Newsgroups' are created in order to specify a subject, which may be as mainstream and serious as news.politics or as frivolous as alt.barney.die.die.die, but there are thousands of newsgroups to choose from. These groups are organized according to the prefix. Prefixes include comp, misc, sci, soc, talk, news, rec, and alt, and serve to distinguish variations in subject discussion. Access the newsreader through the menu system by choosing Usenet News or through the Unix shell by typing 'trn'. To see a list of available newsgroups, type 'l string' to call up a list of newsgroups containing 'string' in the name.
Most newsreaders have online help available.
From trn, type 'h' for a help menu. To post an article, type 'Pnews' from the shell. An interesting place to start in the newsgroups might be alt.college.occidental, with articles only from Oxy students, faculty, staff and alumni. A basic Internet service is the provision of interactive login to a remote host. Telnet is a program and protocol that allows you to do so.