| This just happened to be lying around waiting for an opportunity to
post. :-) Some of this is basic explanation.
A few months ago the Usenet newsgroups for Amiga were reorganized and
since then a few new ones have appeared. The net effect is that
instead of two main newsgroups with several _hundred_ messages daily,
there are now more than a dozen with a manageable number of messages
each day. Now anyone can follow topics of interest without having to
wade through lots of unrelated junk.
Reading Usenet is not much like reading Notes. Usenet postings are far
less focused, draw many duplicate responses and sometimes erupt into
flamethrowing sessions between people who have never met otherwise.
But Usenet is also a good source of news, rumors and solid technical
information. Several Commodore employees visit regularly.
Best of all, Usenet is free. Several Ultrix "server" nodes throughout
the corporation carry the most recent one to three weeks of postings.
There are VMS reader client programs available in both terminal and
DECwindows versions.
Notesfiles to read for more information:
UPSAR::NEWS-BACKBONE Usenet server news and information
CLO::VNEWS VMS terminal-oriented newsreader software
UFP::XRN DECwindows newsreader software
The newsgroup heirarchy:
comp.sys.amiga The original Amiga group -- GOING AWAY
comp.sys.amiga.tech Predecessor to .programmer -- GOING AWAY
comp.binaries.amiga Moderated: executable code distribution
comp.sources.amiga Moderated: source code distribution
(Note: .sources and .binaries often have coordinated postings.)
alt.sources.amiga Unmoderated sources
comp.sys.amiga.advocacy "Commodore should...," Amiga vs. Mac, etc.
comp.sys.amiga.announce Moderated: products, Fish Disks, meetings
comp.sys.amiga.applications Any Commercial and PD application topics
comp.sys.amiga.audio Sound- and audio-related topics
comp.sys.amiga.datacomm Terminal emulators, networks, downloads
comp.sys.amiga.emulations Emulations of other computers
comp.sys.amiga.games Game chat, reviews, opinions, spoilers
comp.sys.amiga.graphics Pictures, animation, rendering, modeling
comp.sys.amiga.hardware Any hardware topic
comp.sys.amiga.introduction Beginner questions and discussion
comp.sys.amiga.marketplace For sale and wanted
comp.sys.amiga.multimedia Multimedia, AmigaVision, competing packages
comp.sys.amiga.programmer Intuition, AmigaDOS, languages, compilers
comp.sys.amiga.reviews Moderated: reviews of new products
comp.sys.amiga.misc Catch-all discussion group
comp.unix.amiga A3000UX, Amiga Minix
alt.sys.amiga.demos Discussion of "Euro-style" demo disks
alt.sys.amiga.uucp Discussion and bug rpts on Dillon's UUCP
alt.sys.amiga.uucp.patches Patches to Dillon UUCP packages
Other groups available on some servers: aus.computers.amiga,
bit.listserv.i-amiga, some university Amiga groups
Apparently bogus groups: comp.sys.amiga.tex,
comp.sys.amiga.software.pirate, alt.amiga.demos
Wes
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