Hello! Thank you for your interest HIVNET/AEGIS, or GENA (Global Electronic Network for AIDS), as we are known together. HIVNET is, as you probably know, a network for HIV and AIDS information and discussion. HIVNET is primarily based in Europe and, together with our sister organizations, AEGIS, based in the US and reaching to other continents, APC (Association for Progressive Communications) and others, try to make as much free information available as possible. We distribute both message areas (analogous to Usenet newsgroups) and files, containing periodicals such as Aids Treatment News and the CDC Aids Daily Summary, as well as one-shot documents and reports. HIVNET and AEGIS have been based on Fido protocols and technology, allowing low-cost entry into the net. The file distribution capabilities of Fidonet have been put to good use as well. Thanks to generous help and cooperation from Sun Microsystems, the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam, APC and Hacktic Networks, we now have our own Internet host, hivnet.org. On this system we gateway between Fidonet and Internet for GENA, run a gopher and provide anonymous FTP access to our filebase. The proper addresses to use for these services are: Gopher gopher.hivnet.org FTP ftp.hivnet.org The gopher/ftp tree is still in need of some cleaning up. Please be so kind as to send mail to gopher@hivnet.org of you run across something strange. I'll be glad to clean it up. We also have a number of discussion areas, which we are gating, for the time being, to mailing lists. We do NOT wish to distribute these areas as newsgroups, out of concern for the signal to noise ratio. Up until now, these groups have all been extremely high signal. In the future, if the demand grows enough, we will look into distribution as a separate hierarchy. There is a mailing list for new files in the tree. New files arrive almost daily. To subscribe, please send mail to hiv-newfiles-request@hivnet.org. The configuration is still being tested, so please feel free to report any anomalies. The lists are all resident on hivnet.org. The available lists are: Fido area List name Source Description --------- --------- ------ ----------- AIDS.DATA AEGIS Read-only - data postings AIDS.DIALOGUE hiv-aids-dialogue AEGIS Discussion area AIDS.DRUGS AEGIS Read-only - NLM Drug desc. AIDS.SPIRITUAL hiv-aids-spiritual AEGIS Spiritual discussion AIDS.TRIALS AEGIS Read-only - NLM Drug trials AIDS.WOMEN hiv-aids-women AEGIS Discussion of women's issues AIDS.NL hiv-aids-nl HIVNET Dutch language discussion and data AIDS.FR hiv-aids-fr HIVNET French language discussion and data HIVNET.GER hiv-aids-de HIVNET German language discussion and data HIVNEWS.GER hiv-aids-denews HIVNET Read-only - German language data AIDS/ARC hiv-aids-arc FIDONET Discussion - from Fidonet backbone AIDS-HIV hiv-aids-hiv FIDONET Discussion - from Fidonet backbone INTERNET hiv-internet HIVNET Discussion and announcements about the lists and gateway If anyone should have an article for submission to AIDS.DATA, it should be sent to hiv-aids-data, which will forward it on to the moderator. Please send your subscription requests to the normal addresses, i.e., hiv-aids-dialogue-request@hivnet.org. Submissions go to the list name at hivnet.org, i.e., hiv-aids-dialogue@hivnet.org. A few notes about the lists and gateway: - E-mail replies to individuals are now fully supported, although some Fido usernames may not work. - The volume on some groups can be pretty high, such as hiv-aids-data. Be warned! it is, however, a very useful source of information. Any questions can be addressed to either the hiv-internet list (by preference), or to me personally at info@hivnet.org. Thank you for your interest! Best regards, Matthew Lewis HIVNET Foundation