What is alt.something.this
Where can I type in an “alt” and actually get someting? I have no idea what or where these things are but everyone is always talking about them. Please someone give me the straight dope on ALTs…
…And finally my lack of computer knowledge shows through
Those are newsgroups. What browser do you use?
Bear, I’m so glad you started this thread. I’ve always wanted to know but have been too afraid to ask.
I use IE.
You want the whole thing?
Gross oversimplification: Altnet is the redheaded stepbrother of Usenet, a hierarchical distributed message-board system. While Usenet has a formal method of creating new message boards, altnet is administrated by its users. Anyone who has taken the time to research how things work is presumed to have the maturity to use said techniques. In other words, it’s a hair away from anarchy. Though in a good way, usually.
If your browser is set to the proper news server, going to the URL news:alt.fan.cecil-adams should point you at, well, the newsgroup for fans of The Man himself.
Well that’s a description that’s a mite too techy for the newbies, don’t you think?
Newsgroups are like message boards, only different.
There.
And I didn’t even get into B & C News, INN, When the Net Was Flat, AARM, Kibo, The Day Tim Lost It, or tale. How about this:
In other words, it’s just like here.
Your ISP normally provides access to the newsgroups [some do not]. You can also sign up with a newsgroup provider.
IE comes with a newsgroup reader; you just need to point it to the news source. You can contact your service provider for help.
Forte makes a good free newsgroup reader called Free Agent. They also sell Agent. Again, you will need to point it to the news source.
To be technical again IE does not have a news reader built-in; Outlook and Outlook Express are the MS newsreaders.
Alt.* is part of Usenet; they are not seperate entities. Alt.* just has different rules. (The charter reads, in effect, “Use common sense.”)
The main newsgroup hierarchies
My guess is that alt. is short for alternative.
We’re arguing semantics. Do you consider de.* to be part of Usenet? How about triangle.? Us.? Demon.? Alt. was created separately from the big seven, explicitly to be an alternative to them, and is administrated differently than them. For a bit of the history, check out http://www.vrx.net/usenet/history/rename.html.
To provide a bit of a background… Newsgroups are indeed much like message boards. The primary reason for their existance is that Usenet predates the Web. While newsgroups are certainly still used today, they were one way for people to communicate in a message board type setting on the Internet before web-based message boards existed. (Just as gopher was a way for people to view documents over the Internet before the Web existed, though Usenet hasn’t died out like gopher has. Hmm, I probably lost anyone who hasn’t heard of gopher there.)
[/quote]
We’re arguing semantics. Do you consider de.* to be part of Usenet? How about triangle.? Us.? Demon.? Alt. was created separately from the big seven, explicitly to be an alternative to them, and is administrated differently than them. For a bit of the history, check out http://www.vrx.net/usenet/history/rename.html.
[/QUOTE]
OK, well, I consider all the machines that regularly sync with each other via NNTP to be part of Usenet, so that includes the other TLGs as well I’ve never met a news server that carried just alt.*. Very few servers carry every publically accessable hierarchy. Just my preference, though.