247 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
247 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
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ZDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD? IMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM; ZDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD?
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3 Founded By: 3 : Network Information Access : 3 Founded By: 3
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3 Guardian Of Time 3D: 16APR90 :D3 Guardian Of Time 3
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3 Judge Dredd 3 : Judge Dredd : 3 Judge Dredd 3
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@DDDDDDDDBDDDDDDDDDY : File 16 : @DDDDDDDDDBDDDDDDDDY
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3 HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM< 3
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3 IMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM; 3
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@DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD: USENET: BASICS :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDY
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HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM<
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What is USENET? what is BITNET? Why do Phrack and P/HUN mention them so much?
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Well, for the begginer, here is a history nad a basic working of USENET. If
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you have any questions in regard, please contact spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford).
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Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of
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software packages and programs. This article mentions the important
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ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look
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for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign"
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and "obsolete" software. At the very end is a list of sites from which
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current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained.
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$_History
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Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7
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Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina,
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Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to
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exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad
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student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first
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version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on
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the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the
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network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at
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Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. Steve
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Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never
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released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did
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another implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott made
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further modifications, and this became the "A" news release.
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In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school
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student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality
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and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" news was
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intended for under 100 sites and only a few articles per group per
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day. This rewrite was the "B" news version. The first public release
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was version 2.1 in 1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the
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net grew, the news software was expanded and modified. The last
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version maintained and released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.
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Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination
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of the maintenance and enhancement of the news software with the 2.10.2
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release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news was
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becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to
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the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA mailing
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lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. In late 1986,
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version 2.11 of news was released, including a number of changes to
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support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and
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compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features.
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The current release of news is 2.11, patchlevel 19. Article format is
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specified in RFC 1036, last revised in December 1987 (a version is
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distributed with the news software).
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<20>An aside about RFCs: a RFC is a Request For Comment, a de-facto
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standard in the Internet Community. It is a form of published
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software standard, done through the Network Information Center (NIC)
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at SRI. Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable
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from archive sites.<2E>
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A new version of news, becoming known as "C" news, has been developed
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at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This
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version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article
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processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve
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the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The
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package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For more
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information, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in The
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Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings.
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Two popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been developed
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in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews" interface.
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The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by Kenneth Almquist.
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"vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command interface, but displays
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articles using direct screen positioning. It appears to have been
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inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system (described below).
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"vnews" is currently distributed with the standard 2.11 news source.
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A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall
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now of JPL/NASA and released in 1984. This interface also uses
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full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many other
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useful features and is very popular with many regular net readers. The
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interface includes reading, discarding, and/or processing of articles
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based on user-definable patterns, the ability to follow "threads of
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discussions" in newsgroups, and the ability of the user to develop
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customized macros for display and keyboard interaction. "rn" is
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currently at release 4.3, patchlevel 40, with a major re-release under
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development. "rn" is not provided with the standard news software
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release, but is very widely available due to its popularity.
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xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick
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Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley). The current version is
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6.2. xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject,
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user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes,
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and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings
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similar to rn). xrn is actively supported by the authors with bug
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fixing and feature addition support from many of the users. xrn can
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be retrieved from most of the popular FTP sites (gatekeeper.dec.com,
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uunet.uu.net, expo.lcs.mit.edu) and is on the X11R4 distribution from
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MIT (in the contrib section).
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There are two popular macro packages named "GNUs" and "Gnews" that can
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be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading, replying,
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and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs text
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editor. Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather than
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from a local disk. Copies can be found on most archive sites that
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carry the GNU archives.
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"notes" is a software package popular at some sites. It uses a
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different internal organization of articles, and a different
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interchange format than that of the standard Usenet software. It was
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inspired by the notesfiles available in the PLATO system and was
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developed independently from the Usenet news. Eventually, the "notes"
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network and Usenet were joined via gateways doing (sometimes imperfect)
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protocol translation. The interface for "notes" is similar to "rn" but
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implements different features, many of which are dictated by its
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internal organization. "notes" was written in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick
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and Rob Kolstad, (then) grad students at the University of Illinois at
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Urbana-Champaign. The first public release of "notes" was at the
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January 1982 Usenix conference. The current release of notes is
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version 1.7.
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In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission,
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posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
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(as specified in RFC 977). This protocol allows hosts to exchange
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articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional
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uucp. It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified
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version of "rn" or other user agents) from machines which cannot or
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choose not to install the USENET news software. Reading and posting are
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done using TCP/IP messages to a server host which does run the USENET
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software. Sites which have many workstations like the Sun and Apollo
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products find this a convenient way to allow workstation users to read
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news without having to store articles on each system. Many of the
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Usenet hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles using
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NNTP because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp (and NNTP
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ensures much faster propagation).
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NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U.
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C. San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley. It is now in
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release 1.5, and includes support for System V UNIX with Excelan
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Ethernet cards and DECNET under Ultrix. NNTP was developed at U. C.
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Berkeley by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair, Steven Grady, and
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Mike Meyer, among others. The NNTP package is distributed on the
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4.3BSD release tape (although that is version 1.2a and out-of-date)
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and is also available from the various authors, many major hosts, and
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by anonymous FTP from ucbvax, ucsd, and gatech. Reader clients for
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VMS systems should be available soon. A TOPS-20 reader was developed
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by Dave Edwards of SRI <dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is
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unknown. There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics
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Lisp Machines (under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from
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ucbvax.berkeley.edu [10.2.0.78] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by
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Ian Connolly <connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard
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Welty <welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>. An NNTP reader suite for PC's running
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MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available for ftp from
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ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files.
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At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is
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available. Interested parties should contact Irwin Tillman of
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Princeton University (irwin@pucc.princeton.edu or irwin@pucc.bitnet)
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for details. Another version may also be available from Bill Verity at
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Penn State (whv@psuvm.bitnet).
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A VAX/VMS implementation is available that implements a screen-based
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user interface with the functionality similar to rn. The program allows
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reading, posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a
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fashion closely related to regular news. The implementation includes
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the RFC1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP
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protocols to support remote news servers, implemented as a VAX/VMS
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Decnet object. A RFC977 server implemented as a Decnet object is also
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included. The license for the software is free, and there are no
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restrictions on the re-distribution. For more info, contact
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gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff Huston).
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$_Special note on "notes" and pre-2.11 news
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Users of these systems may note problems in their interactions with the
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Usenet. In particular, postings may be made by "notes" users to
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moderated groups but they will not usually propagate throughout the
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entire Usenet. The same may happen to users of old B news software.
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Users of "notes" or old B news software wishing to post to moderated
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groups should either mail their submissions to the moderator, as listed
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in the monthly posting of "List of Moderators" in the group
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"news.lists", or else they should post from a system running up-to-date
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B news software (i.e., 2.11). "notes" users may obtain some patches
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from the comp.sources.unix archives which enable recent versions of
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"notes" to interact with moderated groups properly.
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Users of old B news and "notes" are also not able to take advantage of
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some other current B news features, such as the "checkgroups" message.
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"notes" continues to be a "foreign" system, and B news versions before
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2.10.2 are considered "obsolete." The various maintainers of the
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Usenet software have never expressed any commitment to maintain
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backwards compatibility with "foreign" or obsolete news systems and are
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unlikely to do so; it is the responsibility of the users to maintain
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compatibility of such software if they wish to continue to interact
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with the Usenet.
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$_Software versions & availability
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You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing the
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"v" command in either "vnews" or "readnews." "rn" version is
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obtainable by typing the "v" command to the top level prompt -- it
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should currently be 4.3.1.4.
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Current software is obtainable from almost any major Usenet site.
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Source to the 'rn' newsreader program is also widely available.
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The following sites have sources to the current news software available
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for anyone needing a copy:
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Site Contact
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---- -------
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attctc postmaster@attctc.dallas.tx.us
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ncar woods@ncar.ucar.edu
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mirror usenet@mirror.tmc.com
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munnari kre@munnari.oz.au
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osu-cis postmaster@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
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philabs usenet@philabs.philips.com
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pyramid usenet@pyramid.com
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rutgers usenet@rutgers.edu
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tektronix news@tektronix.tek.com
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watmath usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu
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Sources for both news 2.11 and "rn" are also available in the
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comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the sources
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from their nearest Eunet backbone site.
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$_Acknowledgements
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The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatly
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enhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons:
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Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley,
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Bob Page, Tom Truscott, Larry Wall, and Thanks, folks.
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[OTHER WORLD BBS]
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