[TheForge] OT: Accessing newsgroups

[Chris Caswell]

Thank you all for your information

Chris Caswell
Caswell Wood & Iron
Burlington, VT

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Mike Spencer <mspencer@tallships.ca>
To: <theforge@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 1:32 PM
Subject: [TheForge] OT: Accessing newsgroups


> 
> 
> 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
> 
> --