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Good day, At 03:47 PM 9/10/96 -0400, you wrote: >Subject: Usenet alternative > >Would someone who knows, please explain the differences between the >listserv, and a Usenet ? - It means nothing to me. > Usenet is another name for a newsgroup. A newsgroup is a discussion groups consisting of collections of related postings (also called articles) on a particular topic that are posted to a news server which then distributes them to other participating servers. There are thousands of newsgroups covering a wide range of subjects. You must subscribe to a newsgroup in order to participate in it or to track the discussion on an on-going basis. Unlike with a magazine or newspaper, subscribing to a newsgroup does not cost anything. Newsgroups are found primarily on Usenet, hence the name "usenet". Usenet is the collection of computers that participate in a global conferencing system that make newsgroups perhaps the largest distributed bulletin board system in the world. Newsgroups are one of the oldest and most widely used services on the Internet. There are more than 13,000 of them, with new ones coming online all the time. Not all newsgroups are carried by Usenet, and Usenet is carried by networks that are not on the Internet. Other than an owner moderating it, newsgroups are totally uncontrolled. Your IP (internet provider) may or may not download all the newsgroups to the server you use to read the articles is each group. There is, therefore, no guarantee that all PD List participants will have access to a Newsgroup. A Listserv is a mailing list, another type of discussion group. The difference between the two is that one subscribes to the Listserv and whenever anyone sends a message to the list, everyone automatically receives the message. With a Newsgroup, you have to go out to get the articles. Anyone can post anything they wish in a Newsgroup, thus enabling spamming (blindly posting commercial messages or advertisements to a large number of unrelated and uninterested newsgroups). A listserv can be controlled so that only those who have subscribed can post messages, thus preventing a plenteous plethora of painful missives from coming your way. Thus endth my 02 cents. Jeff Jones part time CG for Becky [log in to unmask]