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Internet News

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Internet News. A basic Internet service that offers thousands (30-60,000! ... Internet News is still a very valuable service, but often overlooked by new ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Internet News


1
Internet News
  • A basic Internet service that offers thousands
    (30-60,000!) discussion groups to the user
  • In practice only 8,000 major ones!
  • Started at the University of North Carolina and
    Duke in 1980 really before the Internet was
    pervasive
  • CS depts. at UNC and Duke were experimenting with
    sending files back and forth using UUCP
  • The network they used then was called USENET -
    hence to this day News often referred to as
    USENET News

2
What is it like?
  • Similar in concept to listservers except
  • You read news when you want, doesnt clutter your
    regular mail.
  • Each message is called an article and articles
    are posted to groups of common interest.
  • Rather than a copy of each article being sent to
    each recipient, the articles are instead sent to
    central news servers
  • Each news server can control what groups it
    accepts, how long to keep the messages, and what
    users can use at that server

3
Newsgroup Names
  • Prefixes identify categories
  • comp, news, rec, sci, soc, misc, talk
  • e.g. comp.os.ms-windows.win95, news.newusers,
    news.software.newsreaders, rec.arts.comics
  • Other groups like alt.whatever may have more
    off-beat topics
  • e.g. alt.sex, alt.alien.visitors
  • Bogus newsgroups
  • alt.duke.basketball.suck.suck.sucks
  • May be site specific groups
  • Old Uwash.gslis newsgroup
  • Users subscribe to groups of interest

4
Reading News
  • Newsreaders are (surprise!) Client-Server based
    applications, NNTP (Network News Transport
    Protocol) is the protocol
  • Popular Clients
  • Outlook Express, Agent, Netscape, and Gravity
    (PC)
  • rn, trn, tin, nn (Unix), Pine can also read news
  • Features
  • Threads
  • Kill files (Gravity calls it a Bozo Bin)
  • Simple or sophisticated binary decoding depending
    on the client
  • Some are getting very sophisticated with Rules

5
Client/Server in Action
  • Client (like Gravity or Agent or Outlook Express)
    connects to the news server and gives user a list
    of groups available
  • User subscribes to those of interest
  • Client then asks the server for the headers of
    the messages in that group
  • User picks messages interested in to read
  • Client requests the article body from the server
    and displays it to the user
  • All done with NNTP

6
NNTP
  • Network News Transport Protocol
  • RFC 977 - Text based protocol, server typically
    runs on port 119
  • Common Commands
  • LIST
  • GROUP groupname
  • STATUS article
  • HEAD
  • BODY
  • NEXT
  • POST
  • QUIT

7
News Clients (Newsreaders)
  • Until recently, news clients were VERY difficult
    to use with TERRIBLE interfaces
  • rn and tin on Unix still complicated, with
    zillions of command line options
  • In last few years PC/Mac products like Outlook
    Express, Gravity, Agent have made reading news
    much simpler but
  • Today the public news groups are often full of
    spam making the whole idea possibly go away

8
Outlook Express as a News Client
  • Need to setup Outlook Express to talk to a news
    server before we can use it (Tools, Accounts)
  • The news server you use at home will probably be
    different than what you use at work/school. Your
    ISP will tell you the address (if they support
    news)
  • The precise groups available will also differ
    depending on that ISP. Some ISPs differentiate
    themselves from others by the groups they make
    available or dont make available
  • Warning in advance.
  • There are many great news groups, but there are
    also many pornographic news groups - you may see
    something you find offensive. Some of these
    groups are where pictures of everything you can
    (and cant) imagine are posted.

9
Interesting Policy Issues Here..
  • Who decides what you should see or not see?
  • The range of groups runs from fun and innocent to
    violent and extremely objectionable (there are
    groups where people post child pornography)
  • Are there differences in how you might be treated
    from a law enforcement perspective if you just
    look as opposed to if you post?
  • Other groups have software warez available that
    you can download for free, or serial numbers to
    make pirated software work. Are those less
    objectionable than say naked pictures? Someone
    has to decide these things!
  • Some ISPs differentiate themselves as family
    friendly by only providing access to newsgroups
    that would not be objectionable (but to who may
    be the question)

10
Searching News
  • News groups often are terrific sources of
    information that are not fully utilized
  • Google now makes it possible to search many of
    these groups
  • Go to www.google.com, enter your search, and then
    click on Groups
  • FANTASTIC technical resource for IT problems

11
Conclusion
  • Internet News is still a very valuable service,
    but often overlooked by new users, and
    increasingly no longer supported by some ISPs
  • Web based discussion boards have in some cases
    taken-over, but not for everything
  • To use News you will need a news client and a
    news server to connect to. Fortunately, in terms
    of the client, very often you can use the same
    client that you use for email you just need to
    configure it properly
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