Finally, the menus themselves are often idiosyncratic and not especially good at showing you where to look for specific items. You can, for example, sign on to a discussion of a particular artist, a computer language, a social issue, a geographical area, or a discipline. The quality and volubility of the conversations varies widely, and you should always save the message that explains how to get off a discussion group if you can't stand the traffic it generates. The Directory of Scholarly and Professional Electronic Conferences is a good place to find interesting discussion groups to join, and includes information on the real-time discussion groups called MUDS and MOOs. News Group readers-programs for reading and responding to news groups.
News groups are a mixed bag.
Many of them are frivolous time-wasters in which people who have opinions and no manners demonstrate those qualities to excess. Fetch and other FTP programs-make it possible to connect to a remote site and download files from it to your computer. These help you transfer files easily, but you first have to know which files you want and where they are. It also is important to think about how large they are, since really big files take a long time to download and can overburden the wiring that carries all the Internet traffic and shouldn't be downloaded during peak working hours. Telnet requires some knowledge-especially the address of the computer you want to connect to and some idea of what you want when you get there.