I would like to start by thanking Lloyd Humphries for his letter asking about newsgroups. Just when I was thinking about the lead article for this month's newsletter, he asked some good and interesting questions about what newsgroups are and how to use them.

So, here we go.

The term "Usenet" refers to the network of machines around the world that exchange newsgroup articles. "Newsgroups" are the various groups dedicated to exchanging information about any given topic. There are thousands upon thousands of newsgroups, and more are being added every day. Personally I frequent the newsgroup "rec.music.dylan" most often, so pardon me for using it as the main model in this article.

What Usenet Is

Each ISP (Internet Service Provider, such as Actrix) in New Zealand and around the world is connected to Usenet. Each has a news server that connects to one or more other central news servers in New Zealand. These, in turn, are connected to other news servers around the world. These servers co-operate and exchange newsgroup postings on a very regular basis. So, when I post a message to rec.music.dylan, it goes from my home machine to the Actrix news server using "nntp" (Network News Transfer protocol) where it is given a unique identifying number. The Actrix news server periodically connects to other Usenet servers. When it does, it transfers my message (and any others it has received) setting it aside for the rec.music.dylan newsgroup.

The various servers around the world that are connected to form "Usenet" interact with each other at different times, and some connect more frequently than others. It is conceivable therefore, that someone in France may post to my newsgroup. His or her post may have been read by someone in Istanbul, who replies to it.  Weirdly, I may receive the reply to the original message before I receive the original message itself, depending on which servers I am closest to, and how often these servers interact. Interaction times between Usenet news servers will vary from every few minutes to every few hours depending on settings. Normally, you will see your own postings appearing in the newsgroup pretty much right away, but they may not appear for others overseas for a couple of days.

What Usenet Isn't

Usenet is not an organisation. It has no central authority. In fact it has very little central anything. As a result, you can expect to come across anything and everything. There is very little you can do to stop someone who is behaving in an irritating or offensive way, especially if that person is far away from you geographically. Therefore, you may want to be careful about allowing your children unrestricted access to newsgroups. Even a mild and worthy newsgroup such as rec.music.dylan will contain posts with, shall we say, colourful language, innuendo and creatively suggestive insults. There are idiots the world over who seem to delight in offending. Some have nothing better to do that post to newsgroups dedicated to subjects that they hate. Newsgroups are free to anyone, so you may just have to "suffer such fools gladly."

This is not to say that participation in Usenet can't be a rewarding, enriching and informative experience. It certainly is. Besides being a great source of information, Usenet is a fine way to meet people from around the world with similar interests, and, with New Zealand being such a small country, this can be a real advantage.

Firstly, approach newsgroups with a thick skin. It is usually best to ignore the "serial insulters." Such people are called trolls because they delight in hurting others, or they deliberately drag bait through a newsgroup to see who they can hook. There is an unofficial newsgroup saying, "Don't feed the trolls." What this means is that people who troll will grow bored if no one reacts to them. Such people will move on if they find no reactive joy in your newsgroup.

Generally, complaining to an ISP (yours or theirs) will probably achieve little. An ISP is going to be very reluctant to try and curb one of their customer's "freedom of speech" even if they agree with you that the person is a pain in the neck. Once an ISP tries to do this, they open themselves up to a quagmire of difficulties with consistency and fairness.  You can complain if you like, usually to an address such as abuse@actrix.co.nz, but don't expect too much help unless the offender is being really and repetitively bad. It takes all sorts to make a world, and this is a sad fact.

You will also have the ability to control what is downloaded to your machine to some extent. Most news-reading programs will include a facility for blocking senders that annoy you. This is popularly referred to as a "killfile" and it is one way that you can filter out unwanted or offensive material. Currently on rec.music.dylan, for example, there is more discussion of the American election than there is on Bob Dylan. A killfile could be used, therefore, to filter out any posts with the word "election" in the title. If someone continually posts what you consider to be mindless dribble, you can filter out posts from that person's email address. Generally, the more you know about Usenet and your "newsreader" the better your control will be. And there's only one way to learn.

Now, all that sounds pretty terrible, but please, don't be put off. I am describing worst case scenarios above. Most Internet users are familiar with and use Usenet in one form or another without great problems. You can almost bet, too, that, no matter what your interest, there will be a newsgroup dedicated to its discussion, whether that be roses, artists, computer programs, games or 17th Century bellybutton lint brushes.

So How Do I Subscribe?

Subscribing to newsgroups is a piece of cake, and it is a free. There are a variety of free downloadable newsreaders on the Internet, and each has its advantages, disadvantages, detractors and advocates. Many people simply use the newsreader function of Outlook Express, and this is more than adequate, especially for the Usenet beginner. I will detail the steps below. If you have problems, please give our help desk a call. They can talk you through the nitty-gritty if needed.

Subscribing with Outlook Express

Step One

1. With Outlook Express open, click the Tools menu, then click Accounts.
2. In the Internet Accounts box which comes up, there are a number of tabs, including Mail, News and Directory Service. Click the News tab.
3. On the right hand side, click the Add button, and then the News button in the small grey box that appears.
4. Work through the frames, adding your name and email address. When you come to the dialogue box requesting the name of your news (NNTP) server, type in news.actrix.co.nz (no full-stop at the end). Don't tick the "My news server requires me to log on" box.
5. Click Finish and your news account now exists on your computer. 

Step Two

6. On the right hand side of their Outlook Express program, most people have a list of folders. You should now see news.actrix.co.nz appearing near the bottom of the folder list. If you click this, your Outlook Express will turn into a newsreader.
7. A box should come up asking you whether you would like to view the list of available newsgroups. Click Yes. If this box doesn't come up, click on the Newsgroups button that appears near the top of the Outlook Express newsreader. A box called Newsgroup Subscriptions should appear as will a connection box if you are not already online.
8.Connect to the Internet if you aren't already connected. Outlook Express will automatically begin downloading a list of available newsgroups from the Actrix news server (news.actrix.co.nz). This may take a few minutes, but it only has to be done once.
9. Once you have the list of newsgroups down, you can use the search box ("Display newsgroups which contain") to locate newsgroups that suit you. Wait until all the newsgroups have been downloaded before you search. If you know the specific name of the newsgroup you want (e.g. rec.music.dylan) enter the whole thing in the search field.
10. Click on one you might like to subscribe to and then click the Subscribe button to the right and then click OK. Voila! You're subscribed!! You will notice that your chosen newsgroup now appears below news.actrix.co.nz in your list of folders.
11. Click on your chosen newsgroup in your folder list. Outlook Express will change to look pretty much the way it does for you as an email program.
12. Outlook Express may start downloading newsgroup messages on its own. If it doesn't, or you'd like it to download more, click the Tools menu and then click Get Next 300 headers. The number of headers to download at a given time can be set under Tools/Options.
13. Click the little cross beside main messages to expand them and see submessages. Altogether these messages and sub-messages are called threads.
14. That's pretty much it. From here you can use Outlook Express to select messages, reply to them in the newsgroup or reply to the sender privately (try right-clicking on the message header and choosing "Reply to Group" or "Reply to Sender") . Because the Internet is a wonderful vehicle of discovery, I will leave the rest to you for now. Experiment with a few settings and with the various tools to see what you can do.

Unsubscribing

Should you find that newsgroup is not quite what you expected, or if you'd like to unsubscribe for whatever reason, simply right-click on the newsgroup in your folder list. Then left-click on Unsubscribe. Outlook Express will unsubscribe you and automatically delete any headers it has already downloaded to your machine.

Usenet Etiquette

Stay tuned for next month when I'll write a little more on what is expected of Usenet participants. For now, though, remember your Ps and Qs. Most newsgroups have a few regular "high profile" participants who seem to be self-appointed leaders. It is usually best to just read the newsgroup for a few days or weeks until you're familiar with who they are and how others behave (this is called "lurking"). There is nothing more annoying than a newsgroup newbie bursting on the scene and pontificating about everything when he or she has little idea about what is currently being discussed or what has been posted in the recent past. Look before you leap, and get the feel of the water before you take the plunge. Remember, too, that everyone in the world has access to whatever you post to a newsgroup. Beware. Your sins will often find you out. Mine have.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that Actrix have teamed up with Digital Mobile to bring you the following great deal on Vodafone prepay mobile phones - exclusive to Actrix customers! Purchase any one of these six prepay phones using the Actrix online order form and you will receive a hands-free headset free of charge.

Here's how it works:

Check out the offer at www.actrix.co.nz/DigitalMobile where you can learn all about the phones, their benefits and features, and about the offer itself in more detail. Go to the online order form, fill it out and click submit. Your phone will be shipped to you within 48 hours by overnight courier, and you will be billed through your Actrix account. It's that simple!

Please see the terms and conditions at the web site, and be advised that we will not process orders from customers who are more than a month behind in their Actrix payments.

Actrix Help Desk Now Open 24/7

That's right, our help desk is now open 24 hours per day, seven days per week. You can call them on 0800 ACTRIX (228749) or email them at support@actrix.co.nz. They are there to help you with whenever you have trouble with your Actrix service, or whenever you need to know more about it. You pay their wages with your subscription fees, so please feel free to use them.

Actrix News Page

Actrix publishes a news page which is updated most days. This page will contain news about important things that may be happening on the Internet such as the latest virus alerts. It will also contain information about interruptions to service that may be coming, or that may have just happened. Reasons will also usually be given. To access the news page, click the News button on our home page (www.actrix.co.nz) or surf straight over to www.actrix.co.nz/news.html.

Last month I asked readers to write in submitting their favourite sites so that they could be shared with everyone. In judging which ten were winners, I looked for the best sites under 5 different categories: Weird/Intriguing, Amusing, Useful, Stimulating and Popular. Each winner received a Norrie the Nerd Christmas chocolate bar. See below for this month's competition.

Seeing as I have a stack of Christmas Norrie chocolate bars that should be given out at this time of year (way more than ten) I think what I'll do is send one to every child (14 and under) who writes in to tell me what sort of things they have learned from using the Internet. You need to include your name and age, and give me an address to send your choccy bar to. You also need to tell me whether I am allowed to publish what you write in the next newsletter (no addresses or e-mail addresses will be published). Someone in your family has to be an Actrix customer, too. Every child who writes in with something decent gets a bar until I run out of them. Be quick!

If you want to learn about Norrie the Nerd, visit my homepage at http://www.actrix.gen.nz/users/norrie.

Split Files Shell Extension v3.1

This is a neat little program for splitting up files of a large size so that they can be saved onto a series of floppy disks, and taken elsewhere (to another computer) for loading.

The program is easy to use. Once installed, it adds a line to the "right-click menu" of your machine. If you would like to split a file, let's take a 3.5 megabyte mp3, for example, all you need to do is right-click on the file, and then left click on "Split this file." This calls up the Split Files program which splits the file up into three or more smaller files that can be fit onto floppies. The brilliant thing is that the program makes one of these smaller files an ".exe" file (executable program file). You can download this free program at

http://space.dolphin.free.fr/.

It's not a large program, and shouldn't take long to download.

The program is also reasonably easy to figure out how to use, and there is a good page of instructional material available at the site. You see this page when you click the Split File link. The only thing to be sure of is that it is set to make the ".exe" file.

To make sure it is:

1. Right-click on the large file you want to split.
2. Left-click on "Split this file."
3. In the File Splitting box that comes up, click the Options button.
4. Untick the box  next the the words "No header."
5. Tick the box next to the words "Automatic Merging (make .exe file).
6. Click OK. The Options box will disappear.
7. Click the Start button to split the large file.
8. Copy the files onto floppies and take them wherever you want to go.

When you get to your destination computer you can simply copy the smaller files into the same directory of your choice. Double click on the smaller file that ends with the ".exe" extension, and it will re-assemble all the smaller files together and recreate the original file.

I've tried it, and it works!

Did you know that "gen" and "co" are interchangeable in your email address or that our help desk is now open 24 hours per day, seven days per week?  It will be closed on Christmas Day and New Years Day, however.

Have a good Christmas and New year,

Rob Zorn
editor@actrix.co.nz