Updated:
2003-09-23 11:44

First Homework - Using News Groups

This is part of your Week 1 homework.

Usenet News is a third tool to add to your current Internet kit alongside EMail and Web.  If you have a home Internet Service Provider, you will usually find tens of thousands of Usenet news groups available there.  Another way to get connected to these thousands of News Groups is by becoming a member of the National Capital FreeNet.

Here at Algonquin College, you have access to a few dozen local Ottawa news groups, plus all the local Algonquin news groups.

  1. Find and open the course web page for my sections of this course.  (Start looking here.)
  2. Next, select the News & Discussion link.  Read this new page carefully.
  3. Click on the NNTP interface to the Discussion news group.  Your browser should start up the News Reader software, open to the Discussion news group.  If it doesn't work, return to the News & Discussion page and select the link "Select here if you want to know more about participating in online discussion".  You will find some information on how to better configure Netscape on that page.
  4. In the Discussion news group that you opened successfully, read some news articles.
  5. Find the news article posted by your instructor entitled "First Homework ..." that has your course section number in it.  Follow the directions in that news article: Reply to that article so that your reply is posted to the news group.  (Ensure that the reply goes to the group, not to the individual who posted the article.)
  6. Using the Netscape menus, find the correct menu and configure your news reader for "Show only Unread Articles".  This will keep the number of articles on your screen smaller.  You can turn it off again if you want to see and re-read an article you have already read.
  7. You're done.  You might want to browse the Algonquin Student news group, or the For Sale news group.  Find the menu entry in your News Reader that says "Subscribe to News Groups" to do that.

Here is some terminology to help you keep EMail and News distinct:

  1. Mail has messages that are sent, e.g. "Please send someone an email message"
  2. News Groups have articles that are posted, e.g. "Please post a news article to that news group"
 

Web Author: Ian! D. Allen idallen@idallen.ca      Updated: 2003-09-23 11:44

Internet Free Zone Level 1 logo Support free and non-commercial Internet.

Any Browser logo This site works best in Any Browser, a campaign for non-specific WWW.

Creative Commons License logo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.