Usenet is a set of sites worldwide that share lists similar to (and
sometimes identical to) those on Listserv but they use unix software,
they are much bigger than Bitnet, and they distribute to sites instead
of individuals. To find out more about Usenet/Netnews, ask your system
administrator.  Most Internet nodes get Usenet's Netnews, which can
then be read by a program called readnews (or rn or nn). There will
be a list of the hundreds of groups available in the file called
.newsrc and it is posted periodically in the group called
news.lists on Netnews itself. For more details you will have to
turn to someone more knowledgeable than me. On Usenet, "subscribing"
just amounts to chaning a ! to a : for any given group in your
personal .newsrc file.

Stevan Harnad