[01] WHAT IS USENET? HOW DO I GO ABOUT BEING A PART OF USENET?
 
     USENET consists of thousands of topic related "newsgroups".  Submissions
     to these newsgroups propogate via internetworked news servers through
     out the world. 

     From the UNIX shell, create a file in your home directory called
     .newsrc.  Add the list of groups you want to read like this:

       comp.lang.lisp:
       rec.music.makers.synth:
       comp.os.cpm:
       comp.36bit.multics:
       comp.36bit.twenex:

     The popular news readers seem to be trn and tin.  You can run either
     from the UNIX shell.

     Posting messages can be done from within a newsreader, or by using
     the "postnews" or "Pnews" commands.

     NOTE FOR PINE USERS!

     If you want to read news from within pine, set the NNTP server to be 
     "news.sdf.org" Note that news can't be reached outside of sdf.  However
     if you have a tunnel running (either via the MetaARPA or VPN memberships)
     you can connect to the news server.