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USENET

   A distributed bboard (bulletin board) system supported mainly
   by UNIX machines.  Originally implemented in 1979--1980 by Steve
   Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke
   University, it has swiftly grown to become international in scope
   and is now probably the largest decentralized information utility
   in existence.  As of early 1993, it hosts well over 1200
   newsgroups and an average of 40 megabytes (the equivalent of
   several thousand paper pages) of new technical articles, news,
   discussion, chatter, and flamage every day.