Grizzled Usenet veterans (you can always tell them by the coffee-stained leather jackets they wear) proudly recall the days when they could read every single article posted on the network each day and still find time to do some work. But now, with the number of newsgroups approaching 10,000, that, of course, is impossible. That causes a potential problem, though. What if there's a discussion going on somewhere you might be interested in? Sure, Usenet is divided into hierarchies and newsgroups with the goal of helping people find discussions on specific topics, but given the number of people who now post each day, even that might mean you'll miss something. And if you go on vacation and you come back to 2,000 new articles in your favorite group, the temptation is awfully high to just mark them all as read rather than trying to dig through them for useful/interesting messages. Meet Stanford University's Netnews Filtering Server. Somewhere at Stanford sits a computer that creates a daily index of all Usenet messages that pass through it. Through simple e-mail commands, you can get this machine to filter out articles for you and then send you a daily summary of what it finds. If the summaries of each article look intriguing enough, you can then have the entire articles mailed to you. The basic commands are really simple. You tell the computer what to look for and how frequently you want to receive its reports. Send an e-mail message to netnews@db.stanford.edu. Leave the subject line blank, and as the message, write subscribe phrase or word period 1 For example, subscribe boston bruins period 1 would set the machine to searching for references to the Boston Bruins and then report back to you every day (if you substituted "period 2," it would report back to you every two days; you can go as high as 5). There's an optional third command, "expire,'' which you would use to tell the computer how many days to keep looking for you. For example, expire 30 would end the search after 30 days. Now let's say you do get an article you want to read more about. Each article will have a message number. To get it, write back to netnews@db.stanford.edu and as your message, write get news.group.# for example, get alt.sex.hamsters.duct-tape.4601 You can also search the Stanford database for existing articles. Again, write to netnews@db.stanford.edu. As your message, write search word or phrase You'll get back a list of possibly relevant articles. 10.6 JUST THE FAX, MA'AM Yes, the Internet is by far the world's largest computer network. But not everybody's connected to it -- yet. Thanks to some Internet pioneers, however, you can now extend the reach of the Net to people who still rely on fax machines. In 1993, Carl Malamud, founder of the Internet Multicasting Service (which now provides everything from a half-hour talk show broadcast over the Internet to databases of patent and SEC information) and Marshall Rose, a computer consultant, created a mechanism for translating Internet e-mail messages into faxes. Today, you can reach a number of metropolitan areas in the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Korea, Portugal, New Zealand and the United Kingdom via their service. TPC depends on a series of volunteers, from individuals to large corporations, who have agreed to provide Internet-to-fax services in a given geographic area. Technically, TPC is an experiment at this point; one of the issues Malamud and Rose are looking at for the long term is how to make the system pay for itself. Sending a fax via TPC is as easy as sending an e-mail message, with the exception of figuring out the e-mail address to use for a given fax, which, to an outsider, looks awfully bizarre. First, you want to get a TPC coverage list to see if the person you want to reach is in an area served by TPC. Send an e-mail message to tpc- coverage@town.hall.org (it doesn't really matter what you say in the message; "send info" works fine). You'll get back a list showing the metropolitan areas now covered, as well as, in many cases, the specific exchanges within those areas you can reach. Assuming the person you want to reach is in one of these areas, you're ready to go. Now to figure out the e-mail address for a given fax number. Take the phone number and add the particular country's international dialing code to the front -- even if you're sending a fax to somebody in your own country (the U.S.'s international code is 1). Do not, however, include whatever digits you would dial just to get an international circuit (which in the U.S. would be 011). Now remove any parentheses, hyphens or spaces. So, for example, 1 (213) 555-1234 would become 12135551234. Add ".iddd.tpc.int" to the end of that, for example: 12135551234.iddd.tpc.int That's the part of the address to the right of the @ sign. The left half of the address will look something like this: remote-printer.John_Doe/5th_floor This is actually a clever way to have a cover sheet printed for your fax. All TPC addresses start with "remote-printer." The next part, as you can see, is the name of the person you want to reach. Since you can't have spaces in an Internet address, always separate the names with a _. A TPC fax server interprets a / as a message to move to the next line on the cover page. So put all this together, and you get: remote-printer.John_Doe/5th_floor@12135551234.iddd.tpc.int Phew! But it works! Now compose your e-mail message and send it to the address you've just created. TPC will then route it to the nearest participating fax machine, for delivery to your recipient. Once your fax is delivered, you'll even get a confirmation notice via e-mail. If you have addresses you plan to write to more than once, it would make eminent sense to put them in your Pine or Elm address book. Speaking of Pine, you can use its ability to forward message attachments to send graphics as part of the fax. See under FYI to see how to get information on this. 10.7 THE ALL KNOWING ORACLE One other thing you can do through e-mail is consult with the Usenet Oracle. You can ask the Oracle anything at all and get back an answer (whether you'll like the answer is another question). First, you'll want to get instructions on how to address the Oracle (he, or she, or it, is very particular about such things and likes being addressed in august, solemn and particularly sycophantic tones). Start an e-mail message to oracle@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu In the "subject:" line, type help and hit enter. You don't actually have to say anything in the message itself -- at least not yet. Hit control-D to send off your request for help. Within a few hours, the Oracle will mail you back detailed instructions. It's a fairly long file, so before you start reading it, turn on your communications software's logging function, to save it to your computer (or save the message to a file on your host system's home directory and then download the file). After you've digested it, you can compose your question to the Oracle. Mail it to the above address, only this time with a subject line that describes your question. Expect an answer within a couple of days. And don't be surprised if you also find a question in your mailbox -- the Oracle extracts payment by making seekers of knowledge answer questions as well! 10.8 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG * You get back an error message that your fax could not be delivered. With TPC, that could mean one of two things. Either you tried sending a fax to an area not covered by TPC or you made a mistake converting the fax number into a TPC address. Double-check both the list of TPC coverage areas and the address you created. 10.9 FYI To get a more comprehensive guide to Stanford's Netnews Filtering Server, which includes tips on helping the computer better refine your searches, write netnews@db.stanford.edu. Leave the subject line blank, and as your message, write: help TPC (which gets its name from the 1967 movie "The President's Analyst") maintains a mailing list to discuss the project. To get on it, send your request to tpc-rp-request@aarnet.edu.au. To get more detailed information on TPC, send a message to tpc-faq@town.hall.org. Chapter 11: NEWS OF THE WORLD 11.1 CLARINET: ASSOCIATED PRESS, MISS MANNERS AND DILBERT Usenet "newsgroups" can be something of a misnomer. They may be interesting, informative and educational, but they are often not news, at least, not the way most people would think of them. But there are several sources of news and sports on the Net. One of the largest is Clarinet, a company in Cupertino, Calf., that distributes wire-service news and columns, along with a news service devoted to computers and even the Dilbert comic strip, in Usenet form. Because Clarinet charges for its service, not all host systems carry its articles. Those that do carry them as Usenet groups starting with "clari." As with other Usenet hierarchies, these are named starting with broad area and ending with more specific categories. Some of these include business news (clari.biz); general national and foreign news, politics and the like (clari.news), sports (clari.sports); columns by Mike Royko, Miss Manners, and others (clari.feature); and NewsBytes computer and telecommunications reports (clari.nb). Because Clarinet started in Canada, there is a separate set of clari.canada newsgroups. The clari.nb newsgroups are divided into specific computer types (clari.nb.apple, for example). Clari newsgroups feature stories updated around the clock. There are even a couple of "bulletin" newsgroups for breaking stories: clari.news.bulletin and clari.news.urgent. Clarinet also sets up new newsgroups for breaking stories that become ongoing ones (such as major natural disasters, coups in large countries and the like). Occasionally, you will see stories in clari newsgroups that just don't seem to belong there. This happens because of the way wire services work. AP uses three-letter codes to route its stories to the newspapers and radio stations that make up most of its clientele, and harried editors on deadline sometimes punch in the wrong code. 11.2 STILL MORE NEWS ON THE NET Several newspapers around the world now offer online editions on the World-Wide Web. Typically, this includes not only copies of current news and sports stories, but features and, increasingly, advertisements (well, they have to pay for it somehow). One of the first newspapers to go online with a daily edition was the Charlotte News and Observer in North Carolina, at http://www.nando.net. You'll find world news, sports news (including homepages devoted to specific teams) and features about North Carolina. You'd expect the San Jose Mercury News, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, to be online, and it is, at http://www.sjmercury.com. Look for daily news and sports, as well as documents and features not always found in the printed version. The Mercury News also offers a for- fee service that will e-mail you stories and classifieds with keywords you specify. The London Telegraph's Electronic Telegraph provides a similar supply of stories, with a British slant, naturally, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk. You'll have to register to use the service, but it's free. Also online is Time magazine, at http://www.timeinc.com. In addition to providing copies of news stories, this Web site also lets you participate in online conferences about the news. 11.3 THE WORLD TODAY, FROM BELARUS TO BRAZIL The Open Media Research Institute (formerly known as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) provides daily news summaries from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The digests are available via e-mail. Write to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu. Leave the "subject:" line blank, and as your message, write: subscribe omri-l your name The Voice of America, a government broadcasting service aimed at other countries, provides transcripts of its English-language news reports through both gopher and anonymous ftp. For the former, use gopher to connect to this address: gopher.voa.gov and for the latter, to this address: ftp.voa.gov Daily Brazilian news updates are available (in Portuguese) from the University of Sao Paulo. Use anonymous ftp to connect to uspif.if.usp.br Use cd to switch to the whois directory. The news summaries are stored in files with this form: NEWS.23OCT92;1. But to get them, leave off the semicolon and the 1, and don't capitalize anything, for example: get news.23oct92 11.4 FYI Steve Outing maintains a list of newspapers with online services and how to connect to them. It's available on the Web at http://marketplace.com/e-papers.list.www/e-papers.outing.html The clari.net.newusers newsgroup on Usenet provides a number of articles about Clarinet and ways of finding news stories of interest to you. To discuss the future of newspapers and newsrooms in the new electronic medium, subscribe to the online-news mailing list. Send a mail message of Subscribe online-news Your Name to majordomo@marketplace.com. Look in the alt.radio.networks.npr newsgroup in Usenet for summaries of NPR news shows such as "All Things Considered." This newsgroup is also a place to discuss the network and its shows, personalities and policies. A number of media organizations now encourage readers, listeners and viewers to communicate with them electronically, via Internet e-mail addresses. they range from internationally known newspapers such as the Times of London to college-owned FM stations. You can get a list of media outlets with e-mail addresses via anonymous ftp or ncftp at ftp.std.com, in the /periodicals/middlesex-news directory. Get the file called medialist. Chapter 12: IRC, MUDs AND OTHER THINGS THAT ARE MORE FUN THAN THEY SOUND Many Net systems provide access to a series of interactive services that let you hold live "chats" or play online games with people around the world. To find out if your host system offers these, you can ask your system administrator or just try them -- if nothing happens, then your system does not provide them. In general, if you can use telnet and ftp, chances are good you can use these services as well. 12.1 TALK This is the Net equivalent of a telephone conversation and requires that both you and the person you want to talk to have access to this function and are online at the same time. To use it, type talk user@site.name where user@site.name is the e-mail address of the other person. She will see something like this on her screen: talk: connection requested by yourname@site.name talk: respond with: talk yourname@site.name To start the conversation, she should then type (at her host system's command line): talk yourname@site.name where that is your e-mail address. Both of you will then get a top and bottom window on your screen. She will see everything you type in one window; you'll see everything she types in the other. To disconnect, hit control-C. One note: Public-access sites that use Sun computers sometimes have trouble with the talk program. If talk does not work, try typing otalk or ntalk instead. However, the party at the other end will have to have the same program online for the connection to work. 12.2 INTERNET RELAY CHAT IRC is a program that lets you hold live keyboard conversations with people around the world. It's a lot like an international CB radio - it even uses "channels." Type something on your computer and it's instantly echoed around the world to whoever happens to be on the same channel with you. You can join in existing public group chats or set up your own. You can even create a private channel for yourself and as few as one or two other people. And just like on a CB radio, you can give yourself a unique "handle" or nickname. IRC currently links host systems in 20 different countries, from Australia to Hong Kong to Israel. Unfortunately, it's like telnet -- either your site has it or it doesn't. If your host system does have it, Just type irc and hit enter. You'll get something like this: *** Connecting to port 6667 of server world.std.com *** Welcome to the Internet Relay Network, adamg *** Your host is world.std.com, running version 2.7.1e+4 *** You have new mail. *** If you have not already done so, please read the new user information with +/HELP NEWUSER *** This server was created Sat Apr 18 1992 at 16:27:02 EDT *** There are 364 users on 140 servers *** 45 users have connection to the twilight zone *** There are 124 channels. *** I have 1 clients and 3 servers MOTD - world.std.com Message of the Day - MOTD - Be careful out there... MOTD - MOTD - ->Spike * End of /MOTD command. 23:13 [1] adamg [Mail: 32] * type /help for help ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You are now in channel 0, the "null" channel, in which you can look up various help files, but not much else. As you can see, IRC takes over your entire screen. The top of the screen is where messages will appear. The last line is where you type IRC commands and messages. All IRC commands begin with a /. The slash tells the computer you are about to enter a command, rather than a message. To see what channels are available, type /list and hit enter. You'll get something like this: *** Channel Users Topic *** #Money 1 School CA$H (/msg SOS_AID help) *** #Gone 1 ----->> Gone with the wind!!! ------>>>>> *** #mee 1 *** #eclipse 1 *** #hiya 2 *** #saigon 4 *** #screwed 3 *** #z 2 *** #comix 1 LET'S TALK 'BOUT COMIX!!!!! *** #Drama 1 *** #RayTrace 1 Rendering to Reality and Back *** #NeXT 1 *** #wicca 4 Mr. Potato Head, R. I. P. *** #dde^mhe` 1 no'ng chay? mo*? ...ba` con o*iiii *** #jgm 1 *** #ucd 1 *** #Maine 2 *** #Snuffland 1 *** #p/g! 4 *** #DragonSrv 1 Because IRC allows for a large number of channels, the list might scroll off your screen, so you might want to turn on your computer's screen capture to capture the entire list. Note that the channels always have names, instead of numbers. Each line in the listing tells you the channel name, the number of people currently in it, and whether there's a specific topic for it. To switch to a particular channel, type /join #channel where "#channel" is the channel name and hit enter. Some "public" channels actually require an invitation from somebody already on it. To request an invitation, type /who #channel-name where channel-name is the name of the channel, and hit enter. Then ask someone with an @ next to their name if you can join in. Note that whenever you enter a channel, you have to include the #. Choose one with a number of users, so you can see IRC in action. If it's a busy channel, as soon as you join it, the top of your screen will quickly be filled with messages. Each will start with a person's IRC nickname, followed by his message. It may seem awfully confusing at first. There could be two or three conversations going on at the same time and sometimes the messages will come in so fast you'll wonder how you can read them all. Eventually, though, you'll get into the rhythm of the channel and things