The course newsgroup is an important resource, since it allows discussion between students as well as providing a forum for questions to the course staff. This page will explain how to connect to the newsgroup.
If you're logged on to eniac, you easily read and post to the newsgroup using pine. Run pine from the command line, choose L for "Folder List", then choose "News on netnews.upenn.edu/nntp." You may have to change the (Pine) configuration to let Pine know where the news server is located: use the 'm'ain menu command and select 's'setup and 'c'onfig to find the user configurable options. The news server is specified in the line nntp-server = netnews.upenn.edu. If you're not already subscribed to the course newsgroup, choose A for "Add," and then type upenn.cis.cis505 and hit return. Then select upenn.cis.cis505, and you should see a list of messages. You can browse the listing, and post to the newsgroup by choosing C for "Compose."
If you have a mail client such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Outlook Express installed on your computer, you can probably set it up to use the newsgroup as well. Add the NNTP (news) server netnews.upenn.edu, tell the client to connect with a secure connection (SSL), and then try to connect. You'll need to login with your PennKey and password. After connecting, you should be able to choose from a list of newsgroups. Subscribe to upenn.cis.cis505 and you should see a list of postings, as well as be given the option to post yourself.
CETS should be able to help you connect to the newsgroup if you have any problems.