HHHHoooowwww ttttoooo RRRReeeeaaaadddd tttthhhheeee NNNNeeeettttwwwwoooorrrrkkkk NNNNeeeewwwwssss Mark R. Horton Bell Telephone Laboratories Columbus, Ohio 43213 WWWWhhhhaaaatttt iiiissss tttthhhheeee NNNNeeeettttwwwwoooorrrrkkkk NNNNeeeewwwwssss???? USENET (Users' Network) is a bulletin board shared among many computer systems in the computer science commun- ity, around the United States and Canada. USENET is a logi- cal network, sitting on top of several physical networks, including uuuuuuuuccccpppp, BBBBLLLLIIIICCCCNNNN, BBBBeeeerrrrkkkknnnneeeetttt, and the AAAARRRRPPPPAAAANNNNEEEETTTT. Sites on USENET include many universities, private companies and research organizations. Most of the members of USENET are either university Computer Science departments, or part of Bell Telephone Laboratories. Currently, most USENET sites run the UNIX* operating system. The network news, or simply _n_e_t_n_e_w_s, is the set of pro- grams that provide access to the news, and transfer it from one machine to the next. Netnews was originally written at Duke University, and has been modified extensively by the University of California at Berkeley. Netnews allows arti- cles to be posted for limited or very wide distribution. This document contains a list of newsgroups that were active at the time it was written, to assist you in determining which newsgroups you may want to subscribe to. When creat- ing a new article, the level of distribution is controlled by specifying the newsgroup. Any user can post an article, which will be sent out to the network to be read by persons interested in that topic. A user can specify which topics he or she is interested in via a _s_u_b_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n _l_i_s_t. Then, whenever he asks to read news, he will be presented with all articles of interest that he has not yet read. There are also facilities for browsing through old news, posting follow-up articles, and sending direct electronic mail replies to the author of an article. This paper is a tutorial, aimed at the user who wants __________________________ *UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories. April 8, 1983 - 2 - to read and possibly post news. The system administrator who must install the software should see the companion docu- ment _U_S_E_N_E_T _V_e_r_s_i_o_n _B _I_n_s_t_a_l_l_a_t_i_o_n. WWWWhhhhyyyy UUUUSSSSEEEENNNNEEEETTTT???? USENET is useful in a number of ways. Someone wishing to announce a new program or product can reach a wide audi- ence. A user can ask ``Does anyone have an _x?'' and will usually get several responses within a day or two. Bug reports and their fixes can be made quickly available without the usual overhead of sending out mass mailings. Discussions involving many people at different locations can take place without having to get everyone together. Another facility with similar capabilities to _n_e_t_n_e_w_s is the _e_l_e_c_t_r_o_n_i_c _m_a_i_l_i_n_g _l_i_s_t. A mailing list is a collec- tion of electronic mailing addresses of users who are interested in a particular topic. By sending electronic mail to the list, all users on the list receive a copy of the article. While the mailing list facility is quite use- ful, USENET offers a number of advantages not present in mailing lists. Getting yourself on a mailing list is not always easy. You have to figure out who maintains the list and ask them to put you on it. Often these people are out of town or busy, and don't put you on the list for several days. Sometimes you have to send mail to the entire mailing list, hoping that one of the readers will tell you who main- tains the list. Once you are on the list, you often find yourself in the middle of a discussion. Netnews keeps old articles around until they expire (usually about two weeks) so you can browse through old news to catch up on what you missed. Similarly, referring to an old article is easy, without having to keep a personal file of all old mail to the list. Another advantage is appreciated by the other users of the system. There is less overhead in having only one copy of each message sent to each machine, instead of having separate copies sent to each of several users on the same machine. This cuts down on computer time to process the messages, and on line costs for telephone calls to transfer messages from one machine to another (when phone lines are used). Another advantage is in the disk space consumed. When only one message is sent to each system, only one copy of the message is kept on disk. In a mailing list environ- ment, each user has a copy in his mailbox. HHHHoooowwww ddddoooo IIII RRRReeeeaaaadddd NNNNeeeewwwwssss???? In the USENET jargon, interest topics are called _n_e_w_s_- _g_r_o_u_p_s. A newsgroup list appears in a later section, current as this paper was written. You have your own _s_u_b_- _s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n _l_i_s_t of newsgroups to which you are said to April 8, 1983 - 3 - _s_u_b_s_c_r_i_b_e. To read news, type the command rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss Each newsgroup to which you subscribe will be presented, one article at a time. As each article is presented, you will be shown the _h_e_a_d_e_r (containing the name of the author, the subject, and the length of the article) and you will be asked if you want more. There are a number of possible choices you can make at this point. The three most common (y, n, and q) are suggested by the program. (To see a com- plete list of possible responses, type ``????'' for help.) You can type ``yyyy'' for ``yes'' (or simply hit return) and the rest of the message will be displayed. (If the message is long, it may stop before it runs off the top of the screen. Type space or return to see more of the message. If _r_e_a_d_- _n_e_w_s prints a ``:'' at the end of a long message, it's wait- ing for you to finish reading the message. Hit return and it will go on to the next message.) Another choice you can make is ``nnnn'' for ``no''. This means you are not interested in the message - it will not be offered to you again. A third option is ``qqqq'' for ``quit''. This causes a record to be made of which articles you read (or refused) and you will exit netnews. When you have read all the news, this happens automatically. The quit command is mainly useful if you are in a hurry and don't have time to read all the news right now. (Many users put a rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss or cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss command in their ._p_r_o_f_i_l_e or ._l_o_g_i_n files so that they will see new news each time they log in.) If you are reading news for the first time, you may find yourself swamped by the volume of unread news, espe- cially if the default subscription is ``all''. Don't let this bother you. If you are getting newsgroups which you have no interest, you can change your subscription list (see below). Also, bear in mind that what you see is probably at least two weeks accumulation of news. If you want to just get rid of all old news and start anew, type readnews -p -n all > /dev/null & which will throw away all old news, recording that you have seen it all. (The '&' puts it in the background; chances are that there is so much old news on your machine that you won't want to wait for it all.) Once you catch up (or ignore) all the old news, the news will come in daily at a more manageable rate. (If the daily rate is still too much you may wish to unsubscribe to some of the high volume newsgroups.) Finally, note that while an article is printing, you can hit DDDDEEEELLLLEEEETTTTEEEE which will throw away the rest of the article. April 8, 1983 - 4 - Among the other commands you can type after seeing the header of an article are: xxxx Exit readnews. This is different from qqqquuuuiiiitttt in that the quit command will update the record of which articles you have read, but the exit command will pretend you never started readnews. NNNN Go on to the next newsgroup. The remaining articles in the current newsgroup are con- sidered ``unread'' and will be offered to you again the next time you read news. ssss _f_i_l_e_n_a_m_e The article is saved in a disk file with the given name. In practice, what usually hap- pens is that an article is printed, and then _r_e_a_d_n_e_w_s goes on to print the header of the next article before you get a chance to type anything. So you usually want to write out the _p_r_e_v_i_o_u_s message (the last one you have read in full); in this case, use the form ``ssss---- _f_i_l_e_n_a_m_e''. eeee Erase the memory of having seen this arti- cle. It will be offered to you again next time, as though you had never seen it. The ``eeee----'' case is useful for checking followups to see if anyone has already said what you wanted to say. rrrr Reply to the author of the message. You will be placed in the editor, with a set of headers derived from the message you are replying to. Type in your message after the blank line. If you wish to edit the header list, to add more recipients or send carbon copies, for instance, you can edit the header lines. Anyone listed on a line beginning with ``To: '' or ``Cc: '' will receive a copy of your reply. A mmmmaaaaiiiillll com- mand will then be started up, addressed to the persons listed in the header. You are then returned to readnews. The case rrrr---- is also useful to reply to the previous mes- sage. Another variation on this is rrrrdddd---- which puts you in $MAILER (or ``mail'' by default) to type in your reply directly. ffff Post a follow-up message to the same news- group. This posts an article on this news- group with the same title as the original article. Use common sense when posting follow-ups; many follow-up articles should April 8, 1983 - 5 - have just been replies. You will be placed in the editor - enter your message and exit. The case ffff---- is also useful to follow up the previous message. Another case, ffffdddd----, allows you to directly type in the followup, without the use of an editor. If you type this by accident, hit DEL to abort the follow-up. In each case, the editor you are placed in will be vvvviiii unless you set EEEEDDDDIIIITTTTOOOORRRR (in your environment) to some other editor. You should enter the text of the followup after the blank line. ++++ The article is skipped for now. The next time you read news, you will be offered this article again. ---- Go back to the previous article. This tog- gles, so that two -'s get you the current article. UUUU Unsubscribe from this newsgroup. Your .newsrc file will be edited to change the ``:'' for that newsgroup to an ``!'', preventing you from being shown that news- group again. ? If you type any unrecognized command a sum- mary of valid commands will be printed. CCCChhhhaaaannnnggggiiiinnnngggg yyyyoooouuuurrrr SSSSuuuubbbbssssccccrrrriiiippppttttiiiioooonnnn LLLLiiiisssstttt If you take no special action you will subscribe to a default subscription list. This default varies locally. To find out your local default, type rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss ----ssss Typically this list will include all newsgroups ending in ``general'', such as ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll, and nnnneeeetttt....ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll. (At Duke, the default is ``general''. As distributed by Berkeley, the default is ``general,all.general''. The Columbus default is ``general,osg.general''. Another popular default is ``all''.) You can change this by creating a file in your home directory named ".newsrc" in which contains as its first line a line of the form: options -n newsgroup newsgroup newsgroup ... If your lines get too long, you can continue them on subse- quent lines by beginning those lines with a space. (The netnews system will put extra lines in this file to record which articles you have read. You should ignore these lines unless you want to edit them.) For example, if you are April 8, 1983 - 6 - creating a subscription list for the first time, and have already read news, you will find some text already in your ._n_e_w_s_r_c file, recording which articles you have read. You should put your ooooppppttttiiiioooonnnnssss line before the first line of the file.) Thus, options -n general net.general fa.human-nets will subscribe to those three newsgroups. A ``!'' can be used to exclude certain newsgroups and the word aaaallllllll can be used as a wild card, representing any newsgroup. You can also use aaaallllllll as a prefix or suffix to match a class of newsgroups. For example, options -n all !fa.all !net.jokes !all.unix-all will result in a subscription to all newsgroups except for arpanet news, jokes, and any UNIX information. The meta- character ``.'' is like ``/'' to the shell, and ``all'' is like ``*''. A simpler way to subscribe to news it to subscribe to ``all'', and then use the ``U'' readnews command to unsub- scribe to newsgroups you don't want to read. This way you will see new newsgroups that are created, get a chance to evaluate them, and then unsubscribe to those that don't interest you. SSSSuuuubbbbmmmmiiiittttttttiiiinnnngggg AAAArrrrttttiiiicccclllleeeessss To submit a new news article type ppppoooossssttttnnnneeeewwwwssss You will be prompted for the newsgroup, title, and distribu- tion on your terminal. Then you will be placed in the edi- tor. Enter the text of your article, after the blank line, and exit the editor. The article will be posted to the newsgroups specified. If you change your mind about the headers while you are still in the editor, you can edit them as well. Extra headers can also be added before the blank line. The distribution line controls how widely your article will be distributed. Often, you'll just hit return, causing the article to go as far as the newsgroup name implies, e.g., ``usa.general'' would be distributed to all USENET sites in the USA. If you do want to change the distribu- tion, type in the name of the newsgroup class you want it distributed to. Although any newsgroup name can be used here, ordinarily you'll just type the name of the newsgroup class, e.g. ``usa'', ``net'', ``nj'', etc. (``net'' arti- cles go to the entire world, not just the USA.) For example, April 8, 1983 - 7 - to post an announcement of a science fiction film festival in New Jersey, you wouldn't want to send it out to the whole world, or even the whole United States. You could post to ``net.sf-lovers'' with a distribution of ``nj''. When you post something to the net, and you are prompted for the dis- tribution, please think for a minute about who would be interested in reading your message. Sending messages to people who have no interest in them is one of the most annoying problems on the net today. If your article is related to a previous article, you should use the ``f'' (followup) command to readnews, instead of posting a new article. This creates an article with references to the previous article, so that persons unin- terested in the topic can shut it off. Postnews should only be used to start a new discussion. FFFFrrrroooommmm tttthhhheeee AAAARRRRPPPPAAAANNNNEEEETTTT Certain newsgroups have different conventions for post- ing news. Rather than using iiiinnnneeeewwwwssss, ppppoooossssttttnnnneeeewwwwssss, or the ffffoooollll---- lllloooowwwwuuuupppp command, the convention is to send mail to a particu- lar electronic mailing address. All the ffffaaaa (from the ARPANET) newsgroups are in this category. Although it is possible to post news directly to the newsgroup, you should not do this. The reason is the nature of the distribution. ffffaaaa newsgroups are electronic mailing lists on the ARPANET. A number of people on the ARPANET get the mailings directly from the mailing lists. One entry on each mailing list is of the form ``ppppoooosssstttt----_n_e_w_s_g_r_o_u_p@@@@BBBBeeeerrrrkkkkeeeelllleeeeyyyy'' which is fed into a program that posts the article on newsgroup ``ffffaaaa...._n_e_w_s_g_r_o_u_p''. From there it is distributed to the other sites on USENET. If you post an article directly to the newsgroup, you will reach all the readers of that newsgroup on USENET, but you will miss all the people getting the direct mailing on the ARPANET. The correct way to post news to an ffffaaaa news- group is to send electronic mail to the address listed in the header of an article on this newsgroup (often an ARPANET address). To follow up an ffffaaaa article, use the rrrreeeeppppllllyyyy command of rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss, not the ffffoooolllllllloooowwww----uuuupppp command. This will insure that ARPANET members also see the reply. Replying directly to the author is difficult, and requires that you have the capability to send ARPANET mail. The return address of the author (on the ARPANET) is usually in the first line of the article. BBBBrrrroooowwwwssssiiiinnnngggg tttthhhhrrrroooouuuugggghhhh OOOOlllldddd NNNNeeeewwwwssss There are a number of command line options to the rrrreeeeaaaadddd---- nnnneeeewwwwssss command to help you find an old article you want to see again. The ----nnnn _n_e_w_s_g_r_o_u_p_s option restricts your search to April 8, 1983 - 8 - certain newsgroups. The ----xxxx option arranges to ignore the record of articles read, which is kept in your ._n_e_w_s_r_c file. This will cause all articles in all newsgroups to which you subscribe to be displayed, even those which you have already seen. It also causes rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss to not update the ._n_e_w_s_r_c file. The ----aaaa _d_a_t_e option asks for news received since the given _d_a_t_e. Note that even with the ----aaaa option, only arti- cles you have not already seen will be printed, unless you combine it with the ----xxxx option. (Articles are kept on file until they expire, typically after two weeks.) The ----tttt _k_e_y_- _w_o_r_d_s option restricts the query to articles mentioning one of the _k_e_y_w_o_r_d_s in the title of the article. Thus, the com- mand rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss ----nnnn net.unix-wizards ----xxxx ----aaaa last thursday ----tttt setuid asks for all articles in newsgroup net.unix-wizards since last thursday about the setuid feature. (Be careful with the -t option. The above example will not find articles about ``suid'', nor about ``Setuid'', nor will it find arti- cles with no title or whose author did not use the word ``setuid'' in the title.) Other useful options include the ----llll option (which lists only the headers of articles - a useful form for browsing through lots of messages). The ----pppp option prints the mes- sages without asking for any input; this is similar to some older nnnneeeewwwwssss programs on many UNIX systems and is useful for directing output to a printer. The ----rrrr option produces arti- cles in reverse order, from newest to oldest. UUUUsssseeeerrrr IIIInnnntttteeeerrrrffffaaaacccceeeessss The _u_s_e_r _i_n_t_e_r_f_a_c_e of a program is the face it presents to the user, that is, what it prints and what it allows you to type. Readnews has options allowing you to use different user interfaces. The interface described above is called the ``msgs'' interface because it mimics the style of the Berkeley mmmmssssggggssss program. (This program, in turn, mimics a program at MIT of the same name.) The key element of the msgs interface is that after printing the header, you are asked if you want the rest of the message. Another interface is available with the ----cccc option. In this case, the entire message is printed, header and body, and you are prompted at the end of the message. The command options are the same as the msgs interface, but it is usu- ally not necessary to use the ``----'' suffix on the reply, save, or followup commands. This interface is called the ``/bin/mail'' (pronounced _b_i_n_n _m_a_i_l) interface, because it mimics the UNIX program of that name. A third interface is the _M_a_i_l (pronounced _c_a_p _m_a_i_l) interface, available with the ----MMMM option. This invokes the April 8, 1983 - 9 - MMMMaaaaiiiillll program directly, and allows you to read news with the same commands as you read mail. (This interface may not work on your system - it requires a special version of Mail with a ----TTTT option.) A fourth interface, if you have it, is the MH news pro- gram from Rand. That program can be used directly to read network news. A fifth possibility is to use your favorite mail system as an interface. There are a number of different mail read- ing programs, including /bin/mail, Mail, msg, and MH. Any mail system with an option to specify an alternative mailbox can be used to read news. For example, to use Mail without the ----MMMM option, type rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss ----cccc "Mail -f %" The shell command in quotes is invoked as a child of rrrreeeeaaaadddd---- nnnneeeewwwwssss.... The -f option to Mail names the alternative mailbox. Readnews will put the news in a temporary file, and give the name of this file to the mailer in place of the ``%''. There is an important difference when using this kind of interface. The mailers do not give any indication of which articles you read and which ones you skipped. Readnews will assume you read _a_l_l the articles, even if you didn't, and mark them all read. By contrast, the ----MMMM option uses the ----TTTT option to Mail, asking Mail to tell readnews which articles you read. GGGGeeeettttttttiiiinnnngggg NNNNeeeewwwwssss wwwwhhhheeeennnn yyyyoooouuuu LLLLoooogggg IIIInnnn Most users like to be told when they first log in if there is any news. This way they are reminded of news, but are not interrupted by it during the day. If you log in once in the morning, you can think of getting the news as reading the morning newspaper. It is common to put a cccchhhheeeecccckkkk---- nnnneeeewwwwssss or rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss command in your ._p_r_o_f_i_l_e or ._l_o_g_i_n file of commands that happen when you log in. Since there might not be any news, and since the rrrreeeeaaaadddd---- nnnneeeewwwwssss command goes to a considerable amount of work to find all unread news (assuming you are going to read it), there is another command, called cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss, which tells you if there is any news. The cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss command is smaller and faster than rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss, and was designed especially for a login file. There are also options to be silent if there is (or is not) news, and to start up rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss automatically if there is news. The options to cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss are: April 8, 1983 - 10 - ----yyyy Print ``There is news'' if there is any unread news. ----vvvv If ----yyyy is also given, instead of printing ``There is news'', print ``News: _n_e_w_s_g_r_o_u_p ...'' giving the name of the first newsgroup containing unread news. If ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll is the first newsgroup presented, this can be used to tell users whether the unread news is important. ----nnnn Print ``No news'' if there is no unread news. ----eeee If there is any unread news, start up rrrreeeeaaaadddd---- nnnneeeewwwwssss.... Any additional arguments after the ----eeee will be passed to readnews. Thus, ``cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss ----yyyynnnn'' tells you whether there is any unread news. ``cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss ----eeee ----MMMM'' starts up rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss with the Mail interface if there is news, and otherwise does nothing. ``cccchhhheeeecccckkkknnnneeeewwwwssss ----yyyy'' tells you if there is news, and is silent if there is no news. CCCCrrrreeeeaaaattttiiiinnnngggg NNNNeeeewwww NNNNeeeewwwwssssggggrrrroooouuuuppppssss New newsgroups are created by the users. To create a newsgroup, first post an article an appropriate ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll newsgroup suggesting the new newsgroup, (for example, for a new nnnneeeetttt or ffffaaaa newsgroup, post to nnnneeeetttt....ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll, for a new local newsgroup, post to ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll) with another copy to nnnneeeetttt....nnnneeeewwwwssss....ggggrrrroooouuuupppp, for example: postnews Subject: suggested new newsgroup on literature Newsgroups: net.general,net.news.group Other users will follow-up to net.news.group, giving opin- ions about whether the suggested newsgroup makes sense, should have a different name, etc. When agreement is reached and it is established that there is interest in the topic, ask your local netnews administrator to create the newsgroup. (It can actually be created by any netnews administrator anywhere on the net, within the scope of the newsgroup.) Once the newsgroup is created and the first article has been posted, the newsgroup is available for all interested persons to post to. LLLLiiiisssstttt ooooffff NNNNeeeewwwwssssggggrrrroooouuuuppppssss This section lists the newsgroups that are currently active. It is intended to help you decide what you want to subscribe to. Note that the list is constantly changing. April 8, 1983 - 11 - New newsgroups are created at the rate of about five per month, and old newsgroups often fall into disuse. Note also that this list is specially tailored for the Berkeley sites. It is recommended that other installations edit the list of local newsgroups to fit their installation before distribut- ing this document to their users. If this is not possible, a local appendix can be created. LLLLooooccccaaaallll Local groups are kept on the current machine only. Local names can be identified by the lack of a prefix, that is, there are no periods in local newsgroup names. general News to be read by everyone on the local machine. For example: The system will be down Monday morning for PM. Or, a new ver- sion of program x has been installed. This newsgroup is usually mandatory - you are required to subscribe to this newsgroup. (The list of mandatory newsgroups varies locally.) This requirement assures that important announcements reach all users. (Formerly mmmmssssggggssss.) uuuuccccbbbb Ucb groups are sent to all USENET machines at Berkeley. ucb.general Read by everyone on all ucb machines. (Formerly aaaallllllllmmmmssssggggssss.) For example: ASUC elec- tions are Tuesday: everyone be sure to vote! ucb.eats Contributions to the U. C. Berkeley Eats guide to local restaurants. ucb.cs Topics of interest to the Computer Science Division, such as new class offerings. (Formerly ccccssssmmmmssssggggssss.) ucb.talks Announcements of seminars, talks, and spe- cial classes to be held on campus. ucb.su-talks Announcements of seminars to be held at Stanford. (This could be from the group su.talks at Stanford, for example.) ucb.bboard An electronic bulletin board. For example: ``Apartment for rent'', ``where can I get my car fixed'', ``does anyone know of someone who rents terminals to students''. April 8, 1983 - 12 - ucb.jobs Job offerings in the area. ucb.prelims Discussion of EECS preliminary exams for the Ph.D. ffffaaaa FA groups are "from the arpanet" and are mostly copies of mailing lists or ``digests'' distributed on that network. (A digest is a collection of mail put together by an editor and sent out every so often. It is much like a newsletter.) A special convention applies to submissions to FA news- groups. As previously described, you should not post directly to the newsgroup, since this will be seen by people on USENET but not by the people on the arpanet who get the list directly mailed to them. Instead, send mail to the return address on any article, by using the reply command to rrrreeeeaaaaddddnnnneeeewwwwssss. For example, to post to ffffaaaa....hhhhuuuummmmaaaannnn----nnnneeeettttssss, the reply command might mail to cccchhhhiiiiccccoooo!!!!uuuuccccbbbbvvvvaaaaxxxx!!!!CCCC77770000::::hhhhuuuummmmaaaannnn----nnnneeeettttssss (if chico is the proper route to get to ucbvax - this route varies depending on your system). FA groups and their correspond- ing mailing lists can reach a very large user community, including USENET sites on UUCP, Berknet, BLN, and the ARPANET, as well as sites on the ARPANET which are not on USENET, who get the news via direct electronic mailing. fa.arms-d People worried about nukes. fa.arpa-bboard Announcements that are posted to all arpanet bboards are also fed into this newsgroup. fa.digest-p People who deal with digests. Mostly the people who moderate them. fa.editor-p Interest group in computer editors, both text and program. fa.energy Topics relating to alternate energy produc- tion, conservation, etc. fa.human-nets A daily moderated digest with discussions of computer-aided human-to-human communica- tions. Probably the most widely read ARPANET publication. fa.info-cpm CP/M and other operating systems for micro computers. fa.info-micro Micro processor discussions. fa.info-terms Opinions/queries about what's a good/bad computer terminal. April 8, 1983 - 13 - fa.info-vax VAX interest group. Seems to be mostly VMS issues, but some hardware discussions too. fa.poli-sci Political Science discussions digest. fa.sf-lovers Science Fiction book/movie reviews, etc. fa.space Digest containing comments on the space pro- gram and outer space in general. fa.tcp-ip Digest relating to the TCP and IP network protocols. fa.telecom Technical topics relating to telecommunica- tions, especially the telephone system. A digest recently spun off from fa.human-nets. fa.teletext Teletext discusses all aspects of ``eso- teric'' data systems. This includes teletext, viewdata, closed-captioning, and digicasting. fa.unix-cpm CPM/UNIX discussions. fa.works Interest group on personal workstations (e.g. Apollo, Perq, Xerox Star, etc). nnnneeeetttt Net groups are intended to be available to all people on the entire network who read netnews. This does not mean they go to every machine, since some machines restrict the volume of news that comes in. It is assumed that users of such restricted machines can read news on another machine on which they have a login. Net groups reach all of USENET (including USENET sites on the ARPANET) but do not reach any sites that are not on USENET. That is, USENET is defined as all sites that nnnneeeetttt....ggggeeeennnneeeerrrraaaallll reaches. This list is already out of date. An up to date list is posted to newsgroup net.news periodically. See the docu- mentation file ``doc/nglist'' for a more recent list. net.general Articles to be read by everyone on the whole net. net.applic Functional programming (applicative) languages. net.auto Notes of interest to owners of particular cars. Main subgroup is nnnneeeetttt....aaaauuuuttttoooo....vvvvwwww for own- ers of Volkswagon Rabbits. April 8, 1983 - 14 - net.aviation Private pilots. net.bugs Bug reports and fixes. Subscribing to nnnneeeetttt....bbbbuuuuggggssss gets all bug reports, but bugs are normally posted to one of nnnneeeetttt....bbbbuuuuggggssss....2222bbbbssssdddd, nnnneeeetttt....bbbbuuuuggggssss....4444bbbbssssdddd, nnnneeeetttt....bbbbuuuuggggssss....vvvv7777, or nnnneeeetttt....bbbbuuuuggggssss....uuuussssgggg, (for the 2nd and 4th Berkeley Software Dis- tribution, Version 7, or UNIX system III & V,) as appropriate. net.chess Interest group for computer chess. This newsgroup is gatewayed into an ARPANET mail- ing list but appears as a normal newsgroup to USENET, so it is called nnnneeeetttt....cccchhhheeeessssssss instead of ffffaaaa....cccchhhheeeessssssss. net.columbia Newswire items and comments on the Space Shuttle, and on the space program in gen- eral. net.cooks Food, cooking, cookbooks, and recipies. net.cycle Motorcycle interest group. net.eunice Topics of interest to sites running SRI's Eunice system, which simulates UNIX on VMS. net.games Discussion of computer games (of the /usr/games/variety). Subgroups include nnnneeeetttt....ggggaaaammmmeeeessss....rrrroooogggguuuueeee, nnnneeeetttt....ggggaaaammmmeeeessss....ffffrrrrpppp (for fantasy role playing games,) and nnnneeeetttt....ggggaaaammmmeeeessss....ttttrrrriiiivvvviiiiaaaa. net.ham-radio Topics of interest to amateur radio opera- tors. net.jokes The latest good joke you've heard. Jokes are expected to be kept clean and unoffen- sive. Offensive jokes can be posted ``encrypted'', by rotating each letter 13 places in the alphabet, and mentioning the reason for encryption in the subject. This prevents people from accidently decrypting something that will offend them. (The tr program or /usr/lib/news/caesar can be used to rotate a joke.) net.lan Local area network interest group. net.lsi Large Scale Integrated Circuit discussions. net.misc Miscellaneous discussions that start in net.general but are not permanent enough for their own newsgroup. April 8, 1983 - 15 - net.movies Movie reviews by members of USENET. net.music Computer generated music. net.news Discussion of netnews itself. Subgroups discuss or post various aspects of netnews, including nnnneeeetttt....nnnneeeewwwwssss....bbbb for the B version of netnews, nnnneeeetttt....nnnneeeewwwwssss....ggggrrrroooouuuupppp for discussions about proposed new newsgroups, nnnneeeetttt....nnnneeeewwwwssss....mmmmaaaapppp to post maps of USENET or additions/corrections to previously posted maps, nnnneeeetttt....nnnneeeewwwwssss....nnnneeeewwwwssssiiiitttteeee to announce a new site. nnnneeeetttt....nnnneeeewwwwssss itself is used for discus- sions relating to USENET policies and the like, rather than any specific software. net.oa Office Automation/Word Processing interest group. net.periphs Queries and discussions about particular peripherals. (``Does anyone have a driver for a framus-11?'') net.rec Recreational games. This differs from nnnneeeetttt....ssssppppoooorrrrtttt in that nnnneeeetttt....rrrreeeecccc discusses games where one generally participates, but nnnneeeetttt....ssssppppoooorrrrtttt is for spectator sports. nnnneeeetttt....ggggaaaammmmeeeessss is for computer type games. Sub- groups of nnnneeeetttt....rrrreeeecccc include nnnneeeetttt....rrrreeeecccc....bbbbrrrriiiiddddggggeeee for contract bridge discussions, nnnneeeetttt....rrrreeeecccc....ssssccccuuuubbbbaaaa for scuba divers, and nnnneeeetttt....rrrreeeecccc....sssskkkkiiii for skiers. net.records Discussions of phonograph records, albums, record stores, etc. net.rumor For posting of rumors. net.sources Large bulky items are distributed here. People don't usually want to read this news- group, rather it is used for software dis- tribution. net.space Undigested, immediate distribution version of fa.space. net.sport Spectator sports. Subgroups include nnnneeeetttt....ssssppppoooorrrrtttt....bbbbaaaasssseeeebbbbaaaallllllll, nnnneeeetttt....ssssppppoooorrrrtttt....ffffoooooooottttbbbbaaaallllllll, and nnnneeeetttt....ssssppppoooorrrrtttt....hhhhoooocccckkkkeeeeyyyy. net.taxes Tax advice and queries. April 8, 1983 - 16 - net.test Test messages are posted here. Generally this is not interesting to ordinary readers. If you must post something here, please explain why in the message, and please use the smallest distribution newsgroup (e.g. test or ucb.test) possible. net.travel Requests, suggestions, and opinions about traveling. net.ucds Circuit drawing system. net.unix-wizardsARPANET mailing list for UNIX Wizards. Any- thing and everything relating to UNIX is discussed here. This list is gatewayed to the ARPANET mailing list but appears like a regular nnnneeeetttt newsgroup to USENET. net.wines Information and recommendations about wines and alcoholic beverages. April 8, 1983