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It's not just new, it's news! The D.W. Mattson Computer Center began offering network news to faculty, staff, and students in early May. Network news is one of the most powerful tools for researching, learning, or discussing most any subject imaginable. It's like having personal subscriptions to a truly diversified group of professional journals, research publications, and recreational magazines. What's missing? The mountains of paper that traditionally go with them. What's added? Not only do you get to read articles (called posts) from Internet users around the world, but you also have the chance to write your own.

Trust us when we say that this is not just a collection of boring, technical announcements about computer networks that appeal only to technically-oriented people - it's a worldwide bulletin board system covering topics on almost every subject imaginable.

You may have heard before about BITNET and Internet discussion groups. These discussion groups work like mailing lists; you subscribe to a list, and then each message that is posted to the group arrives in your mail box. So what makes network news different? The discussions are similar in format, but rather than each message arriving through mail and filling up your mailbox, every article in news is stored on the system. Unlike mail, where messages are retained indefinitely until you delete them, all a rticles in network news are automatically deleted after a period of time (currently seven days for most newsgroups). However, you can print, mail or save any articles you wish. This is accomplished via a newsreader on node Gemini or TVAX. (See the sidebar at the bottom for "How To" specifics.)

So the arrival of network news is good news for TTU. But there's one drawback: there are so many newsgroups that you could, without much effort, spend all day reading news! For example, want to learn about WordPerfect for Windows? Read bit.listserv.wpwin-l. Need to research the battle of Midway? Try soc.history. war.world-war-ii. During your free time, catch up on how the Braves are doing with rec.sport.baseball. And for those new to network news, look into news.newusers.questions. All in all, we receive over 1500 newsgroups.

Network newsgroups are organized into hierarchies. We currently carry newsgroups from the following hierarchies:

       bit      BITNET listserv discussion groups
       comp     Computer-related topics
       gnu      Free Software Foundation and its GNU project
       misc     Newsgroups that don't fit anywhere else
       news     Groups related to USENET News administration
       rec      Recreational topics
       sci      Scientific research and applications
       soc      Social issues
       talk     Long debates on controversial subjects (like politics)
       tntech   Local groups of interest to the Tennessee Tech community
       vmsnet   VMS operating system topics
       

For more information about network news, pick up the document Getting Started with NEWS available in Clement Hall computer labs, or contact Barbara Goodson at 372-3984.

Ready to Read? Here's how...

You use newsreader software to read whatever groups you want. The newsreader available on the VAX is called ANU NEWS, and may be invoked by typing news at the $ prompt (on Gemini) or from the UTIL menu (on TVAX).

Use the following commands to become familiar with network news.

       news                Invoke the newsreader
       dir/all             List all available newsgroups
       dir/reg             List groups you've registered
       register GROUPNAME  Register a newsgroup
       select GROUPNAME    Select a newsgroup for reading
       read/new/followup   Read the current article and all followups to it
       exit	           Leave NEWS
       

To learn how to post your own articles to a newsgroup, get a copy of Getting Started with NEWS available in the Clement hall computer labs. Please read the information in it about network etiquette before posting your first article.