~ or $HOME or home directory
 The Unix directory that you are in when you first log on to your
 account.  You can always get home by typing `cd'.

.newsrc            
 A file in your home directory that keeps track of which newsgroups
 you're subscribed to and what articles you've read.

article or message
 One item that is posted to a newsgroup or mailed to an email
 address.  Often the word "article" is used for news postings and
 "message" is used for email.

bang
 "Exclamation mark" or `!'.  In Unix an exclamation mark can be used
 to go out to your shell and run a program while you are in the midst
 of running another program.  For more info, see "shell out."

BBS
 A bulletin board system (or service) is similar to news in that
 a group of people publicly discuss things.  A difference between
 a BBS and Net news is that a BBS is usually centralized and all
 the articles are stored on one machine.  Net news is decentralized
 and news articles are replicated on thousands of news machines around
 the world.

browser
 A Web browser.

Clarinet news
 UPI and Reuters news that is distributed and stored in the same way
 that Usenet news is.  Clarinet news costs money so not all Internet
 providers receive it.

desktop computer
 The machine you are physically working on.  If this machine is not
 "on the Internet" (see definition) then it needs to use communication
 software to connect to a machine on the Internet.

expire
 Since there is such a high volume of news on the Net, each
 article can only be made available for a short amount of time.
 Different Internet hosts have different rates of expiration --
 usually from 2 to 15 days.

flame
 To verbally attack a person, rather than a person's ideas.  

flame war
 A group of people verbally attacking each other. 

followup
 To "followup" to a news article means to respond by posting an
 article to the newsgroup.

FQDN 
 Fully qualified domain name.

GUI
 Graphical User Interface such as Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, or X
 Windows, and OS/2.  Pronounced like the word "gooey."

HTML
 HyperText Markup Language is the markup language used to create Web
 pages.

HTTP
 HyperText Transfer Protocol is the protocol used to transfer the bits
 (0's and 1's) that comprise Web pages.

IMAP
 Internet Message Access Protocol is a protocol for accessing messages
 on your Internet host.  With IMAP, you can choose whether to leave 
 messages on your host or transfer them to your desktop computer.

init file
 A file in your .nn directory that's used to establish variable
 settings, macros, and other things.

kill
 To "kill" a subject (or author) means to mark all articles with that
 subject (or by that author) read.

kill/select file
 A file (~/.nn/kill) that keeps track of what subjects and authors
 you want to automatically kill or select.

local and remote host 
 These two terms are relative.  When you connect from one Internet
 machine to another, the one you start at is the "local host" and the
 one you connect to from the local host is the "remote host."

mailer or mail user agent or MUA
 Software that allows you to read and respond to mail.  Examples are
 pine, elm, Berkeley mail, Pegasus Mail, and Eudora.

mail transport agent or MTA 
 Software that transports mail messages.  Examples are sendmail or
 smail.

menu mode or selection mode
 In nn, this is when the list of authors and subjects of articles in
 a newsgroup are displayed.  You choose the articles you're
 interested in by typing their IDs.

moderated newsgroup
 A newsgroup that has a moderator, i.e., someone who looks at each
 article before it gets posted and decides whether it is appropriate.  
 Examples are comp.viruses and bit.listserv.nettrain.

The Net
 The Internet. 

Net news or Internet news
 All the thousands of newsgroups and articles that are distributed
 through the Internet.  This includes Usenet and Clarinet news.

news reader
 Software that can be used to read Net news.  Examples are nn, tin,
 trn, pine, Netscape, Free Agent, and News Express.

newsgroup or group
 A discussion area in Net news.  For example, rec.arts.movies is
 a newsgroup for discussion of movies.

nn
 A news reader that displays articles in a menu and lets you choose
 which ones you want to read.  After you have read the articles you
 want to read, it marks all the articles in that newsgroup as read,
 so you won't see them the next time you read that newsgroup.  nn
 stands for "no news" because the default is to not see any old
 news.  FYI, you can view old news by typing `G a'.

on the Internet
 A machine that is "on the Internet" has an IP (Internet Protocol)
 address, and can directly participate in the Internet.  For example,
 it may be able to receive mail and news, and connect to other
 Internet machines using ftp and telnet.  If you have a personal
 interactive account, then your machine is not "on the Internet" --
 it uses your local host to access the Net.

PGP
 Pretty Good Protection is used to authenticate messages that are
 mailed or posted.

pico
 A user-friendly editor that is the default PIne COmposer.  It can also
 be used from the Unix prompt, with nn, and in other Unix
 applications.

pine
 A user-friendly mailer and news reader that displays messages in a
 menu and lets you use the arrow keys to move around the menu.

pipe
 The `|' (which is often above the backslash (\) on keyboards).  In
 Unix, and some other operating systems, the pipe is used when you
 want the output of one command to be the input of another command.
 For example `ls -CF |less' means use the ouptut of the `ls -CF'
 command as the input of the `less' command.

POP
 Post Office Protocol is a protocol for transferring mail messages
 from your host computer to your desktop computer.

protocol
 A set of rules for how data bits (0's and 1's) are packaged and
 transferred.

read article
 In nn, an article is "read" if you viewed its contents or it was
 marked read by nn when you left the newsgroup the last time you were
 in it.

regular expression
 Text that can include "wild cards" (such as .to match any single
 character); used for searching.

reply
 To "reply" to a news article means to respond to the author in mail.

seen article
 In nn, an article is "seen" if you saw its author's name and subject
 displayed on the menu.

sequence
 The order in which newsgroups are presented by nn.  This is
 established in your ~/.nn/seq file or in the sequence section of
 your init file.

shell
 A layer that sits on top of the Unix operating system and allows a
 human being to communicate with Unix.  A friendly shell presents the
 user with a menu.  Two common (less friendly) shells are the Bourne
 shell (which usually has a $ prompt) and the C shell (which usually
 has a % prompt).

shell out
 To "shell out" of a program means to temporarily leave the program by
 typing `!'.  You return to the program that you shelled out of by
 typing `exit.'  For example, you might shell out of nn so you can use
 lynx to look at a Web page someone mentioned in a news article.

show mode or reading mode
 In nn, this is when you are reading an article. 

SLIP/PPP
 Serial Line Internet Protocol/Point-to-Point Protocol are protocols
 used to communicate with the Internet over a telephone line.

text file
 Unformatted file such as most news articles. 

thread
 A collection of articles in a newsgroup that make up a conversation.

Unix prompt
 The command line prompt that you get while working on a Unix host.
 Different shells have different prompts, for example the Bourne shell
 usually has a $ prompt and the C shell usually has a % prompt.

URL
 A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is an address that can be used by a
 Web browser.  URLs usually look like this:

   protocol://host.address/directory/filename.extension

 Where "protocol" can be http, gopher, ftp, mailto, news, etc.

Usenet news
 Most (but not all) of the thousands of newsgroups and articles that
 are distributed through the Internet.

UUCP
 Unix-to-Unix copy. 

WAIS
 Wide Area Information Service. 

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