BKUSNTBK.RVW   950301
 
"The Usenet Book", Bryan Pfaffenberger, 1995, 0-201-40978-X, U$26.95/C$34.95
%A   Bryan Pfaffenberger bp@watt.seas.virginia.edu
%C   1 Jacob Way, Reading, MA   01867-9984
%D   1995
%G   0-201-40978-X
%I   Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
%O   U$26.95/C$34.95 800-822-6339 617-944-3700 Fax: (617) 944-7273
%P   468
%T   "The Usenet Book"
 
As the author states, Usenet news is second only to email in the significance
of its contribution to mass communications.  Usenet may be the first "Internet"
application that many newcomers experience, and is often confused with the
Internet, itself.  With thousands of newsgroups; some calm, some incendiary,
some useful, many trivial; and traffic volumes equalling hundreds of novels per
*day*, Usenet can be a very hostile place for the newcomer.
 
This book is a thorough compilation of Usenet information.  As well as basic
Usenet news concepts (chapters one, two and four), chapter three describes the
basics of dial up and IP connections.  Chapters five, and fifteen to seventeen,
cover Usenet customs and culture, describing the spectrum of behaviour, as well
as the accepted taboos.  Chapters six through fourteen deal with the variety of
newsreaders that users may encounter, from commercial services to tin, nn and
rn, to Trumpet for Windows, and Newswatcher for the Mac.  More than a hundred
pages are devoted to the newsgroup reviews in chapter eighteen.  This group is
quite select, as it must be for the volume and value the author has put into
the reviews.  It is, therefore, backed up with a list of newsgroups with FAQs
(Frequently Asked Questions lists) archived at the MIT server, and a subject
index to newsgroups.  (Your humble scribe was just puffed all to heck to find
out that someone had *finally* noticed the Book Review Index list.)  The last
part of the book has chapters on creating a newsgroup, becoming a Usenet site,
and Usenet issues and future.
 
A book of this size, dealing with an entity as vast as Usenet news, could not
be without errors.  "Bogus" newsgroups are mentioned as the outcome of mistyped
or incorrectly created entries.  You will, however, frequently see valid
newsgroups described, by the system, as bogus.  This happens when traffic is
low and groups are "eliminated" by the server to conserve disk space.  The
section on FAQs lists (in detail) how to get them from the MIT server by ftp,
but doesn't mention the mail server.  (And the author was caught by the
Sexotica GIF/Kaos 4 hoax.  Yes, be careful of file postings on the net--but
there *is* a lot of worthwhile stuff, and a *very* low incidence of infection.)
 
The book could use some reorganization, and a definite trimming of some
repetitious material.  This is, however, the best general reference on Usenet
news that I have seen to date.  Internet trainers should very definitely look
at it.  New, and old, Usenet devotees will likely find it timesaving and
useful.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995   BKUSNTBK.RVW   950301

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