First we consider methods for
Fax is not a useful as E-mail, except in regard to one thing.
Now that you know the techniques, try getting some of the things on the"Top 10" list, in Appendix E.
This short Chapter contains a little advice on how to learn about theInternet. It should be clear from the preceding Chapters that learninghow to use the Internet is a survival skill for many businesses.Effective use of the electronic medium
o Saves employee time—time lost in phone tag, lost messages, and they three day time delay of surface mail.
o Avoids circuitous means of transfering data like printing a document, faxing it, and then rekeyboarding the data at the receiving end
o Allows businesses and individuals to self-publish, and distribute their work efficiently, whether or not the text or the graphical appearance is primary.
o Provides access to information, allows communication and distribution of documents in a single, uniform fashion.
It should also be clear that Internetworking is not yet a smooth, easily learned process. It requires knowledge and skills that are not presently taught anywhere except on the Internet itself.
The next section discusses specific needs of different segments of people. The final section contains a fairly systematic exposition of the methods and skills needed to Internetwork effectively. But far from representing these sections as the last word on the subject, I would like to stress that the only way to learn Internetworking is through undirected exploration of the Internet.
This means you have to let your employees play, at least on their own time: play with programs, play with Anonymous FTP, and play with Usenet news. None of these activities are directly productive, but the playing pays off when you need a new program and someone in your office can
o pick the right Usenet newsgroup and retrieve its FAQ
o read the FAQ and learn about free software that will solve yourproblem and where to find the latest version
o connect to the software archive and (correctly) transfer theprogram—even though the intervening machine is of the "wrong" make.
o properly decompress and install the software.
When all this is done competently, in less than half an hour, you will have attained the goal of employee development.
A final caveat: *don't neglect Usenet news.* Usenet news is the most difficult of the "Internet basic services" to get because it is not really an Internet service. It is commonly found on Internet computers and commonly transmitted over the Internet, but it does not fit into the E-mail-FTP-telnet scheme of things. If your Internet provider does not provide the news, you may have to ferret it out by (1) getting an account on a public access UNIX system and (2) learning to use UNIX. Command-line UNIX is no easier than command-line MS-DOS, but it is worth learning how to get on a UNIX system for the "rn" (readnews) command alone. All you need to know to get that far (and more) is contained in Appendix D.
Any guide like this will soon be dated in terms of information sources, techniques, and software. But Usenet is up to the minute. There, hidden among the many diversions of alt., talk., and soc. hierarchies, is the latest information on the computing environment of modern Internetworking. In the opinion of this author, learning to use a newsreader and reading the network news regularly is the *single most important Internetworking skill*. The Usenet newsgroups are Dewey Decimal System of the the true world library. Information can be found in plenty elsewhere, but guides to information are rare and priceless— and the Usenet news is the guide to the Internet.
This Part lists briefly some of the ways in which various groups of people can use internetworking skills.
I wish I had better news for business use of the Internet. I wish I could describe hundreds of free services of interest to *business* and tell you how to use the Internet for profit. But it's not there yet. However, before you turn away with a sad but knowing smile on your face shaking your head over another unlikely technological dream—you've seen it before—consider this: the main potential of the Internet is as a communication medium. Is radio and television important to businesses? What about newspapers and magazines? Or direct mail? Very few businesses make money by selling newspapers or operating radio stations, but many, many businesses use these media for advertising. You and your employees need to become adept at using this medium for the same reasons you've mastered layout of newpaper ads and writing form letters.
It is very important to understand that the Internet is not a broadcast medium but more like the telephone or mail system. It specializes in contacting individuals one at a time. In other words, you are not going to get a list of all 25 million E-mail addresses and bombard them every 10 minutes with a 30 second sound byte. Nor are you going to send 100 people a letter asking them to contact 100 persons each. On the other hand you might use the medium to contact a mailing list of your customers or self-publish a promotional brochure.
The amount of commercial traffic on the Internet is disappointingly small—but important. Mostly this is for historical reasons. The backbone network in the United States, NSFnet (for National Science Foundation) has an "acceptable use" policy for traffic carried over it. This restricts traffic to messages that support the R&D effort of certain government laboratories and universities. Clearly, there is not room for commercial traffic if you are directly connected to the NSFnet.
But nowadays one can get on the Internet without connecting directly to NSFnet, and the amount of commercial traffic is growing. Don't overlook:
o Making product information and brochures available by E-mail as well as by the postal service.
o Allowing customer-support inquiries by E-mail.
o Starting a mailing list for your customers or clients.
o Setting up a "mail-server" to let clients get information about your product automatically, without having to wait for you to log on (required direct connection to the Internet).
o Putting your product information on an anonymous FTP server (requires that you have a fileserver on the net or find an FTP site willing to take the information).
Suprisingly, there are, to my knowledge, no pay-for-advertising services that support mailservers or anonymous FTP sites. It is a fair prediction that this advertising medium will develop as more persons join the net. You could put your information on bulletin boards, of course, but only members will see it there—not the 25 million people with E-mail access.
The fact remains, however, that unless you are in very specific industries that are information or paper intensive (say publishing, computing, information retrieval, and so on), or unless you need access to government information like weather maps, that your use of the Internet will consist of downloading programs or getting the latest technical information.
All of this overlooks the most important aspect of the Internet for businesses. The Internet is evolving very rapidly. It is likely to be an important medium for transacting business, for customer service and for advertising in the very near future no matter what industry you are in. For some industries, like publishing, high-technology industries, and the media, it will be critical. Businesses who have a pool of employees that are adept at using the Internet will have a competitive advantage over firms that don't. Thus you should encourage your employees to get personal Internet connections and learn about the Internet after hours.
Since the Internet grew up in an academic environment, university students will likely have a level of access that would be the envy of any business. All the services and research tools—not just E-mail, FTP, and telnet, but gopher, WWW, WAIS, and the rest are likely to be available to students from any terminal on the local "cluster" or by dial-up from their dorm rooms.
Students will be especially keen on:
o checking the university library catalogue to see if a book is inbefore walking to the library.
o finding out about campus events (even at other universities!)through gopher or school bulletin boards
o posting buy and sell notices for computer equipment, cars, housing,and so on.
o contacting potential tutors either at their own university or for help by E-mail. (A netwide "university" of tutors, called Usenet University, is prepared to answer questions in various subjects by E- mail already exists in the Usenet newsgroups. See the alt.uu.* hierarchy).
o using online catalogues of other university libraries to find books for interlibrary loan or to compile bibliographies
o downloading free software and information
o finding scholarship information
Parents can communicate with their children at college by E-mail—and probably get a faster response than waiting for the occasional letter from home. Worried parents will have to refrain, however, from using the "finger" command to find out when their children last logged in or read their mail!
There is probably no industry for which information is so critical as for the media and publishing industries. Journalists who explore the networks will find that they use the tools described in the first part over and over to track down information, conduct prompt "interviews" by mail, and so on. Publishers will be interested in the electronic transmission of manuscripts (though writers soliciting publication will still want to send hardcopy—the equivalent in the electronic age of sending a self-addressed stamped envelope). Publishers will also be interested in sharing or developing free image processing software with other publishers, and transmitting graphics.
As the net develops, libraries research will more and more often involve internetworking. Searching for books is already easy by dial-up or over the Internet. In addition, the amount of information that is never circlulated on paper will increase. This is already the case in the scientific and technical community where printing is a luxury rather than a necessity. Given that a single 8 mm videotape can hold 500,000 pages of text, it is possible to hoard (and search) vast amounts of information that you can never possibly print out. Imagine what such technology will do in the hands of Government or any other bureaucracy. Finally, it is not hard to image the day when an editor will receive as many press releases by E-mail as through the postal service.
Internetworking technology allows virtually any business or individual to set up and run their own "wire service", providing information about their business or special interest to a select group of subscribers. This capability is completely analogous to Desk Top Publishing, which put low-end printing in the hands of any business or individual.
Journalists and other writers will not want to overlook the kaleidascopic mixture of technical discussion, product announcements, gossip, and general ranting on Usenet. Usenet already has more channels than a typcial satellite and is growing by ten channels a day or so. It is hard to find, but tucked in among the chit-chat and programs is the only up to the minute information on the Internetworked World. Certainly all writers of scientific or technical columns will want to tap this source of information.
There are many special Internet services for Elementary and Secondary School teachers provided by the Government, mostly through the education offices of research laboratories. The best all around refernce for teachers is theNCSA Guide to the Internet, put out by the Education Office of the National Center for Supercompter Administration. A paper version is available from:
The network version is located at ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Unfortunately, it is available only in Microsoft Word format (requires binary transfer). If you are unable to use this format directly or convert to a format you can use, you will have to order the paper version.
The NCSA Guide covers all you need to know to connect to the Internet— both technical details and etiquette—as well as suggested projects to introduce children to the net. You will find out how to get information about the space program or how to access such programs as the Newton Bulletin Board Service for Science and Math. teachers at Argonne National Laboratory.
In addition, Usenet has a k12.* hierarchy which provides a gateway to the K12 network. Besides K12, there are several other regional networks specifically for teachers and students.
One of the more exciting prospects for teachers is that of sharing worksheets, handouts, and other materials with other teachers. Although this type of sharing is routine on bulletin boards and regional networks that cater to teachers, anonymous FTP sites hold out the possibility of a worldwide collection of such materials. Send contributed materials (in electronic format) to
ftp.cs.city.ac.uk:/freelore/incoming
by following the instructions in Chapter xx for sending a file by anonymous FTP, or mail a floppy disk (and a return mailer with prepaid postage, if you want it back!) to
The FreeLore ProjectP.O. Box 6022St. Charles, IL 60174.
Make sure your materials have a copyright notice like this course, allowing anyone to copy and distribute them for free (for educational purposes).
For many years, of course, libraries have been among the heaviest users of information services—for cataloguing or to fill patron requests. Several companies now specialize in providing Internet access to libraries, e.g. ACCESS or DRAnet. Libraries will increasingly use these services because the promise the following benefits:
o Inexpensive access to hundreds of online library catalogues,worldwide.
o Uniform, and often cheaper, access to information services usingtelnet rather than a host of special software packages.
o Access to netwide searching tools like WAIS, WWW, and GOPHER.
o Discussion by E-mail with other librarians, conference reports and announcements, and so on.
It is true, as one librarian said to me, that you can tell that librarians didn't set up the Internet. The archives grew piecemeal and their contents are far from uniform in quality. In addition, the whole Internet is so vast it probably can't be catalogued. Nevertheless, rough and ready tools and customs have grown up to provide some sort of access to the information that is "out there". There is a great deal of work to be done by librarians that will doubtless keep them employed into the next millenium.
The main boon to librarians is the hierarchical organization of the net into nodes, directories, and subdirectories. These provide an implicit and universal call number to *everything in the electronic world*. The day is not far away when a cross-reference like
See ota.ox.ac.uk:/pub/HistoricalDocs/Political/US/constitution
will be as common as a bibliographic citation or See reference in a card catalogue.
The Internet also carries a number of hidden expenses and dangers to libraries:
o It will somewhat increase the expense of computer equipment,technical personnel, software, etc. needed by libraries
o Additional phone lines may become necessary, especially if somesort of public access to the Internet is contemplated
o Staff training needs will be greater
o The local computer system will need virus protection software and regular backups (a good idea anyway but seldom practiced by librarians, in my experience. Persons who are trained in book conservation should know better!).
o Some material on the Internet will arouse complaints from the public because it represents the views of unpopular minorities (e.g liberals, homosexuals, feminists, and intellectuals). There is also a great deal of pornographic material (text and graphics) available by E- mail or through the Usenet newsgroups. Issues of censorship, public funding, and access for minors have yet to be played out in the domain of electronic communications.
In addition to the standard package of services from your provider, librarians should not neglect Usenet Newgroups, even if this means getting a special account with a different service (and accessing it by dial-up or telnet through your primary service). Learning to use the Usenet Newgroups and their invaluable FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) is the *single most important skill for professional development of your staff.* This means that you may want to encourage after-hours "playing" with your computer system. Think of the Usenet Newsgroups as the Reference Section of the Internet.
It used to be that only scientists and technologists used the academic networks. But no longer. Today there are many humanists and social scientists happily gabbing away with their friends (oops . . . I mean colleagues) at other universities, collaborating by E-mail, subscribing to and writing for E-journals, and so on. This is, of course, in addition to the academic computing environment described in the Chapter for students.
Your main entree to this world is some sort of E-mail access and finding a mailing list or newsgroup for your field. From there you will pick up tips on interesting materials or groups to join—in short you can start networking. The two main sources for such mailing lists are LISTSERVERS (traditional on BITNET) and increasingly Usenet Newsgroups. Actually the newsgroups are not as useful as the lists at the moment *for the humanities*. This is because the academic hierarchy is not as subdivided as the computer science hierarchy. Thus, there is a whole hierarchy for computer science, but all of linguistics fits into sci.lang! These discussion groups either tend to have just a few participants or to be so all-encompassing that they are useless. This does not mean you should ignore Usenet—the computer and networking information is invaluable—just that you will not find it *directly* relevant to your field.
Listservers are another matter. They allow distribution of articles by anyone to the whole list (unless the list is moderated, i.e. refereed by the list's owner), and they allow archiving of articles at a place anyone on the list can access. In short, they form a sort of Electronic Journal with a *very* big reader mail column. To find a list in your field, send the message "INDEX GLOBAL" to any listserver. These usually have an address like "listserv@hoople.usnd.edu". Then send a message like "SUBSCRIBE PDQFAN" to the listserver to join the list PDQFAN. After that you will send messages for publication to "pdqfan@hoople.usnd.edu" and (human) service requests to "pdqfan- request@hoople.usnd.edu".
The best way to use a listserver is to avail yourself of the "SET PDQFAN
DIGEST" or "SET
Ultimately the Humanities will have the same infrastructure of services that already is forming in the Sciences:
o easy access to preprints and collections of journal articles
o archives of data sets, special purpose free software, and textdatabases.
o collections of E-text source materials, if relevant. These mayinclude "tagged" text for special statistical studies.
o a set of free programming tools for routine scholarly tasks like typesetting papers, creating bibliographic databases, and so on—in the format specific to your field.
Scholars in the humanities should check the list of E-text archives (over 300 of them) at Georgetown University (send E-mail message "" to "" to get started). These archives may well have materials in your field that they will make available for scholarly purposes at a nominal cost. In addition, check the Oxford Text Archives at black.ox.ac.uk. (Login as "anonymous" for information—as of this writing the archives are not searchable online by telnet, but an index is available).
It is suprising that religious organizations have been so slow to recognize the importance of a new communications medium like the Internet. Many religious organizations use computers for producing newsletters or accounting and other office tasks; but very few use them effectively for telecommunication and internetworking.
The Internet is not like Television or Radio—it is not a broadcast medium. In many ways the Internet is a more appropriate communications medium for religions organizations than "the media". It is less expensive, not centrally controlled, and reaches persons who want to receive the information on a case-by-case basis.
There is nothing to prevent a religious organization from setting up a fileserver on one of the commercial nets (admittedly expensive, but you only need one worldwide). From there any member of your organization can upload and download information. Thus you can keep a library of regional or local newsletters, special software, a directory of local groups, listings of job openings, and so on. Many organizations already have this sort of thing on Bulletin Boards, but FTP archives and E-mail provide a less expensive method of disseminating information that can reach anywhere in the world, not just a local region or single area code.
But the promise of internetworking goes beyond the "office environment" of your organization—which I am sure is already well developed—to touch your educational and evangelical mission. You can make information about your organization and its beliefs instantly available to 25 million people if they want it.
In addition, there is a great need for "charity work" in preparing E- texts. Most E-texts are copyrighted or locked up in proprietary databases. This means that they cannot be freely shared. Free E-texts, especially those written in plain "vanilla" ASCII, are in great demand among blind people—who can use special software to convert the text to sound—and by persons in remote areas or the third world.
Distribution of free E-text is not limited to the Internet by any means. Free E-text will find its way onto thousands of bulletin boards and will be passed to non-networked machines by floppy disks. Once printed out it can be disseminated by photocopying or any inexpensive printing method that uses "camera-ready" copy. The Internet is thus the backbone of a worldwide distribution network that can reach anyplace sophisticated enough to have some sort of printing (or delivery) technology.
There are basically two ways to create free E-text: you can type or scan in something in the public domain (75 years old or older) or you can create new text that has a copyright notice like this one allowing anyone to copy and distribute the text. It is not enough merely to sell the information at a nominal cost. Unless you allow others the right to further distribute information it is not really "free", even if you sometimes give it away at no cost on a floppy disk.
In fact, the only *free* religious literature (and typing even this in was quite an accomplishment) consists of: TheKing James Bible(without Apocrypha), theQuran, theNicene Creed, TheBook of Mormonand related texts, the Bible in Hebrew, and theKama Sutra. Certainly the various denominations should consider releasing their basic liturgical texts and a selection of their religious literature in free E-text form. Modern versions of the Bible are a problem because of copyright restrictions. It would certainly be a boon for some organization to make a modern version "free" in the sense that anyone could copy and distribute it.
The Internet is certainly a vast place. For the beginner, or for the experienced user who wants to do more than check an occasional bibliographic cross-reference to an FTP site, a navigation tool is almost essential. The three most common navigation tools are discussed here. They represent three different approaches to stategy, target constituency, target materials, and user interface (the part of the program that you see). The three services are known as GOPHER, the WIDE AREA INFORMATION SERVICE (WAIS, pron. "ways"), and the WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW or W3).
All three services are based on client-server technology. To make information *available* to others you need special software called a server. The user then uses a "client" program to access the information. "Clients" are often free—they are written by whoever funded the initial project or by volunteer hackers. The catch to using a client is that you have to have a *direct* (usually expensive) connection to the Internet. This is the main reason that a SLIP connection will become more and more important. It "fools" the net into thinking that you have a direct connection without the expense of hooking your computer to a Local Area Network and then to the Internet. You can use a client program on your own home or office computer if you have a SLIP connection.
Even if you don't yet have a SLIP connection—they're still a bit experimental—you can use the services listed here. As of this writing all three services allow free access to a client for demonstration purposes. There are a number of telnet addresses where you can try out these navigation tools. I expect that, as the traffic on the network increases, these public access sites will close down. But by then communications programs will routinely include SLIP and probably some version of the major "clients" as well.
One word of caution: all the services here are built on top of telnet and FTP. They just provide a different and perhaps more useful way of making Internet connections. Thus, the same service may appear in several guises, depending on the tool you use to connect to it. There are also gateways that let you access one service from the other—but often at a price in terms of useability. Since the software may not tell you that you are looking at, say, a Gopher-based service via WWW, you may have to try all three services to find the one that makes the most reliable connection.
Another factor to consider is that unless you have a direct or SLIP connection, you will be limited to using a command line interface. You will not experience the real power of, at least, WWW or WAIS. Nevertheless they are useful. In general, a beginner should use gopher first, then play with the other two services to see if they are useful to you.
The main problem you will have is *getting* the information you find. If you do not have the client program, this is difficult. You could cut and paste the information from your screen or use your communications program's "buffer" to store it. WAIS will send you the results of your search by E-mail. Often, you will have to resort to FTP to fetch the information once you have located it—if you can figure out where you are. One of my criticisms of search tools like Gopher or WAIS is that they often give you a very poor indication of where the information you found is physically located. This is especially true of the publically accessible versions.
Gopher was created by two students, xx and xx, at the University of Minnesota. It provides a menu-like view of that part of the Internet where Gopher servers are found, "gopherspace". Gopher has spread to many universities. You can search student directories and campus calendars, as well as the usual internet resources. It is by far the easiest way to explore the net without entering numerous FTP and telnet commands.
Since Gopher is the oldest and most decentralized of the services, it provides the most extensive access to useful services. Online library catalogues, the Project Gutenberg library, FTP archives, and numerous exits to telnet.
The telnet access to demonstration Gopher systems (and through them toGopher servers on *any* campus) is through:
xxx.xxx.xxx
Students will of course want to use Gopher directly from their school's system. Try typing "gopher" at any prompt.
WAIS was developed in a very different environment from Gopher. It was developed by a joint collaboration of Thinking Machines, Inc. (Artificial Intellegence technology), Dow Jones News Retrieval (Information systems), and Apple Computer (User interface). Its ability to find information given a plain English description of what you want ("hey, find everthing on Personal Computers and Health) is truely mind- boggling. It returns a list of "hits" together with a likelihood that it contains what you wanted. It can also look for documents that are "something like" a sample document.
The user interface is a pleasure to use—but requires a direct or SLIP connection to the Internet. The line-oriented version that is publically available is a pale imitation of the real thing.
WAIS strength is its ability to retrieve information from almost any source, not just FTP sites. A list of all WAIS sources is maintained in a directory-of-directories (available at think.com). You import a set of instructions on how to access a given information server to create your own personalized list of sources.
This service is probably the one of greatest interest to business (i.e. non-academic and non-library) users. To try out WAIS, telnet think.com and log in as SWAIS.
The newest of the three services is the World Wide Web. It was created at the European European Center for High Energy Physics (CERN). It is based on yet another technology (besides FTP and client-server)— hypertext. The World Wide Web views the entire complex of FTP sites as a single "document" with cross-references.
A WWW server lets you read that document and jump to any cross-reference that you find—hence the term "hypertext". The result is rather like a menu driven system but (at least in the graphical interface versions) you stay inside the familiar context of a text editor. If you can imagine clicking on a cross-reference and having your text editor fetch the document from an FTP site you will get the idea.
The documents that can be viewed by WWW are ASCII text with special "tags" that give a addresses of the "hypertext links." The tags use the syntax of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is a language used by scholars to mark text for academic research. The WWW vision of the library of the future is a collection of documents spread all over the world, the whole of which can be looked at starting from any one of them. Sort of like having the whole world on your desktop.
There is not "top" node to the Web, but you can find points of entry at:
telnet info.cern.ch (European Center for High Energy Physics in Geneva, Switzerland, the "home" of WWW).
To summarize, here are the three systems discussed, together with their underlying technology and "constituency":
Gopher : Simple FTP and Telnet : Campus Info
WAIS : Artificially Intellegent searches : Business
World Wide Web : Hypertext and SGML markup : Ac. Research
[This chapter is under construction]
The previous two chapters covered the more or less standard techniques for finding your way around the net. This chapter covers more
There are three basic "problem situation" that every researcher using the Internet will eventually face:
(1) You know who has the information but you don't know their "address".
(2) The information is on the net, only you don't know where.
(3) The desired information is not on the net, but their *is* information on how to get it from a non-network source.
The methods described in this chapter are more tentative than in the preceeding two chapters. They don't always work.
There are a couple of standard methods for checking and verifying E-mail addresses.
% ping rtfm.mit.edu
(Remember that "%" is the prompt the computer gives you. Your system prompt may look different). You should get back a message saying "rtfm.mit.edu is alive" or something like that.
Many machines support a command called "nslookup" that will return the dotted decimal address given the name of the machine
% nslookup rtfm.mit.edu
returns "xxx" as the dotted decimal address.
If you can guess the name of person or institution—this is not hard— then you can try to see if you have a valid address by "fingering" your intended victim:
% finger pdq@hoople.usnd.edu
If the system supports the "finger" feature (and many don't), you can try any number of guesses or permutations. If you succeed, you can find out lots of information about the person: their telephone number, when they last logged on, when they last read their mail, what department they work in, etc. Many systems allow you to leave a file called ".plan"—note the initial dot—that contains further contact information.
Good guesses for names:
o last name (bach),
o last name with one or more initials (pbach, pdqbach),
o three (or more!) initials (pdqb)
o nicknames, cute handles, etc. (fluffy,aragorn)
o work ID numbers (bach2378@bigblue.com)
Your last resort is a search program called "netfind". It lets you find a machine or person by keyword. If you know your target is at USND, you can try the keywords PDQ, USND, EDU and find pdq@hoople.usnd.edu. Note that you often have to guess the "domain", but this should not be hard. You can also search with PDQ, "University of Southern North Dakota", EDU, if USND is not sufficiently obvious. City and state names work, too. Try it.
The main short comings of "netfind" are:
(1) it often fails if the target computer does not support the "finger" command; and
(2) it only works on the Internet, not Bitnet or other mail systems.
To use "netfind" you have to telnet to any of several standard locations and log in as "netfind".
If one server is busy it should give you a list of alternate servers to try.
Detailed information on how to find someone on the net is given in the Usenet FAQ (ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/ xxxx ). This FAQ is oriented towards helping University students, who flood the networks every Fall looking for the E-mail addresses of their friends.
By far the easiest way to
If you do not have Internet access, then you will have to use FTP by E- mail (use the "Archie by E-mail" archive server first to find your target!).
Finding Information and SoftwareUsenet News FAQ ArchivesArchie
This is the last resort, right? Most information is still in paper, although the high cost of paper will mean that less and less is available this way.
(1) Use the Internet to access bibliographic databases, especiallylibrary catalogues
(2) Use a document retrieval service like that provided by theColorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL).
(3) Try to get someone to send you a xerox or fax.
The main resources on the Internet are to be found on the net itself: especially the Usenet news and its many FAQs including the PDIAL and NIXPUB listings and various Internet resource guides. The resources provided here are second best. Nevertheless, it was felt important to provide a few addresses and a few book titles for the neophyte to get started. The information in this section is a point of departure, not a conclusive summary.
[This Chapter is under construction]
Most of the books below do not contain a great deal of how-to information about connecting to the Network. This course is intended to fill the gap. But they do tell you what to do once you are on. The first few, which are available by Internet, are especially useful. They do make the network "self-describing".
The Incomplete Guide to the Internet(for Macintosh with Microsoft Word only—for paper version see below)
A very complete guide written by the Education Office of the National Supercomputing Agency (NCSA). It contains a very complete intro- duction to the Internet and classroom Internet projects for K12 teachers. This is the best guide for public school teachers.
For paper version, write: Chuck Farmer, 152 CAB, 605 E. SpringfieldAve., Champaign, IL 61820. Cost is around $22.00 for 300 pp.
Polly, Jean Armour.Surfing the Internetnysernet.org:/pub/resources/guides (192.77.173.2). This is my all- around choice for best introduction to the Internet. It contains references to most other good sources of information together with instructions on how to get them. It is especially complete in giving information of interest to librarians.
Kehoe, Brendan.Zen and the Art of the Internet(1st ed.)
A very good guide for how-to information. Unfortunately, the FTP versions are all marked up in a dialect of the TeX typesetting system. They are still somewhat readable though, even if you don't have the TeX system. A Postscript version is also provided.
ftp.uu.net:/inet/doc (137.39.1.9) ftp.cs.toronto.edu:/pub/zen (147.31.254.132) ftp.cs.widener.edu:/pub/zen (147.31.254.132) files are called zen- 1.0.tar.Z, zen-1.0.dvi, and zen-1.0.PS ftp.sura.net:/pub/nic/zen-1.0.PS
Kehoe, Brendan. (1993). Zen and the Art of the Internet: a Beginner's Guide (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-010778- 6. Index.
Krol, Ed. (1992). The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog. Sebastopol,CA: O'Reilly & Associates. ISBN 1-56592-025-2.
LaQuey, Tracey, & Ryer, J. C. (1993). The Internet Companion: aBeginner's Guide to Global Networking.. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.ISBN 0-201-62224-6
Marine, April. (1992). INTERNET: Getting Started. Menlo Park, CA: SRIInternational. ISBN 0-944604-15-3
Tennant, Roy, Ober, J., and Lipow, A. G. (1993). Crossing the Internet Threshold: An Instructional Handbook. Berkeley, CA: Library Solutions Press. ISBN: 1-882208-01-3 (Library Solutions Institute and Press, 2137 Oregon Street, Berkeley, CA 94705. Voice: 510/841-2636 FAX: 510/841-2926)
[This chapter is under construction]
1. (turning on) Make sure the computer is plugged in and on. Is something on the screen? Can you hear a fan? Does anything happen when you type or move the mouse? Are lights lit or flashing? The screen may be frozen by a "hold" button (look for a light labelled "scroll lock" or something similar. Try touching the upper left button on the keyboard— F1, "escape", "hold", "break", whatever). If the computer is not on look for a switch on back or a key labelled "on" or with a triangle on it.
2. (using a mouse) Determine whether you are looking at a character terminal or a window-oriented screen. If window-oriented, then moving the mouse should cause a pointer to appear and move around. Use this pointer to click on windows, buttons, etc. You click the mouse by pressing its button (leftmost one if there are three). If you hold the mouse button down you can "grab" things and drag them around. Clicking on windows makes them active (ready for commands) and brings them forward.
3. (modifier and function keys) Keys labelled "shift", "alt", "meta", "option", "command", "ctrl" or marked with certain funny symbols are modifier keys. They work like shift keys on a typewriter and can change the effect of typing a key or clicking a mouse button. Function keys, labelled F1, F2, etc., do something immediately—like edit, move to the next page, or quit the program—when you press them. The keys on the keypad (right hand side, looks like a calculator pad) act as function keys in some programs.
4. (popup menus and menubars). If there is a string of words at the top of the screen ("menubar"), touch one of the words with the pointer using the mouse and then hold down the mouse button. A menu should pop up. If you continue holding down the mouse button and drag down the menu, then let go, you will select one of the commands. If you don't want to activate a command, drag the pointer away from the commands (towards the middle of the screen, say) and let go.
5. (getting the computer's attention) No luck? Try hitting "return" or "enter" a few times, look for keys labelled "break" or "escape", try "control-C" (hold down the key labelled "CTRL"—it works like the shift key on a typewriter—and then press "c", then let go of both keys).
6. (carriage return) Once the system is responding you usually have to hit the carriage return key (marked with a hooked arrow or "return" or "enter" or "CR" or "newline") or else click the mouse (left-most button if there are three) before anything permanent happens—like sending a command to the computer.
An exception is in "menu-driven" systems which print a list of options and expect you to type a number or letter (like "y" for yes, "n" for no). Sometimes answering a question with a carriage return gets you a default answer. The default is often indicated in brackets:
Do you really want to quit [n]?
Hitting return here will not quit.
7. (delete key) If you make a typing mistake, there is a key in the upper righthand corner labelled "del", "delete", "backspace", or with a backwards arrow or "x" on it that will erase what you typed.
8. (logging on) If you see a message like this:
Hello. Welcome to FUBAR system. Authorized persons only.
Username: xxxPassword:
then the computer wants you to give it a username (nickname, handle) and type a password. Type your last name and hit return; then type your password and hit return. If you are sure the system is meant for the general public—say it is a donor database run by the Red Cross—try obvious names like "redcross", "anonymous", or "public". If the account is meant for general use then: (1) no password will be required, or (2) any password at all will work, or (3) the password will be something easy like "redcross" (again) or "donor" or "guest".
9. (system prompts and help) If the computer prints a funny symbol (called a prompt—often it is a dollar sign, percent sign, question mark, right angle bracket or some such) and sits there blinking at you, it is waiting for a command. Try "help" or "?" to find out what is possible. Or try "man intro" (UNIX systems only) to read the online manual. There might be a help key or help command on a menu.
10. (text buffers) At some point you may be composing a message. You type the message, of course. You may or may not have to type "return" at the end of each line—experiment with this. You can erase any mistakes with the delete key. See if the cursor (blinking marker that marks where you type) can be moved around with arrow keys or a mouse. If there is a mouse, you can select text by "dragging" across it (hold down button, move mouse, release mouse). Once selected a large block of text can be deleted with the delete key or moved by issuing the "cut" command (look for a function key or command on the "edit" menu) and then the "paste" command.
11. (usernames) if you need to know someone's username, try their last name (goodwin) , first initial or both initials and last name (jgoodwin, jegoodwin), or all three initials (jeg). Be warned that many sites add numbers (goodwin21), use serial numbers (g21135), or use cutesy aliases (thumper). Usernames are usually all lowercase.
12. (case sensitivity) if nothing seems to work the way it is supposed to check your caps lock. Most systems are either case-sensitive (like UNIX) or automatically translate commands to all upper case. Thus "help", "HELP", and "Help" are either three differnt commands or one and the same.
13. (saving your work) With most programs, whatever you do or change is not permanent unless you write the changes to disk. You "save" your work by selecting "save" from the "file" menu or some other method. Often there are two commands for exiting—one that saves your work and one that discards it. For example, "exit" might save changes and "quit" ignore them. If your program does not have an "autosave" feature—and even if it does—you should save your work every 15 minutes at least.
14. (quitting or logging off) After you have properly saved your work you can quit your program or system by finding the quit command (look at the bottom of either the first or last menu on the menu bar), or by typing "quit", "exit", "q", "x", "bye", "lo", "logout", "logoff", or something similar.
Using a modem (modulator-demodulator) is relatively easy if you follow the instructions that come with the modem and the communications software. These instructions cannot
You should choose a "Hayes-compatible" modem. This is the industry standard and works with most software. The modem is a small computer that responds to "AT" commands, commands sent by your software beginning with "AT" for "Attention Modem". The most common are "ATDT 1 800 555 1212". This tells your modem
So make sure the modem you buy responds to AT commands. A 2400 baud Hayes-compatible modem will cost about $50 by mail-order. You should consider buying a FAX modem ($350), however. The more expensive modem is faster, has more features, and can turn your computer into a FAX machine. Your connection to the outside world will never be any better than your modem allows, so buy a good one.
The FAXes can be displayed on your computer screen. You only print them if you want to, on an ordinary laser printer. The other features of a top of the line FAX modem include:
(1) Up to 14,440 baud rate (7 times faster than 2400 baud)
(2) Data compression (V.32bis is the name of the standard)
(3) Error correction (V.42bis is the name of the standard)
The modem goes between your computers serial (one-bit-at-a-time) communications port and your telephone line. Your modem probably included the right kind of cable. If not, check the manual or call the dealer who sold you the modem.
The modem to phone connection will use standard telephone cable with modular jacks on either end. You unplug your phone from the wall socket and plug in your modem instead. If you want to leave your phone, answering machine, fax machine, and so on plugged in, you can use dual plugs that allow one or more cord to be plugged into the same socket. Look on the bottom of each piece of equipment (including the modem). There should be a little sticker that tells how many ringer equivalents the equipment is worth. Don't exceed eight on any one phone line.
You can also buy inexpensive boxes that will let you use a single phone line for faxes and for voice.
WARNING: usually your modem—and any other "peripherals"—should be wired to your computer before you turn the computer on. This is so the computer can look for the modem and confirm that it is hooked up. Check your computer's and modem's manual for precise instructions on hooking up a modem to your computer.
If you are connecting the computer to an office phone that is part of aPrivate Branch Exchange (PBX) then …
Usually you call another computer by dialing its phone number. Either you type an AT command like "ATDT 1 800 555 1212" or your software does this for you when you choose a "connect" command or something like that from a menu.
Before you get the modem's attention you need to set your software to the proper "modem settings". These settings are listed in literature about the service. As a last resort call customer service for the computer you are trying to connect to. Or else you can try different settings until you find one the lets you connect. The most common modem settings today are either 1200 or 2400 baud and "8N1", which means 8 bits, no parity, and one stop bit.
The most important settings are:
The BAUD RATE (300, 1200, and 2400 are typical low speed connections, with 2400 being the most common one for modern equipment; 9600 or 14400 are
Flow control ON or OFF (often labelled XON/XOFF). If your modem is going to talk with your computer at a faster rate than over the phone line, then flow control is essential. Be sure that your software understands that the phone line speed is different from the computer-to- modem speed. The phone line can't go any faster than 14,440 Baud. Your computer can do four times that or more.
Full or half duplex connection (LOCAL ECHO ON or OFF). In a half duplex connection the two computers take turns communicating on the same channel. This means that your computer will be the one to "ECHO" what *you* type on your screen (local echo ON), since it doesn't make sense say something, have the other computer read it, then send it back, just so you can see what you type. In a full duplex connection both computers can talk at once, so local echo is OFF.
7 or 8 bits per character. Many computer systems use the last seven bits of each byte to denote a character (up to 128 characters). The eighth bit is used for parity, flow control, or some other important signal. Nowadays 8 bits is more common.
Even, Odd, or No PARITY. One way to check for errors in transmission is to tag each byte with a bit that means "even or odd", the parity bit. If a bit is transmitted incorrectly, then the parity bit won't agree with byte sent and the software can ask for that byte or block of data again. NO parity is the most common setting today, however.
0,1, or 2 STOP BITS. 1 stop bit is the usual setting these days.
If your modem has its speaker on, you will here a dial tone, then the modem will dial, and then there will be a lot of squeals as the two computers "negotiate" about the transmission. If you are lucky, both computers will establish a "carrier" tone or hum that is then modulated to send data. At this point most modems turn of the speaker, but a "carrier detect" light should be on. As long as you have the carrier you have the connection. The carrier is present—to your modem, at least—even if you tell your software to "go off line" for a while. If you hang up, however, the carrier is dropped.
Now that you have a carrier, whatever you type is sent to the other computer (and the "transmit" light flashes), and you can receive data as well. Pay attention to any banner the service you are connecting to may print. In particular you need to know what "escape character" your system recognizes. Typing this character or sequence of characters allows you to stop tranmitting everything and give your own system a command. This is especially important if are transferring a file and have to "escape back to your own system" to tell it what to do with the incoming data.
Many services let you sign up by connecting your computer to a
Getting data from one computer to another is a matter of running *two* programs—one on each computer. These programs use a common protocol, or procedure, to communicate. The most common protocols are XMODEM, YMODEM, ZMODEM, and KERMIT (for UNIX systems and some others). The steps involved—using KERMIT as an example—are:
1. Run KERMIT on the sending machine
2. Escape to the receiving machine
3. Run KERMIT on the recieving machine
4. Wait for the transfer to finish.
You will have to read your software manual for more specific instructions, unless you have a direct internet connection or SLIP connection. In these cases you can issue a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) command to whichever computer and the details at the other end are automatically taken care of. See Chapter X for more detail on transferring data.
You will want to use whatever "logoff" procedure the remote computer wants. If your manual or other literature doesn't tell you, and you can't get any information by trying "help" or "?", try the following commands: "logout", "logoff", "lo", "bye", "exit", "quit".
If all else fails you can drop the carrier using the "hangup" command (or escape back to your system and send "ATH" to your modem—attention, hangup).
As a last resort pull the plug and your telephone company will disconnect you, then exit your software and turn off your computer.
You may have to get your modem's attention by typing the "escapesequence", which varies from modem to modem or connection to connection.
[This chapter is under construction]
Since the UNIX operating system may be unfamiliar to many of you, and since many workstations on the net use UNIX, it may help some readers to summarize some of the peculiarities of UNIX. One day you may be logged on to a UNIX machine. Nowadays, like many operating systems, UNIX hides behind a graphical user interface like the X Windows system. Occasionally—and networking is unfortunately one of those occasions— its quirks like file-naming and directory hierarchy peek through.
This Appendix gives you just enough UNIX to avoid some pitfalls and issue commands needed to transfer files. The basic commands you need to know for any system are how to display directories and list the contents of files, how to name files, and how to get help about the system. UNIX commands are just as quirky as MS-DOS, VMS, RSX, VM, or any other operating system that uses a command language. Fortunately, they are no harder.
ls : list current directory
ls -l : longer listing, with file length in bytes
cd mydir : move down one level in the hierarchy to directory "mydir"
cd .. : move up one directory in the hierarchy
Files in UNIX are arranged in a hierarchy or tree structure.
This Appendix may be distributed separately from the rest of this course.
—————(cut here)————— THE FREELORE PROJECT's LIST OF THE TOP 10 THINGS TO GET BY E-MAIL
Copyright (c) 1993 by John E. Goodwin. All Rights Reserved. You may make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non- commercial purposes provided this notice is preserved on all such copies.
This is a list of ten fun and useful things you can get by electronic mail. In all cases your request is handled by an automated system that sends the materials by return mail. Systems change frequently, so some commands may be out of date. All were tested and working as of mid-June 1993.
A typical, old-fashioned E-mail system works like this
% mail
mail> send
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Subj: Your Stance on Nuclear Power
Enter Message. When Done, hit Control-Z, Control-C to quit:Dear Mr. President:
I was disappointed to see that . . .
Message sent 23:05:44 14-JUN-1993.
mail> exit
Modern automated mailservers expect your command in the body of the message. But some old-fashioned ones expect it as part of the *subject* line! I always tell if this is the case.
In most cases you will get a response in a few minutes. For systems that wait to off-peak hours to send responses you may have to wait a day.
Here are some more hints:
o Most automated systems respond to the single command "help".
o People change their directory systems around everyday it seems. If the commands given don't work, try to locate what you want by Archie (see below) before requesting it by mail.
o The Double quotes around some commands aren't part of the command itself (so don't type them!).
With that advice, here's the list. . . .
[10] The CPET (Catalog of Projects in Electronic Text) supplies information about E-text archives for scholars. They have an online database. For detailed instructions, send the message:
connect guvax.acc.georgetown.edu cd cpet_projects_in_electronic_text get cpet_user_guide.txt
to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com". [This is a service that provides Internet File Transfer Protocol (FTP) by E-mail. See next entry].
Anonymous FTP reference for CPET user's guide:
"guvax.acc.georgetown.edu:/cpet_projects_in_electronic_text/cpet_user_gu ide.txt"
[9] Instructions for using Archie by Mail and FTP by Mail.
Archie is a lookup service for finding software or documents in Anonymous FTP archives on the Internet. Anonymous FTP is a method for making materials on certain computers available to the public. Anyone is allowed to log in with the username "anonymous" You give your real name as the password. Anonymous FTP is not available if you just have E-mail, not a full Internet connection.
To help E-mail users access Anonymous FTP archives, an FTP by Mail server has been set up at decwrl.dec.com. It will send you materials you find using Archie. Binary files (pictures and programs) are encoded as text files using the programs "btoa" or "uuencode". You need these freeware programs if you want to get anything besides text files, i.e. ASCII.
A. To get started with Archie, send the message "help" to "archie@archie.rutgers.edu". There are many Archie servers around the world. Any Archie will give you a complete list.
B. To get started with FTP Mail, send the message
help quit
to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com".
[8] A list of book-length Public Domain texts Produced by Project Gutenberg.
You may either get these texts from the Almanac server at "oes.orst.edu" or direct from Project Gutenberg at "mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu".
Send message "help" to "almanac@oes.orst.edu". After reading the guide, send the message "send gutenberg catalog". To get an E-text by mail (e.g.Alice in Wonderland), send the message:
send etext alice
To see the contents of project gutenberg archivesj, send the message
connect mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu cd etext/articles get index quit
to "ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com".
To get the actual texts,
connect mrcnext.cso.uiuc.educd etext/etext93getquit
Anonymous FTP Archive references:
oes.orst.edu:/pub/data/etext
mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu:/etext/articles (general info)
mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu:/etext/etext93 (the texts)
[7] A list of E-mail mailing lists, posted to the "Frequently Asked Questions" or FAQ part of the Usenet newsgroups.
A typical mailing list works like this: to join, say, a mailing list on politics, you send the request "subscribe" to "politics- request@whitehouse.gov". Thereafter, any message sent to "politics@whitehouse.gov" will send you message to all members of the list. You get all the postings from other members as well [The Whitehouse list on politics is a fake example].
Aside: Usenet newsgroup FAQ's are archived at "rtfm.mit.edu". They cover every conceivable subject (but are especially good with computers). To access the archive by E-mail, send the message "help" to "mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu". For an index of materials available, send the message "index".