Project 1 - CMPE 80N
Class newsgroup participation (5%)
A class newsgroup will be set up for students to participate. A newsgroup can be thought of as a mixture of an electronic bulletin board (where announcements are posted) and discussion forum.
This project consists of taking part on this newsgroup joining the current discussion topic and/or starting a new one. Discussion topics must be somewhat related to the course. The newsgroup will be monitored by the TAs.

You can read UCSCs newsgroups from your CATS account. Log into unix.ucsc.edu or one of the cats machines and use a newsreader. It is highly likely that CATS software is already configured. If you are using a browser, you might be able to read the newsgroup by clicking on the ucsc.class.cmpe80n link. You can read it with netscape or pine from CATS.
If you are outside campus you can ssh to unix.ucsc.edu. You can download putty or the official ssh version to connect to cats. Once in cats, you can run "pine". From the main menu choose "L" for Folder List. Now go down to the News-Collection section. Hit "A" to Add a group and type ucsc.class.cmpe80n. You should now be able to browse the messages and post.
If you are inside campus and the program asks for your News (NNTP) server, type news.ucsc.edu.

Resources:
USENET @ faqs.org
USENET @ about.com
UCSC online literacy 101
CMPS 002 USENET lab
CATS Software

CMPE 80n class page
Contact the TA if you have questions.