On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:31:52 -0700, Firstlight wrote:

Hello Users,

I am obviously too dumb to survive in the computer era. I can see posts
to RAS online, but no matter what I do, I can't get them delivered to my
inbox. Is there somebody who can walk me through the steps? I've tried
several different addresses.

That's how it should work: USENET, of which r.a.s is one of a few tens of
thousands of newsgroups is a sort of distributed bulletin board or forum.
It is designed to be read online, though some newsreaders can work
offline. USENET itself is almost as old as e-mail. Both are almost 20
years older than the World Wide Web.

Some newsreaders, e.g. Thunderbird, can handle both e-mail and USENET,
but in my opinion you're better served by using separate programs.

All the programs I'm about to list are free to download, try, and go on
using if you like them. Except for the ones I sat are paid for. If you're
a Windows user, try:

- Forte's FreeAgent does everything well but doesn't have a killfile
It can work offline: in this mode you go online, download all the news
for your subscribed groups and drop offline to read them and write
replies. Then you go online again briefly to upload your replies.

- Forte's Agent (about $30 to upgrade FreeAgent) does have a killfile
Whether you need a killfile depends on the newsgroups you read: some
are full of trolls and spam, Others, like r.a.s, aren't.
I used FreeAgent/Agent for years until I stopped using Windows.

- also NewsRover and Ozum (I haven't used either of these)


For Linux:

- Pan (my current newsreader)

For OS X (I don't use OS X)


- try Unison or Thoth


I've used Thunderbird and didn't like it much for either for mail or
news. It hasn't had anything like the development effort that Firebird,
its Mozilla stablemate, got and in my opinion this really shows.

HTH


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |