EVERYBODY'S INTERNET UPDATE ==================== Number 6 - September, 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ An online publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This month: 1. Giving the Internet the SLIP 1.1 Look Ma, I'm multitasking 1.2 Hooking up 1.3 The nitty-gritty (it ain't pretty) 1.4 Putting it all together 1.5 TIA: Help for the SLIPless 1.6 When things go wrong 1.7 FYI 2. Mining Usenet for Information 2.1 Stanford digs the mine 2.2 FYI 3. Aren't you hungry? Cybereats to go 4. Public-access providers 4.1 Italy 4.2 California 4.3 Connecticut 4.4 Florida 4.5 Nevada 4.6 New Jersey 4.7 New York 4.8 Utah 4.9 Virginia 4.10 FYI 5. Services of the month 6. Updates/errata 7. Thanks! 8. Contact info ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. GIVING THE INTERNET THE SLIP If you connect to the Internet via a public-access Internet provider, chances are good you're doing it the old fashioned way. You start up a communications program like Procomm, Zterm or Crosstalk, then dial into your provider and then use programs on that site to read your mail, cruise Usenet newsgroups, whatever. That means having to learn a set of Unix commands. And if you're a Windows or Macintosh user, it means having to give up most of the features that can make your computer easier to use, such as the ability to do things by clicking (or double-clicking) on them with your mouse, dragging and dropping files, etc. There is a potentially better way -- software that uses a communications standard called the Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP). With a SLIP connection, you gain back all those graphical conveniences. You also gain the ability to do more than one thing at once -- reading your e-mail while downloading some large game program, for example. And SLIP will give you a graphical interface to multimedia applications on the Net, such as the World-Wide Web. Of course, there's a catch. Setting up a SLIP connection could cost you more than a standard dial-in account, both for the cost of the software and the cost of the connection (although both are falling rapidly). It could also mean some really frustrating set-up work that will make your dentist's chair seem an enjoyable place to visit. And as is often the case these days, MS-DOS users are being left behind. Although there is SLIP software for MS-DOS, it requires the use of commands very similar to those you use on a Unix system. And there is no graphical MS-DOS interface to the World-Wide Web. But with all that in mind, let's take a look at how this all works and how to get yourself started with it. 1.2 LOOK MA, I'M MULTI-TASKING Computers tied directly to the Internet communicate with each other using a standard known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). This standard allows for direct interaction between these computers -- so that, for example, you can tap into a database halfway around the world over the Net (it also deals with such issues as routing information from A to B). This is NOT what you are doing when you dial into a public-access site with, say, Procomm. Once your computer and your host establish a link, your computer basically goes to sleep and you interact with the network via programs on your host. That terminal emulation you always have to remember to set is merely a way to tell the host system what kind of keyboard to pretend you'd be using if you were actually at the host computer sitting at one of its terminals. All of the programs you need to run to interact with the Net, from mail and Usenet readers to Gopher and Lynx, are actually running on your provider's computer (or network); the only time your computer wakes up is when you do something like download a file (and even then, you're not using any particular Internet program). SLIP changes that by making your computer an active participant on the network. With a SLIP account, it's essentially your host that goes to sleep, acting only as a sort of doorway to the rest of the Internet for you and your computer. Now your computer has direct access to TCP/IP message packets (which can be anything from e-mail to World-Wide Web images). Note: You'll often see references to PPP, or Point-to-Point Protocol. It accomplishes the same basic thing as SLIP, only it does it differently. In practical terms, there's really no difference between the two. To do anything useful, you'll now need your own programs to retrieve and interpret these packets -- or your own equivalents of Pine, Gopher, tin, etc. Typically, however, the Windows and Mac versions of these programs work just like other Windows and Mac programs. For example, an FTP program will let you drag a file listed on an anonymous file directory into a directory on your own computer (so no more getting the file to your public-access host and then downloading it to your machine). And Windows users getting huge files over the net can use alt-tab to bring up another application, Usenet, say. Now before you rush out and spend lots of time and money on a SLIP connection, however, be aware that there are some definite advantages to the old way of doing things. Besides the costs mentioned earlier, you don't have to worry about clogging up your hard drive with all the programs you'll need to make a SLIP link work -- your provider has to worry about that. The provider is also responsible for keeping the software running and upgrading it from time to time. Think of it as the difference between owning your own house, where you can do anything you want, and renting an apartment, where the landlord has to fix things when they break. And one of the things you simply can't do on a standard dial-up connection is run Mosaic (with one key exception; look below for the TIA section). With SLIP, you'll be able to use this graphic interface to the World-Wide Web that everybody keeps talking about. Yes, it's pretty and fun to look at. But watch out kids -- even with a 14.4K modem, it can be slooooow, because of the size and number of some of the images out there. If you use the World-Wide Web more to find information than look at pretty icons, you might find yourself turning off the "inline images" (i.e., the icons and masthead photos), which most Web browsers now let you do. Still, if you get bored waiting for a World-Wide Web page to show up, with SLIP you can do other things -- read mail, download a file, set up a telnet connection somewhere, or even all three. Yes, each of those will be slower than if you were doing them one at a time, but generally not enough that you'll notice. So now you're ready to give the Internet the SLIP. 1.2. HOOKING UP Some Internet providers now make it really easy on you -- they'll sell you a complete package that gives you the main Internet programs in a single box. All you basically have to do is tell the software your modem speed, and credit-card number and you're off. Netcom, with local numbers across the country and Pipeline, in New York, are two providers that do this (Pipeline's software technically does not use SLIP, but it works essentially the same; more important, however, its software does not yet support the World-Wide Web). Spry, Inc. and O'Reilly and Associates recently released their own "Internet in a Box" for Windows that does much the same thing for $149. NetManage, Inc. sells its top-of-the-line Chameleon for Windows for closer to $300. But what if you're happy with your existing provider? Ask them if they support SLIP. Many now do, typically for an additional set-up fee of up to $30 and then an extra monthly fee of $10 to $20 a month above whatever you're paying now (although some now offer SLIP for the same price as regular dial-up). But you'll need to get and configure the software. One option is to Internet in a Box, Chameleon or some other package. Another is to download the software you need right from the Internet. Using some free and low- cost software, you can create a decent Windows SLIP package for about $40. This includes access to the Web, e-mail and Usenet software and FTP and telnet. There are SLIP-ready Gopher programs, but given that you can get to Gophers via the Web, it seems redundant to have software for it. Mac users please bear with me. It's not that I have anything against Macs, but since I don't use one, I can't really talk intelligently about them. So here's a plea: Any Mac user who's set up a SLIP system and wants to tell others how they did it, drop me a line! In the meantime, see the FYI section below for information on a World-Wide Web server that has lots of information about setting up SLIP connections on Macs and other computers. 1.3 THE NITTY-GRITTY (IT AIN'T PRETTY) And now here's where things get, um, fun. First, set up your SLIP account. Your provider should give you several bits of information you'll need to configure the software: * A modem phone number. * Your user name * Your password * An IP address. This will be your numerical Internet address * A host name. This can be whatever you like, for example, your first name * A domain name or suffix. Typically, the last part of your provider's address, for example: tiac.net. * A POP/SMTP server address or number (also known as mail host number). This is the Internet address for the machine your mail program will connect to to fetch your mail. * An NNTP address (for Usenet) * A numerical address for a domain name server. * A default gateway * Whether the system supports straight SLIP or Compressed SLIP Also, you'll need Windows 3.1 and at least 4 megabytes of RAM. In a word: Phew! Fortunately, once you set your system up, you'll never have to deal with any of this stuff ever again (but keep it written down somewhere just in case your hard drive melts or something). Now let's go get the software we need. The University of California at Santa Cruz runs a Gopher that conveniently has much of the software we'll need. Use Gopher to connect to darkstar.ucsc.edu. From the main menu, select "Network information," then "UCSC public ftp service" and then "PC - various DOS-Windows utilities/programs." Now select "catsapps" and then "winsock." You'll want to get the file twsk10a.zip, which contains the Trumpet Winsock software. This is our SLIP connection software and includes a file called winsock.dll (short for Windows Socket) that connects SLIP to Windows. This application is shareware, so if you continue to use it, you should buy it -- it's $40 (you'll find information on where to send the money after you un-zip the file). Now back up the menu tree once, so that you're back in the "catsapps" menu. Select "eudora." The file you want here is eudora14.exe. This is our mail program. After you get it, back up again, this time two levels, to the "PC" menu. Select "wintrump" and get the file wtwsk10a.zip. This will be our Usenet system. Now disconnect from there and use anonymous FTP or ncFTP to connect to ftp.netmanage.com. As mentioned earlier, NetManage sells a high-end SLIP package. But you can get an earlier version of the software, which seems to work well for most things, for free. The path is /pub/demos/sampler/sampler.exe. We'll use this for FTP and telnet (it also comes with mail, but Eudora has some nicer features). Finally, there's our World-Wide Web browser. Yes, you can certainly use the famous Mosaic, from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. But the current version of Mosaic only works with 32-bit versions of Windows, i.e., the kind of Windows you probably don't have. To use it at home, you'll need another, really large program called win32s. Partly for this reason, partly because of the way Mosaic quickly reached the Nuts Threshold here (i.e., the point at which I started yelling "This is nuts!" because of the rapidity with which it kept crashing my computer), I'd recommend two other World-Wide Web browsers, both free and both available over the Internet. WinWeb, from EINet, looks a whole lot like Mosaic, right down to the default gray background, but it's designed for normal Windows set-ups and hasn't caused any grief here. You can get it via anonymous FTP or ncFTP at ftp.einet.net as /einet/pc/winweb/winweb.zip. Cello, designed by Thomas Bruce at Cornell University's Legal Information Institute, also works quite nicely. It has a different "feel" than WinWeb and Mosaic, but you can customize the interface, everything from the size of fonts to background colors. It's available via anonymous FTP or ncFTP at ftp.law.cornell.edu as /pub/LII/Cello/cello.zip. 1.4 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER So now you have all this stuff cluttering up your hard drive. Un-zip the .ZIP files and run the files that end in .EXE (they're self-extracting ZIP files). Most will then be ready to go. The one exception is sampler.exe, which requires you to run setup.exe after it's unpacked. Also, the actual program for Trumpet Winsock is tcpman.exe. For convenience, you might want to put all of the applications in a single program group in Program Manager. Next, you configure all these programs. First, start with the Trumpet Winsock. When you launch it, you should get a configuration screen. If not, click on File and then Set Up. Fill in all the blanks. Click on Internal SLIP (and, if your provider uses Compressed SLIP, click on Van Jacobson CSLIP Compression). When done, you'll be told to exit Trumpet to re-start it. Do so and re-launch the program. This time, click on Dialler and then Edit Scripts. Double-click on login.cmd. This will bring up the Notepad text editor. Look for a line that says "output at&c1" Put a # at the very beginning of that line, which will cause the system to ignore that line (unless you're in Australia; otherwise the system might not work). Save the file, and exit Trumpet. You probably want to edit your autoexec.bat file to include the Trumpet directory in your PATH line. Now launch Eudora. Click on Special and then Configuration, where you'll again be asked to fill in a bunch of blanks, using some of the information you got up above. If you're online a lot, and get a lot of mail, you might want to change the Check For Mail Every X Minutes setting from 0 to some other number; otherwise, you'll have to "manually" get your mail. You can also tell the system where to put any message attachments you might get -- click on Auto Receive Attachment Directory, then the weird blue bar next to it to mark one off. When done, click OK. The last thing you'll have to configure is the Trumpet News Reader. Launch it, and if you don't get a configuration screen right away, click on File and then Setup, which will bring up yet another config table. One of the things you can set is the path to a .signature file (which assumes that you want one attached to all your outbound Usenet messages). When done, click OK, then call up File and then Network Configuration, to answer two more questions (there's actually three spaces, but don't worry about a Time Server setting, unless your provider gives you one). Amazingly enough, the other programs -- WinWeb or Cello, FTP and telnet -- don't need you to do anything at all to configure them. And now, you're ready to go. Launch the Trumpet Winsock. Wait about 20 seconds, until you get a message "Script aborted." Now click on Dialler and then Manual Login and then type atdt555-1234 or whatever the actual number is, and hit enter (if you're familiar with communications scripts, you can later go back and alter the login.cmd file to get you in automatically). When you connect, log on with your user name and password. You should then get some sort of message like "SLIP access now starting..." Hit your escape key, which tells Trumpet to make the SLIP connection. And you're in! Use alt-tab to get back to your Internet program group and click on the Trumpet Newsreader. Here's where we'll see if you have any problems. If you get any sorts of error messages about how your computer can't connect to the NNTP server, chances are the some of the configuration numbers are wrong. Go back into the Newsreader config section and double-check the numbers you typed in. But let's be optimistic and assume things worked. The first thing that'll happen is that your computer will download a list of every single available newsgroup. This could take awhile, so while that's going on, hit alt-tab again, and this time call up WinWeb or Cello (WinWeb will take a fair while to load up, too, because its default setting is to connect you to the EINet Web server, a setting you can change). Both will have a series of "starter" Web sites for you to click on and jump to. Try those. Look at the pretty pictures. Try more Web sites. If you have a specific URL or address you want to try, click on Jump in Cello or Navigate in WinWeb, then Load or Launch URL. Important note here: You always have to launch Trumpet Winsock before you can start the other applications, at least to grab stuff off the Internet. After a few minutes, go through alt-tab to return to the newsreader. You should have a list of newsgroups, which you can search. Double click on any groups to which you want to subscribe. When done, click on OK. A list of subscribed-to groups will appear on the top of your screen. Double click on the one you want to read first. If it's a large group, it'll take awhile -- your system will grab all the messages. So while that's going on, use alt-tab to get back to your Internet group and start up Eudora. You'll get what looks like a very simple spreadsheet -- this is actually where you'll get a list of incoming messages, if you have any. To send somebody a message, click on Message and then New Message. From there, it's pretty straightforward. If you want to attach a file, choose between BinHex and Mime, then, with your cursor in the header, hit control-H and put in the file path. When done, hit the Send button. To check if you have new mail, click on File and then Check Mail. NetManage's telnet is fairly straightforward. The FTP is not particularly hard, either. Click on Connect, type in the name of an FTP site and your user name and password (which for anonymous FTP will be your e-mail address). When you connect, you navigate the site on the right. When you find a file you want, set the directory on your machine where you want to put it, then click on Copy. 1.5 TIA: HELP FOR THE SLIPLESS A new entrant is a program called The Internet Adapter that simulates SLIP, letting you use Mosaic and similar SLIP-type applications over a normal connection to your existing Internet access provider. The software actually sits on your provider's computer. This means that to use TIA, you'll a "shell account." Generally, if you're dumped right into Unix when you dial into your host system, you have a shell account. Because the software depends on your host, your host has to run one of the types of Unix supported by TIA. Users of Free-Nets, however, do not have such access, while some providers charge extra for this. You'll also still need Mosaic or some such, telnet, etc., installed on your own computer. To get the software, use anonymous FTP or ncFTP to connect to marketplace.com. In the /tia directory, you'll find copies of the software for several Unix varieties. In the /tia/docs directory, you'll find documentation, answers to frequently asked questions, etc. Once you get the software and load it in your home directory on your public-access provider, you'll need to get a software key that will let you use the software for 14 days -- after which the software disables itself until you send in a check for $25. You'll find info on how to get this key in the /tia/read.me file on the above site. Once you have the software up and running, it's fairly simple. Dial into your host as usual. After you log in, type "tia" at your command prompt and hit enter. This starts TIA. Now you're ready to run the programs on your own computer Two caveats: Remember all those addresses listed above that you have to get to set up a SLIP account? You'll need several of them to configure your software to run with TIA. The instructions that come with the software tell you which ones and how to get them (if you can't get them from your provider). Also, TIA has caused something of a controversy among access providers. Some have embraced it and bought site licenses so all their users can take advantage of it. Others, however, have banned it. 1.6 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG If something can go wrong with SLIP, it will. You could write a book about setting up a SLIP connection (and no doubt, somebody has), so the above directions might be a bit skimpy in some areas. If one setting doesn't work, try another. The Charm Net PPP Home Page, listed below, is an excellent place to go for more information. Some specific things that can go wrong: Some specific things: * You launch a program and get an "Undefined Dynalink" error message. This probably means you've tried to start a program while not connected to your SLIP provider. Click on OK and then check to see if you're actually connected via Trumpet Winsock. * You get error messages whenever you try to use Eudora or Trumpet Newsreader. * Check your configuration settings to make sure you put in the correct addresses. * You have a SLIP connection, but get an error message the first time you try to use Eudora. Go into the configuration area and change the numerical address to the name one (or vice versa). 1.7 FYI Frank Hecker's "Personal Internet Access Using SLIP or PPP; How You Use It, How It Works," gives a good overview of how the two protocols work. It's available via FTP at ftp.digex.net as /pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt or via the World-Wide Web at http://www.charm.net/ppp.html. At that latter URL, you'll find numerous other documents and programs related to SLIP/PPP access, including information and files related to Macintosh SLIP service. Henry Kriz has written a three-part series on connecting Windows computers to the Internet via TCP/IP, SLIP, etc. that goes into more technical detail than what you've just read. It's available via anonymous FTP at nebula.lib.vt.edu in the /pub/windows/winsock directory. Look for a file with a name like wtcpip05.asc, where the two digits in the first part of the name indicate the current version number. There's a large set of information files related to Cello at the Web address http://www.law.cornell.edu/cello/cellofaq.html For information on Spry products, point your Web browser at http://www.spry.com. For information on Netcom's NetCruiser, connection to http://www.netcom.com/netcom/cruiser.html. And for information on Pipeline, the URL is http://www.pipeline.com. Useful Usenet newsgroups include comp.infosystems.www, comp.infosystems.www.users and plain old comp.infosystems. 2. MINING FOR INFO ON USENET 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. 2.1 STANFORD DIGS THE MINE But what if there were software out there that scanned the Net for articles containing keywords of interest to you? That way, you'd get only the stuff you're really interested in and not the dross. 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. 2.2 FYI To get a more comprehensive guide to the service, 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 3. AREN'T YOU HUNGRY? CYBEREATS TO GO Pizza Hut got some national attention recently when it opened up an online pizza-delivery service on the Internet. Alas, it currently only serves the anchovy-mad masses of Santa Cruz, California (the Santa Cruz Operation, best known for its Unix software, helped set up the server), but if it takes off, Pizza Hut could expand it nationwide. If you want to get a taste of online food service, point your World-Wide Web browser at http://www.pizzahut.com. Fill in the form that pops up. Unless you put in a Santa Cruz phone number, you'll be told you can't actually use the service. But then you'll get the chance to click on "demo" and fill out a mock order form. Experience the joy that only comes from building your own pizza. Extra pepperoni? No problem! And actually, for all the publicity, Pizza Hut was not the first. That honor goes to Celia's Chinese Kitchen in Boulder, Colo., which lets you order either via a World-Wide Web form or e-mail. Of course, it helps to be in the vicinity of Boulder (mooshi chicken doesn't travel well in parcel post). To take a look at the menu for Boulder's only dimsum eatery, set your World-Wide Web browser to http://celias.com/celias/index.html, or send some e-mail to menu@celias.com (orders go to orders@celias.com). Oh, they're closed on Sundays. Several restaurants in Boston and Cambridge, Mass. are now also reachable via the Web at http://bighorn.terra.net/ResTERRAnt (yes, you read right; it's a service of a company called Terra Net). This is actually an Internet-to-fax gateway: you fill out an order, it gets sent to the eatery's fax machine. Those on a diet should check out the menu for the Potluck Cafe in Boston, which features such appetite suppressants as lizard-brain soup and bat's liver. 4. PUBLIC-ACCESS PROVIDERS What follows are listings of Internet providers not previously mentioned in the EFF Guide to the Internet or past Updates. Systems that have "menus" listed let you access the Internet by making choices on menus; others use the more traditional Unix command prompt. 4.1 ITALY Milan. Galactica, 02/29.00.60.58 (up to 2400 bps); 02/29.00.60.91 (up to 14.4 Kbps). Charges: 24.000 lire/month; 71.400/three months; 178.500/a year, including IVA. Voice: 02/29.00.61.50 Rome. Agora, 06 69920412 (up to 2400 bps); 6990532 (9600 bps); 52271093 (14.4 Kbpss). Also available via ITAPAC: NUA 26430303, 26420265 (1200 bps). Voice: 06 6991742/3 Rome. MC-link Technimedia Srl, 06 4180440 or 06 4180660 (US Robotics). ITAPAC: NUA 26410420. Charges: 216.000 lire per year or 72.000 lire per quarter. Voice: 06 418921. 4.2 CALIFORNIA Berkeley. Community ConneXion, (510) 549-1383. Log in as: guest. $10 a month. Voice: (510) 841-2014. 4.3 CONNECTICUT Middlefield. Connix, (203) 349-1176. $20 start-up fee; $2 an hour with a $10 monthly minimum or $20 a month for 20 hours a month. SLIP is $25 for 20 hours a month plus a $25 set-up fee. Voice: (203) 349-7059. 4.4 FLORIDA Broward County. SEFLIN Free-Net, (305) 357-7318. Menus. Free. Voice: (305) 357-7318. Deerfield Beach/Miami/Tampa/Orlando. CyberGate. $17.50 a month; $29.50 a month for 25 hours of SLIP/PPP access (plus $50 set-up fee). Voice: (305) 428-GATE or (800) NET GATE outside of 305. Tallahassee. Symnet, (904) 385-8177. Menus or Unix. $15 a month or six months for $75; SLIP for $30 set-up and $30 for 30 hours a month. Voice: (904) 385-1061. 4.5 NEVADA Las Vegas. Evergreen Internet Express. For modem number, call voice number below. $240 a year unlimited access; $360 a year for unlimited SLIP/PPP access. Voice: (702) 361-2258. Las Vegas. @wizard.com, (702) 871-3102. Menus or Unix. $14.95 set-up fee, $25 a month. Voice: (702) 871-4461. 4.6 NEW JERSEY Wyckoff. NIC. Call voice number for modem number. Menus or Unix. $10 set- up fee, $10 a month for 20 hours or $20 a month for 60 hours. Voice: (201) 934-1445. 4.7 NEW YORK New York. Interport Communications, (212) 989-1258. Log on as: newuser. $25 a month for 60 hours a month. Voice: (212) 989-1128. Rockland County. TZ-Link, (914) 353-4618, Menus or Unix. Log in as guest with a password of: guest. $36 a quarter. Voice: (914) 353-5443. Rye. WestNet Internet Services, (914) 967-7802. Log in as: new. $45 a quarter; $150 a year. Voice: (914) 967-7816. White Plains. Cloud 9 Internet, (914) 682-0384. Menus or Unix. $45 a quarter or $180 a year; #90 a quarter or $360 a year for SLIP. Voice: (914)682-0626. 4.8 UTAH XMission, (801) 539-0900. Menus and Unix. $5 first month; $19 a month after that. SLIP/PPP no extra charge. Voice: (801) 539-0852. 4.9 VIRGINIA Williamsburg. Global Connect. For modem number, call voice number below. Menus or Unix. $15 a month or $150 a year for 40 hours per month; $40 a month or $400 a year for 70 hours of SLIP/PPP access a month. Voice: (804) 229-4484. 4.10 FYI The Society for Electronic Access in New York maintains a comprehensive list of Internet providers in the New York/Tri-State area. You can get a copy by using Gopher to connect to gopher.panix.com. At the main menu, select SEA. Network-USA has created a World-Wide Web listing of Internet providers around the world at http://www.netusa.net/ISP. 5. SERVICES OF THE MONTH 5.1 AGRICULTURE The Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an e-mail server from which you can obtain fact sheets on rural and farm economics for each state. To get them, write to listserv@ers.bitnet. As your message, write GET OK DATA substituting the two-letter state code for whichever state you want. 5.2 CHERNOBYL A group of researchers at the Kurchatov Institute for Atomic Energy in Moscow have created a World-Wide Web resource devoted to the Chernobyl melt-down. The URL is http://polyn.net.kiae.su/polyn/manifest.html. 5.3 GOVERNMENT/LAW Look up Canadian Supreme Court decisions on a Web/Gopher server run by the Research Centre in Public Law and the University of Montreal's Faculty of Law. The Web URL is http://www.droit.umontreal.ca/; the Gopher address gopher.droit.umontreal.ca. Washington State legislative information is now available via anonymous FTP at leginfo.leg.wa.gov in the /pub directory. 5.4 IRELAND Who knows better about pubs than the Irish? Look up reviews of pubs in Dublin via the World-Wide Web at http://www.dsg.cs.tcd.ie:/dsg_people/czimmerm/pubs.html. 5.5 SMILEYS The Smiley Catalog is just what it sounds like -- a collection of hundreds of those little ASCII faces. Use telnet to connect to twinbrook.cis.uab.edu 3399. Type "help" (but without the quotation marks) to get hints on using the system. 5.6 TRAVEL More detours for the Virtual Chevrolet, including a New York City Web server at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/nyc/. 5.7 WOMEN IN COMPUTING The Ada Project at Yale University is a collection of World-Wide Web links to information and resources related to women in computing, from their importance in the development of the field to information on organizations and fellowships. Point your Web browser at http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/tap/tap.html. 6. ERRATA/UPDATES The author of "Travels with Samantha" (Update No. 4) is Philip Greenspun. Don't use fido.de (Chapter 1) as a gateway to Fidonet in Germany. Instead, use fidonet.org, as with other Fidonet addresses. 7. THANKS! Thanks to the following folks who provided information that made this month's Update possible: Adam Atkinson, Philip Greenspun, Michael Holzt, David Riggins, Gleason Sackman. 8. CONTACT INFO Everybody's Internet Update is published monthly by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Current and back copies are available by anonymous FTP or ncFTP at ftp.eff.org in the pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/Updates directory; by gopher at gopher.eff.org (select Net Info, then EFF Net Guide, then Updates); and by WWW at http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/Updates/ To obtain a copy of the entire EFF Guide to the Internet, use anonymous FTP or ncFTP to connect to ftp.eff.org and look in the /pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide directory, or use gopher to connect to gopher.eff.org and then select Net Info and then EFF Net Guide. You'll find several versions for different types of computers. The file netguide.eff is the generic ASCII version. To reach Update Editor Adam Gaffin, write adamg@world.std.com. For general information on the Electronic Frontier Foundation, send an e- mail message to info@eff.org. To ask a specific question, write ask@eff.org. Everybody's Internet Update is copyright 1994 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Washington, D.C.