Please read part 7 before reading this.
Last time I tried to stress the use of Usenet Newsgroups for both research and marketing. They are quite possibly your best source of both finding obscure information and obtaining potential reviewers/customers. There are also some things the naive need to be aware of.
By and large Usenet is still a text only communication system. Yes you will see some hosting services advertising they host binary groups, but unless something has drastically changed those binary groups aren’t like a Web page with cool graphics, programs and sounds. You will most likely find messages in there starting with something like this:
mode>, <decode_pathname>
and ending with something like this:
“====\n”
In between you will find a massive block of seemingly ugly random text with a forced right margin. You will also find message subjects containing something like pt 1 of N. Older communications systems used to limit text lines to 72 usable characters out of the 80 a punched card could support. Two were reserved for the <LF><CR> and the others I forget the usage of.
The only way of transferring binary information using this system was to uuencode/uudecode. http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/uuencode.html These utility programs would block format into a text file various forms of binary files. If you wrote some utility program others wanted to run but you didn’t want to release the source code into the wild, this was how you did it.
Many legitimate uses for uuencode/uudecode exist. Like any legitimate tool they can also be used for illegitimate purposes. Groups for auto mechanics used to routinely have part pictures and shop manual pages because this was the only way to get them from one place to another in a timely manner.
The Internet can be a beautiful thing. It is also a dark and ugly Pandora’s Box which should have never been unleashed on the human race. Yes, you hear stories about the TOR browser and the “Dark Web,” but the regular Internet has some very dark places as well. Depending on your subject matter and who you choose for a Usenet Newsgroups provider you may steer clear of the dark places, or you may not. Here are a few rules to keep you as safe as possible.
1) Never uudecode anything from an untrusted source. The dirty little secret of the Internet is that _everything_ is illegal _somewhere_. This runs the gauntlet from speaking out against government policy to discussing how to provide basic education to women. Most Americans take such discussions for granted, but they aren’t legal everywhere. Some things which get posted in some groups are pretty much illegal everywhere. Much of that stuff has moved off to the Dark Web, but some of it may still be lurking in archives for the unsuspecting to find.
2) Never uuencode anything to post on there. I don’t care if it is a picture of your cat being cute or not, just don’t do it.
3) If you choose to ignore 1 & 2 then purchase a sacrificial machine which will _never_ connect to your home or business network and run at least a dozen different virus scanners on anything you choose to uudecode BEFORE you attempt to open it.
I don’t want to make this sound like a forbidden place you should not tread. The same advice applies to any part of the Internet. You can get bot-net viruses surfing for cat pictures even more easily than you can get them from things on Usenet groups. The difference with the Usenet Newsgroups is that you actually have to work at it. Those pt 1 of N messages require you to cut and paste those blocks of characters into a text editor, save the file, then decode it. Your first few times will not be successful because you will accidentally insert blank lines or extra return keys or simply not cut and paste enough.
Why am I bothering to tell you any of this then? Because some of you will be writing works which contain very dark characters such as serial killers or deviants or human interaction rituals which, shall we say, the Pope would not approve. You will have to do research to make those characters believable which means you will have to go to some dark places on the Internet. They may be Web sites or they may be Newsgroups. One thing is for certain they will be both dark and high risk. Be warned, be air gapped and be as safe as you can.
