---------------------------- ua.upd ----------------------------------- ###################################### ### Updates to Usenet_Access.txt ### ###################################### keys: MT == minor typos ; TI == textual improvements ; MTI == minor TI; Version Changes ======= ======= 1. 25/04/96 - original document 2. 02/05/96 - adding info about Liszt; MT; 3. 05/05/96 - adding about EXPIRES field; MT and TI. 4. 07/05/96 - adding a section on lists of free/commercial ISP's/IAP's/BBS's; Adding more info about UUNET. Also MT and TI. 5. 08/05/96 - MT, and adding a section `comments on answers'. 6. 13/05/96 - MT, MTI. Adding info about the popular Web-browsers. Adding a section on offline news-reading. Adding explanation on setting NNTPSERVER on IBM-PC. 7. 21/05/96 - MT, adding about UltraIndex. Removing ISP lists which appeared on UltraIndex. 8. 13/06/96 - Adding info about the InReference and Vigilant filtering services. Modifying the info about Stanford filtering service. Adding the reference to DejaNews by e-mail. 9. 25/06/96 - adding info on AltaVista, on Excite, on MaasInfo, on Foldoc by e-mail. 10. 27/06/96 - a caution remark on my info on UUNET. 11. 01/07/96 - adding another location for newsgroups archives, and the files of Infinite Ink 12. 08/07/96 - updating info about Stanford --> InReference. 13. 15/07/96 - make the correction on UUNET, adding timeline source, adding comment to distribution rights, and adding the "No Acknowledgments" paragraph. 14. 22/07/96 - typo correction tile.net -> www.tile.net . Removing info on Yanoff's, as the info there is obsolete. 15. 24/07/96 - quoting from Rankin's doc about mail to news gateways. 16. 27/07/96 - adding a reference to a new UseNet Filter (UNNF at Bonn) 17. 01/08/96 - references to the sources of NewsHunter were replaced. added a reference to a list of commercial news-providers. Also many MTIs. Added a remark about the new ROADMAP96 course. Removed the reference to freenews at A.17 . 18. 05/08/96 - references to search engines by e-mail were replaced. One more list of ISP lists was added (iap_meta_list). Few more comments on DejaNews, and on the UNNF at Bonn. 19. 06/08/96 - e-mail address of the author, and of this autoresponder were changed. 20. 17/08/96 - another source for open NNTP-servers, with a simple search engine, was added to A.24; small modifications on A.17 21. 10/10/96 - UA.txt, UA.upd, UA.sup, UA.not were renamed to be all in lower cases. uzipaz.ar autoresponder will no longer support "get UA.txt" or "get ua.txt". For alternative, see below. Two sources for open NNTP server were added. List of email2newsgroups gateways, was updated (quoted from accmail.6 by Bob Rankin). Boyd's documents are now on Infomart. Added a ref for description of the different hierarchies (C.2 for A.4). A.6 was entirely rewritten. 22. 18/10/96 - Another source for email to news gateways is added. This includes a new type of gateways. also a correction for "who is updating the list of the newsgroups on the news.groups etc." also few MTI. 23. 23/12/96 The Usenet filter at Bonn now has a name: NewsSIEVE. Added other info on NewsSIEVE. Added a Q&A on crossposting and redirecting. Added info on using Agora servers in order to access news (A.23). The ISP information service by email on aimnet was moved to penny-a-pic: updated info is given. Also mention another ISP-list by e-mail. InReference, DejaNews, and NewsSIEVE are now allowing postings, and replying to messages. A new Usenet by WWW service (FeedME) is added. A new list of free NNTP servers was added. My document is now available also on WWW and also by anonymous ftp (see below) also updated this list of FAQ sources, and a ref. to a search engine for FAQ. news.lists was renamed to news.lists.misc 24. 24/03/97 Infomart autoresponder is defunct. Binky autoresponder replaces Infomart. Few other resources for ua.txt are added. Few more lists of Free NNTP servers are added. Few lines on periodic automatic offline news-downloaders/ filters were added to the answer on offline news-readers. I removed the list of mail to news gateways, as it becomes obsolete rapidly; the references to updates of these lists are still there. Few statistical numbers are changed, and few TIs as well. 25. 18/04/97 FeedME service moved to a new address, and supports over 30,000 newsgroups. It also allows postings. JWA's list of open NNTP servers has moved to a permanent place, got a name (NewzBot) and provides new services. Few words about Billy News - a new Usenet by WWW service, which provides many features usually found only in regular newsreaders. Few words about *.test newsgroups in a section that I added between A.23 and A.24 (Hence numbers of all sections after A.23 were shifted by one). In the section for E-Mail only users, I added a reference to getit4u and email4u documents. 26. 16/06/97 The address of Virtual University is updated. Wizardchives site is no longer a recommended source for ua.txt. Few words about the Secure News (snews) protocol. The Binky autoresponder is closed. GetWeb allows posting Forms of the method POST to WWW. This allows e-mail-only users to post messages to Usenet, using various www2news services - more info, and a small list of such services, is added. FeedME no longer supports posting due to abuse. Info on the "Distribution:" field is now more detailed. More on the path of messages to moderated newsgroups. link to "How to receive banned newsgroups FAQ" has been removed as it is no longer relevant. 27. 18/08/97 Vigilant service is shut down. The status of "the son of rfc1036" draft was erroneous and is corrected. List of lists of open/free news-servers, has been updated. A new Getweb service is added. A change in the URL of the advance search in DejaNews. The info on the Distribution field has been corrected. Another list of archived newsgroup was added. A.15 now includes a list and reference to works aiming to extend/revise the Usenet standards. 28. 04/11/97 "news:" type of URL accepts in many cases also news-server directives, (nonstandard but becomes common). Number of supported newsgroups is removed for NewsSieve. Address of the list of mail to news gateways is changed. Reference to Newbie-U as an introductory source for Usenet. NewsHunter is back - last year, the author of NewsHunter decided not to support and not to provide his software. Now, he started to support and provide his program again (and the version is also updated). 29. 13/02/98 Adding about news:message-id type of URL, and about the Option to get a message via Dejanews if you know the Message-Id. Giving a more detailed info on the reference on "estimation of Usenet growth", and mentioning the Usenet growth table at Timeline. Adding about "MyDejanews" - A great free service that allows customization of Dejanews. Adding a new format for ua.txt - ua.htm . (See at the bottom of this message the location of the HTML file). My preferred permanent address has chanced, see below). Secured NNTP is corrected to NNTPS (was erroneously written as SNNTP) Number of newsgroups in the big-eight hierarchies, is no longer periodically posted to Usenet, and there is no longer formal list of those newsgroups. An alternative way to extract the full list is mentioned. Number of newsgroups in the big-eight hierarchies, is updated, and also the number of hierarchies. Many other small corrections were made. Adding about www.faqs.org and ftp.faqs.org, estimated number of newsgroups was updated. 30. 12/04/99 Major changes due to the fact that over a year have been passed. Due to the amount of changes they will not be listed here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * To receive the ua document (recent version) you may use any of the following URLs: ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/iv/iverham/ua.txt ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/iv/iverham/ua.zip (compressed) http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/ua.txt http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/ua.zip (compressed) http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/ua.htm (HTML) http://members.aol.com/bombagirl/freeware/ua.txt http://www.wireworm.com/ua/ua.txt http://www.wireworm.com/ua/ua.zip (compressed) or via autoresponder, by sending an empty message to ua.txt@wireworm.com * To receive information on the last version date and a short historical information on the changes, use the URL: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/ua_upd.txt * To be added to a list of notification whenever a new version is published, send a message to ua-list-request@wireworm.com with the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) as the SUBJECT of the message. * To remove yourself from that list send a similar message, but with "unsubscribe" instead. For e-mail contact with the author: the address is uzi_poboxes.com (where you should replace the underscore with the "at" sign). Uzi ------------------------------------------------------------------------