How to Newsgroups?
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Can anybody tell me How do I get to use "Newsgroups"? I have IE and Firefox and my supplier is Qwest..
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380,
Here's what I recall, mostly accurate I think.
You need to have a usenet newsreader and access to a news server. A web browser, such as IE or Firefox, does not read the network news transfer protocol (NNTP), but either hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) or file transfer protocol (FTP). Outlook Express has a news client, but Outlook does not. The Thunderbird e-mail client (companion to Mozilla Firefox) also has a built-in news client. Forte Agent is a well known stand-alone news reader. It's predecessor, Free Agent (which was free) is apparently defunct.
News servers provide access to news groups, generally by downloading the contents of some horrendous number of individual newsgroup hosts on a periodic basis. Many (used to be most) ISPs have or provide access to a news server. There are a number of free news servers out there, which tend to be short-lived.
-Gully
Edit: Incidentally, and perhaps ironically, Google Groups (which many on this forum consider too icky for their refined sensibilities) provides web-based access to a huge number of internet usenet newsgroups and maintains an archive of their contents (which it acquired from the one-time internet giant Deja View) going back to the mid 90s, and if you don't have a newsreader and a news server, it's a reasonable alternative.
poster-Gully Foyle
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