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Depending on your facility, the access to the
international networks, or the availability
of the tools described
in this chapter, may be restricted. The electronic network can be
of great help when asking for information in the user community. One
system, called USENET
NEWS, is available at most
academic sites. Its principle is that of an exchanging bulletin
board. I.e., you 'post' something and this can be read by all
others due to the replication
mechanism of the system. A certain
discipline should be adhered to in writing messages (so-called
netiquette). In biology, many NEWS groups of interest are also
available as electronic mail
exploder lists. This means that you can
interact with thousands of people via electronic mail.
NEWS is a program which must be installed on your computer to
allow you to read the messages.
It is available in various flavours,
the most common one is described below.
The NEWS system on UNIX can be read either with screen-oriented newsreaders,
like 'rn', 'trn',
'nn','tin' or similar, or with graphics-oriented systems (mouse
& click) like 'xrn'. The command
'man' (see previous sections for on-line help)
on any of these programs should get you started
on the system prompt, and help
you to find an entry point. Unfortunately, the operation of
newsreaders is too diverse to explain it here. To start the 'nn'
NEWS reader, you can use
the command
% tin
The system will start up with a help screen on how to use it. Read it carefully
(make
notes if needed), and proceed accordingly.
The bulletin boards of USENET NEWS are also available as electronic mail. To send and receive
mail, refer to the section about mail servers .
To
subscribe to a group, you must first obtain the address of the
group and information on the
procedure of subscription. DO NOT SEND MESSAGES
TO THE GROUP if you want to subscribe. Read
the
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sheet below.
The following article is available either via the network or in printed form:
Subsection 4.9.1 USENET NEWS
Subsection 4.9.2 BIOSCI BULLETIN BOARDS
Subsection 4.9.3 Frequently Asked Questions
Smith, Una R. (1993) "A Biologist's Guide to the Internet."
This article summarises most of
the questions asked
in networking together with the appropriate answers.
It is published monthly in the USENET
newsgroups sci.bio, bionet.general, and news.answers.
The document is also available via 'anonymous
ftp' as file "biology/guide" from the server
pit-manager.mit.edu (approx. 20 pages).
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