3.1  THE GLOBAL WATERING HOLE


Imagine a conversation carried out over a period of hours and days, as if 
people were leaving messages and responses on a bulletin board.  Or 
imagine the electronic equivalent of a radio talk show where everybody 
can put their two cents in and no one is ever on hold. 

Unlike e-mail, which is usually "one-to-one,"  Usenet is "many-to-many." 
Usenet is the international meeting place, where people gather to meet 
their friends, discuss the day's events, keep up with computer trends or 
talk about whatever's on their mind.  Jumping into a Usenet discussion 
can be a liberating experience.  Nobody knows what you look or sound 
like, how old you are, what your background is.  You're judged solely on 
your words, your ability to make a point. 

To many people, Usenet IS the Net. In fact, it is often confused with 
Internet.  But it is a totally separate system. All Internet sites CAN 
carry Usenet, but so do many non-Internet sites, from sophisticated Unix 
machines to simple bulletin-board systems running on old XT clones and 
Apple IIs. 

Technically, Usenet messages are shipped around the world, from host 
system to host system, using one of several specific Net protocols.  Your 
host system stores all of its Usenet messages in one place, which 
everybody with an account on the system can access. That way, no matter 
how many people actually read a given message, each host system has to 
store only one copy of it. Many host systems "talk" with several others 
regularly to exchange messages in case one or another of their links goes 
down for some reason.  When two host systems connect, they basically 
compare notes on which Usenet messages they already have.  Any that one 
is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa.  Because they are 
computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of 
these comparisons every day. 

Yes, millions.  For Usenet is huge.  Every day, Usenet users pump upwards 
of 100 million characters a day into the system -- nearly an 
encyclopedia's worth of writing. Obviously, nobody could possibly keep up 
with this immense flow of messages.  Let's look at how to find 
conferences and discussions of interest to you. 

The basic building block of Usenet is the newsgroup, which is a 
collection of messages with a related theme (on other networks, these 
would be called conferences, forums, bboards or special-interest groups).  
There are now more than 9,000 of these newsgroups, in several diferent 
languages, covering everything from art to zoology, from science fiction 
to South Africa (not all systems carry all newsgroups, however). 

Some public-access systems, typically the ones that work through menus, 
try to make it easier by dividing Usenet into several broad categories.  
Choose one of those and you're given a list of newsgroups in that 
category.  Then select the newsgroup you're interested in and start 
reading. 

Other systems let you compile your own "reading list" so that you only 
see messages in conferences you want.  In both cases, conferences are 
arranged in a particular hierarchy devised in the early 1980s.  Newsgroup 
names start with one of a series of broad topic names.  For example, 
newsgroups beginning with "comp." are about computer-related topics.  
These broad topics are followed by a series of more focused topics (so 
that "comp.unix" groups are limited to discussion about Unix).  The main 
hierarchies are: 
 
     bionet          Research biology
     bit.listserv    Conferences originating as Bitnet mailing lists
     biz             Business
     comp            Computers and related subjects
     misc            Discussions that don't fit anywhere else
     news            News about Usenet itself
     rec             Hobbies, games and recreation
     sci             Science other than research biology
     soc             "Social" groups, often ethnically related
     talk            Politics and related topics
     alt             Controversial or unusual topics; not
                     carried by all sites
 
In addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular city, 
state or region.  For example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where New 
Englanders can look for apartments.  A growing number also carry K12 
newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and 
students.  And a number of sites carry clari newsgroups, which is 
actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and a 
unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter 11).