Mail and News resources

Many ISP's for some strange reason deny their users access to the alt groups. alt.2600 being one of the most victimised.
Worse still, other ISPs don't provide access to any of the newsgroups at all. (yikes).
My ISP happens to be one of them, and I get around this problem by using Web based news archives. Or by setting the NNTP server name in the news client's configuration, to one of the servers in this NNTP list

The websites that maintain archives of usenet posting sometimes restrict them to a few groups, but the The Web Based News Archives section of this document has a few sites that maintain archives of almost all the newsgroups.

Also worth checking out is the rtfm.edu archive of newsgroup FAQs, which can be accessed by regular FTP, FTP mail or rtfm's special mail-server.

Web Based News Archives

• DejaNews maintains a searchable archive of postings in most of the newsgroups out there. Infoseek colloborates with Dejanews, for newsgroup searches.
  Altavista on the other hand have their own efficient usenet search. Postings via DejaNews can be recieved directly in your mailbox. Which saves trouble of having to browse the group again.
• In Reference provides a wider range of services than dejanews. And also lets you carry out searches by mail. But it does take some time before you can master all their services and you have to register with them before you are allowed full access. Fortunately registration is free It's often possible to find the archives of a specific maillist or a newsgroup on the web, a few examples are netannounce, link exchange digest, and the linux security archives. Accessing these web sites is often easier and quicker than having to sift through the muck on sites with less specific content.

Mailling List

With megabites of spam eating away the usenet, mailing lists have largely increased in importance. Most of the best mail lists on the internet are free, meaning they do not charge a fee for subscription. They make their income from one line or two line ads that apear at the end of each mail. posting are not charged for but are often moderated. These ensure that spam is automaticaly filtered out.
Some of the mailing lists that I subscribe to are.

• The Link Exchange Digest, Moderated by John Audette of mmgco is packed with information on web publishing, banner exchanges, search engine issues and any other topic that may be of interest to Link Exchange members.
  You can subscribe to it by visiting the LED website.
• Netannounce, Is a list that accepts all kinds of announcements, it need not even be about a web site. They restrict commercial postings. So it is highly unlike that you will recieve spam from this list.
• Webpromote has a multitude of lists, but they unfortunately are not as content rich as the above two. But still they do have some pretty good lists.
• The heavy metal mailing list. Is for rockers only. to subscribe send mail to axl@iglou.com

www.lizt.com maintains a large collection of mailling lists. Both commercial and non commercial. Though it's no fault of theirs some of the commercial lists I tried to subscribe to have not sent me anything even one month after.

NNTP Servers

NNTP - Net News Tranfer Protocol servers are used to read mail, Unfortunately many ISPs dont have one or restrict the number of groups their server supports. While it is hard to find a server that provided access to all the newsgroups, by combining several NNTP servers it's possible to cover most of the usenet. Until recently I was using 206.136.168.3 and sdf.lonestar.org along with news2.linkexchange.com for the Link Exchange groups.
However both SDF and 206.136.168.3 started having difficulties and now I have switched to adenine.c.dna.affrc.go.jp, which covers a wide range of newsgroups. A very comprehensive list of NNTP servers can be found at the internet zoo

rtfm

Read The ------- Manual

Sorry Tripod, does not allow me to say it. rtfm.mit.edu maintains, an excellent archive of Usenet FAQs. These can be accessed by the use of an anonymous FTP client. Or by using the rtfm mail-server. To obtain a list of commands used with the mail-server send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the word help in the body of the message.