steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) (02/17/90)
[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 Minnesotarwf@PacBell.COM (Roy Fontes) (02/17/90)
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
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (02/18/90)
In article <A1404507216@thelake.mn.org> steve@thelake.mn.org (Steve Yelvington) writes: >* 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 >$20 range plus telecom expenses. Your information on Portal is more or less accurate. WELL is in Sausalito, CA, and is accessible through Compu$erve's packet network (not Telenet). They charge per-hour in addition to a monthly fee and telecom costs. There are less expensive places to read usenet; WELL's main attraction is its local conferences available nowhere else. (But if you're used to blowing big bucks on BIX, Compuserve, Delphi, GEnie, et al., WELL is a bargain.) -=EPS=-
randy@polecat.llnl.gov (Randy Futor) (02/22/90)
eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: >WELL is in Sausalito, CA, and is accessible through Compu$erve's packet >network (not Telenet). Not entirely true, Eric. I login to the WELL via Telenet's PC Pursuit ser- vice 2 or 3 times a week. ( I *would* like to see 2400baud access in more than a mere "7 major cities" in the US, but Time may be on my side in this. ) >There are less expensive places to read usenet . . . This is quite true! I use my rig at work & drive the cost ( to *me*!! ;-) right down to zero. >the WELL's main attraction is its local conferences available nowhere else. & the user community involved therein! Though your mileage will probably vary considerably, *I* think there are some excellent minds on that box & I like knowing they're there & accessible to me. -- randy@polecat.llnl.gov futor@ocfmail.ocf.llnl.gov