Out of all the parts on the Internet, the ability to post to a newsgroup has
to be the hardest thing. Reading is no problem -- there are many news servers
that allow public access for reading, but very very few servers allow you
to post as well. So what do you do?
Well I could say "here's a list of public access servers that carry AGM", but
I'm not because:
- They're never constant - the list would change daily as
access is removed or added, or it goes off line.
- As soon as a list of servers is found on a web page, there are
two effects:
- That page suddenly gets lots of hits from other people doing
a web search for these lists
- Which means that the listed servers get shutdown because
too many people are using them.
So instead, I'll tell you of ways to get and post news via the web, and give
email gateways (which also change on an almost daily basis as well, but they
tend to be more stable than server access).
Access via the WWW
The easiest way to read and post to news, without having continuing problems
with newsreaders, is to use a Web Gateway. These pages are varied in their
complexity and functionality, but they all allow you to do two things: read
and post to newsgroups.
The most well known of these is Dejanews.
This service also acts as a news archive, so any post that arrives at dejanews
will immediately go into an archive, so you can look back over posts that are
months old.
Another service exists at NewzBot.
This is a lot less frilly and advanced as Dejanews, but it does carry AGM and
you can post as well :-).
You can read news at the
Educational Computing Network, but you can't post.
Zippo provides access to Usenet, however
to get at many of the news groups (including AGM) you have to pay a
subscription.
Connections to AGM:
Email Gateways
An alternative to posting via the WWW is to use email to send a post to a
gateway that will send your email onto Usenet. However, the complexity
of use varies. There are two sorts:
- Scan the address
- Scan the header
Gateways that use the address to decide what group to send on to are the
easiest to use. For example, to send an post to AGM, you'd send an email
to: alt.good.morning@mail2news.someserver.net. You don't need any
special skill bar the ability to use email for these. However, the
gateways that use these forms are as stable as house built on sand. So,
for the reasons listed right at the start, I'm not listing them.
Email me to get more info, but if I don't
know you, I won't answer.
Gateways that look at the header of the email tend to be more stable, as
they are less open to abuse, so they tend to stay around longer. But
(and this is a big but), you need to know how to change the headers of your
email, and this will vary from program to program, and with many, you may
not be able to do this. To use these gateways, you need to add a line to
the header that starts: Newsgroups: , followed by the newsgroups
you want to post to. For example:
Newsgroups: alt.good.morning
will tell the gateway that the post is for alt.good.morning. Again, I'm
not going to list the gateways here, so please 
