yEnc. & Co.

Although most computer users will never see anything else than professionally laid out websites and the odd email from friends, relatives and spammers, the global communication medium called the Internet has far more to offer. For example, there are tens of thousands of on line newsgroups that allow people with the same hobby or interest to exchange ideas (and flame one another!). Within these groups, a number of file encoding methods are used with strange names like yEnc and uuencode.Not so long ago, you had to dial into a BBS (bulletin board system) to receive or send messages, or download files. In those early days many BBS users spent hours on end downloading programs and pictures, all adding considerably to the monthly telephone bill.