n be queried by e-mail, however; we'll show you how to do that later on. In the meantime, the rest of this chapter assumes you are connected to a site with at least partial Internet access. Most telnet sites are fairly easy to use and have online help systems. Most also work best (and in some cases, only) with VT100 emulation. Let's dive right in and try one. At your host system's command line, type telnet access.usask.ca and hit enter. That's all you have to do to connect to a telnet site! In this case, you'll be connecting to a service known as Hytelnet, which is a database of computerized library catalogs and other databases available through telnet. You should see something like this: Trying 128.233.3.1 ... Connected to access.usask.ca. Escape character is '^]'. Ultrix UNIX (access.usask.ca) login: Every telnet site has two addresses - one composed of words that are easier for people to remember; the other a numerical address better suited for computers. The "escape character" is good to remember. When all else fails, hitting your control key and the `]' key at the same time will disconnect you and return you to your host system. At the login prompt, type hytelnet and hit enter. You'll see something like this: Welcome to HYTELNET version 6.2 ................... What is HYTELNET? . Up/Down arrows MOVE Library catalogs . Left/Right arrows SELECT Other resources . ? for HELP anytime Help files for catalogs . Catalog interfaces . m returns here Internet Glossary . q quits Telnet tips . Telnet/TN3270 escape keys . Key-stroke commands . ........................ HYTELNET 6.2 was written by Peter Scott, U of Saskatchewan Libraries, Saskatoon, Sask, Canada. 1992 Unix and VMS software by Earl Fogel, Computing Services, U of S 1992 The first choice, "" will be highlighted. Use your down and up arrows to move the cursor among the choices. Hit enter when you decide on one. You'll get another menu, which in turn will bring up text files telling you how to connect to sites and giving any special commands or instructions you might need. Hytelnet does have one quirk. To move back to where you started (for example, from a sub-menu to a main menu), hit the left-arrow key on your computer. Play with the system. You might want to turn on your computer's screen-capture, or at the very least, get out a pen and paper. You're bound to run across some interesting telnet services that you'll want to try - and you'll need their telnet "addresses." As you move around Hytelnet, it may seem as if you haven't left your host system - telnet can work that quickly. Occasionally, when network loads are heavy, however, you will notice a delay between the time you type a command or enter a request and the time the remote service responds. To disconnect from Hytelnet and return to your system, hit your q key and enter. Some telnet computers are set up so that you can only access them through a specific "port." In those cases, you'll always see a number after their name, for example: `india.colorado.edu 13'. It's important to include that number, because otherwise, you may not get in. In fact, try the above address. Type telnet india.colorado.edu 13 and hit enter. You should see something like this: Trying 128.138.140.44 ... Followed very quickly by this: telnet india.colorado.edu 13 Escape character is '^]'. Sun Apr 5 14:11:41 1992 Connection closed by foreign host. What we want is the middle line, which tells you the exact Mountain Standard Time, as determined by a government-run atomic clock in Boulder, Colo. Library Catalogs ================ More than 200 libraries, from the Snohomish Public Library in Washington State to the Library of Congress and the libraries of Harvard University, are now available to you through telnet. You can use Hytelnet to find their names, telnet addresses and use instructions. Why would you want to browse a library you can't physically get to? Many libraries share books, so if yours doesn't have what you're looking for, you can tell the librarian where he or she can get it. Or if you live in an area where the libraries are not yet online, you can use telnet to do some basic bibliographic research before you head down to the local branch. There are several different database programs in use by online libraries. Harvard's is one of the easier ones to use, so let's try it. Telnet to `hollis.harvard.edu'. When you connect, you'll see: ***************** H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y ***************** OFFICE FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY *** *** *** *** VE *** RI *** *** *** *** HOLLIS (Harvard OnLine LIbrary System) ***** ***** **** TAS **** HUBS (Harvard University Basic Services) *** *** ***** IU (Information Utility) *** CMS (VM/CMS Timesharing Service) ** HOLLIS IS AVAILABLE WITHOUT ACCESS RESTRICTIONS ** Access to other applications is limited to individuals who have been granted specific permission by an authorized person. To select one of the applications above, type its name on the command line followed by your user ID, and press RETURN. ** HOLLIS DOES NOT REQUIRE A USERID ** EXAMPLES: HOLLIS (press RETURN) or HUBS userid (press RETURN) ===> Type hollis and hit enter. You'll see several screens flash by quickly until finally the system stops and you'll get this: WELCOME TO HOLLIS (Harvard OnLine Library Information System) To begin, type one of the 2-character database codes listed below: HU Union Catalog of the Harvard libraries OW Catalog of Older Widener materials LG Guide to Harvard Libraries and Computing Resources AI Expanded Academic Index (selective 1987-1988, full 1989- ) LR Legal Resource Index (1980- ) PA PAIS International (1985- ) To change databases from any place in HOLLIS, type CHOOSE followed by a 2-character database code, as in: CHOOSE HU For general help in using HOLLIS, type HELP. For HOLLIS news, type HELP NEWS. For HOLLIS hours of operation, type HELP HOURS. ALWAYS PRESS THE ENTER OR RETURN KEY AFTER TYPING YOUR COMMAND The first thing to notice is the name of the system: Hollis. Librarians around the world seem to be inordinately found of cutesy, anthropomorphized acronyms for their machines (not far from Harvard, the librarians at Brandeis University came up with Library On-Line User Information Service, or Louis; MIT has Barton). If you want to do some general browsing, probably the best bet on the Harvard system is to chose HU, which gets you access to their main holdings, including those of its medical libraries. Chose that, and you'll see this: THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNION CATALOG To begin a search, select a search option from the list below and type its code on the command line. Use either upper or lower case. AU Author search TI Title search SU Subject search ME Medical subject search KEYWORD Keyword search options CALL Call number search options OTHER Other search options For information on the contents of the Union Catalog, type HELP. To exit the Union Catalog, type QUIT. A search can be entered on the COMMAND line of any screen. ALWAYS PRESS THE ENTER OR RETURN KEY AFTER TYPING YOUR COMMAND. Say you want to see if Harvard has shed the starchy legacy of the Puritans, who founded the school. Why not see if they have "The Joy of Sex" somewhere in their stacks? Type TI Joy of Sex and hit enter. This comes up: HU: YOUR SEARCH RETRIEVED NO ITEMS. Enter new command or HELP. You typed: TI JOY OF SEX *************************************************************************** ALWAYS PRESS THE ENTER OR RETURN KEY AFTER TYPING YOUR COMMAND. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- OPTIONS: FIND START - search options HELP QUIT - exit database COMMAND? Oh, well! Do they have anything that mentions "sex" in the title? Try another TI search, but this time just: `TI sex'. You get: HU GUIDE: SUMMARY OF SEARCH RESULTS 2086 items retrieved by your search: FIND TI SEX --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 SEX 2 SEX A 823 SEXA 827 SEXBO 831 SEXCE 833 SEXDR 834 SEXE 879 SEXIE 928 SEXJA 929 SEXLE 930 SEXO 965 SEXPI 968 SEXT 1280 SEXUA 2084 SEXWA 2085 SEXY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- OPTIONS: INDEX (or I 5 etc) to see list of items HELP START - search options REDO - edit search QUIT - exit database COMMAND? If you want to get more information on the first line, type 1 and hit enter: HU INDEX: LIST OF ITEMS RETRIEVED 2086 items retrieved by your search: FIND TI SEX --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SEX 1 geddes patrick sir 1854 1932/ 1914 bks SEX A Z 2 goldenson robert m/ 1987 bks SEX ABUSE HYSTERIA SALEM WITCH TRIALS REVISITED 3 gardner richard a/ 1991 bks SEX AETATES MUNDI ENGLISH AND IRISH 4 irish sex aetates mundi/ 1983 bks SEX AFTER SIXTY A GUIDE FOR MEN AND WOMEN FOR THEIR LATER YEARS 5 butler robert n 1927/ 1976 bks ------------------------------------------------------ (CONTINUES) -------- OPTIONS: DISPLAY 1 (or D 5 etc) to see a record HELP GUIDE MORE - next page START - search options REDO - edit search QUIT - exit database COMMAND? Most library systems give you a way to log off and return to your host system. On Hollis, hit escape followed by xx One particularly interesting system is the one run by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, which maintains databases for libraries throughout Colorado, the West and even in Boston. Telnet `pac.carl.org' Follow the simple log-in instructions. When you get a menu, type `72' (even though that is not listed), which takes you to the Pikes Peak Library District, which serves the city of Colorado Springs. Several years ago, its librarians realized they could use their database program not just for books but for cataloging city records and community information, as well. Today, if you want to look up municipal ordinances or city records, you only have to type in the word you're looking for and you'll get back cites of the relevant laws or decisions. Carl will also connect you to the University of Hawaii library, which, like the one in Colorado Springs, has more than just bibliographic material online. One of its features is an online Hawaiian almanac that can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Hawaiians, including the number injured in boogie-board accidents each year (seven). ôelnet Sites ============ Agriculture ----------- PENPages, run by Pennsylvania State University's College of Agricultural Sciences, provides weekly world weather and crop reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These reports detail everything from the effect of the weather on palm trees in Malaysia to the state of the Ukrainian wheat crop. Reports from Pennsylvania country extension officers offer tips for improving farm life. One database lists Pennsylvania hay distributors by county - and rates the quality of their hay! The service lets you search for information two different ways. A menu system gives you quick access to reports that change frequently, such as the weekly crop/weather reports. An index system lets you search through several thousand online documents by keyword. At the main menu, you can either browse through an online manual or chose "PENPages," which puts you into the agriculture system. Telnet: `psupen.psu.edu' User name: PNOTPA California State University's Advanced Technology Information Network provides similar information as PENPages, only focusing on California crops. It also maintains lists of upcoming California trade shows and carries updates on biotechnology. Telnet: `caticsuf.cati.csufresno.edu' Log in: public You will then be asked to register and will be given a user name and password. Hit `a' at the main menu for agricultural information. Hit `d' to call up a menu that includes a biweekly biotechnology report. AIDS ---- The University of Miami maintains a database of AIDS health providers in southern Florida. Telnet: `callcat.med.miami.edu' Log in: library At the main menu, select `P' (for "AIDS providers" and you'll be able to search for doctors, hospitals and other providers that care for patients with AIDS. You can also search by speciality. See also under Health *Note Health:: and Conversation *Note Conversation::. Amateur Radio ------------- The National Ham Radio Call-Sign Callbook lets you search for American amateur operators by callsign, city, last name or Zip code. A successful search will give you the ham's name, address, callsign, age, type of license and when they got it. Telnet: `callsign.buffalo.edu 2000' or `ham.njit.edu 2000'. When you connect, you tell the system how you want to search and what you're looking for. For example, if you want to search for hams by city, you would type city city-name and hit enter (for example: `city Kankakee'). Other search choices are "call" (after which you would type a ham's name), "name," and "zip" (which you would follow with a Zip code). Be careful when searching for hams in a large city; there doesn't seem to be anyway to shut off the list once it starts except by using control-]. Otherwise, when done, type quit and hit enter to disconnect. Animals ------- See under Health *Note Health::. Art --- The National Gallery of Art in Washington maintains a database of its holdings, which you can search by artist (Van Gogh, for example) or medium (watercolor, say). You can see when specific paintings were completed, what medium they are in, how large they are and who donated it to the gallery. Telnet: `ursus.maine.edu' Login: ursus At the main menu, hit your `b' key and then `4' to connect to the gallery database. Calculators ----------- Hewlett-Packard maintains a free service on which you can seek advice about their line of calculators. Telnet: `hpcvbbs.cv.hp.com' No log-in is needed. Congress -------- The Library of Congress Information Service lets you search current and past legislation (dating to 1982). Telnet: `locis.loc.gov' Password: none needed. When you connect, you'll get a main menu that lets you select from several databases, including the Library of Congress card catalog (with book entries dating to 1978) and a database of information on copyright laws. For the congressional database, select the number next to its entry and hit enter. You'll then be asked to choose which legislative year to search. After that, a menu similar to this will come up: ***C103- THE LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION FILE FOR THE 103RD CONGRESS, which was updated on 05/10/93 and contains 4,044 records, is now available for your search. CURRENCY: All information is NOT current through the above date, which is machine generated when ANY information is added to the file. Bill numbers, official titles, sponsors, and status (STEP) added within 48 hours. Indexing terms and digests added later, in some cases several weeks after the bill is added to the file. TO START RETRIEVE to find: EXAMPLES: SEARCH: member name --------------> retrieve rep gingrich retrieve sen kennedy bill number --------------> retrieve h.r. 1 subject keywords ---------> retrieve day care FOR HELP: Type the word HELP and press the ENTER key. READY FOR NEW COMMAND: Conversation ------------ Communications Canada, a Canadian government agency is developing Conversational Hypertext Access Technology (CHAT) is a system being developed by Communications Canada to provide easy database access to people with little or no computer experience, using what are known as hypertext links. Instead of cryptic computer commands, users type questions in English. Telnet: `debra.doc.ca' Log in: chat You chose one of the three databases now online, one on AIDS, and then ask questions in English. Ask the AIDS database, "When was AIDS first discovered?" and it answers: "The first case of AIDS in North America was diagnosed in 1979. Before that, it existed in Africa, probably beginning in the 1950's. AIDS was discovered in North America when a number of young men with a history of homosexuality developed a rare type of cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma." Sometimes, you do have to rephrase your question. For example, when asked "What is the link between AIDS and drug use?" the computer responds: "I know two things about drugs: the drugs that are used to treat people with AIDS, and the risks that drug users have in getting AIDS. Please ask about treatments or drug users." Copyright Law ------------- See under Congress *Note Congress::. Current Events -------------- Every year, the CIA publishes a Fact Book that is essentially an almanac of all the world's countries and international organizations, including such information as major products, type of government and names of its leaders. It's available for searching through the University of Maryland Info Database. Telnet: `info.umd.edu' User name: info Chose a terminal type and hit enter (or just hit enter if you are using VT100). At the main menu, choose the number next to "Government" and hit enter. One of your options will then be for "Factbook." Chose that one, and you can then search by country or agency. Dictionary ---------- Rutgers University's Campus-Wide Information Service has an online dictionary, thesaurus and database of familiar quotations, as well as online copies of the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon and the U.S. Constitution. Telnet: `info.rutgers.edu' No log-in name is needed. At the main menu, type reference and hit enter. You'll see a menu like this: Online reference material Menu Commands... Command Purpose ------- ------- Dictionary Concise Oxford Dictionary, 8th Ed. Thesaurus Oxford Thesaurus Familiar Oxford Dictionary of Familiar Quotations (and Modern Q.) World CIA World Factbook US US government: Constitution, etc. Religion Bible, Book of Mormon, Koran For more information you may look under Libraries in the main menu Previous Return to previous menu Find Search for information Source Age and provider of information. Where to go for more. Quit Go back to main menu Online reference material Menu> To access any of them, type its name (dictionary, for example) and hit enter. You'll then be asked for the word to look for. If, instead, you type religion and hit enter, you'll be able to search for a word or passage from the Bible, the Koran or the Book of Mormon. Environment ----------- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains online databases of materials related to hazardous waste, the Clean Lakes program and cleanup efforts in New England. The agency plans to eventually include cleanup work in other regions, as well. The database is actually a computerized card catalog of EPA documents - you can look the documents up, but you'll still have to visit your regional EPA office to see them. Telnet: `epaibm.rtpnc.epa.gov' No password or user name is needed. At the main menu, type public and hit enter (there are other listed choices, but they are only for use by EPA employees). You'll then see a one-line menu. Type ols and hit enter, and you'll see something like this: NET-106 Logon to TSO04 in progress. DATABASES: N NATIONAL CATALOG CH CHEMICAL COLL. SYSTEM H HAZARDOUS WASTE 1 REGION I L CLEAN LAKES OTHER OPTIONS: ? HELP Q QUIT ENTER SELECTION --> Choose one and you'll get a menu that lets you search by document title, keyword, year of publication or corporation. After you enter the search word and hit enter, you'll be told how many matches were found. Hit 1 and then enter to see a list of the entries. To view the bibliographic record for a specific entry, hit V and enter and then type the number of the record. The University of Michigan maintains a database of newspaper and magazine articles related to the environment, with the emphasis on Michigan, dating back to 1980. Telnet: `hermes.merit.edu' Host: mirlyn Log in: meem Geography --------- The University of Michigan Geographic Name Server can provide basic information, such as population, latitude and longitude of U.S. cities and many mountains, rivers and other geographic features. Telnet: `martini.eecs.umich.edu 3000' No password or user name is needed. Type in the name of a city, a Zip code or a geographic feature (Mt. McKinley, for example) and hit enter. By typing in a town's name or zip code, you can find out a community's county, Zip code and longitude and latitude. Not all geographic features are yet included in the database. Government ---------- See under Dictionary *Note Dictionary:: and Current Events *Note Current Events::. Health ------ The U.S. Food and Drug Administration runs a database of health-information. Telnet: `fdabbs.fda.gov' Log in: bbs You'll then be asked for your name and a password you want to use in the future. After that, type topics and hit enter. You'll see this: TOPICS DESCRIPTION * NEWS News releases * ENFORCE Enforcement Report * APPROVALS Drug and Device Product Approvals list * CDRH Centers for Devices and Radiological Health Bulletins * BULLETIN Text from Drug Bulletin * AIDS Current Information on AIDS * CONSUMER FDA Consumer magazine index and selected articles * SUBJ-REG FDA Federal Register Summaries by Subject * ANSWERS Summaries of FDA information * INDEX Index of News Releases and Answers * DATE-REG FDA Federal Register Summaries by Publication Date * CONGRESS Text of Testimony at FDA Congressional Hearings * SPEECH Speeches Given by FDA Commissioner and Deputy * VETNEWS Veterinary Medicine News * MEETINGS Upcoming FDA Meetings * IMPORT Import Alerts * MANUAL On-Line User's Manual You'll be able to search these topics by key word or chronologically. It's probably a good idea, however, to capture a copy of the manual, first, because the way searching works on the system is a little odd. To capture a copy, type manual and hit enter. Then type scan and hit enter. You'll see this: FOR LIST OF AVAILABLE TOPICS TYPE TOPICS OR ENTER THE TOPIC YOU DESIRE ==> MANUAL BBSUSER 08-OCT-91 1 BBS User Manual At this point, turn on your own computer's screen-capture or logging function and hit your 1 key and then enter. The manual will begin to scroll on your screen, pausing every 24 lines. Hiring and College Program Information -------------------------------------- The Federal Information Exchange in Gaithersburg, MD, runs two systems at the same address: FEDIX and MOLIS. FEDIX offers research, scholarship and service information for several federal agencies, including NASA, the Department of Energy and the Federal Aviation Administration. Several more federal agencies provide minority hiring and scholarship information. MOLIS provides information about minority colleges, their programs and professors. Telnet: `fedix.fie.com' User name: fedix (for the federal hiring database) or "molis" (for the minority-college system). Both use easy menus to get you to information. History ------- Stanford University maintains a database of documents related to Martin Luthor King. Telnet: `forsythetn.stanford.edu' Account: socrates At the main menu, type `select mlk' and hit enter. Quotations ---------- See under Dictionary. Religion -------- See under Dictionary *Note Dictionary::. Ski Reports ----------- See under Weather *Note Weather::. Space ----- NASA Spacelink in Huntsville, Ala., provides all sorts of reports and data about NASA, its history and its various missions, past and present. You'll find detailed reports on every single probe, satellite and mission NASA has ever launched along with daily updates and lesson plans for teachers. The system maintains a large file library of GIF-format space graphics, but you can't download these through telnet. If you want them, you have to dial the system directly, at (205) 895-0028. Telnet: `spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov' When you connect, you'll be given an overview of the system and asked to register and chose a password. The NED-NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database lists data on more than 100,000 galaxies, quasars and other objects outside the Milky Way. Telnet: `ipac.caltech.edu' Log in: ned You can learn more than you ever wanted to about quasars, novae and related objects on a system run by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. Telnet: `cfa204.harvard.edu' Log in: einline The physics department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst runs a bulletin-board system that provides extensive conferences and document libraries related to space. Telnet: `spacemet.phast.umass.edu' Log on with your name and a password. Supreme Court Decisions ----------------------- The University of Maryland Info Database maintains U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1991 on in its Government area. Telnet: `info.umd.edu' User name: info Chose a terminal type and hit enter (or just hit enter if you are using VT100). At the main menu, choose the number next to "Government" and hit enter. One of your options will then be for "US." Select that number and then, at the next menu, choose the one next to "Supreme Court." Telnet Addresses ---------------- Hytelnet, at the University of Saskatchewan, is an online guide to hundreds of telnet sites around the world. Telnet: `access.usask.ca' Log in: hytelnet Thesaurus --------- See under Dictionary *Note Dictionary::. Time ---- To find out the exact time: Telnet: `india.colorado.edu 13' You'll see something like this: Escape character is '^]'. Sun Apr 5 14:11:41 1992 Connection closed by foreign host. The middle line tells you the date and exact Mountain Standard Time, as determined by a federal atomic clock. If you want a more philosophical approach to your time, the U.S. Naval Observatory's Automated Data Service has copies of detailed papers on such things as "the nature of time." It also carries information on how to buy a clock, along with arcana on such things as "leap seconds." Telnet: `tycho.usno.navy.mil' Log on: ads After you log in and register, you'll get the following menu: MAIN OPTIONS: info, note, ptti, exp, internet, nav, aust, tco, gps, loran, omega, series, transit, astro, tv, soft, vlf, goes, gpsftp, PAGE(/), HELP(?), COMMENT, EXIT(Bye) Type info and hit enter for many of the text files. Weather ------- The University of Michigan's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanographic and Space Sciences supplies weather forecasts for U.S. and foreign cities, along with skiing and hurricane reports. Telnet: `madlab.sprl.umich.edu 3000' (note the 3000) No log-in name is needed. *Note Weather (FTP):: in the FTP list for information on downloading satellite and radar weather images. ôelnet BBSs =========== You might think that Usenet, with its hundreds of newsgroups, would be enough to satisfy the most dedicated of online communicators. But there are a number of "bulletin-board" and other systems that provide even more conferences or other services, many not found directly on the Net. Some are free; others charge for access. They include: Cimarron -------- Run by the Instituto Technical in Monterey, Mexico, this system has Spanish conferences, but English commands, as you can see from this menu of available conferences: List of Boards Name Title General Board general Dudas Dudas de Cimarron Comentarios Comentarios al SYSOP Musica Para los afinados........ Libros El sano arte de leer..... Sistemas Sistemas Operativos en General. Virus Su peor enemigo...... Cultural Espacio Cultural de Cimarron NeXT El Mundo de NeXT Ciencias Solo apto para Nerds. Inspiracion Para los Romanticos e Inspirados. Deportes Discusiones Deportivas To be able to write messages and gain access to files, you have to leave a note to SYSOP with your name, address, occupation and phone number. To do this, at any prompt, hit your M key and then enter, which will bring up the mail system. Hitting H brings up a list of commands and how to use them. Telnet: `bugs.mty.itesm.mx' (8 p.m. to 10 a.m., Eastern time, only). At the "login:" prompt, type `bbs' and hit enter. Cleveland Free-Net ------------------ The first of a series of Freenets, this represents an ambitious attempt to bring the Net to the public. Originally an in-hospital help network, it is now sponsored by Case Western Reserve University, the city of Cleveland, the state of Ohio and IBM. It uses simple menus, similar to those found on CompuServe, but organized like a city: <<< CLEVELAND FREE-NET DIRECTORY >>> 1 The Administration Building 2 The Post Office 3 Public Square 4 The Courthouse & Government Center 5 The Arts Building 6 Science and Technology Center 7 The Medical Arts Building 8 The Schoolhouse (Academy One) 9 The Community Center & Recreation Area 10 The Business and Industrial Park 11 The Library 12 University Circle 13 The Teleport 14 The Communications Center 15 NPTN/USA TODAY HEADLINE NEWS ------------------------------------------------ h=Help, x=Exit Free-Net, "go help"=extended help Your Choice ==> The system has a vast and growing collection of public documents, from copies of U.S. and Ohio Supreme Court decisions to the Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution. It links residents to various government agencies and has daily stories from USA Today. Beyond Usenet (found in the Teleport area), it has a large collection of local conferences on everything from pets to politics. And yes, it's free! Telnet: `freenet-in-a.cwru.edu' or `freenet-in-b.cwru.edu' When you connect to Free-Net, you can look around the system. However, if you want to be able to post messages in its conferences or use e-mail, you will have to apply in writing for an account. Information on this is available when you connect. Dialog ------ This commercial service offers access to a large variety of databases - for a fairly sizable fee. You need a Dialog account to use the system through the Net. Telnet: `dialog.com' DUBBS ----- This is a bulletin-board system in Delft in the Netherlands. The conferences and files are mostly in Dutch, but the help files and the system commands themselves are in English. Telnet: `tudrwa.tudelft.nl' ISCA BBS -------- Run by the Iowa Student Computer Association, it has more than 100 conferences, including several in foreign languages. After you register, hit `K' for a list of available conferences and then `J' to join a particular conference (you have to type in the name of the conference, not the number next to it). Hitting H brings up information about commands. Telnet `bbs.isca.uiowa.edu' At the "login:" prompt, type `bbs' and hit enter. Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) ---------------------------------- Itself a major Net access point in the San Francisco area, the WELL is also a unique online community that maintains dozens of conferences on every imaginable topic (seven devoted just to the Grateful Dead). WELL users are intelligent and opinionated; discussions are often fast and furious. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was basically started in a series of online conversations on the WELL. Although it has a serious San Francisco flavor, it has users from across the country (enough to support both East Coast and Midwest conferences). For its conferences, the WELL uses PicoSpan software, which presents messages differently than rn or nn. When you enter a conference, you can call up a list of "topics." Enter a topic number, and all of the messages start scrolling down the screen, sort of like the music on an old-fashioned player-piano. There is some online help, but new users are sent a written manual. *Note Electronic Mail:: for information on access charges (one advantage to connecting to the WELL through telnet is that unless you live in the Bay Area, it is likely to be much cheaper than other access methods). Telnet: `well.sf.ca.us' *Note The Well:: if you're interested in an intimate look on The WELL. Youngstown Free-Net ------------------- The people who created Cleveland Free-Net sell their software for $1 to anybody willing to set up a similar system. A number of cities now have their own Free-Nets, including Youngstown, Ohio. Telnet: `yfn.ysu.edu' At the "login:" prompt, type `visitor' and hit enter. Finger ====== This is a handy little program which lets you tell others more about you - and which you can sometimes use to find out more about people whose names you see on the Net. It uses the same concept as telnet or ftp. But it works with only one file, called `.plan' (yes, with a period in front). This is a text file you create with a text editor in your home directory. You can put your phone number in there, or your address, or anything at all. To finger somebody else's `.plan' file, type this at the command line: finger email-address where email-address is the person's e-mail address. You'll get back a display that shows the last time the person was online, whether they've gotten any new mail since that time and what, if anything, is in their `.plan' file. Some people and institutions have come up with creative uses for these `.plan' files, letting you do everything from checking the weather in Massachusetts to getting the latest baseball standings. Try fingering these e-mail addresses: Latest National Weather Service weather forecasts for regions in Massachusetts. Locations and magnitudes of recent earthquakes around the world. Current major-league baseball standings and results of the previous day's games. The day's events at NASA. Finding Someone on the Net ========================== So you have a friend and you want to find out if he has an Internet account to which you can write? The quickest way may be to just pick up the phone, call him and ask him. Although there are a variety of "white pages" services available on the Internet, they are far from complete - college students, users of commercial services such as CompuServe and many Internet public-access sites, and many others simply won't be listed. Major e-mail providers are working on a universal directory system, but that could be some time away. In the meantime, a couple of "white pages" services might give you some leads, or even just entertain you as you look up famous people or long-lost acquaintances. The whois directory provides names, e-mail and postal mail address and often phone numbers for people listed in it. To use it, telnet to `internic.net'. No log-on is needed. The quickest way to use it is to type whois name at the prompt, where "name" is the last name or organization name you're looking for. Another service worth trying is the "knowbot" system reachable by telnet to `nri.reston.va.us 185'. Again, no log-on is needed. This service actually searches through a variety of other "white pages" systems, including the user directory for MCIMail. To look for somebody, type query name `name' is the last name of the person you're looking for. You can get details of other commands by hitting a question mark at the prompt. Apart from the previously mentioned methods, there exist a periodical posting on Usenet entitled "How to find people's E-mail addresses" that is edited and maintained by JONATHAN I. KAMENS. It lists several alternatives in order of success probability, to enable everybody to find everyone. Just get `/pub/usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses' from `rtfm.mit.edu'. *Note FTP:: to find out how to access this server. It's cross-posted each month to `comp.mail.misc', `soc.net-people', `news.newusers.questions', and the respective `*.answers' newsgroups. When things go wrong: ===================== * Nothing happens when you try to connect to a telnet site. The site could be down for maintenance or problems. * You get a "host unavailable" message. The telnet site is down for some reason. Try again later. * You get a "host unknown" message. Check your spelling of the site name. * You type in a password on a telnet site that requires one, and you get a "login incorrect" message. Try logging in again. If you get the message again, hit your control and `]' keys at the same time to disengage and return to your host system. * You can't seem to disconnect from a telnet site. Use control-] to disengage and return to your host system. FYI: ==== The Usenet newsgroups `alt.internet.services' and `alt.bbs.internet' can provide pointers to new telnet systems. Scott Yanoff periodically posts his "Updated Internet Services List" in the former; Thomas Kreeger periodically posts "Zamfield's Wonderfully Incomplete, Complete Internet BBS List" in the latter newsgroup. The `alt.bbs.internet' newsgroup is also where you'll find Aydin Edguer's compendium of Internet-BBS-related FAQs. Peter Scott, who maintains the Hytelnet database, runs a mailing list about new telnet services and changes in existing ones. To get on the list, send him a note at . *"Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and Violence."* -- Author Unknown *"The world's as ugly as sin, and almost as delightful."* -- Frederick Locker-Lampson  * FTP (Mining the Net, part II) *  ***************************** Hundreds of systems connected to Internet have file libraries, or archives, accessible to the public. Much of this consists of free or low-cost shareware programs for virtually every make of computer. If you want a different communications program for your IBM, or feel like playing a new game on your Amiga, you'll be able to get it from the Net. But there are also libraries of documents as well. If you want a copy of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, you can find it on the Net. Copies of historical documents, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence are also yours for the asking, along with a translation of a telegram from Lenin ordering the execution of rebellious peasants. You can also find song lyrics, poems, even summaries of every "Lost in Space" episode ever made. You can also find extensive files detailing everything you could ever possibly want to know about the Net itself. First you'll see how to get these files; then we'll show you where they're kept. The commonest way to get these files is through the file transfer protocol, or ftp. As with telnet, not all systems that connect to the Net have access to ftp. However, if your system is one of these, you'll be able to get many of these files through e-mail (*note Advanced E-mail::.). Starting ftp is as easy as using telnet. At your host system's command line, type ftp site.name and hit enter, where "site.name" is the address of the ftp site you want to reach. One major difference between telnet and ftp is that it is considered bad form to connect to most ftp sites during their business hours (generally 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time). This is because transferring files across the network takes up considerable computing power, which during the day is likely to be needed for whatever the computer's main function is. There are some ftp sites that are accessible to the public 24 hours a day, though. You'll find these noted in the list of ftp sites. How do you find a file you want, though? Until a few years ago, this could be quite the pain - there was no master directory to tell you where a given file might be stored on the Net. Who'd want to slog through hundreds of file libraries looking for something? ALAN EMTAGE, BILL HEELAN and PETER DEUTSCH, students at McGill University in Montreal, asked the same question. Unlike the weather, though, they did something about it. They created a database system, called archie, that would periodically call up file libraries and basically find out what they had available. In turn, anybody could dial into archie, type in a file name, and see where on the Net it was available. Archie currently catalogs close to 1,000 file libraries around the world. Today, there are three ways to ask archie to find a file for you: through telnet, "client" Archie program on your own host system or e-mail. All three methods let you type in a full or partial file name and will tell you where on the Net it's stored. If you have access to telnet, you can telnet to one of the following addresses: `archie.mcgill.ca'; `archie.sura.net'; `archie.unl.edu'; `archie.ans.net'; or `archie.rutgers.edu'. If asked for a log-in name, type archie and hit enter. When you connect, the key command is prog, which you use in this form: prog filename followed by enter, where "filename" is the program or file you're looking for. If you're unsure of a file's complete name, try typing in part of the name. For example, `PKZIP' will work as well as `PKZIP201.EXE'. The system does not support DOS or Unix wildcards. If you ask archie to look for `PKZIP*', it will tell you it couldn't find anything by that name. One thing to keep in mind is that a file is not necessarily the same as a program - it could also be a document. This means you can use archie to search for, say, everything online related to the Beetles, as well as computer programs and graphics files. A number of Net sites now have their own archie programs that take your request for information and pass it onto the nearest archie database - ask your system administrator if s/he has it online. These "client" programs seem to provide information a lot more quickly than the actual archie itself! If it is available, at your host system's command line, type archie -s filename where filename is the program or document you're looking for, and hit enter. The `-s' tells the program to ignore case in a file name and lets you search for partial matches. You might actually want to type it this way: archie -s filename |more which will stop the output every screen (handy if there are many sites that carry the file you want). Or you could open a file on your computer with your text-logging function. The third way, for people without access to either of the above, is e-mail. Send a message to . You can leave the subject line blank. Inside the message, type prog filename where filename is the file you're looking for. You can ask archie to look up several programs by putting their names on the same "prog" line, like this: prog file1 file2 file3 Within a few hours, archie will write back with a list of the appropriate sites. In all three cases, if there is a system that has your file, you'll get a response that looks something like this: Host sumex-aim.stanford.edu Location: /info-mac/comm FILE -rw-r--r-- 258256 Feb 15 17:07 zterm-09.hqx Location: /info-mac/misc FILE -rw-r--r-- 7490 Sep 12 1991 zterm-sys7-color-icons.hqx Chances are, you will get a number of similar looking responses for each program. The "host" is the system that has the file. The "Location" tells you which directory to look in when you connect to that system. Ignore the funny-looking collections of r's and hyphens for now. After them, come the size of the file or directory listing in bytes, the date it was uploaded, and the name of the file. Now you want to get that file. Assuming your host site does have ftp, you connect in a similar fashion to telnet, by typing: ftp sumex-aim.stanford.edu (or the name of whichever site you want to reach). Hit enter. If the connection works, you'll see this: Connected to sumex-aim.stanford.edu. 220 SUMEX-AIM FTP server (Version 4.196 Mon Jan 13 13:52:23 PST 1992) ready. Name (sumex-aim.stanford.edu:adamg): If nothing happens after a minute or so, hit control-C to return to your host system's command line. But if it has worked, type anonymous and hit enter. You'll see a lot of references on the Net to "anonymous ftp." This is how it gets its name - you don't really have to tell the library site what your name is. The reason is that these sites are set up so that anybody can gain access to certain public files, while letting people with accounts on the sites to log on and access their own personal files. Next, you'll be asked for your tpassword. As a password, use your e-mail address. This will then come up: 230 Guest connection accepted. Restrictions apply. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> Now type ls and hit enter. You'll see something awful like this: 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. total 2636 -rw-rw-r-- 1 0 31 4444 Mar 3 11:34 README.POSTING dr-xr-xr-x 2 0 1 512 Nov 8 11:06 bin -rw-r--r-- 1 0 0 11030960 Apr 2 14:06 core dr--r--r-- 2 0 1 512 Nov 8 11:06 etc drwxrwsr-x 5 13 22 512 Mar 19 12:27 imap drwxr-xr-x 25 1016 31 512 Apr 4 02:15 info-mac drwxr-x--- 2 0 31 1024 Apr 5 15:38 pid drwxrwsr-x 13 0 20 1024 Mar 27 14:03 pub drwxr-xr-x 2 1077 20 512 Feb 6 1989 tmycin 226 Transfer complete. ftp> Ack! Let's decipher this Rosetta Stone. First, ls is the ftp command for displaying a directory (you can actually use dir as well, but if you're used to MS-DOS, this could lead to confusion when you try to use dir on your host system, where it won't work, so it's probably better to just remember to always use ls for a directory while online). The very first letter on each line tells you whether the listing is for a directory or a file. If the first letter is a `d', or an `l', it's a directory. Otherwise, it's a file. The rest of that weird set of letters and dashes consist of "flags" that tell the ftp site who can look at, change or delete the file. You can safely ignore it. You can also ignore the rest of the line until you get to the second number, the one just before the date. This tells you how large the file is, in bytes. If the line is for a directory, the number gives you a rough indication of how many items are in that directory - a directory listing of 512 bytes is relatively small. Next comes the date the file or directory was uploaded, followed (finally!) by its name. Notice the `README.POSTING' file up at the top of the directory. Most archive sites have a "read me" document, which usually contains some basic information about the site, its resources and how to use them. Let's get this file, both for the information in it and to see how to transfer files from there to here. At the ftp> prompt, type get README and hit enter. Note that ftp sites are no different from Unix sites in general: they are case-sensitive. You'll see something like this: 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for README (4444 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. 4444 bytes received in 1.177seconds (3.8 Kbytes/s) And that's it! The file is now located in your home directory on your host system, from which you can now download it to your own computer. The simple `get' command is the key to transferring a file from an archive site to your host system. If the first letter on the line starts with a `d', then that is a directory you can enter to look for more files. If it starts with an `r', then it's a file you can get. The next item of interest is the fifth column, which tells you how large the item is in bytes. That's followed by the date and time it was loaded to the archive, followed, finally, by its name. Many sites provide a `README' file that lists simple instructions and available files. Some sites use files named `Index' or `INDEX' or something similar. If you want to download more than one file at a time (say a series of documents, use mget instead of get; for example: mget *.txt This will transfer copies of every file ending with .txt in the given directory. Before each file is copied, you'll be asked if you're sure you want it. Despite this, mget could still save you considerable time - you won't have to type in every single file name. There is one other command to keep in mind. If you want to get a copy of a computer program, type bin and hit enter. This tells the ftp site and your host site that you are sending a binary file, i.e., a program. Most ftp sites now use binary format as a default, but it's a good idea to do this in case you've connected to one of the few that doesn't. To switch to a directory, type cd directory-name (substituting the name of the directory you want to access) and hit enter. Type ls and hit enter to get the file listing for that particular directory. To move back up the directory tree, type cd .. (note the space between the d and the first period) and hit enter. Or you could type cdup and hit enter. Keep doing this until you get to the directory of interest. Alternately, if you already know the directory path of the file you want (from our friend archie), after you connect, you could simply type get directory/subdirectory/filename On many sites, files meant for public consumption are in the pub or public directory; sometimes you'll see an info directory. Almost every site has a bin directory, which at first glance sounds like a bin in which interesting stuff might be dumped. But it actually stands for "binary" and is simply a place for the system administrator to store the programs that run the ftp system. Lost+found is another directory that looks interesting but actually never has anything of public interest in them. Before, you saw how to use archie. From our example, you can see that some system administrators go a little berserk when naming files. Fortunately, there's a way for you to rename the file as it's being transferred. Using our archie example, you'd type get zterm-sys7-color-icons.hqx zterm.hqx and hit enter. Instead of having to deal constantly with a file called `zterm-sys7-color-icons. hqx', you'll now have one called, simply, `zterm.hqx'. Those last three letters bring up something else: Many program files are compressed to save on space and transmission time. In order to actually use them, you'll have to use an un-compress program on them first. There are a wide variety of compression methods in use. You can tell which method was used by the last one to three letters at the end of a file. Here are some of the more common ones and what you'll need to un-compress the files they create (and these decompression programs can all be located through archie). `.txt' `.TXT' By itself, this means the file is a document, rather than a program. `.ps' `.PS' A PostScript document (in Adobe's page description language). You can print this file on any PostScript capable printer, or use a previewer, like GNU project's GhostScript. `.doc' `.DOC' Is another common suffix for documents. No de-compression is needed, unless it is followed by `.Z' This is a Unix compression method. To uncompress the file, type `uncompress filename.Z' and hit enter at your host system's command prompt. If it's a text file, you can read it online by typing `zcat file.txt.Z |more' at your host system's command line. There is a Macintosh program called "MacCompress" that you can use on your machine if you want to download the file (use archie to find where you can get it!). There's an MS-DOS equivalent, often found as `u16.ZIP', which means it is itself compressed in the ZIP format. `.zip' `.ZIP' An MS-DOS format. Use the PKZIP package (usually found as `PKZ201.exe' or something similar). `.gz' The GNU project's compression format. A variant of the PKZIP format. Use `gunzip filename.gz' to uncompress. `.zoo' `.ZOO' A Unix and MS-DOS format. Requires the use of a program called zoo. `.Hqx' `.hqx' A Macintosh format that needs BinHex for de-compression. `.shar' `.Shar' A Unix format. Use unshar. `.tar' Another Unix format, often used to compress several related files into one big file. Use tar. Often, a "tarred" file will also be compressed with the `.Z' method, so you first have to use uncompress and then tar. `.TAZ' Sometimes used for compressed tar archives `.tar.Z', that are stored on "3 letter suffix only systems" (aka MS-DOS). `.sit' `.Sit' A Macintosh format, requires StuffIt. `.ARC' A DOS format that requires the use of ARC or ARCE. `.LHZ' Another DOS compression format; requires the use of LHARC. A few last words of caution: Check the size of a file before you get it. The Net moves data at phenomenal rates of speed. But that 500,000-byte file that gets transferred to your host system in a few seconds could take more than an hour or two to download to your computer if you're using a 2400-baud modem. Your host system may also have limits on the amount of bytes you can store online at any one time. Also, although it is really extremely unlikely you will ever get a file infected with a virus, if you plan to do much downloading over the Net, you'd be wise to invest in a good anti-viral program, just in case. ôhe Keyboard Cabal ================== System administrators are like everybody else - they try to make things easier for themselves. And when you sit in front of a keyboard all day, that can mean trying everything possible to reduce the number of keys you actually have to hit each day. Unfortunately, that can make it difficult for the rest of us. Connect to many ftp sites, and one of the entries you'll often see is a directory named `bin'. You might think this is a bin where interesting things get thrown. It's not. "Bin" is short for "binary," i.e., the programs that make the ftp site work, to which you won't have access anyway. Etc is another seemingly interesting directory that turns out to be another place to store files used by the ftp site itself. `lost+found' directories are used by Unix systems for some routine housekeeping - again, nothing of any real interest. Then, once you get into the actual file libraries, you'll find that in many cases, files will have such non-descriptive names as `V1.1-AK.TXT'. The best known example is probably a set of several hundred files known as RFCs, which provide the basic technical and organizational information on which much of the Internet is built. These files can be found on many ftp sites, but always in a form such as `RFC101.TXT', `RFC102.TXT' and so on, with no clue whatsoever as to what information they contain. Fortunately, almost all ftp sites have a "Rosetta Stone" to help you decipher these names. Most will have a file named `README' (or some variant) that gives basic information about the system. Then, most directories will either have a similar `README' file or will have an index that does give brief descriptions of each file. These are usually the first file in a directory and often are in the form `00INDEX.TXT'. Use the ftp command to get this file. You can then scan it online or download it to see which files you might be interested in. Another file you will frequently see is called `ls-lgR.Z'. This contains a listing of every file on the system, but without any descriptions (the name comes from the Unix command `ls -lgR', which gives you a listing of all the files in all your directories). The `.Z' at the end means the file has been compressed, which means you will have to use a Unix un-compress command before you can read the file. And finally, we have those system administrators who almost seem to delight in making things difficult - the ones who take full advantage of Unix's ability to create absurdly long file names. On some FTP sites, you will see file names as long as 80 characters or so, full of capital letters, underscores and every other orthographic device that will make it almost impossible for you to type the file name correctly when you try to get it. Your secret weapon here is the mget command. Just type mget, a space, and the first five or six letters of the file name, followed by an asterisk, for example: mget This_F* The FTP site will ask you if you want to get the file that begins with that name. If there are several files that start that way, you might have to answer `n' a few times, but it's still easier than trying to recreate a ludicrously long file name. FTP Sites ========= What follows is a list of some interesting ftp sites, arranged by category. With hundreds of ftp sites now on the Net, however, this list barely scratches the surface of what is available. Liberal use of archie will help you find specific files. The times listed for each site are in Eastern time and represent the periods during which it is considered acceptable to connect. Amiga ----- `ftp.uu.net' Has Amiga programs in the `systems/amiga' directory. Available 24 hours. Atari ----- `atari.archive.umich.edu' Find almost all the Atari files you'll ever need, in the `atari' directory. 7 p.m. - 7 a.m. Books ----- `pit-manager.mit.edu' (aka `rtfm.mit.edu') The `pub/usenet/rec.arts.books' directory has reading lists for various authors as well as lists of recommended bookstores in different cities. Unfortunately, this site uses incredibly long file names - so long they may scroll off the end of your screen if you are using an MS-DOS or certain other computers. Even if you want just one of the files, it probably makes more sense to use mget than get. This way, you will be asked on each file whether you want to get it; otherwise you may wind up frustrated because the system will keep telling you the file you want doesn't exist (since you may miss the end of its name due to the scrolling problem). 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Computer Ethics --------------- `ftp.eff.org' The home of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Use cd to get to the pub directory and then look in the EFF, SJG and CPSR directories for documents on the EFF itself and various issues related to the Net, ethics and the law. Available 24 hours. Consumer -------- `pit-manager.mit.edu' The `pub/usenet/misc.consumers' directory has documents related to credit. The `pub/usenet/rec.travel.air' directory will tell you how to deal with airline reservation clerks, find the best prices on seats, etc. See under Books for a caveat in using this ftp site. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Cooking ------- `wuarchive.wustl.edu' Look for recipes and recipe directories in the `usenet/rec.food.cooking/ recipes' directory. `gatekeeper.dec.com' Recipes are in the `pub/recipes' directory. Esperanto --------- `ftp.stack.urc.tue.nl' You'll find text files about the Esperanto artificial language in the `pub/ esperanto' directory. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Evolutionary Computation ------------------------ `lumpi.informatik.uni-dortmund.de' If you're interested in one possible future of computation, and also are interested in global optimization problems, evolutionary biology and genetics, you might want to take a look at this server. For an overview on the field, you should get the file `pub/EA/docs/hhgtec.ps.Z', aka "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation". Available 24 hours. FTP Addresses ------------- `iraun1.ira.uka.de' Run by the computer-science department of the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, this site offers lists of anonymous-FTP sites both internationally (in the `anon.ftp.sites' directory) and in Germany (in `anon.ftp.sites.de'). 12 p.m. to 2 a.m. `ftp.netcom.com' The `pub/profiles' directory has lists of ftp sites. Government ---------- `ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu' The `SENATE' directory contains bibliographic records of U.S. Senate hearings and documents for the past several Congresses. Get the file `README.DOS9111', which will explain the cryptic file names. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. `nptn.org' The General Accounting Office (GAO) is the investigative wing of Congress. The `pub/e.texts/gao.reports' directory represents an experiment by the agency to use ftp to distribute its reports. Available 24 hours. History ------- `nptn.org' This site has a large, growing collecting of text files. In the `pub/e.texts/freedom. shrine' directory, you'll find copies of important historical documents, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. Available 24 hours. `ra.msstate.edu' Mississippi State maintains an eclectic database of historical documents, detailing everything from Attilla's battle strategy to songs of soldiers in Vietnam, in the `docs/history' directory. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. `seq1.loc.gov' The Library of Congress has acquired numerous documents from the former Soviet government and has translated many of them into English. In the `pub/soviet.archive/text. english' directory, you'll find everything from telegrams from Lenin ordering the death of peasants to Khrushhchev's response to Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. The `README' file in the `pub/soviet.archive' directory provides an index to the documents. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Hong Kong --------- `nok.lcs.mit.edu' GIF pictures of Hong Kong pop stars, buildings and vistas are available in the `pub/hongkong/HKPA' directory. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Internet -------- `ftp.eff.org' The `pub/internet-info' directory has a number of documents explaining the Internet and Usenet. Available 24 hours. `nic.ddn.mil' The `internet-drafts' directory contains information about Internet, while the `scc' directory holds network security bulletins. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Law --- `info.umd.edu' U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1989 to the present are stored in the `info/Government/US/SupremeCt' directory. Each term has a separate directory (for example, `term1992'). Get the `README' and `Index' files to help decipher the case numbers. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. `ftp.uu.net' Supreme Court decisions are in the court-opinions directory. You'll want to get the index file, which tells you which file numbers go with which file names. The decisions come in Word Perfect and Atex format only. Available 24 hours a day. Libraries --------- `ftp.unt.edu' The library directory contains numerous lists of libraries with computerized card catalogs accessible through the Net. Literature ---------- `nptn.org' In the `pub/e.texts/gutenberg/etext91' and `etext92' directories, you can get copies of Aesop's Fables, works by Lewis Carroll and other works of literature, as well as the Book of Mormon. Available 24 hours. `world.std.com' The `obi' directory has everything from online fables to accounts of Hiroshima survivors. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Macintosh --------- `sumex-aim.stanford.edu' This is the premier site for Macintosh software. After you log in, switch to the info-mac directory, which will bring up a long series of sub-directories of virtually every free and shareware Mac program you could ever want. 9 p.m. - 9 a.m. `ftp.uu.net' Carries copies, or "mirrors" of Macintosh programs from the Simtel20 collection in the `systems/mac/simtel20' directory. Available 24 hours a day. Movie Reviews ------------- `lcs.mit.edu' Look in the movie-reviews directory. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. MS-DOS ------ `wuarchive.wustl.edu' This carries one of the world's largest collections of MS-DOS software. The files are actually copied, or "mirrored" from a computer at the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range (which uses ftp software that is totally incomprehensible). It also carries large collections of Macintosh, Windows, Atari, Amiga, Unix, OS9, CP/M and Apple II software. Look in the mirrors and systems directories. The `gif' directory contains a large number of GIF graphics images. Accessible 24 hours. `ftp.uu.net' Carries copies, or "mirrors" of MS-DOS programs from the Simtel20 collection in the `systems/msdos/simtel20' directory. Available 24 hours a day. Music ----- `cs.uwp.edu' The `pub/music' directory has everything from lyrics of contemporary songs to recommended CDs of baroque music. It's a little different - and easier to navigate - than other ftp sites. File and directory names are on the left, while on the right, you'll find a brief description of the file or directory, like this: SITES 1528 Other music-related FTP archive sites classical/ - (dir) Classical Buying Guide database/ - (dir) Music Database program discog/ = (dir) Discographies faqs/ = (dir) Music Frequently Asked questions files folk/ - (dir) Folk Music Files and pointers guitar/ = (dir) Guitar TAB files from ftp.nevada.edu info/ = (dir) rec.music.info archives interviews/ - (dir) Interviews with musicians/groups lists/ = (dir) Mailing lists archives lyrics/ = (dir) Lyrics Archives misc/ - (dir) Misc files that don't fit anywhere else pictures/ = (dir) GIFS, JPEGs, PBMs and more. press/ - (dir) Press Releases and misc articles programs/ - (dir) Misc music-related programs for various machines releases/ = (dir) Upcoming USA release listings sounds/ = (dir) Short sound samples 226 Transfer complete. ftp> When you switch to a directory, don't include the `/'. 7 p.m. - 7 a.m. `potemkin.cs.pdx.edu' The Bob Dylan archive. Interviews, notes, year-by-year accounts of his life and more, in the `pub/dylan' directory. 9 p.m. - 9 a.m. `ftp.nevada.edu' Guitar chords for contemporary songs are in the `pub/guitar' directory, in subdirectories organized by group or artist. Pets ---- `pit-manager.mit.edu' The `pub/usenet/rec.pets.dogs' and `pub/usenet.rec.pets.cats' directories have documents on the respective animals. See under Books *Note Books:: for a caveat in using this ftp site. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Pictures -------- `wuarchiv.wustl.edu' The `graphics/gif' directory contains hundreds of GIF photographic and drawing images, from cartoons to cars, space images to pop stars. These are arranged in a long series of subdirectories. Photography ----------- `ftp.nevada.edu' Photolog is an online digest of photography news, in the `pub/photo' directory. Religion -------- `nptn.org' In the `pub/e.texts/religion' directory, you'll find subdirectories for chapters and books of both the Bible and the Koran. Available 24 hours. Sex --- `pit-manager.mit.edu' Look in the `pub/usenet/alt.sex' and `pub/usenet/alt.sex.wizards' directories for documents related to all facets of sex. See under Books *Note Books:: for a caveat in using this ftp site. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Science Fiction --------------- `elbereth.rutgers.edu' In the pub/sfl directory, you'll find plot summaries for various science-fiction TV shows, including Star Trek (not only the original and Next Generation shows, but the cartoon version as well), Lost in Space, Battlestar Galactica, the Twilight Zone, the Prisoner and Doctor Who. There are also lists of various things related to science fiction and an online science-fiction fanzine. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Shakespeare ----------- `atari.archive.umich.edu' The shakespeare directory contains most of the Bard's works. A number of other sites have his works as well, but generally as one huge mega-file. This site breaks them down into various categories (comedies, poetry, histories, etc.) so that you can download individual plays or sonnets. Space ----- `ames.arc.nasa.gov' Stores text files about space and the history of the NASA space program in the `pub/SPACE' subdirectory. In the `pub/GIF' and `pub/SPACE/GIF' directories, you'll find astronomy- and NASA-related GIF files, including pictures of planets, satellites and other celestial objects. 9 p.m. - 9 a.m. Spain ----- `goya.dit.upm.es' This Spanish site carries an updated list of bulletin-board systems in Spain, as well as information about European computer networks, in the `info/doc/net' subdirectory, mostly in Spanish. The BBS list is `bbs.Z', which means you will have to uncompress it to read it. Available 24 hours. TeX --- `ftp.tex.ac.uk' in `pub/archive', `ftp.uni-stuttgart.de' in `tex-archive', and `ftp.shsu.edu' in `soft/tex' form the CTAN (comprehensive TeX archive network), that always has the latest TeX version (and everything that comes with it) available. They are continuously updated, i.e. they are "mirrors" of the primary TeX archive at Stanford University. TV -- `coe.montana.edu' The `pub/TV/Guides' directory has histories and other information about dozens of TV shows. Only two anonymous-ftp log-ins are allowed at a time, so you might have to try more than once to get in. 8 p.m. - 8 a.m. `ftp.cs.widener.edu' The `pub/simpsons' directory has more files than anybody could possibly need about Bart and family. The `pub/strek' directory has files about the original and Next Generation shows as well as the movies. See also under Science Fiction *Note Science Fiction::. Travel ------ `nic.stolaf.edu' Before you take that next overseas trip, you might want to see whether the State Department has issued any kind of advisory for the countries on your itinerary. The advisories, which cover everything from hurricane damage to civil war, are in the `pub/travel-advisories/ advisories' directory, arranged by country. 7 p.m. - 7 a.m. Usenet ------ `ftp.uu.net' In the usenet directory, you'll find "frequently asked questions" files, copied from `pit-manager.mit.edu'. The communications directory holds programs that let MS-DOS users connect directly with UUCP sites. In the info directory, you'll find information about ftp and ftp sites. The inet directory contains information about Internet. Available 24 hours. `pit-manager.mit.edu' This site contains all available FAQs "frequently asked questions" files for Usenet newsgroups in the `pub/usenet' directory. For easy access, get the `index' file. See under Books *Note Books:: for a caveat in using this ftp site. 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. Viruses ------- `ftp.unt.edu' The antivirus directory has anti-virus programs for MS-DOS and Macintosh computers. 7 p.m. - 7 a.m. Weather ------- `vmd.cso.uiuc.edu' No password needed. The wx directory contains GIF weather images of North America. Files are updated hourly and take this general form: `CV100222'. The first two letters tell the type of file: CV means it is a visible-light photo taken by a weather satellite. CI images are similar, but use infrared light. Both these are in black and white. Files that begin with SA are color radar maps of the U.S. that show severe weather patterns but also fronts and temperatures in major cities. The numbers indicate the date and time (in GMT - five hours ahead of EST) of the image: the first two numbers represent the month, the next two the date, the last two the hour. The file `WXKEY.GIF' explains the various symbols in SA files. X Windows --------- `ftp.x.org' The default server for MIT's X Window System. See under `/pub'. `ftp.germany.eu.net' Germany's backbone site located at the University of Dortmund, in the European part of the Internet; the so-called EUnet. It's also Germany's default server for X window system releases, and also "mirrors" several important sites; e.g. in `pub/packages/gnu' the GNU project's default server. Furthermore you'll find "mirrors" of `386BSD', `NetBSD', and `Linux'. Available 24 hours. When things go wrong: ===================== * You get a "host unavailable" message. The ftp site is down for some reason. Try again later. * You get a "host unknown" message. Check your spelling of the site name. * You misspell "anonymous" when logging in and get a message telling you a password is required for whatever you typed in. Type something in, hit enter, type bye, hit enter, and try again. FYI: ==== Liberal use of archie will help you find specific files or documents. For information on new or interesting ftp sites, try the `comp.archives' newsgroup on Usenet. You can also look in the `comp.misc', `comp.sources.wanted' or `news.answers' newsgroups on Usenet for lists of ftp sites posted every month by TOM CZARNIK and JON GRANROSE. The `comp.archives' newsgroup carries news of new ftp sites and interesting new files on existing sites. In the `comp.virus' newsgroup on Usenet, look for postings that list ftp sites carrying anti-viral software for Amiga, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Atari and other computers. The `comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest' and `comp.sys.mac.digest' newsgroups provide information about new MS-DOS and Macintosh programs as well as answers to questions from users of those computers. *"Welch ein Ort zum Pluendern!" (What a place to plunder!)* -- General Gebhard Leberecht von Bluecher  * Gophers, WAISs and the World-Wide Web *  ************************************* Even with tools like Hytelnet and archie, telnet and ftp can still be frustrating. There are all those telnet and ftp addresses to remember. Telnet services often have their own unique commands. And, oh, those weird directory and file names! But now that the Net has become a rich repository of information, people are looking at ways to make it far easier to find all that data. Gophers and Wide-Area Information Servers (WAISs) are two programs that could ultimately make the Internet as easy to navigate as commercial networks like CompuServe or Prodigy. Both programs essentially take a request for information and then scan the Net for it, so you don't have to. Both also work through menus - instead of typing in some long sequence of characters, you just move a cursor to your choice and hit enter. Newer gophers even let you select files and programs from ftp sites this way. Let's look at gophers first. Many public-access sites now have gophers online. To use one, type gopher at the command line and hit enter. If you know your site does not have a gopher, or if nothing happens when you type that, telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu At the log-in prompt, type gopher and hit enter. You'll be asked what type of terminal emulation you're using, after which you'll see something like this: Internet Gopher Information Client v1.03 Root gopher server: gopher.micro.umn.edu --> 1. Information About Gopher/ 2. Computer Information/ 3. Discussion Groups/ 4. Fun & Games/ 5. Internet file server (ftp) sites/ 6. Libraries/ 7. News/ 8. Other Gopher and Information Servers/ 9. Phone Books/ 10. Search lots of places at the U of M 11. University of Minnesota Campus Information/ Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1 Gophers are great for exploring. Just keep making choices to see what pops up. Play with it; see where it takes you. Some choices will be documents. When you read one of these and either come to the end or hit a lower-case `q' to quit reading it, you'll be given the choice of saving a copy to your home directory or e-mailing it to yourself. Other choices are simple databases that let you enter a word to look for in a particular database. Notice that one of your choices is "Internet file server (ftp) sites." Choose this, and you'll be connected to a modified archie program - an archie with a difference. When you search for a file through a gopher archie, you'll get a menu of sites that have the file you're looking for, just as with the old archie. Only now, instead of having to write down or remember an ftp address and directory, all you have to do is position the cursor next to one of the numbers in the menu and hit enter. You'll be connected to the ftp site, from which you can then choose the file you want, again just by making a choice in a menu. You'll be asked for a name in your home directory to use for the file, after which the file will be copied to your home system. Unfortunately, this file-transfer process does not yet work with all public-access sites for computer programs and compressed files. If it doesn't work with yours, you'll have to get the file the old-fashioned way, via ftp. The letter u is an important one to remember while navigating a gopher - it moves you back up a gopher directory tree, much like cd .. on an ftp site. In addition to ftp sites, there are now scores of databases and libraries around the world accessible through gophers. There is not yet a common gopher interface for library catalogs, so be prepared to follow the online directions more closely when you use gopher to connect to one. Some gopher menu choices will end with a . This means that if you select it, you'll be starting up a simple database that can search through the given service by keyword. So many services are now available through gophers, that finding what you want has become difficult. Fortunately, you can use veronica, a laboriously constructed acronym that does for "gopherspace" what archie (there is no betty, yet) did for files. You'll usually find veronicas (there are now several) under "Other gopher and information services." When you call up a veronica, tell her (it?) the keyword or words you're interested in, and she/it will search all available databases for it. For example, say you want to impress company tonight and make cherries flambe. If you were to type in "flambe" after calling up veronica, you would soon get a menu listing several flambe recipes, including one called "dessert flambe." Put your cursor on that line of the menu and hit enter, and you'll find it's a menu for cherries flambe. Then hit your q key to quit, and gopher will ask you if you want to save the file in your home directory on your public-access site or whether you want to e-mail it somewhere. VeroniÓÁ ======== Veronica is a "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives." Veronica's name is a play on the concepts of both gopher and archie. (Remember the comic book couple Archie and Veronica? Veronica does for gopher what archie does for anonymous FTP.) Veronica searches through hundreds of gopher holes looking for anything that matches a keyword supplied by the user, and assembles a list of gopher servers that contain items of interest. Note: veronica checks *titles* of gopher items only, not their contents. At present, there are no veronica clients; veronica is a gopher tool. An informal veronica FAQ is posted regularly in `comp.infosystems.gopher' and archived on `veronica.scs.unr.edu' as `veronica/veronica-faq'. Wide-Area Information Servers ============================= Now you know there are hundreds of databases and library catalogs you can search through. But as you look, you begin to realize that each seems to have its own unique method for searching. If you connect to several, this can become a pain. Gophers reduce this problem somewhat. Wide-area information servers promise another way to zero in on information hidden on the Net. In a WAIS, the user sees only one interface - the program worries about how to access information on dozens, even hundreds, of different databases. You tell give a WAIS a word and it scours the net looking for places where it's mentioned. You get a menu of documents, each ranked according to how relevant to your search the WAIS thinks it is. Like gophers, WAIS "client" programs can already be found on many public-access Internet sites. If it does, type swais at the command line and hit enter (the "s" stands for "simple"). If it doesn't, telnet to bbs.oit.unc.edu, which is run by the University of North Carolina At the "login:" prompt, type bbs and hit enter. You'll be asked to register and will then get a list of "bulletins," which are various files explaining how the system works. When done with those, hit your Q key and you'll get another menu. Hit 4 for the "simple WAIS client," and you'll see something like this: SWAIS Source Selection Sources: 23# Server Source Cost 001: [ archie.au] aarnet-resource-guide Free 002: [ archive.orst.edu] aeronautics Free 003: [nostromo.oes.orst.ed] agricultural-market-news Free 004: [sun-wais.oit.unc.edu] alt-sys-sun Free 005: [ archive.orst.edu] alt.drugs Free 006: [ wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.gopher Free 007: [sun-wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.sys.sun Free 008: [ wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.wais Free 009: [ archive.orst.edu] archie-orst.edu Free 010: [ archie.au] archie.au-amiga-readmes Free 011: [ archie.au] archie.au-ls-lRt Free 012: [ archie.au] archie.au-mac-readmes Free 013: [ archie.au] archie.au-pc-readmes Free 014: [ pc2.pc.maricopa.edu] ascd-education Free 015: [ archie.au] au-directory-of-servers Free 016: [ cirm2.univ-mrs.fr] bib-cirm Free 017: [ cmns-sun.think.com] bible Free 018: [ zenon.inria.fr] bibs-zenon-inria-fr Free Keywords: selects, w for keywords, arrows move, searches, q quits, ? Each line represents a different database (the .au at the end of some of them means they are in Australia; the .fr on the last line represents a database in France). And this is just the first page! If you type a capital K, you'll go to the next page (there are several pages). Hitting a capital J will move you back a page. The first thing you want to do is tell the WAIS program which databases you want searched. To select a database, move the cursor bar over the line you want (using your down and up arrow keys) and hit your space bar. An asterisk will appear next to the line number. Repeat this until you've selected all of the databases you want searched. Then hit your W key, after which you'll be prompted for the key words you're looking for. You can type in an entire line of these words - separate each with a space, not a comma. Hit return, and the search begins. Let's say you're utterly fascinated with wheat. So you might select agricultural-market-news to find its current world price. But you also want to see if it has any religious implications, so you choose the Bible and the Book of Mormon. What do you do with the stuff? Select recipes and usenet-cookbook. Are there any recent Supreme Court decisions involving the plant? Chose supreme-court. How about synonyms? Try roget-thesaurus and just plain thesaurus. Now hit w and type in wheat. Hit enter, and the WAIS program begins its search. As it looks, it tells you whether any of the databases are offline, and if so, when they might be ready for a search. In about a minute, the program tells you how many hits it's found. Then you get a new menu, that looks something like this: Keywords: # Score SourceTitleLines 001: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #465. [results of comparison. 1] Di 19 002: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #609. Choice. -- N. choice, option; 36 003: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #465. [results of comparison. 1] Di 19 004: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #609. Choice. -- N. choice, option; 36 005: [1000] (recipes) aem@mthvax Re: MONTHLY: Rec.Food.Recipes 425 006: [1000] ( Book_of_Mormon) Mosiah 9:96 007: [1000] ( Book_of_Mormon) 3 Nephi 18:185 008: [1000] (agricultural-ma) Re: JO GR115, WEEKLY GRAIN82 009: [ 822] (agricultural-ma) Re: WA CB351 PROSPECTIVE PLANTINGS 552 010: [ 800] ( recipes) kms@apss.a Re: REQUEST: Wheat-free, Suga 35 011: [ 750] (agricultural-ma) Re: WA CB101 CROP PRODUCTION258 012: [ 643] (agricultural-ma) Re: SJ GR850 DAILY NAT GRN SUM72 013: [ 400] ( recipes) pat@jaamer Re: VEGAN: Honey Granola63 014: [ 400] ( recipes) jrtrint@pa Re: OVO-LACTO: Sourdough/Trit 142 Each of these represents an article or citing that contains the word wheat, or some related word. Move the cursor bar (with the down and up arrow keys) to the one you want to see, hit enter, and it will begin to appear on your screen. The "score" is a WAIS attempt to gauge how closely the citing matches your request. Doesn't look like the Supreme Court has had anything to say about the plant of late! Now think of how much time you would have spent logging onto various databases just to find these relatively trivial examples. But as more databases are added to WAIS programs, a problem arises that is similar to the one WAISs were supposed to solve: how do you find the specific databases you want? Scrolling through page after page of database listings becomes rather tedious rather quickly and you could wind up missing the one database you really need. That's the next step in WAIS research. World-Wide Web ============== Developed by researchers at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, the World-Wide Web project is somewhat similar to a WAIS. But it's designed on a system known as hypertext. Words in one document are "linked" to other documents. It's sort of like sitting with an encyclopedia - you're reading one article, see a reference that intrigues you and so you flip the pages to look up that reference. To take a walk on The Web try the WWW's (or W3 in the project's own jargon), default telnet site: info.cern.ch No log in is needed. When you connect, you'll see: Overview of the Web GENERAL OVERVIEW There is no "top" to the World-Wide Web. You can look at it from many points of view. If you have no other bias, here are some places to start: by Subject[1] A classification by subject of interest. Incomplete but easiest to use. by Type[2] Looking by type of service (access protocol, etc) may allow to find things if you know what you are looking for. About WWW[3] About the World-Wide Web global information sharing project Starting somewhere else To use a different default page, perhaps one representing your field of interest, see "customizing your home page"[4]. What happened to CERN? 1-6, Up, for more, Quit, or Help: Ok. Now type `3', and get the following screen: The World Wide Web project WORLD WIDE WEB The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia[1] information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents. Everything there is online about W3 is linked directly or indirectly to this document, including an executive summary[2] of the project, an illustrated talk[3] , Mailing lists[4] , Policy[5] and Conditions[6] , May's W3 news[7] , Frequently Asked Questions[8] . What's out there?[9] Pointers to the world's online information, subjects[10] , W3 servers[11] , etc. WWW Software Products[12] What there is and how to get it: clients, servers and tools. Technical[13] Details of protocols, formats, program internals etc Bibliography[14] Paper documentation on W3 and references. Also: manuals[15] . 1-20, Back, Up, for more, Quit, or Help: You navigate the web by typing the number next to a given reference. So if you want to know more about the web, hit 2. This is another system that bears playing with. ólients ======= If you are used to plain-vanilla Unix or MS-DOS, then the way these gophers and WAISs work seems quite straightforward. But if you're used to a computer with a graphical interface, such as a Macintosh, an IBM compatible with Windows or a Next, you'll probably regard their interfaces as somewhat primitive. There are, however, ways to integrate these services into your graphical user interface. In fact, there are now ways to tie into the Internet directly, rather than relying on whatever interface your public-access system uses. There is now a growing number of these "client" programs for everything from ftp to gopher. PSI of Reston, Va., which offers nationwide Internet access, in fact, requires its customers to use these programs. Using protocols known as SLIP and PPP, these programs communicate with the Net using the same basic data packets as much larger computers online. Beyond integration with your own computer's "desktop," client programs let you do more than one thing at once on the net - while your downloading a large file in one window, you can be chatting with a friend through an Internet chat program in another. These client programs have a couple of disadvantages. One is that you'll need a 9600-baud modem - while it is possible to connect to the Net with them at lower speeds, you will likely find them painfully slow. Not all public-access sites are set up to allow such connections. And those that are usually charge far more for them. Your system administrator can give you more information on setting up one of these connections. FYI: ==== See the Usenet newsgroups `comp.infosystems.*': `comp.infosystems.gopher', `comp.infosystems.wais', and `comp.infosystems.www' are places to go for technical discussions about Gopher, WAISs, and the World-Wide Web project respectively. Moreover there are `comp.infosystems' for more general discussion of related issues. The group `comp.infosystems.gis' relates to Geographic Information Systems, and thus is more specialized on this subject. There even exists a Gopher service to read Usenet news: `gopher gopher.msu.edu 4320'. But, the lines behind this service are few, and thus it's likely that you get the following message, when trying to enter: We are sorry, but our Usenet News gateway limits the number of simultaneous connections. If you were attempting to read news and were instead directed to this file, all of those connections are in use. We offer this gateway as a "last resort" for people who have no other access for reading Usenet. We do not have the capacity to serve as the Usenet gateway for large numbers of users around the Internet. Individuals who like this style of access should ask their Internet service providers to offer the same sort of gateway on their local Gopher server. Individuals and campuses should consider installing local news feeds and local news readers (such as RN, NN, TIN, or Trumpet) so that users can read and post to Usenet newsgroups conveniently. For system administrators: the software we use to implement this gateway is the go4gw Gopher gateway software from Roland Schemers of Stanford University. This software should be available by anonymous ftp from boombox.micro.umn.edu, somewhere under /pub/gopher. -- The Michigan State University Gopher Team *"Reliable information is the basis of successful planning."* -- Christoph Columbus  * Advanced E-mail *  *************** E-mail by itself is a powerful tool, and by now you may be sending e-mail messages all over the place. You might even be on a mailing list or two. But there is a lot more to e-mail than just sending messages. If your host system does not have access to ftp, or it doesn't have access to every ftp site on the Net, you can have programs and files sent right to your mailbox. And using some simple techniques, you can use e-mail to send data files such as spreadsheets, or even whole programs, to friends and colleagues around the world. A key to both is a set of programs known as encoders and decoders. For all its basic power, Net e-mail has a big problem: it can't handle graphics characters or the control codes found in even the simplest of computer programs. Encoders however, can translate these into forms usable in e-mail, while decoders turn them back into a form that you can actually use. If you are using a Unix-based host system, chances are it already has an encoder and decoder online that you can use. These programs will also let you use programs posted in several Usenet newsgroups, such as `comp.binaries.ibm.pc'. To help people without ftp access, a number of ftp sites have set up mail servers (also known as archive servers) that allow you to get files via e-mail. You send a request to one of these machines and they send back the file you want. As with ftp, you'll be able to find everything from historical documents to software (but please note that if you do have access to ftp, that method is always quicker and ties up fewer resources than using e-mail). Some interesting or useful mail servers include: Files of "frequently asked questions" related to Usenet; state-by-state lists of U.S. representatives and Senators and their addresses and office phone numbers. Information about the Electronic Frontier Foundation; documents about legal issues on the Net. Back copies of the Computer Underground Digest and every possible fact you could want to know about "The Simpsons." Programs for many types of personal computers; archives of past postings from many Usenet newsgroups. Space-related text and graphics (GIF-format) files. Detailed information about Internet. Most mail servers work pretty much the same - you send an e-mail message that tells them what file you want and how you want it sent to you. The most important command is "send," which tells the computer you want it to send you a particular file. First, though, you'll need to know where the mail server stores that file, because you have to tell it which directory or sub-directory it's in. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can send an e-mail message to the archive-server that consists of one line: index The server will then send you a directory listing of its main, or root directory. You'll then have to send a second message to the archive server with one line: index directory/subdirectory where that is the directory or directory path for which you want a listing. An alternative is to send an e-mail message to our old friend archie, which should send you back the file's exact location on the archive-server (along with similar listings for all the other sites that may have the file, however) Once you have the file name and its directory path, compose a message to the archive server like this: send directory/subdirectory/file Send off the message and, anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days later, you'll find a new message in your mailbox: a copy of the file you requested. The exact time it will take a file to get to you depends on a variety of factors, including how many requests are in line before yours (mail servers can only process so many requests at a time) and the state of the connections between the server and you. Seems simple enough. It gets a little more complicated when you request a program rather than a document. Programs or other files that contain unusual characters or lines longer than 130 characters (graphics files, for example) require special processing by both the mail server to ensure they are transmitted via e-mail. Then you'll have to run them through at least one converter program to put them in a form you can actually use. To ensure that a program or other "non-mailable" file actually gets to you, include another line in your e-mail message to the server: encoder This converts the file into an encoded form. To decode it, you'll first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home directory. If you are using the simple mail program, go into mail and type w # file.name where `#' is the number of the message you want to transfer and file.name is what you want to call the resulting file. In pine, call up the message and hit your `O' key and then `E'. You'll then be asked for a file name. In elm, call up the message and hit your `S' key. You'll get something that looks like this: =file.request Type a new file name and hit enter (if you hit enter without typing a file name, the message will be saved to another mail folder, not your home directory). Exit mail to return to your host system's command line. Because the file has been encoded for mail delivery, you now have to run a decoder. At the command line, type uudecode file.name where `file.name' is the file you created while in mail. Uudecode will create a new, uncompressed file. In some cases, you may have to run it through some other programs (for example, if it is in "tar" form), but generally it should now be ready for you to download to your own computer. One further complication comes when you request a particularly long file. Many Net sites can only handle so much mail at a time. To make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like this: size 100000 This gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each file segment. This particular size is good for UUCP sites. Internet and Bitnet sites can generally go up to 300000. When you get all of these files in mail, transfer them to your home directory. Exit mail an