.

Now to get the messages home. First, you tell your host system that you
want to transfer, or download, the file. If your telecommunications
program has Zmodem, that's all you'll have to do -- the downloading will
then start automatically. If you are using something like Xmodem, Ymodem
or Kermit, however, you'll then have to tell your own computer to get
ready to receive a file. To start a Zmodem download in Unix, type

sz filename

where "filename" is the file you want aMnd hit enter. With Zmodem (and
also batch-Ymodem), you can initiate several downloads at once by either
typing in a series of filenames after 'sz' (for example: sz file1 file2)
or by using Unix wildcards (which are very similar to MS-DOS wildcards;
for example, sz man* would send you manual1, manual2 and manoman.txt).
If you use Ymodem, the command would be in the form

sz -k filename

while if you want to use Xmodem, it would be

sx filename

Note that in Xmodem, you have to issue an sx command for each file you
want.

With Ymodem and Xmodem, you'll then have to tell your own computer's
communications program that you're about to download a file and what you
want to call it.

Now you rn users, recall how the files you created were being stored in
your News directory. That means that to get them, you'd have to type
something like:

sz News/filename

Otherwise, you'll get an error message.

4.4 ASCII AND YE SHALL RECEIVE

That was easy, wasn't it? Alas, it can get more complicated. Unix, MS-
DOS and Macintosh computers all handle the end of lines of text
differently. That means that when you download a text file (such as a
collection of Usenet postings), it could look awfully odd on your
computer, to the point of being almost unreadable. There are a couple of
ways to handle this. One is to use an ASCII "flag" after sz (or sx or
sz -k). If you're lucky, your public-access site and your own computer
will be able to figure out that you need to have the line endings
translated. The command would look like this:

sz -a filename

or
sz -ka filename

etc.

If you still get weird results, most Unix systems have a translator
program that can put the proper line endings in. Typing

unix2dos file.txt file.txt

would convert file.txt into a valid MS-DOS file. A similar program
called unix2mac works the same for Macintoshes.

4.4 SOME USENET HINTS

Case counts in Unix -- most of the time. Many Unix commands, including
many of those used for reading Usenet articles, are case sensitive. Hit
a d when you meant a D and either nothing will happen, or something
completely different from what you expected will happen. So watch that
case!

In nn, you can get help most of the time by typing a question mark (the
exception is when you are writing your own message, because then you are
inside the text-processing program). In rn, type a lower-case h at any
prompt to get some online help.

When you're searching for a particular newsgroup, whether through the l
command in rn or with nngrep for nn, you sometimes may have to try
several keywords. For example, there is a newsgroup dedicated to the
Grateful Dead, but you'd never find it if you tried, say, l grateful
dead, because the name is rec.music.gdead. In general, try the smallest
possible part of the word or discussion you're looking for, for example,
use "trek" to find newsgroups about "Star Trek." If one word doesn't
produce anything, try another.

4.5 THE BRAIN-TUMOR BOY, THE MODEM TAX AND THE FCC

Like the rest of the world, Usenet has its share of urban legends and
questionable activities. There are three in particular that plague the
network. Spend more than, oh, 15 minutes within Usenet and you're sure
to run into the Brain Tumor Boy, the plot by the evil FCC to tax your
modem and Dave Rhode's miracle cure for poverty. For the record, here's
the story on all of them:

There once was a seven-year-old boy in England named Craig Shergold who
was diagnosed with a seemingly incurable brain tumor. As he lay dying,
he wished only to have friends send him postcards. The local newspapers
got a hold of the tear-jerking story. Soon, the boy's wish had changed:
he now wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the
largest postcard collection. Word spread around the world. People by the
millions sent him postcards.

Miraculously, the boy lived. An American billionaire even flew him to
the U.S. for surgery to remove what remained of the tumor. And his wish
succeeded beyond his wildest dreams -- he made the Guinness Book of World
Records.

But with Craig now well into his teens, his dream has turned into a
nightmare for the post office in the small town outside London where he
lives. Like Craig himself, his request for cards just refuses to die,
inundating the post office with millions of cards every year. Just when
it seems like the flow is slowing, along comes somebody else who starts
up a whole new slew of requests for people to send Craig post cards (or
greeting cards or business cards -- Craig letters have truly taken on a
life of their own and begun to mutate). Even Dear Abby has been powerless
to make it stop!

What does any of this have to do with the Net? The Craig letter seems to
pop up on Usenet as often as it does on cork boards at major
corporations. No matter how many times somebody like Gene Spafford posts
periodic messages to ignore them or spend your money on something more
sensible (a donation to the local Red Cross, say), somebody manages to
post a letter asking readers to send cards to poor little Craig.

Don't send any cards to the Federal Communications Commission, either.

In 1987, the FCC considered removing a tax break it had granted
CompuServe and other large commercial computer networks for use of the
national phone system. The FCC quickly reconsidered after alarmed users
of bulletin-board systems bombarded it with complaints about this "modem
tax."

Now, every couple of months, somebody posts an "urgent" message warning
Net users that the FCC is about to impose a modem tax. This is NOT true.
The way you can tell if you're dealing with the hoax story is simple: it
ALWAYS mentions an incident in which a talk-show host on KGO radio in San
Francisco becomes outraged on the air when he reads a story about the tax
in the New York Times.

Another way to tell it's not true is that it never mentions a specific
FCC docket number or closing date for comments.

Save that letter to your congressman for something else.

Sooner or later, you're going to run into a message titled "Make Money
Fast." It's your basic chain letter. The Usenet version is always about
some guy named Dave Rhodes who was on the verge of death, or something,
when he discovered a perfectly legal way to make tons of money -- by
posting a chain letter on computer systems around the world. Yeah, right.

4.6 BIG SIG

There are .sigs and there are .sigs. Many people put only bare-bones
information in their .sig files -- their names and e-mail addresses,
perhaps their phone numbers. Others add a quotation they think is funny
or profound and a disclaimer that their views are not those of their
employer.

Still others add some ASCII-art graphics. And then there are those who
go totally berserk, posting huge creations with multiple quotes, hideous
ASCII "barfics" and more e-mail addresses than anybody could humanly
need. College freshmen unleashed on the Net seem to excel at these.
You can see the best of the worst in the alt.fan.warlord newsgroup, which
exists solely to critique .sigs that go too far, such as:

___________________________________________________________________________
|#########################################################################|
|#| |#|
|#| ***** * * ***** * * ***** ***** ***** |#|
|#| * * * * ** ** * * * * |#|
|#| * ****** *** * * * *** * ** ***** ***** |#|
|#| * * * * * * * * * * * |#|
|#| * * * ***** * * ***** ***** * * |#|
|#| |#|
|#| **** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** |#|
|#| * ** * * * * * * * * |#|
|#| **** * * ** ***** * * ** * * * |#|
|#| * ** * * * ** * * * * * * * |#|
|#| **** ***** ***** ** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** |#|
|#| |#|
|#| T-H-E M-E-G-A B-I-G .S-I-G C-O-M-P-A-N-Y |#|
|#| ~-----------------------------~ |#|
|#| "Annoying people with huge net.signatures for over 20 years..." |#|
|#| |#|
|#|---------------------------------------------------------------------|#|
|#| "The difference between a net.idiot and a bucket of shit is that at |#|
|#| least a bucket can be emptied. Let me further illustrate my point |#|
|#| by comparing these charts here. (pulls out charts) Here we have a |#|
|#| user who not only flames people who don't agree with his narrow- |#|
|#| minded drivel, but he has this huge signature that takes up many |#|
|#| pages with useless quotes. This also makes reading his frequented |#|
|#| newsgroups a torture akin to having at 300 baud modem on a VAX. I |#|
|#| might also add that his contribution to society rivals only toxic |#|
|#| dump sites." |#|
|#| -- Robert A. Dumpstik, Jr |#|
|#| President of The Mega Big Sig Company |#|
|#| September 13th, 1990 at 4:15pm |#|
|#| During his speech at the "Net.abusers |#|
|#| Society Luncheon" during the |#|
|#| "1990 Net.idiots Annual Convention" |#|
|#|_____________________________________________________________________|#|
|#| |#|
|#| Thomas Babbit, III: 5th Assistant to the Vice President of Sales |#|
|#| __ |#|
|#| ========== ______ Digital Widget Manufacturing Co. |#|
|#| \\ / 1147 Complex Incorporated Drive |#|
|#| )-======= Suite 215 |#|
|#| Nostromo, VA 22550-1147 |#|
|#| #NC-17 Enterpoop Ship :) Phone # 804-844-2525 |#|
|#| ---------------- Fax # 804-411-1115 |#|
|#| "Shut up, Wesley!" Online Service # 804-411-1100 |#|
|#| -- Me at 300-2400, and now 9600 baud! |#|
|#| PUNet: tbabb!digwig!nostromo |#|
|#| Home address: InterNet: dvader@imperial.emp.com |#|
|#| Thomas Babbit, III Prodigy: Still awaiting author- |#|
|#| 104 Luzyer Way ization |#|
|#| Sulaco, VA 22545 "Manufacturing educational widget |#|
|#| Phone # 804-555-1524 design for over 3 years..." |#|
|#|=====================================================================|#|
|#| |#|
|#| Introducing: |#|
|#| ______ |#|
|#| The |\ /| / |#|
|#| | \/ | / |#|
|#| | | / |#|
|#| | | / |#|
|#| | | ETELHED /_____ ONE |#|
|#|'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'|#|
|#| 50Megs Online! The k00l BBS for rad teens! Lots of games and many |#|
|#| bases for kul topix! Call now and be validated to the Metelhed Zone|#|
|#| -- 804-555-8500 -- |#|
|#|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\V/////////////////////////////////////|#|
|#| "This is the end, my friend..." -- The Doors |#|
|#########################################################################|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hit "b" to continue

Hahahha... fooled u!

4.7 THE FIRST AMENDMENT AS LOCAL ORDINANCE

Usenet's international reach raises interesting legal questions that have
yet to be fully resolved. Can a discussion or posting that is legal in
one country be transmitted to a country where it is against the law?
Does the posting even become illegal when it reaches the border? And
what if that country is the only path to a third country where the
message is legal as well? Several foreign colleges and other
institutions have cut off feeds of certain newsgroups where Americans
post what is, in the U.S., perfectly legal discussions of drugs or
alternative sexual practices. Even in the U.S., some universities have
discontinued certain newsgroups their administrators find offensive,
again, usually in the alt. hierarchy.

An interesting example of this sort of question happened in 1993, when a
Canadian court issued a gag order on Canadian reporters covering a
particularly controversial murder case. Americans, not bound by the gag
order, began posting accounts of the trial -- which any Canadian with a
Net account could promptly read.

4.8 USENET HISTORY

In the late 1970s, Unix developers came up with a new feature: a system
to allow Unix computers to exchange data over phone lines.

In 1979, two graduate students at Duke University in North Carolina, Tom
Truscott and Jim Ellis, came up with the idea of using this system, known
as UUCP (for Unix-to-Unix CoPy), to distribute information of interest to
people in the Unix community. Along with Steve Bellovin, a graduate
student at the University of North Carolina and Steve Daniel, they wrote
conferencing software and linked together computers at Duke and UNC.

Word quickly spread and by 1981, a graduate student at Berkeley, Mark
Horton and a nearby high school student, Matt Glickman, had released a
new version that added more features and was able to handle larger
volumes of postings -- the original North Carolina program was meant for
only a few articles in a newsgroup each day.

Today, this system, now called Usenet, connects tens of thousands of
sites around the world, from mainframes to Amigas. With more than 3,000
newsgroups and untold thousands of readers, it is perhaps the world's
largest computer network.

4.9 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

* When you start up rn, you get a "warning" that "bogus newsgroups"
are present.

Within a couple of minutes, you'll be asked whether to keep these or
delete them. Delete them. Bogus newsgroups are newsgroups that your
system administrator or somebody else has determined are no longer
needed.

* While in a newsgroup in rn, you get a message: "skipping unavailable
article."

This is usually an article that somebody posted and then decided to
cancel.

* You upload a text file to your Unix host system for use in a Usenet
message or e-mail, and when you or your recipient reads the file, every
line ends with a ^M.

This happens because Unix handles line endings differently than MS-DOS or
Macintosh computers. Most Unix systems have programs to convert incoming
files from other computers. To use it, upload your file and then, at your
command line, type

dos2unix filename filename or
mac2unix filename filename

depending on which kind of computer you are using and where filename is
the name of the file you've just uploaded. A similar program can prepare
text files for downloading to your computer, for example:

unix2dos filename filename or
unix2mac filename filename

will ensure that a text file you are about to get will not come out
looking odd on your computer.

* Nothing happens or you get a lot of garbage on your screen when you try
to download a file with Zmodem.

Unfortunately, transferring files over high-speed modems can still
sometimes be troublesome. Diagnosing and fixing the problem often means
tinkering with settings either on your end (for example, if your modem
supports hardware "handshaking" but your telecom program is set for
software "handshaking"); the public-access site's end (with various
flags) or both. The best thing to do when having problems is to send e-
mail to your system administrator or post a message in your site's
"general" or "help" newsgroup if there is one. If you're having a
problem, chances are somebody else has gone through the same thing and
can help out. It would probably make sense to include the type of modem
you're using and the speed at which it connects.

4.10 FYI

Leanne Phillips periodically posts a list of frequently asked questions
(and answers) about use of the rn killfile function in the
news.newusers.questions and news.answers newsgroups on Usenet. Bill
Wohler posts a guide to using the nn newsreader in the news.answers and
news.software newsgroups. Look in the news.announce.newusers and
news.groups newsgroups on Usenet for "A Guide to Social Newsgroups and
Mailing Lists,'' which gives brief summaries of the various soc.
newsgroups.

"Managing UUCP and Usenet,' by Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino (O'Reilly &
Associates, 1992) is a good guide for setting up your own Usenet system.
chap3

CHAPTER 5: MAILING LISTS AND BITNET

5.1 INTERNET MAILING LISTS

Usenet is not the only forum on the Net. Scores of "mailing lists"
represent another way to interact with other Net users. Unlike Usenet
messages, which are stored in one central location on your host system's
computer, mailing-list messages are delivered right to your e-mail box.

You have to ask for permission to join a mailing list -- although
in many cases that means only sending a message to a particular computer,
which then automatically adds you to the list. Unlike Usenet, where your
message is distributed to the world, on a mailing list, you send your
messages to a central moderator, who either re-mails it to the other
people on the list or uses it to compile a periodic "digest" mailed to
subscribers.

Given the number of newsgroups, why would anybody bother with a mailing
list?

Even on Usenet, there are some topics that just might not generate enough
interest for a newsgroup; for example, the Queen list, which is all about
the late Freddie Mercury's band.

And because a moderator decides who can participate, a mailing list can
offer a degree of freedom to speak one's mind (or not worry about
net.weenies) that is not necessarily possible on Usenet. Several groups
offer anonymous postings -- only the moderator knows the real names of
people who contribute. Examples include 12Step, where people enrolled in
such programs as Alcoholics Anonymous can discuss their experiences, and
sappho, a list limited to gay and bisexual women.

You can find mailing addresses and descriptions of these lists in the
news.announce.newusers newsgroup with the subject of "Publicly Accessible
Mailing Lists." Mailing lists now number in the hundreds, so this
posting is divided into several parts.

If you find a list to which you want to subscribe, send an e-mail message
to the listed address, which will often be of the form

list-request@address.site

or

majordomo@address.site

(majordomo is a common program used to manage mailing lists). If you're
writing to a list-request address, chances are good your message will go
to a live person. Ask to be put on the list and include your e-mail
address, just in case something happens to your header. If it's a
majordomo address, you'll typically be told to send a message in this
form:

subscribe listname

where "listname" is the name of the list. As with Usenet, it's generally
a good idea to "listen" to the messages for a few days before jumping in.
once you want to send a message to everybody on the list, send it to

listname@address.site

If you want to get off a mailing list, write to the same address you used
for subscribing in the first place, only this time, write

unsubscribe listname

substituting the actual name of the mailing list.

5.2 BITNET

As if Usenet and mailing lists were not enough, there are Bitnet
"discussion groups" or "lists."

Bitnet is an international network linking colleges and universities, but
it uses a different set of technical protocols for distributing
information from the Internet or Usenet. It offers hundreds of discussion
groups, comparable in scope to Usenet newsgroups. As with Internet
mailing lists, Bitnet discussions take place in e-mail. However, where
mailing lists are often maintained by a person, all Bitnet discussion
groups are automated -- you subscribe to them through messages to a
"listserver" computer. This is a kind of robot moderator that controls
distribution of messages on the list. In many cases, it also maintains
indexes and archives of past postings in a given discussion group, which
can be handy if you want to get up to speed with a discussion or just
search for some information related to it.

Many Bitnet discussion groups are now "translated" into Usenet form and
carried through Usenet in the bit.listserv hierarchy. In general, it's
probably better to read messages through Usenet if you can. It saves
some storage space on your host system's hard drives as well as reducing
clutter in your mailbox. Think of opening your e-mailbox one day to find
200 messages in it -- 199 of them from a discussion group and one of them
a "real" e-mail message that's important to you.

Subscribing and canceling subscriptions is done through an e-mail message
to the listserver computer. For addressing, all listservers are known as
"listserv" (yep) at some Bitnet address. This means you will have to add
".bitnet" to the end of the address, if it's in a form like this:
listserv@miamiu. For example, if you have an interest in environmental
issues, you might want to subscribe to the Econet discussion group. To
subscribe, send an e-mail message to

listserv@miamiu.bitnet

Some Bitnet listservers are also connected to the Internet, so if you
see a listserver address ending in ".edu", you can e-mail the
listserver without adding ".bitnet" to the end.

Always leave the "subject:" line blank in a message to a listserver.
Inside the message, you tell the listserver what you want, with a series
of simple commands:

subscribe group Your Name To subscribe to a list, where "group"
is the list name and "Your Name" is
your full name, for example:
subscribe econet Henry Fielding

unsubscribe group Your Name To discontinue a group, for example:
unsubscribe econet Henry Fielding

list global This sends you a list of all available
Bitnet discussion groups. But be careful
-- the list is VERY long!

get refcard Sends you a list of other commands you
can use with a listserver, such as
commands for retrieving past postings
from a discussion group.

Each of these commands goes on a separate line in your message (and you
can use one or all of them). If you want to get a list of all Bitnet
discussion groups, send e-mail to

listserv@bitnic.educom.edu

Leave the "subject:" line blank and use the list global command.

When you subscribe to a Bitnet group, there are two important differences
from Usenet.

First, when you want to post a message for others to read in the
discussion group, you send a message to the group name at its Bitnet
address. Using Econet as an example, you would mail the message to:

econet@miamiu.bitnet

Note that this is different from the listserv address you used to
subscribe to the group to begin with. Use the listserv address ONLY to
subscribe to or unsubscribe from a discussion group. If you use the
discussion-group address to try to subscribe or unsubscribe, your message
will go out to every other subscriber, many of whom will think unkind
thoughts, which they may share with you in an e-mail message).

The second difference relates to sending an e-mail message to the author
of a particular posting. Usenet newsreaders such as rn and nn let you do
this with one key. But if you hit your R key to respond to a discussion-
group message, your message will go to the listserver, and from there to
everybody else on the list! This can prove embarrassing to you and
annoying to others. To make sure your message goes just to the person who
wrote the posting, take down his e-mail address from the posting and then
compose a brand-new message. Remember, also, that if you see an e-mail
address like IZZY@INDYVMS, it's a Bitnet address.

Two Bitnet lists will prove helpful for delving further into the network.
NEW-LIST tells you the names of new discussion groups. To subscribe, send
a message to listserv@ndsuvm1.bitnet:

sub NEW-LIST Your Name

INFONETS is the place to go when you have questions about Bitnet. It is
also first rate for help on questions about all major computer networks
and how to reach them. To subscribe, send e-mail to
info-nets-request@think.com:

sub INFONETS Your Name

Both of these lists are also available on Usenet, the former as
bit.listserv.new-list; the latter as bit.listserv.infonets (sometimes
bit.listserv.info-nets).