If you do not have a permanent connection to the Internet, and therefore it is costing you money to read the postings, you need to get yourself a newsgroup reader. This is a piece of software that will download the messages to your PC so that you can read them offline. This software will also let you join and leave newsgroups as you wish and will upload your postings in a batch. There are loads of these readers on the Internet, some are good, some not so good. Free Agent has lots of nice features for following discussion threads and can download only those threads that you are really interested in.
Forums are another place to meet other people.
They are similar to newsgroups but generally all postings and discussions are conducted on the Web. You can also find forums by subject. You will also find mailing lists here where postings are sent to your email box everyday. Unfortunately many newsgroups tend to have messages posted to them that are totally irrelevant to the subject being covered. Everything from sex sites, business opportunities and adverts will appear in most newsgroups.