Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!umn-d-ub!cs.umn.edu!thelake!steve From: steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: newsgroup access Message-ID: Date: 16 Feb 90 16:29:46 GMT References: <2727@pbhye.PacBell.COM> Lines: 39 [In article <2727@pbhye.PacBell.COM>, rwf@PacBell.COM (Roy Fontes) writes ... ] > Is this Newsgroup accessable from home terminals if you > are unemployed or retired?? If so how do you access and > is there any cost involved. Thanks in advance This is a good general-interest question, so I'm responding here instead of sending email. * Call a BBS that carries them. There are many privately operated bulletin board systems that carry various subsets of Usenet. A monthly "Nixpub" list of such BBSes is posted in the pubnet.nixpub newsgroup. If you don't have access to that, send me email and I'll dig up a recent copy for you. Some of these BBSes are free; some ask for contributions or charge fees. * Call a commercial service that carries them. The two that I know of are Portal System (Cupertino, Calif.), and Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (San Francisco, I think). Both of these are accessible on Telenet; you type "connect portal" or "connect well". Both charge monthly fees in the $10 to $20 range plus telecom expenses. I read an article in the New York Times about a similar system that was going up on the East Coast, but I don't recall details. * Wheedle a guest account on a business or university system that carries them. (Good luck there!) * Set up your own node. This is not necessarily expensive. Free UUCP-compatible mail and news software is available for most contemporary personal computers. I run such a system on my Atari ST (1 meg RAM, hard drive) and currently receive 33 newsgroups, some of which I forward to a local BBS. (All this works automatically, on my voice line, while I sleep.) The comp.mail.uucp newsgroup currently has an ongoing discussion of PC-based email packages. You also could inquire in the comp.sys.* newsgroup for your particular machine. To obtain a feed, contact your local Unix users organization, universities, and corporations. -- Steve Yelvington at the (snow-covered) lake in Minnesota