newsgroups
30
What is USENET ?
Posted in alt.binaries, binaries, completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, newsreaders, retention, uncensored, uncensored news, usenet, web browsers by Admin
Usenet – the alternative to the WWW!
Usenet is a large worldwide network which provides an opportunity for those who share common interests to meet and exchange information in a virtual environment. Unlike the Internet, with which it is frequently confused, Usenet is a collection of thousands of publicly accessible discussions on a wide range of topics rather than a purely technical network.Whereas using the Usenet was a relatively complicated business in the past, various providers now exist who attempt to secure the custom of users by offering simple and convenient access. The different software products which are available are particularly aimed at simplifying the process of searching for and downloading files from Usenet. We hope you enjoy exploring Usenet !
What is USENET?
Usenet is an open forum free from arbitrary editorial guidelines, file size limits, and format restrictions. Usenet is growing fast – and is already used by millions of people in every corner of the world..
Usenet is a collection of user-submitted notes or messages on various subjects that are posted to servers on a worldwide network. Each subject collection of posted notes is known as a newsgroup. There are thousands of newsgroups and it is possible for you to form a new one. Most groups are hosted on Internet-connected servers, but they can also be hosted from servers that are not part of the Internet. The original protocol was UNIX-to-UNIX Copy (UUCP), but today the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is used.
Usenet is mostly accessed via newsgroup readers, such as Outlook Express, that run as separate programs. Uncensorednewsfeed.com offers easy Web Browser access for those that are either new to Usenet or don’t wish to use as newsreader.
USENET HISTORY
The idea of network ( Usenet ) news was born in 1979 when two graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of using UUCP to connect machines for the purpose of information exchange among users. They set up a small network of three machines in North Carolina.
Initially, traffic was handled by a number of shell scripts (later rewritten in C), but they were never released to the public. They were quickly replaced by “A” news, the first public release of news software.
“A” news was not designed to handle more than a few articles per group and day. When the volume continued to grow, it was rewritten by Mark Horton and Matt Glickman, who called it the “B” release (a.k.a. Bnews). The first public release of Bnews was version-2.1 in 1982. It was expanded continuously, with several new features being added. Its current version is Bnews-2.11. It is slowly becoming obsolete, with its last official maintainer having switched to INN.
Another rewrite was done and released in 1987 by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer; this is release “C”, or C-News. In the time following there have been a number of patches to C-News, the most prominent being the C-News Performance Release. On sites that carry a large number of groups, the overhead involved in frequently invoking relaynews, which is responsible for dispatching incoming articles to other hosts, is significant. The Performance Release adds an option to relaynews that allows to run it in daemon mode, in which the program puts itself in the background.
The Performance Release is the C-News version currently included in most releases.
All news releases up to “C” are primarily targeted for UUCP networks, although they may be used in other environments as well. Efficient news transfer over networks like TCP/IP, DECNet, or related requires a new scheme. This was the reason why, in 1986, the “Network News Transfer Protocol”, NNTP, was introduced. It is based on network connections, and specifies a number of commands to interactively transfer and retrieve articles.
There are a number of NNTP-based applications available from the Net. One of them is the nntpd package by Brian Barber and Phil Lapsley, which you can use, among other things, to provides newsreading service to a number of hosts inside a local network. nntpd was designed to complement news packages such as Bnews or C-News to give them NNTP features.
A different NNTP package is INN, or Internet News. It is not merely a front end, but a news system by its own right. It comprises a sophisticated news relay daemon that is capable of maintaining several concurrent NNTP links efficiently, and is therefore the news server of choice for many Internet sites.
Today, Usenet connects tens of thousands of sites around the world, from mainframes to PC’s. With thousands of newsgroups and untold thousands of readers, it is perhaps the world’s largest computer network.
If you are New to Usenet or require more Usenet Information, we recommend
Usenetservices.com
Subscribe to uncensorednewsfeed.com now for uncensored news and anonymous usenet newsgroups
Download MP3,warez,music, exe, avi, mpeg, more!!! – yEnc -
25
Why choose uncensorednewsfeed.com
Posted in completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, newsreaders, privacy, retention, uncensored, usenet, web browsers by Admin
The Original Uncensored Usenet access since 1999
Why should I choose uncensorednewsfeed.com?
uncensorednewsfeed.com offers a no-surprises, month-to-month service, where NO long term commitment is required and you cancel anytime With thousands of existing long-time members, and years of experience, since 1999, we work very hard to give the best service possible.
Just Some of the Benefits of uncensorednewsfeed.com’s Usenet Newsgroups:
We provide the fastest, reliable, Usenet servers anywhere online today.
We constantly upgrade to increase speed, retention, to improve your Usenet experience.
Our servers are monitored 24/7 and any problems are quickly resolved.
Our servers can be accessed with any newsreader online. We also have plans that include simple browser access.
Usenet provides a way to quickly meet and communicate common interests with people from all over the world.
They enable individuals to participate without having to leave their computers.
They allow people to communicate with each other at any time.
They allow people to read what others are posting without requiring a response.
With the latest Usenet technology, we offer the most powerful, reliable servers available today.
Our Usenet Support Center is always ready to answer your questions or offer support.
uncensorednewsfeed.com leads the Usenet community with an unmatched quality of service. Operating from multiple datacenters across the country to provide the fastest most complete Usenet service, helps us provide you the service you expect and deserve. Our networking partnerships and scaleable software harness economies of scale and savings passed on to you.
Usenet Measurements
uncensorednewsfeed.com uses the standard adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission.For measurement and billing of uncensorednewsfeed.com services, uncensorednewsfeed.com uses the proper decimal notation for Megabyte, Gigabyte, and Terabyte as differentiated from their binary counterparts Mebibyte, Gibibyte, and Tebibyte as defined in IEC standard 60027.
Factor Name Symbol Value GB 103 Kilo K 1000 .000001 106 Mega M 1,000,000 .001 109 Giga G 1,000,000,000 1 1012 Tera T 1,000,000,000,000 1000
Please refer to the IEC website for more information.
5
20 Year Usenet Timeline
Posted in alt.binaries, binaries, completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, retention, usenet by Admin
The Original Uncensored Usenet access since 1999
31
The Usenet Article Format and Protocols
Posted in alt.binaries, binaries, completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, usenet by Admin
Usenet interprets management as damage and routes around it.
Peter da Silva
Standards
The current standard for the format of Usenet (Netnews) articles is RFC 5536, published in November of 2009. The standard for the architecture and protocols of Netnews, including how articles are modified and checked when traveling from system to system, is RFC 5537, published at the same time. I was the document editor for RFC 5537. Both of these documents are built on RFC 5322, the current standard for mail messages. Netnews articles are compliant mail messages with some additional fields and a few additional restrictions.
These RFCs obsolete the previous standard for the format of Usenet articles, RFC 1036, and the draft document known as “Son-of-1036″ which was published as RFC 1849. All software should now follow the newer standards, but RFC 1036 and RFC 1849 may be of interest in understanding the behavior of older standards.
See my Netnews standards index for a hopefully-complete list of Netnews-related standards. For more information, see the USEFOR pages, which is the best collection of links related to Usenet standards that I know of.
Header Registry
Usenet (Netnews) articles use the same basic header format as e-mail messages and HTTP headers and share the same IANA registry for header field names. Most of the references here for Netnews header field names are to the current USEFOR drafts.
Protocol Draft
One Netnews-related draft may still be worked on for publication:
- Usenet Best Practice (104KB)
Four Netnews-related drafts were never published as RFCs but may be of interest:
- Cancel-Locks in Usenet Articles (9KB)
- Recommendations for Generating Message IDs (8KB)
- Identification of Messages Delivered Via Both Mail and News (26KB)
- Signed Headers in Mail and Netnews (76KB)
If you’re curious about the history of these documents, or want to see the other drafts that have gone into the working group discussions, you can review my draft archive. I may have missed a few, but most of them should be here. Also see the IETF Internet-Draft search for USEFOR working group drafts.
Other Documents
- Netnews Moderator’s Handbook
- This is a set of best-practice guidelines for Netnews moderators written back in 1994. This was intended to be published as an RFC, but was never completed. Some of the advice is out of date, but much of this information is still relevant.
- PGP Moose
- The PGP Moose protocol specifies a mechanism for signing articles including certain key headers so that the resulting signature can be used to check several key header fields and the newsgroups to which the article was posted. This protocol is used primarily to validate approvals to moderated groups.
This document is the original README by Greg Rose that accompanied the reference implementation of PGP Moose. The canonical version is on Greg Rose’s web site.
- Signing Control Messages (pgpverify)
- The pgpverify protocol is another protocol for signing a Usenet article that includes a different set of metadata and header fields than the PGP Moose protocol. It’s used primarily (and very widely) to authenticate control messages.
This document is the FORMAT document for the pgpcontrol software. The canonical version is in the pgpcontrol distribution site.
12
Why use different Ports with Usenet
Posted in alt.binaries, completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, newsreaders, retention, usenet by Admin
To try to improve your Usenet experience, we offer various different ports for each server. If you are experiencing slowness, you should first try changing the port you are downloading through and see if the problem is resolved. Often, changing the port will change the routing through the internet and increase your connection speed.
usa.uncensorednewsfeed.com ports – 119, 443, or 8080
eur.uncensorednewsfeed.com ports – 119, 443, or 8080
usaextra.uncensorednewsfeed.com ports – 563, 80, or 81
eurextra.uncensorednewsfeed.com ports – 563, 80, 81
For extra servers, make sure you have SSL ( usually just a check box ) enabled on your newsreader
usaweb.uncensorednewsfeed.com ports – 119, 443, or 8080
eurweb.uncensorednewsfeed.com ports – 119, 443, or 8080
web servers include separate browser access
uncensorednewsfeed.com offers a no-surprises, month-to-month service, where NO long term commitment is
required and you can cancel anytime. With thousands of existing long-time members, and years of
experience (since 1999), we work very hard to give the best service possible.
7
The Battle for Usenet
Posted in newsfeed, newsgroups, usenet by Admin
The whole world reads Usenet. Or at least, there are people in every corner of the world who read it. From Jakarta to Johannesburg to Jacksonville, Florida, international discussions cover just about any topic, technical or trite.
The remarkable thing about Usenet is that the workings behind the grand discussion rely on text. A Usenet news server organizes a vast river of text into files and directories, usually on a system running unix. Each article has headers that govern where it’s filed, where it’s sent, whether it’s kept, and for how long. These headers are simple lines of text that are read by the news software. And because these headers are text, Usenet news can be shared between almost any sort of computer using just about any operating system.
The problem with text is that anyone can dink around with it. You don’t need access to a compiler; for that matter, you don’t really need any programming knowledge at all. Text can be searched using simple tools that are packaged with unix. Getting Usenet to do what you want may be as simple as typing in a bogus header on a message.
Of course, the human factor can be manipulated as well as text. Your message can bounce its way around the world, and if you’re lucky it might be read by thousands of users. In Usenet, you can try to extend your reach by technology, or by psychology, or like some of Usenet’s more infamous personalities over the years, you can use both.
Consider a non-technological way of projecting your presence: the garden-variety chain letter. A former student at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland named Dave Rhodes started a chain letter with the title MAKE MONEY FAST in 1988. Copies of that letter are still showing up in Usenet today, along with a gaggle of imitators, all asking for money in a classic Ponzi scheme, where the original scamsters make money as long as the number of suckers keeps growing. When the bubble bursts, the suckers are left high and dry. Yes, it’s illegal, yes, it’s annoying, and yes, there’s no evidence that anyone on the Internet has ever made a dime this way (although you could populate a small town with people who have lost their Internet accounts after trying this). Still, the phenomenon shows how easily Usenet and its residents can be made to do things, and how difficult such an infection can be to wipe out. The persistence of MAKE MONEY FAST has been compared to computer viruses; you can understand how people would call it a “text virus”.
One of the first people to use technological slicing and dicing of Usenet to their advantage was James Perry, a user at world.std.com who is much better known under the alias “Kibo”. Put simply, Kibo uses the usenet grep utility to search the entire Usenet feed at his site for his adopted name. If a post has the word “Kibo” in it, it falls in his hopper. He can see every post that mentions him, and follow up if he wants to. This technique gave Kibo the flair of a leprechaun; mention his name, and he appears like magic. He’s even inspired a new verb: to “kiboze” now means to search your whole Usenet feed for a word or string of characters.
Several Usenet regulars have taken up Kibo’s grepping technique to search for articles related to their personal interests, regardless of which Usenet newsgroup the article was posted to. A more disruptive variation showed up in 1992, when a person using the name Hasan Mutlu started following up articles that mentioned Turkey with strange ravings about “Armenian genocide against Turks”. The same person would use several names over the next couple of years; the one that stuck was Serdar Argic.
Serdar Argic wouldn’t just search for “Turkey”, he would use a script that would suck information out of the article containing the word “Turkey” and plug it into a canned response. If the original post was by Bob Smith, the automatic Argic followup would say “Bob Smith refuses to acknowledge the criminal Armenian genocide!…”–regardless of what Bob Smith might have really said. Whatever automatic reply program Argic was using wasn’t terribly sophisticated; it would auto-reply to articles about turkey, the bird, as well as about Turkey, the nation. The volume of Argic autoposts always seemed to balloon up around Thanksgiving.
Some Net watchers assumed that Serdar Argic wasn’t even a real person. Efforts to pin him down (in order to complain to his site administrator) were tricky, and the bizarre canned responses looked like something a bit of software would do, as opposed to something a human being would do. This didn’t stop less seasoned Usenet users from trying to argue with Argic, which just flooded newsgroups with even more noise. By the end of 1993, some newsgroups such as soc.culture.iranian and soc.history were choked with Argic and Argic-related disorder.
In April of 1994, just as the anti-Argic forces were closing in on his (or “its”) last Net connection through Uunet, Argic himself mysteriously disappeared, much to the relief of Usenet’s history buffs and poultry farmers. By the way, it was the Turkish government in 1918 that waged genocide against the Armenians: Argic’s posts had it exactly backwards.
Just as the Serdar Argic controversy was dying down, a more ominous threat to Usenet’s integrity appeared. Persons reading their favorite newsgroup found an advertisement that was completely off-topic in most cases: “Green Card Lottery 1994 may be the last one!…”, an advertisement for immigration lawyers Lawrence Canter and Martha Siegel of Phoenix, Arizona. Advertisements have traditionally been a no-no on Usenet, and on the Internet in general. The original acceptible use policy of NSFNet and the policies of most universities and providers disallowed them, and since then they’ve been a breach of generally accepted netiquette as well.
What made this particular advertisement such an abomination was its scope. It wasn’t just in one newsgroup–Canter and Siegel had posted it to virtually every newsgroup in Usenet. Science groups, sports groups, sex groups, Star Trek groups, every group from sci.physics to alt.religion.kibology had a copy of the same ad in them. The precedent was set: for only the cost of Internet access, Canter and Siegel had advertised their law practice to hundreds of thousands of people. By using a unix script to post the ad to every group automatically, they had hijacked Usenet for their own purposes. It wasn’t illegal, as far as anyone could tell, and at the time there was no mechanism in place to fix the situation. There was nothing to stop anyone else from doing exactly the same thing. Site administrators were predicting a deluge of these opportunistic ads. Some thought that Usenet itself might drown in the noise.
Desperate Usenet defenders tried a variety of counterattacks. The original site in Phoenix that Canter & Siegel had used was overwhelmed with e-mail complaints. The “Green Card Lawyers” bounced from site to site, broadcasting their ad again and again, getting kicked out of sites and quietly getting accounts on other ones by hiding their identity, until finally they set themselves up as their own Internet provider, where they remain to this day. Some enterprising researchers turned up information about the pair being forced to resign from the Florida bar due to “neglect, misrepresentation, misappropriation of client funds and perjury,” others tried to get them kicked out of the Tennessee bar. The two turned out to have fairly little computer savvy: a Phoenix programmer was hired by Canter & Siegel to write the mass-posting script (then curtly told to get lost), and they left their directories world-readable on their machines, so that anyone on the Internet could look in on them (a very basic unix oversight).
Meanwhile, the crisis found its way off the Net and into the mainstream media. Canter & Siegel found themselves in newsweeklies and on CNN. Some mainstream media types who knew nothing about the Internet took the Canter & Siegel side of things at face value, and reported it with a straight face. Martha Siegel used her fifteen minutes of fame to lecture the general public about how the Internet should be regulated–adding insult to injury. The pair even got a book published, telling anyone how to flood the Net with ads just as they had, and set up a company (Cybersell), to help people do it–for a fee. Not only were they unwittingly out to destroy Usenet, they were going to make a buck off it in the process.
The solution that stuck was a technological solution to the technical problem of having the same post repeated across 8000 or more newsgroups. Usenet software allows the author of a message to cancel it, if the author has a change of heart. What happens when the author issues a cancel is that a special cancel message is generated–a text message–that copies from site to site around the world, instructing the news server at each site to cancel that one message. By carefully changing the author’s name in the headers, you can issue a “forged cancel”, and cancel somebody else’s messages. Some of this message cancelling had already been used to clean up the Argic mess; with the Canter & Siegel phenomenon, the process became an art. An anonymous user calling himself “Cancelmoose” wrote a script that would automatically send out cancel messages for Canter & Siegel’s massive posting waves, effectively erasing them–a “cancelbot”. The advertisements were toast within just a couple of hours.
A lot of people have attempted mass advertising on Usenet since them, some of them through Cybersell, some of them copycats, some of them just clueless. The cancelbot technique has been refined and codified, and the general community of Usenet site administrators have come up with unofficial guidelines as to what is mass-posting and what is not. Cancelmoose is on the record that cancels are done no matter what the content of the mass posting; appeals for sick children get the same cancels that ads for “Skinny Dip Thigh Cream” get. The technique seems to work, and even the Green Card Lawyers have had to admit that advertising on Usenet isn’t what it used to be.
(The word that this crisis gave the Internet was “spam”–sending out a mass posting to Usenet is called “spamming”. The world comes from a Monty Python sketch, or from the mental image of a brick of spam luncheon meat hitting an electric fan and spattering, depending on who you believe.)
While cancelbots are effective, they still have a lingering uncomfortable feature–no matter how good your intentions, you’re still cancelling someone else’s posts, and engaging in a minor bit of forgery to boot. In the wrong hands, the technique could be used for all sorts of mischief.
The wrong hands turned out to be the Church of Scientology. Scientology as an organization has a long history of using heavy-handed tactics to silence its critics, especially when those critics are former members. Church officials were none too thrilled when the Usenet group alt.religion.scientology started turning into a forum for critics of the Church, some of them skeptics, some of them former members who are now non-believers, some of them former members who still hold to Scientology’s tenets but disagree with how the Church is managed.
The legal premise that the Church of Scientology has been using is copyright infringement: post Church documents, and you get threatened with a lawsuit. With zombie-like persistence, the Church hierarchy has pressed this sort of legal harassment against many people who have spoken out against them on Usenet. In February of this year, Scientology attorneys managed to get a court order against former member Dennis Erlich of Glendale, California which, among other things, allowed them to enter his house (along with the Glendale Police) and search his personal computer files. As Erlich himself put it: “This is not happening in cyberspace. This is happening in my house.” Lawsuits are still pending against Erlich, and as the legal bills pile up, a defense fund has been established.
Faced with this sort of hounding, many Scientology critics turned to anonymous remailing services in order to get their message out. As a result, Scientology lawyers turned their attention to the remailer operators. Their most chilling manipulation of the legal system occurred on February 18 of this year, when Church attorneys working through Interpol managed to get Helsinki police to serve a warrant on Julf Helsingius, the operator of the popular anon.penet.fi remailer in Finland. The police could have seized his hardware, but Helsingius managed to satisfy them by giving up the one name that they were looking for–the identity of one anonymous user who had been posting criticisms of Scientology to Usenet. In April, Scientology lawyers continued their campaign of harassment by threatening lawsuits against operators of other remailers, notably Homer Wilson Smith, who was running an anonymous remailer at rahul.net. Mr. Smith, in refusing to turn over records from his remailer to Scientology attorney Helena Kobrin, said that the privacy of his users was “sacrosanct”. The remailer crisis may have set some disturbing precedents, particularly in how easily law enforcement officials who know nothing about the Internet can be manipulated. For the most part, the remailer operators have stood their ground in spite of the threats, and the remailers are still operating, including anon.penet.fi.
The current conundrum is that Scientology enforcers have taken up the cancelbot technique to silence critics. Cancel messages are entered into Usenet through security holes in poorly-managed news servers. Instead of cancelling messages that threaten to destroy Usenet as a discussion medium, Church of Scientology “clams” as they are now called are sending out forged cancel messages to erase posts that criticize the Church. These forged cancels, unlike those of the Cancelmoose, are done without the consent of the Usenet site that they’re posted from–Church “clams” have to sneak through site security to post them. Tracking down the source of these forged cancels has involved Usenet defenders in some serious detective work. As recently as the first week of July of this year, Ron Newman of MIT traced the source of some Scientology forged cancels to University College in Dublin, Ireland.
Cancelbots can be good or evil, depending on who’s using them. While Scientology’s reputation on the Net among anyone but true-believers has pretty much turned to mud, the people who have worked to defend Usenet’s integrity find themselves caught in a bind–how can you criticize cultists for issuing forged cancels when you might be using the technique yourself? One answer may be to define the question as a free speech issue: you cancel people who are posting noise and trying to drown out discussion, you don’t cancel people who are expressing themselves. This point of view still doesn’t solve the moral dilemma, after all, one man’s signal is another man’s noise. The question remains open; meanwhile, the Scientology cancelbot wars continue.
There may be opportunities for very creative disrupters to make even bigger messes on Usenet. Earlier this year, someone got through a security hole at Uunet and posted thousands of garbage messages to the groups alt.2600 and alt.current-events.net-abuse. The body of the messages were random lines from a “quote-of-the-day” program, but the headers contained random character sequences–meaning that you couldn’t cancel them by searching for a particular string of characters. It took three days before the source was found and the hole plugged. In this case again, the problem was as much a security problem at a particular site as it was a problem specific to Usenet, but with thousands of possible Usenet sites to break into, a persistent noisemaker with enough time and perversity can still drown out a discussion if they want.
The struggle between order and freedom on Usenet continues, and it’s still difficult to tell the white hats from the black hats sometimes. Should individual users be able to cancel their own messages, even if that makes forged cancels possible? Should individuals be able to make their own newsgroups, should new newsgroups be voted on, or should the decision rest with site administrators? Just how big does a mass posting have to be before it can be called spam? What is content, and what is static? Meanwhile, Usenet steams along, in spite of the spammers, scamsters and kooks, still giving the individual a worldwide voice in thousands of discussions. The same ease of use and lack of tight control that makes Usenet vulnerable to manipulation has let Usenet survive all its crises so far, and there’s every reason to expect that Usenet will survive the next battle fought over it as well. You could even say that the concern so many people show over the future of Usenet shows that its soul is healthy–Green Card Lawyers notwithstanding.
by Charles A. Gimon
19
Usenet Update
Posted in newsgroups, usenet by Admin
Usenet Update
The high article number for alt.binaries.boneless, the largest group on Usenet, has surpassed 4294967296 (232). This is significant because the highest article numbers are now 64-bit numbers and some older versions of NNTP clients are unable to handle numbers of this size. For example, older versions of Forte Agent, Xnews, and NewsBin Pro are known to be affected, and we believe many others are as well.
If you receive reports of problems with alt.binaries.boneless, the first thing we recommend is that you update your client to a more recent version or contact the client vendor to request support for 64-bit numbers.
If you have any questions about this announcement, please do not hesitate to contact us via the usenet support center.
Uncensored and Anonymous Usenet
19
Usenet History
Posted in alt.binaries, binaries, completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, newsreaders, retention, uncensored, usenet, web browsers by Admin
Usenet Software: History and Sources
——————————————————————————–
Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7
Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina,
Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to
exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad
student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first
version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on
the first two sites: “unc” and “duke.” At the beginning of 1980 the
network consisted of those two sites and “phs” (another machine at
Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. Steve
Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never
released beyond “unc” and “duke.” Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did
another implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott made
further modifications, and this became the “A” news release.In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school
student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality
and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news — “A” News was
intended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite was
the “B” News version. The first public release was version 2.1 in
1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the net grew, the news
software was expanded and modified. The last version maintained and
released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination
of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the
2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news
was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was
added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by
ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems.
In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number
of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced
batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and
other features.The final release of B News was 2.11, patchlevel 19. B News has been
declared “dead” by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and is
unlikely to be upgraded further; most Usenet sites are using C News or
INN (see next paragraphs).In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission,
posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
(as specified in RFC 977). This protocol allows hosts to exchange
articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional
uucp. It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified
news user agent) from machines which cannot or choose not to install
the Usenet news software. Reading and posting are done using TCP/IP
messages to a server host which does run the Usenet software. Sites
which have many workstations like the Sun and SGI, and HP products
find this a convenient way to allow workstation users to read news
without having to store articles on each system. Many of the Usenet
hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles using NNTP
because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp (and NNTP
ensures much faster propagation).NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U. C.
San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley. Primary development was
done at U. C. Berkeley by by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair,
Steven Grady, and Mike Meyer, among others. The NNTP package (now
called the reference implementation) was distributed on the 4.3BSD
release tape (although that was version 1.2a and out-of-date) and is
also available on many major hosts by anonymous FTP. The current
version is 1.5.12.2. It includes NOV (News Overview — see below)
support and runs on a wide variety of systems. It is available from
ftp.academ.com:/pub/nntp1.5/nntp.1.5.12.2.tar.gz. For those with
access to the World-Wide Web on the Internet, the WWW page
http://www.academ.com/academ/nntp.html contains a description and news
about NNTP. A different variant, called nntp-t5, implements many of the
extensions provided by INN (including NOV support). It is available
from ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/nntp/nntp-t5.tar.gz.One widely-used version of news, known as C News, was developed at the
University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This version
is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article
processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve
the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The
package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For more
information, see the paper “News Need Not Be Slow,” published in The
Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. This paper is
also available from ftp.cs.toronto.edu in doc/programming/c-news.*, and
is recommended reading for all news software programmers. The most
recent version of C News is the Sept 1994 “Cleanup Release.” C News
can be obtained by anonymous ftp from its official archive site,
ftp.cs.toronto.edu:pub/c-news/c-news.tar.Z.Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by Rich
Salz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. INN is designed to run on Unix hosts that have
a socket interface. It is optimized for larger hosts where most traffic
uses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support. INN is very fast, and
since it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to administer only one
package. The package was publicly released on August 20, 1992. For more
information, see the paper “InterNetNews: Usenet Transport for Internet
Sites” published in the June 1992 Usenix Technical Conference Proceedings.
INN can be obtained from many places, including the 4.4BSD tape; its
official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory
/networking/news/nntp/inn. Rich’s last official release was 1.4sec in
Dec 1993.In June 1995, David Barr began a series of unoffical releases of INN based
on 1.4sec, integrating various bug-fixes, enhancements and security
patches. His last release was 1.4unoff4, found in
ftp.math.psu.edu:/pub/INN. This site is also the home of contributed
software for INN and other news administration tools.INN is now maintained by the Internet Software Consortium <inn@isc.org>.
The official INN home is now http://www.isc.org/isc/ and the latest version
(1.7.2) can be obtained from ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/inn/Towards the end of 1992, Geoff Collyer implemented NOV (News Overview): a
database that stores the important headers of all news articles as they
arrive. This is intended for use by the implementors of news readers to
provide fast article presentation by sorting and “threading” the article
headers. (Before NOV, newsreaders like trn, tin and nn came with their
own daemons and databases that used a nontrivial amount of system
resources). NOV is fully supported by C News, INN and NNTP-t5. Most
modern news readers use NOV to get information for their threading and
article menu presentation; use of NOV by a newsreader is fairly easy,
since NOV comes with sample client-side threading code.ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS
systems. ANU-NEWS is a complete news system that allows reading,
posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion
closely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC
1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP
protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a
VAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet
object is also included. ANU-NEWS currently includes support for the
following TCP/IP protocols: MultiNet, CMU/TEK, Wollongong WIN/TCP, UCX
(TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS), EXOS, and TCPware. The ANU-NEWS
interface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems. The
license for the software is free, and there are no restrictions on the
re-distribution. For more info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff
Huston). ANU-NEWS is available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu.
Contact SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info.A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS,
MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from
iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd
Onasch <uranus@pilhuhn.ka.sub.org> for details).Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS
(current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS.
VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contact
jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives
vmsnet.source. Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as
a reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server.FNEWS is a fast news reader, for VAX/VMS and UNIX. It is basically a
mixture of NEWSRDR and ANU-NEWS, (a bit like ‘nn’ in how it works) giving
a nice (but different) full-screen interface and fast response to
thousands of groups without heavily loading your local machine. It works by
caching the news indexes from a UNIX news system (CNEWS or INN), and then
dynamically loading the items when the user wants to read them. Indexes
are only cached for groups which are actually read, so the load and disk
usage can be very small. FNEWS Versions are available for VMS, ALPHA-VMS
and UNIX via anonymous ftp from ftp.std.com in /ftp/vendors/emagic/fnews.
Contact chrisp@marc.cri.nz for more information.A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is
available. The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>,
and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lerctr.org>. Also,
Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved the
UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp from
ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon. The package also includes a
newsreader very loosely like the real rn. Dillon also has a “vn” port
provided by Eric Lee Green. This software is also available on Bix,
and for ftp from wuarchive.wustl.edu (many other Amiga newsreaders are
also available on theis ftp site).The traditional line-oriented “readnews” interface was followed by several
popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces. The first of these was
“vnews” and it was written by Kenneth Almquist. “vnews” provides a
“readnews”-like command interface, but displays articles using direct
screen positioning. It appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by
the “notes” system (described below). “vnews” is currently distributed
with the standard 2.11 news source.A second, more versatile interface, “rn”, was developed by Larry Wall (the
author of Perl) and released in 1984. This interface also uses full-screen
display with direct positioning, but it includes many other useful features
and has been very popular with many regular net readers. The interface
includes reading, discarding, and/or processing of articles based on
user-definable patterns, and the ability of the user to develop customized
macros for display and keyboard interaction. “rn” is currently at release
4.4.4. It is being maintained by Stan Barber <sob@academ.com>. “rn” is not
provided with the standard news software release, but is very widely
available because of its popularity. The software can be obtained from its
official archive site, ftp.academ.com, using FTP. A description and some
news about it can be found on the WWW pagehttp://www.academ.com/academ/rn.html.
Wayne Davison’s “trn” is a superset of “rn”. Trn adds the ability to
follow “threads of discussions” in newsgroups; its latest version 3.6 is
based on rn 4.4. It uses a Reference-line database to allow the user to
take advantage of the “discussion tree” formed by an article and its
replies. This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the articles,
complete with a small ascii representation of the current article’s
position in the discussion tree. Trn is also capable of “menu-based”
selection of articles, allows one to do useful things to operate on a set
of selected newsgroups. Trn can be obtained from ftp.uu.net in the
/networking/news/readers/trn/ directory, and from many other archive
servers world-wide.Slrn is a small NNTP-based newsreader for Unix systems, written by John
E. Davis <davis@space.mit.edu>. It uses the NOV database, provides
thread-based access to the articles, and runs quickly and compactly, in
the face of large numbers of articles in large numbers of newsgroups.
It provides a “scoring” facility, allowing you to define what kinds of
articles you are or are not interested in in terms of their headers
(capable of doing many of the jobs of rn’s killfiles). It is available from
<URL:ftp:space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slrn/>.xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was originally written by Rick
Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley). Jonathan Kamens (OpenVision
Technologies, Inc.) is the author and maintainer of the current version
(8.02), available by anonymous ftp from ftp.x.org in
/contrib/applications/xrn. xrn supports many features, including sorting
by subject, user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server
crashes, and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key
bindings similar to rn).Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews, written by Dan Currie, currently
maintained by Hans de Graaff <J.J.deGraaff@twi.tudelft.nl>. xvnews is an
OPENLook newsreader written primarily for Sun workstations running
OpenWindows, but it will run on any X workstation which has the XView
libraries. It works with NNTP only, and is compatible with rn style
commands. The current version is 2.2.1 and is available from its archive
site ftp.twi.tudelft.nl in the /pub/news directory.There are two macro packages named “Gnus” (formerly “GNUS”) and “Gnews”
that can be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading,
replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs text
editor. In addition, Gnus now has mail-reading capabilities as well.
Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather than from a local
disk. Copies can be found on most archive sites that carry the GNU
archives eg. ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp, archie.au, archive.eu.net,
gatekeeper.dec.com, prep.ai.mit.edu. More information about the latest
Gnus version (5.1, included with emacs 19.30) can be found athttp://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding.html
“nn” is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of Texas
Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989. nn differs from the
traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article subject and
sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to read. nn uses NOV
index files for fast access to article header information. nn is now
maintained by (Michael T Pins <mtpins@isca.uiowa.edu>. The current version
is 6.5.1 and the “official” ftp site is ftp.isca.uiowa.edu in the
unix/nn directory.Yet another newsreader is the “tin” reader. It operates with threads,
uses NOV-style index files if available, has different article
organization methods, and is full-screen oriented. tin works on a
local news spool or over an NNTP connection. It has been posted to
alt.sources; further information is available from www.tin.org. The
current maintainer is Urs Janssen (urs@tin.org) and the current
release of tin is pre-1.4. Tin is based more on the Notes and tass
systems than “rn”. There is an extensive list of features, including
interfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms. The official
ftp site for tin is ftp.tin.org.Pine(tm) –a Program for Internet News & Email– is a tool for reading,
sending, and managing electronic messages. It was designed specifically
with novice computer users in mind, but can be tailored to accommodate the
needs of “power users” as well. Pine uses Internet news and mail message
protocols and runs on Unix and PCs. Pine is copyrighted, but freely
available. The latest version, including source code, can be found on
the Internet host “ftp.cac.washington.edu” in the file “pine/pine.tar.Z”
(accessible via anonymous FTP). To try Pine out from the Internet, you
may telnet to “demo.cac.washington.edu” and login as “pinedemo”. There
is also a Pine-specific Internet news group (comp.mail.pine). For
further information, send e-mail to pine@cac.washington.edu. Pine was
originally based on Elm, but there is little if any Elm code left. Pine
is the work of Mike Seibel, Steve Hubert, Mark Crispin, Sheryl Erez,
David Miller and Laurence Lundblade* at the University of Washington
Office of Computing and Communications. Pine and Pico are trademarks of
the University of Washington. (* Laurence is now at Virginia Tech.)An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews. It is
implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP. It is available
from many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com and
sumex-aim.stanford.edu.A newsreader preferred by many Macintosh users is NewsWatcher by by
j-norstad@nwu.edu (John Norstad). The current version is 2.0b8 and is
available in ftp.acns.nwu.edu:/pub/newswatcher.Nuntius is another newsreader for the Mac, written by Peter Speck
<speck@ruc.dk>. It can be obtained from frederik.ruc.dk, or the Cornell
mirror site ftp.cit.cornell.edu in /pub/mac/comm/test.There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines
(under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu
[128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly
<connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard Welty
<welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>. In addition, another NNTP-based news
browser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8. It provides
mouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, with
support for X11 servers on remote machines. It is available for
anonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directory
pub/lispm/news-reader/. It is written and maintained by Peter
Clitherow <pc@bellcore.com>A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI
<dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is unknown. An NNTP reader
suite for PC’s running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available
for ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files. There are two
MS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the “nfs”
directory. They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work. They will
both work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year. Source will
be provided at that time.“trumpet” is a NNTP based news reader for DOS and Windows. There is Lan
Workplace version which is also available. It runs over packet drivers,
which can work side-by-side with a Novell Network. For information on
the Crynwr Packet Driver Collection, send mail to <info@crynwr.com> or
send a FAX to +1-315-268-9201. Trumpet offers a very intuitive interface
with most of the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but without
some of the ‘bells and whistles found in something like rn). It has
facilities for using SMTP to forward/reply etc. The latest version is
1.07 and is shareware available at most main ftp sites.trumpet ftp.trumpet.com.au:/dostrump/
wintrumpet ftp.trumpet.com.au:/wintrump/“WinVN” is a public domain NNTP newsreader for Microsoft Windows and
Windows NT. There are versions available for WINSOCK, Novell LWP, and
DEC Pathworks/LanMan. It supports the XOVER extension, and can display
articles in thread trees. SMTP and MAPI outgoing mail are supported.
The latest version is 0.99.2. Sources and binaries are always available
from:ftp.ksc.nasa.gov:[.pub.win3.winvn].
ripem.msu.edu:/pub/pc/win/winvn/titan.ksc.nasa.gov (mirror).Details on several newsreaders for systems running “Waffle” may be
found in the FAQ posted to the comp.bbs.waffle newsgroup on a regular
basis. At least 8 different readers are available, and all can be
obtained via ftp and mailserver from ftp.halcyon.com (look in
/pub/waffle/news).
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.bbs.waffle/faq>Details on many other mail and news readers for MSDOS, Windows and OS/2
systems can be found in the FAQ posted to comp.os.msdos.mail-news.
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.os.msdos.mail-news/intro>
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.os.msdos.mail-news/software>At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is
available. It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by Linda
Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu). Version 2.4 of the
software is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM. PSU NetNews supports only
3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver. Most major VM
sites appear to use this package. NetNews supports locally-stored
news, not NNTP reading.Since January 1993, a complete NNTP server is available for VM systems.
It provides news reading, posting and feed processing compatible to the
Unix NNTP implementations. The code is written in IBM’s VM Rexx.
It assumes that you already have installed PSU VM NETNEWS. The VM NNTP
package, written by Kris Van Hees (gutest6@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be) who also
takes care of the maintenance. The current version is 1.0.1 and requires
IBM’s FAL TCP/IP and Arty Ecock’s RXSOCKET which is available from the
IBMTCP FIELLIST on listserv@pucc. The VM NNTP package can be obtained
from the NNTP PACKAGE on listserv@blekul11.There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER
will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent
from a Unix NNTPXMIT process. Either program sends the news articles
to NetNews for processing. Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet
or qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from
listserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST. These programs are provided with
source, and require IBM’s FAL TCP/IP and Pascal. An NNTPXMIT sender
that works in cooperation with PSU NETNEWS is available from Herman
Van Uytven (SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be).There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as its
screen manager: NNR. Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for
information. The program requires IBM’s FAL TCP/IP. The software is
available for anonymous ftp from ftp.uni-stuttgart.de
in the directory pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnr/*.An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is
written by Steve Bacher <seb@draper.com> at Draper Laboratory. It
requires C/370 V1R2 or SAS/C; ISPF V2; and TCP/IP for MVS (either
IBM’s “FAL” or SNS). It is now available via anonymous ftp at
ftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory
/pub/comm/news/beginner/software/nnmvs and from ftp.mic.ucla.edu,
directory /pub/mvs/netnews. The current version is Version 3
Release 2. There’s also an object-code-only distribution for folks
without C compilers, but that’s an at-your-own-risk distribution,
and requires the IBM C/370 run-time library. The source code
distribution can be compiled with either C/370 or SAS/C.Newsfeed management software
Gup, the Group Update Program is a Unix mail-server program that lets a
remote site change their newsgroups subscription on their news feed
without requiring the intervention of the news administrator at the feed
site. Gup operates with the INN (and likely the C News) batching
mechanisms. The news administrators at the remote sites simply mail
commands to gup to make changes to their own site’s subscription list.
The mail/interface is password protected. Gup checks the requests for
valid newsgroup names, patterns that have no effect and so on. Gup’s
authors are Mark Delany <markd@mira.net.au> and Andrew Herbert
<andrew@mira.net.au>. Its official ftp location is
ftp.mira.net.au:/unix/news/gup-0.4.tar.gz, but since that’s not
as well connected as uunet, people are strongly advised to obtain it from
a mirror site. eg. ftp.uu.net:/networking/news/misc/gup-0.4.tar.gzdynafeed is a package from Looking Glass Software Limited that maintains a
.newsrc for every remote site and generates the batches for them. Remote
sites can use uucp or run a program to change their .newsrc dynamically. It
comes with a program that the remote site can run to monitor readership in
newsgroups and dynamically update the feed list to match reader interest.
The goal of this is to get a feed that sends only exactly the groups
currently being read. dynafeed can be obtained from ftp.clarinet.com as
sources/dynafeed.tar.Z.News processing software
Software also exists to automatically archive Usenet newsgroups. The package
rkive, written by Kent Landfield <kent@sterling.com> can be configured to
archive news automatically based on different headers — Archive-Name,
Volume-Issue, Chronological, Subject and External-Command to name a few. It
can be run in batch mode from the command line or from cron. It can also be
installed in the sys/newsfeeds file to process articles as they are
received. rkive supports local spool directories as well as NNTP based
access. rkive is available via ftp from ftp.sterling.com in the directory
/rkive.Newsclip is a programming language for writing news filtering programs, from
Looking Glass Software Limited, marketed by ClariNet Communications Corp. It
is C-like, and translates to C, so a C compiler is required. It has
data-types to represent the kinds of things found in article headers and
bodies. It can maintain databases of users, message-ids, patterns,
subjects, etc. These can be used to decide whether to ignore or select an
article. Newsclip can either operate as a standalone program or as part of
rn. It is free for non-commercial use and is available from ftp.clarinet.com
as sources/nc.tar.Z. Contact clari-info@clarinet.com with
a subject line of “newsclip” for more info.Commercial software
DNEWS is a commercial product from NetWin. DNEWS licenses are provided
free to educational institutions for non profit use. With DNEWS, the news
is stored in a database so as not to overload the raw file system. DNEWS
supports ‘sucking’ where only groups which users read are pulled over from
the feeder site. DNEWS is currently known to run on VMS, Windows NT,
Solaris, SunOS, Unixware, HP/UX. DNEWS binaries are available by
anonymous ftp from ftp.std.com in /ftp/vendors/netwin/dnews
or fromhttp://world.std.com/~netwin/
DNEWS sources can be obtained on request, see the file source.txt in the
ftp area for more information.Special note on “notes” and old versions of news
Many years ago, there was another distributed “news” system called
“notes”. The “notes” software package used a different internal
organization of articles, and a different interchange format than that
of the standard Usenet software. It was inspired by the notesfiles
available in the PLATO system and was developed independently from the
Usenet news. Eventually, the “notes” network and Usenet were joined
via gateways doing (sometimes imperfect) protocol translation.
“notes” was written in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then)
grad students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The
first public release of “notes” was at the January 1982 Usenix
conference. The last release of notes was version 1.7; it is no
longer being actively maintained and the newsgroup for discussing
it (news.software.notes) was removed in April 1995.“B” news software is currently considered obsolete. Unix sites
joining the Usenet should install C news or INN to ensure proper
behavior and good performance. Most old B news software had
compiled-in limits on the number of newsgroups and the number of
articles per newsgroup; the increasing volume of news means that B
news software cannot reliably cope with a moderately-full newsfeed.Software versions & availability
You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing
some form of “v” command to show the current version — consult the
man page for details. Current software is obtainable from almost any
major Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of the
article, above.Sources for most of the news readers and software, including news
2.11, C News, “rn”, and “trn” are also available in the
comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the sources
from their nearest backbone site.The “archie” service can be used to locate ftp archives containing
various news software packages. There are regular postings in the
comp.answers newsgroup about how to use the “archie” service.For a relatively low price, you can buy one of many CD-ROM distributions
of freely-redistributable software. This may be cheaper than a
long-distance phone call.Standards
News programs communicate with each other according to standard
protocols, some of which are described by RFCs. An RFC is a Request For
Comment, a de facto standard in the Internet Community. It is a form of
software standard, published by the Internet Network Information Center
(InterNIC). Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable
from archive sites. Current news-related RFCs include the following:
RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this.
RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol.
RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles.
RFC 1123 amends RFC 822.
RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use.Henry Spencer has a draft of a successor to RFC1036 that attempts to
document and explain all subsequent enhancements and existing practice as
implemented in the newer news systems. This draft (often called
son-of-1036) can be obtained by anonymous ftp from ftp.zoo.toronto.edu as
/pub/news.txt.Z (the text version) or /pub/news.ps.Z (a PostScript
version). Son-of-1036 is intended to be stand-alone reading and does not
require that one also read RFCs 822 or 1123.Newsgroups
The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and can
be consulted for recent developments.bit.listserv.netnws-l Discussion about NetNews on VM systems.
gnu.emacs.gnews News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba’s Gnews.
gnu.emacs.gnus News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English).
news.software.anu-news VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ.
news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software.
news.software.nn Discussion about the “nn” news reader package.
news.software.readers General discussion about news reading software.
news.software.nntp The Network News Transfer Protocol.
comp.os.msdos.mail-news Administering mail & network news systems under MS-DOS.
comp.protocols.tcp-ip TCP and IP network protocols.
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc TCP/IP for IBM(-like) personal computers.
alt.usenet.offline-reader Packages for reading mail/news off-line.
Uncensored and Anonymous Usenet
13
What is an ALT Newsgroup
Posted in alt.binaries, binaries, newsgroups, uncensored, usenet by Admin
- What is alt? newsgroup?
Contrary to popular belief, “alt” is not named because it is for “alternative” topics. Back during the dawn of the modern Usenet, it was decided that newsgroups should be created by following a clearly defined set of “Guidelines”, involving formal discussions and a voting procedure. There was a significant number of people who felt that there should be a provision for a place where people could create groups without having to go through any discussion or votes. Thus alt was born. It is a hierarchy that is “alternative” to the “mainstream” (comp,misc,news, rec,soc,sci,talk) hierarchy.”ALT stands for ‘Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists’.” – ziegast@uunet.uu.net (Eric Ziegast) - Votes? Did someone say vote?
Let me repeat. There are no votes in alt. Period. If you want to gather an “opinion poll” for your own purposes to see how popular the group will be, great. Do not post votes to alt.config. Every few months someone says “hey I’ve got a great idea for a newsgroup alt.widget, what do you think?”. Someone responds “I vote yes!”, causing a chain-reaction of posts to alt.config, lasting for days or weeks. These serve no purpose but to annoy readers of alt.config, and to distribute dozens of messages across the globe that should have ended up in someone’s mailbox instead. Please, use a Followup-To: posterin your header and gather votes by e-mail. Then post a summary after a week or two. - News Administrators:
Alt newsgroups are not created everywhere all at once. Each site has a news administrator, who ultimately decides whether to carry a new newsgroup on that site. Nevertheless, for simplicity, many sites automatically honor all requests to create a new group and (by default) ignore all requests to remove groups. Newsadmins can be very busy people who don’t need the hassle of hand-approving every group. Thus, altnewsgroups are not necessarily created in a way that is fair, or just, or logical. That’s life. - How do alt groups get created?
Like any group in Usenet, a group gets created (typically) when someone sends out a special “control” message to “newgroup” it. This is injected into the news system mostly like any other article that you read, except it has special syntax. Different sites on the net behave differently when one of these messages arrives. The news software has various ways of acting automatically on the message based on who sent it, and what hierarchy the group to be created is in (alt in our case). With respect to alt, some sites will automatically honor any “newgroup” control message it sees, and some will mail the message to the news admin who will make the decision to carry the group or not. Read on on the section “Some Postitive Suggestions.” Do not ask me how to send a control message, because I won’t answer you. I don’t have the hours it takes to go back and forth finding out what kind of news system you have, what kind of access you have to the system, and if you’ve followed the other guidelines as specified in this document. For more information, check out http://www.gweep.bc.ca/~edmonds/usenet/good-newgroup.html. - Newsgroup Name Components:
A newsgroup name, e.g. alt.foo.bar-bar.baz, is made up of a series of dot-separated components, in this case alt, foo, bar-bar, and baz. The articles in newsgroups are usually stored in your machine’s directory hierarchy. Basically, every component of the newsgroup name corresponds to a directory or subdirectory of the same name, and that subdirectory typically takes up 512 or more bytes on the machine all by itself. Also, since accessing any group requires eventually reading the contents of the directory, if there are lots of subdirectories off of alt access for any single article in alt can theoretically suffer a performance hit. Also, some newsreaders are hierarchically organized. To read alt.folklore.computers, you select alt, then select folklore, then computers. If there are lots of needless top-level components (e.g. More than four levels deep), then this is more work for the person reading news. - What is a newsgroup name for?
A newsgroup is a collection of articles with a common purpose. A name for a newsgroup serves several purposes.- It tells those who want to read the group that this group is for them.
- It tells those who do not want to read the group that this group is not for them.
- It classifies similar groups together so that:
- the group name can convey more meaning than just what can fit in 14 letters. (e.g. alt.music.monkees vs. alt.monkees)
- similar groups can be placed logically nearer to each other in sorted or hierarchical listings.
- It makes those who are interested in various aspects of a more general classification more able to find specific groups. (For example, those interested in philosophy can search for “philosophy” in the newsgroup name to find general groups as well as those about specific philosphies like alt.philosophy.zen)
- The top-level hieararchy is not a jumbled mess of thousands of newsgroups, with often ambiguous names.
- Small sites can more easily choose the kinds of newsgroups they want to get fed. (e.g. only alt.tv.*, and alt.sex.*, or no alt.binaries.*)
- Newsgroup Longevity:
There are some people who insist that once an alt newsgroup is created, it can never be destroyed, no matter what. These people make sure that whenever someone tries to remove a group, it gets re-created. Even if these people were not on the net, occasional mistakes (in such situations as people setting up new sites) can cause almost-dead newsgroups to get revived everywhere. Thus, alt groups are effectively immortal, at least for the foreseeable future; they can’t be removed or even re-named. Alt groups never die, they just fade away. However, some alt groups fade away faster than others.
10
What Usenet is Not
Posted in alt.binaries, binaries, completion, newsfeed, newsgroups, retention, usenet by Admin
What Usenet is Not
1. Usenet is not an organization.
No person or group has authority over Usenet as a whole. No one controls who gets a news feed, which articles are propagated where, who can post articles, or anything else. There is no “Usenet Incorporated,” nor is there a “Usenet User’s Group.” You’re on your own.Granted, there are various activities organized by means of Usenet newsgroups. The newsgroup creation process is one such activity. But it would be a mistake to equate Usenet with the organized activities it makes possible. If they were to stop tomorrow, Usenet would go on without them.
2. Usenet is not a democracy.
Since there is no person or group in charge of Usenet as a whole — i.e. there is no Usenet “government” — it follows that Usenet cannot be a democracy, autocracy, or any other kind of “-acy.” (But see “The Camel’s Nose?” below.)
3. Usenet is not fair.
After all, who shall decide what’s fair? For that matter, if someone is behaving unfairly, who’s going to stop him? Neither you nor I, that’s certain.
4. Usenet is not a right.
Some people misunderstand their local right of “freedom of speech” to mean that they have a legal right to use others’ computers to say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of said computers have no right to stop them. Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not to speak. If I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that is my right. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
5. Usenet is not a public utility.
Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized. Most of them, by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly on Usenet, and little or no government control.
6. Usenet is not an academic network.
It is no surprise that many Usenet sites are universities, research labs or other academic institutions. Usenet originated with a link between two universities, and the exchange of ideas and information is what such institutions are all about. But the passage of years has changed Usenet’s character. Today, by plain count, most Usenet sites are commercial entities.
7. Usenet is not an advertising medium.
Because of Usenet’s roots in academia, and because Usenet depends so heavily on cooperation (sometimes among competitors), custom dictates that advertising be kept to a minimum. It is tolerated if it is infrequent, informative, and low-hype. The “comp.newprod” newsgroup is NOT an exception to this rule: product announcements are screened by a moderator in an attempt to keep the hype-to-information ratio in check. If you must engage in flackery for your company, use the “biz” hierarchy, which is explicitly “advertising-allowed”, and which (like all of Usenet) is carried only by those sites that want it.
8. Usenet is not the Internet.
The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are subsidized by various governments. It carries many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And the Internet is only one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic.
9. Usenet is not a UUCP network.
UUCP is a protocol (actually a “protocol suite,” but that’s a technical quibble) for sending data over point-to-point connections, typically using dialup modems. Sites use UUCP to carry many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And UUCP is only one of the various transports carrying Usenet traffic.
10. Usenet is not a United States network.
It is true that Usenet originated in the United States, and the fastest growth in Usenet sites has been there. Nowadays, however, Usenet extends worldwide. The heaviest concentrations of Usenet sites outside the U.S. seem to be in Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. Keep Usenet’s worldwide nature in mind when you post articles. Even those who can read your language may have a culture wildly different from yours. When your words are read, they might not mean what you think they mean.
11. Usenet is not a UNIX network.
Don’t assume that everyone is using “rn” on a UNIX machine. Among the systems used to read and post to Usenet are Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, Macintoshes and MS-DOS PCs.
12. Usenet is not an ASCII network.
The A in ASCII stands for “American”. Sites in other countries often use character sets better suited to their language(s) of choice; such are typically, though not always, supersets of ASCII. Even in the United States, ASCII is not universally used: IBM mainframes use (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore non-ASCII sites if you like, but they exist.
13. Usenet is not software.
There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package can be called “the Usenet software.” Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing the two. Such private communication networks are typically kept distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different from the universally-recognized ones.
Categories
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