Internet and New Media

(706.003 1VU Internet und neue Medien WS 2014/2015)

Exercise 0: Register for Course and Set Up Newsreader

0.1 Register for the Course on TUGrazOnline.

In one of eight tutorial groups, one per tutor. Details on TUGrazOnline. The groups differ in the time of their respective tutorials.

0.2 Set Up a Proper Newsreader

For this course you will need to have set up a proper newsreader to access newsgroups. If you do not know how to do this, read the lecture notes or go to your tutorial.

A newsreader is a news client which speaks NNTP protocol to a news server. I highly recommend that you use Thunderbird as your newsreader. Others include 40tude Dialog (Win) and MT-NewsWatcher (Mac). Opera and Outlook Express are not very good newsreaders in their default configuration.

Do not use a web browser to read and post news in these practicals! Using a web browser to access newsgroups is not the same as using a real news client.

I would also advise against using a mobile newsreader app for these practicals, since they generally do not have the range of possible settings and features that a laptop/desktop newsreader will have.

0.3 Thunderbird Setup in TU Graz Computer Labs

If you are using the computers in the TU Graz computer labs, read the following:

• The lab PCs run Windows 8 Enterprise 64-bit EN.
• Log on with your TU Graz account and password.
• The first login on a particular machine can take a while (a few minutes) due to various initialisations being carried out.
• Your user settings are saved to a virtual drive and are remembered between sessions and between PCs.
• You have no Administrator rights on the lab computers. That means you cannot install software which requires Admin access, including Firefox or Thunderbird extensions which also install components to the file system (such as Total Validator).

0.4 Configure Your Newsreader

Configure your newsreader:

• To access the TU Graz news server at news.tugraz.at
• With your real name.

• For the purposes of the INM practicals, so that we can identify you uniquely, you must use either:

  1. your TU Graz email address in the From field, or
  2. your TU Graz email address in the Reply-To field and a secondary email address in the From field, or
  3. a secondary email address in the From field or Reply-To field, which you have previously disclosed to your tutor by email from your TU Graz email account.

  In any case, for these practicals, you should always use a working email address, not masked addresses which have to be hand-edited to reply to.

• To use a valid signature.
• To generate valid message-ids.

If you do not know how to do any of this, read the lecture notes or go to your tutorial.

0.5 Subscribe to the TU Graz Test Newsgroup

Subscribe to the TU Graz test newsgroup tu-graz.test

This is where you can post test messages to your heart's desire. Do not post test messages to any of the INM newsgroups or to any other newsgroups! Ever.

0.6 Subscribe to the Main Course Newsgroup

Subscribe to the main course newsgroup tu-graz.lv.inm

This is where you should ask questions and where I will post answers and announcements.

There are several hundred of you taking the course, so I will generally not be able to answer personal email.