[TheForge] OT: Accessing newsgroups

[Mike Spencer]

If you're completely new to Usenet and newsgroups, there's one small
source of confusion in the customary jargon you might want to know
about. 

When you "subscribe" to a newsgroup, you are *not* signing up with
some outside agency, are not sending your email address or ID to some
remote person, program or computer.  "Subscribe alt.foo" just tells
your own news reading software to add alt.foo to the list of
newsgroups that it will keep closer track of and show you in a menu
when you read news.

Because there is a humongous number of newsgroups, this saves a lot of
waiting around for processing of stuff about newsgroups you'll never
read.  (My ISP's server carried, last time I looked, over 15,000
groups. I only "subscribe" to a couple of dozen and only read maye 6
regularly.) 

I remember being confused by "subscribe" when I first used news.  I
was afraid that I would be telling some remote machine to put me on a
list.  That's not the way news works.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer@tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

--