TCS - Super Saturday report

Super Saturday report

by Richard Hall
Tulsa Computer Society
From the August 1999 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

The Online and Internet SIG meetings on 6/19/99 Super Saturday went great, but not without a few hitches to test our computer skills. We had trouble connecting. But one of the audience graciously allowed us to use his account from a different ISP and we got online. Connections speeds were not breathtaking at about 21K, but we were able go to tucows.com and download an MP3 player. We used Sonique as a player because the price was right. We then went to the Sonique website and downloaded a tune called "Fuzz" or by a group of that name. Anyway, there were some tense moments as the presenter canceled the download instead of minimizing it. All was not lost, however. Returning to the Sonique site, we downloaded Fuzz again and it picked up at where it had left off. We thought the tune would be a migraine maker, but it turned out to be a nice jazz number. It came across well on the cheap speakers supplied by the SIG presenter. We then tried to play the MP3 file with Real Audio. The Real program on the computer was evidently old and we watched as the program upgraded itself several times. The file played well in Real. The upgrading of the program led to the discussion of other programs, such as Win98 and Norton products, that upgrade themselves online. We ended the session by watching ZDTV on Real Player. The afternoon session consisted of a discussion of newsgroups and list services. We talked about what newsgroups are and how they are a free-for-all system of 50,000 or more bulleting boards. We discussed Netiquette and how lurking, or observing newsgroup interactions online, may be the best way to learn how to post messages on them. We looked at Tucows for an appropriate newsgroup reader, but we did not get around to loading it before we ran out of time. We browsed the newsgroups available through the presenter's ISP, but we also searched Yahoo for other newsgroup servers. We logged into the Microsoft Network news server, msnews.microsoft.com, and subscribed to newsgroups on that server. Toward the end of the SIG, the presenter tried to answer questions of the audience and everyone went home challenged to get online and post important messages to servers of their choice in the vast expanse of cyberspace.

Here are the links that we used throughout the day.

FAQs and Information about Newsgroups

http://www.deja.com/

http://www.remarq.com/

http://209.1.206.4/netiq.htm

http://www.newsreaders.com/

http://www.newsville.com/news/usenet.faq.html

http://www.webfreestuff.com/c1-1-4.htm

http://www.freenntp.com/complete.htm

http://www.w3.org/LineMode/Defaults/AboutNewsServers.html

http://www.newbie-u.com/news/

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Servers/Usenet/