UsenetUsenet (ˈjuːznɛt), USENET, or "in full", User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups.
Binary-to-text encodingA binary-to-text encoding is encoding of data in plain text. More precisely, it is an encoding of binary data in a sequence of printable characters. These encodings are necessary for transmission of data when the communication channel does not allow binary data (such as email or NNTP) or is not 8-bit clean. PGP documentation () uses the term "ASCII armor" for binary-to-text encoding when referring to Base64.
8-bit clean8-bit clean is an attribute of computer systems, communication channels, and other devices and software, that handle 8-bit character encodings correctly. Such encoding include the ISO/IEC 8859 series and the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. Until the early 1990s, many programs and data transmission channels were character-oriented and treated some characters, e.g., ETX, as control characters. Other assumed a stream of seven-bit characters, with values between 0 and 127; for example, the ASCII standard used only seven bits per character, avoiding an 8-bit representation in order to save on data transmission costs.
Null characterThe null character (also null terminator) is a control character with the value zero. It is present in many character sets, including those defined by the Baudot and ITA2 codes, ISO/IEC 646 (or ASCII), the C0 control code, the Universal Coded Character Set (or Unicode), and EBCDIC. It is available in nearly all mainstream programming languages. It is often abbreviated as NUL (or NULL, though in some contexts that term is used for the null pointer). In 8-bit codes, it is known as a null byte.
NewlineA newline (frequently called line ending, end of line (EOL), next line (NEL) or line break) is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a sequence of characters, is used to signify the end of a and the start of a new one. In the mid-1800s, long before the advent of teleprinters and teletype machines, Morse code operators or telegraphists invented and used Morse code prosigns to encode white space text formatting in formal written text messages.
Simple Mail Transfer ProtocolThe Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typically use SMTP only for sending messages to a mail server for relaying, and typically submit outgoing email to the mail server on port 587 or 465 per . For retrieving messages, IMAP (which replaced the older POP3) is standard, but proprietary servers also often implement proprietary protocols, e.
