At 01:23 AM 5/19/02 +0700, Kiki wrote the following:
>I'm a newbies here, hope I'll have good time and experience here.
>BTW, is anybody know what's the difference between newsgroup and mailing
>list?
>They just look the same for me...
>And would you like to give me any FREE newsgroup server that I can sign in?
Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a
thousands of topically named "newsgroups" with names that are classified
hierarchically by subject. "Articles" or "messages" are "posted" to these
newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software (usually
called a newsreader) -- these articles are then broadcast to other
interconnected computer systems using NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol)
server. The NNTP server is used for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval,
and posting of news articles via a wide variety of networks. Some
newsgroups are "moderated"; in these newsgroups, the articles are first sent
to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup.
Not all ISPs provide all the Newsgroups. The groups distributed
worldwide are divided into eight broad classifications: "comp",
"humanities", "misc", "news", "rec", "sci", "soc", and "talk". Each of
these classifications is organized into groups and subgroups according
to topic.
"humanities" Professional and amateur topics in the arts & humanities.
"misc" Groups addressing themes not easily classified under any of the
other headings or which incorporate themes from multiple categories.
"news" Groups concerned with the news network and software themselves.
"rec" Groups oriented towards the arts, hobbies and recreational
activities.
"sci" Discussions marked by special and usually practical knowledge,
relating to research in or application of the established sciences.
"soc" Groups primarily addressing social issues and socializing.
"talk" Groups largely debate-oriented and tending to feature long
discussions without resolution and without appreciable amounts of
generally useful information.
These "world" newsgroups are (usually) circulated around the entire
USENET -- this implies world-wide distribution. Not all groups actually
enjoy such wide distribution, however. Some sites take only a selected
subset of the more "technical" groups, and controversial "noise" groups
are often not carried by many sites (these groups are often under the
"talk" and "soc" classifications). Many sites do not carry some or all
of the comp.binaries groups.
There are groups in other subcategories, but they are local: to
institutions, to geographic regions, etc. and they are not listed here.
Note that these distribution categories can be used to restrict the
propagation of news articles. Currently, distributions include:
world worldwide distribution (default)
can limited (mostly) to Canada
eunet limited (mostly) to European sites in EUNet
na limited (mostly) to North America
usa limited (mostly) to the United States
There may be other regional and local distribution categories available
at your site. Most US states have distribution categories named after
the two letter abbreviation for that state or category (e.g., "ca" for
California, "ny" for New York).
Google Groups (old Dejanews) has now added a web-based interface
(http://groups.google.com/) to the Usenet archive going back some 20 years.
They also support are the major newsgroups listed above.
Discussion lists, discussion group, and mailing lists are all names for
the same function. The main purpose of these functions is to provide the
subscribers of a list with a set of email messages, data or program
files which are related to the main purpose of the list. These can be:
questions and answers; frequently asked questions (FAQs); archives of
messages which appeared on the list; minutes of internal meetings held
by some of the subscribers; application programs related to some
software they are all using; etc. Automatic distribution of updated
materials is also available to subscribers. Last but not least, a set of
public files open to all and not associated with any particular
distribution list, can be made available. Files can also be maintained
individually by "file owners" (with storing privileges, similarly to the
"list owners" but only related to specific files).
Mailing lists need to be subscribed to in order to contribute, except
for those that are mirrored on the "bit.listserv.xxxxxx" series of
Usenet Newsgroups.
Pcworks is a mailing list. The largest set of mailing lists (currently some
56,000+) use a mailing listing program called Listserv (see
http://www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html). Other mailing list managers (MLMs,
the programs used to support mailing lists) are ListProc and Majordomo (no
central listing of them is available) and Mailbase
(http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/). The newer mailing list programs are web-based
mailing list programs like Yahoo Groups (which was Egroups which was Onelist).
--
Gerry Boyd
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