Script: About USENET Newsgroups
Overview
This courselet explains the USENET and newsgroups.
Audio Script – About News
S1 0:0.025: Established 1980, the USENET (USEr NETwork) is one of the oldest services on the Internet, preceding the World Wide Web by a decade.
S5 0:7.000: The Usenet can best be compared to a public bulletin and discussion board, one that is organized into many different sections for different topics called newsgroups.
S10 0:15.720: There are thousands of news groups, from local job offerings to discussion of US policies, news groups for science topics and – of course – for computer related topics.
S15 0:27.622: Messages in newsgroups look almost exactly like Email messages, only that the Email header doesn‘t contain an email address but a newsgroup address as destination. This is why it makes sense to re-use Email software for posting to newsgroups as well, so this is why Thunderbird is not just an Email client but a Usenet client as well.
[Pause 2s]
S20 0:47.540: The Usenet is a decentralized distributed system, just like the WWW.
S25 0:51.935: There is one big difference: All servers talk to each other!
S30 0:56.340: They continuously exchange messages sent by users, so that whatever Usenet server server you use, after some time you get to see all messages sent by anyone to any other server. Unlike the WWW the Usenet, while just as decentralized and distributed, is one big space and you see the same contents everywhere.
S40 1:16.785: The only exception is that on every server the administrator can choose to introduce newsgroups local to that particular server only, and not to synchronize particular newsgroups with other servers.
S45 1:28.380: For example, news servers in Germany have no reason to subscribe to local newsgroups meant for discussion of job offerings in Sydney, Australia.
[Pause 2s]
S50 1:43.670: Just like Email is similar to postal mail and we need to differentiate between sending and receiving (e)mail, the Usenet is like a bulletin board.
S55 1:51.600: You may remember from this courses‘ section about email that while for postal as well as for email you have different boxes, and therefore servers, one – owned by the mail carrier organization – for dropping your outgoing mail, and another box – owned by you – for receiving mail,
S60 2:08.325: whether you want to post to or read a bulletin boards messages you go to the same location.
S65 2:14.155: The difference between real-world bulletin boards and the Usenet is that in the real world if you put a paper message on one board it is visible on just that board.
[Pause 0.5s]
S70 2:25.600: In the Usenet, however, your message is quickly distributed to all over newsservers worldwide – if they agree to subscribe to the particular newsgroup you selected for posting.
S75 2:31.170: Today we have one important restriction for posting to newsgroups, which in 1990 did not exist. Because of the SPAM problem today most newsservers require that you have a login and a password before they allow you to read and post newsgroup messages. This is to control access to newsgroups, which otherwise would be flooded by commercial offerings.
S80 2:50.880: This means that for setting up Thunderbird or any other newsgroup software, you need
S85 2:55.675: the Internet name or IP address of a newsserver,
S90 2:59.450: and, possibly, a login and a password.
[Pause 1s]
S95 3:05.060: Now you know what you need for setting up Thunderbird for news. We‘ll show you how to use newsgroups in another section of this course.