ATTMail ------- Address your message to user@attmail.com. From ATTMail, a user would send mail to you in this form: internet!domain!user So if your address were nancyr@world.std.com, your correspondent would send a message to you at internet!world.std.com!nancyr Bitnet ------ Users of Bitnet (and NetNorth in Canada and EARN in Europe) often have addresses in this form: IZZY@INDVMS. If you're lucky, all you'll have to do to mail to that address is add "bitnet" at the end, to get izzy@indvms.bitnet. Sometimes, however, mail to such an address will bounce back to you, because Bitnet addresses do not always translate well into an Internet form. If this happens, you can send mail through one of two Internet/Bitnet gateways. First, change the @ in the address to a %, so that you get username%site.bitnet. Then add either @vm.marist.edu or @cunyvm.cuny.edu, so that, with the above example, you would get izzy%indyvms.bitnet@vm.marist.edu or izzy%indvyvms.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu Bitnet users have it a little easier: They can usually send mail directly to your e-mail address without fooling around with it at all. So send them your address and they should be OK. CompuServe ---------- CompuServe users have numerical addresses in this form: 73727,545. To send mail to a CompuServe user, change the comma to a period and add "@compuserve.com"; for example: 73727.545@compuserve.com. Note that many CompuServe users must pay extra to receive mail from the Internet. If you know CompuServe users who want to send you mail, tell them to GO MAIL and create a mail message. In the address area, instead of typing in a CompuServe number, have them type your address in this form: INTERNET:YourID@YourAddress. For example, INTERNET:adamg@world.std.com. Delphi ------ To send mail to a Delphi user, the form is username@delphi.com. Fidonet ------- To send mail to people using a Fidonet BBS, you need the name they use to log onto that system and its "node number.'' Fidonet node numbers or addresses consist of three numbers, in this form: 1:322/190. The first number tells which of several broad geographic zones the BBS is in (1 represents the U.S. and Canada, 2 Europe and Israel, 3 Pacific Asia, 4 South America). The second number represents the BBS's network, while the final number is the BBS's "FidoNode'' number in that network. If your correspondent only gives you two numbers (for example, 322/190), it means the system is in zone 1. Now comes the tricky part. You have to reverse the numbers and add to them the letters f, n and z (which stand for "FidoNode,''"network,'' and "zone'). For example, the address above would become f190.n322.z1. Now add "fidonet.org'' at the end, to get f190.n322.z1.fidonet.org. Then add "FirstName.LastName@', to get FirstName.LastName@f190.n322.z1.fidonet.org Note the period between the first and last names. Also, some countries now have their own Fidonet "backbone" systems, which might affect addressing. For example, were the above address in Germany, you would end it with "fido.de" instead of "fidonet.org." Whew! The reverse process is totally different. First, the person has to have access to his or her BBS's "net mail" area and know the Fidonet address of his or her local Fidonet/UUCP gateway (often their system operator will know it). Your Fidonet correspondent should address a net-mail message to UUCP (not your name) in the "to:" field. In the node-number field, they should type in the node number of the Fidonet/UUCP gateway (if the gateway system is in the same regional network as their system, they need only type the last number, for example, 390 instead of 322/390). Then, the first line of the message has to be your Internet address, followed by a blank line. After that, the person can write the message and send it. Because of the way Fidonet moves mail, it could take a day or two for a message to be delivered in either direction. Also, because many Fidonet systems are run as hobbies, it is considered good form to ask the gateway sysop's permission if you intend to pass large amounts of mail back and forth. Messages of a commercial nature are strictly forbidden (even if it's something the other person asked for). Also, consider it very likely that somebody other than the recipient will read your messages. GEnie ----- To send mail to a GEnie user, add "@genie.geis.com" to the end of the GEnie user name, for example: walt@genie.geis.com. MCIMail ------- To send mail to somebody with an MCIMail account, add "@mcimail.com to the end of their name or numerical address. For example: 555-1212@mcimail.com or jsmith@mcimail.com Note that if there is more than one MCIMail subscriber with that name, you will get a mail message back from MCI giving you their names and numerical addresses. You'll then have to figure out which one you want and re-send the message. From MCI, a user would type Your Name (EMS) at the "To:" prompt. At the EMS prompt, he or she would type internet followed by your Net address at the "Mbx:" prompt. Prodigy ------- UserID@prodigy.com. Note that Prodigy users must pay extra for Internet e-mail. 2.6 SEVEN UNIX COMMANDS YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT If you connect to the Net through a Unix system, eventually you'll have to come to terms with Unix. For better or worse, most Unix systems do NOT shield you from their inner workings -- if you want to copy a Usenet posting to a file, for example, you'll have to use some Unix commands if you ever want to do anything with that file. Like MS-DOS, Unix is an operating system - it tells the computer how to do things. Now while Unix may have a reputation as being even more complex than MS-DOS, in most cases, a few basic, and simple, commands should be all you'll ever need. If your own computer uses MS-DOS or PC-DOS, the basic concepts will seem very familiar -- but watch out for the cd command, which works differently enough from the similarly named DOS command that it will drive you crazy. Also, unlike MS-DOS, Unix is case sensitive -- if you type commands or directory names in the wrong case, you'll get an error message. If you're used to working on a Mac, you'll have to remember that Unix stores files in "directories" rather than "folders." Unix directories are organized like branches on a tree. At the bottom is the "root" directory, with sub-directories branching off that (and sub-directories in turn can have sub-directories). The Mac equivalent of a Unix sub- directory is a folder within another folder. cat ROUGHLY Equivalent to the MS-DOS "type" command. To pause a file every screen, type cat file |more where "file" is the name of the file you want to see (and | is the thing that looks like an overgrown colon). Hitting control-C will stop the display. Alternately, you could type more file to achieve the same result. You can also use cat for writing or uploading text files to your name or home directory (similar to the MS-DOS "copy con" command). If you type cat>test you start a file called "test." You can either write something simple (no editing once you've finished a line and you have to hit return at the end of each line) or upload something into that file using your communications software's ASCII protocol). To close the file, hit control-D. cd The "change directory" command. To change from your present directory to another, type cd directory and hit enter. Unlike MS-DOS, which uses a \ to denote sub- directories (for example: \stuff\text), Unix uses a / (for example: /stuff/text). So to change from your present directory to the stuff/text sub-directory, you would type cd stuff/text and then hit enter. As in MS-DOS, you do not need the first backslash if the subdirectory comes off the directory you're already in. To move back up a directory tree, you would type cd .. followed by enter. Note the space between the cd and the two periods -- this is where MS-DOS users will really go nuts. cp Copies a file. The syntax is cp file1 file2 which would copy file1 to file2 (or overwrite file2 with file1). ls This command, when followed by enter, tells you what's in the directory, similar to the DOS dir command, except in alphabetical order. ls | more will stop the listing every 24 lines -- handy if there are a lot of things in the directory. The basic ls command does not list "hidden" files, such as the .login file that controls how your system interacts with Unix. To see these files, type ls -a or ls -a | more ls -l will tell you the size of each file in bytes and tell you when each was created or modified. mv Similar to the MS-DOS rename AND MOVE commands. mv file1 file2 will rename file1 as file2, The command can also be used to move files between directories. mv file1 News would move file1 to your News directory. rm Deletes a file. Type rm filename and hit enter (but beware: when you hit enter, it's gone for good). WILDCARDS: When searching for, copying or deleting files, you can use "wildcards" if you are not sure of the file's exact name. ls man* would find the following files: manual, manual.txt, man-o-man. Use a question mark when you're sure about all but one or two characters. For example, ls man? would find a file called mane, but not one called manual. 2.7 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG * You send a message but get back an ominous looking message from MAILER-DAEMON containing up to several dozen lines of computerese followed by your message. Somewhere in those lines you can often find a clue to what went wrong. You might have made a mistake in spelling the e-mail address. The site to which you're sending mail might have been down for maintenance or a problem. You may have used the wrong "translation" for mail to a non-Internet network. * You call up your host system's text editor to write a message or reply to one and can't seem to get out. If it's emacs, try control-X, control-C DELETE(in other words, hit your control key and your X key at the same time, followed by control and C). If worse comes to worse, you can hang up. * In elm, you accidentally hit the D key for a message you want to save. Type the number of the message, hit enter and then U, which will "un- delete" the message. This works only before you exit Elm; once you quit, the message is gone. * You try to upload an ASCII message you've written on your own computer into a message you're preparing in Elm or Pine and you get a lot of left brackets, capital Ms, Ks and Ls and some funny-looking characters. Believe it or not, your message may actually wind up looking fine; all that garbage is temporary and reflects the problems some Unix text processors have with ASCII uploads. But it will take much longer for your upload to finish. One way to deal with this is to call up the simple mail program, which will not produce any weird characters when you upload a text file into a message. Another way (which is better if your prepared message is a response to somebody's mail), is to create a text file on your host system with cat, for example, cat>file and then upload your text into that. Then, in elm or pine, you can insert the message with a simple command (control-R in pine, for example); only this time you won't see all that extraneous stuff. * You haven't cleared out your Elm mailbox in awhile, and you accidentally hit "y" when you meant to hit "n" (or vice-versa) when exiting and now all your messages have disappeared. The system has put all the messages in a file called received in your Mail directory. To get to the messages, call up Elm again, and hit your c key. You'll be asked which folder to change to. Type =received and hit enter. You'll be prompted as if you're about to exit Elm; when done answering the questions, you'll get a menu of messages in your receive folder. You can reply to them, delete them, etc., as you would normally. Chapter 3: USENET I 3.1 THE GLOBAL WATERING HOLE Imagine a conversation carried out over a period of hours and days, as if people were leaving messages and responses on a bulletin board. Or imagine the electronic equivalent of a radio talk show where everybody can put their two cents in and no one is ever on hold. Unlike e-mail, which is usually "one-to-one," Usenet is "many-to-many." Usenet is the international meeting place, where people gather to meet their friends, discuss the day's events, keep up with computer trends or talk about whatever's on their mind. Jumping into a Usenet discussion can be a liberating experience. Nobody knows what you look or sound like, how old you are, what your background is. You're judged solely on your words, your ability to make a point. To many people, Usenet IS the Net. In fact, it is often confused with Internet. But it is a totally separate system. All Internet sites CAN carry Usenet, but so do many non-Internet sites, from sophisticated Unix machines to simple bulletin-board systems running on old XT clones and Apple IIs. Technically, Usenet messages are shipped around the world, from host system to host system, using one of several specific Net protocols. Your host system stores all of its Usenet messages in one place, which everybody with an account on the system can access. That way, no matter how many people actually read a given message, each host system has to store only one copy of it. Many host systems "talk" with several others regularly to exchange messages in case one or another of their links goes down for some reason. When two host systems connect, they basically compare notes on which Usenet messages they already have. Any that one is missing the other then transmits, and vice-versa. Because they are computers, they don't mind running through thousands, even millions, of these comparisons every day. Yes, millions. For Usenet is huge. Every day, Usenet users pump upwards of 100 million characters a day into the system -- nearly an encyclopedia's worth of writing. Obviously, nobody could possibly keep up with this immense flow of messages. Let's look at how to find conferences and discussions of interest to you. The basic building block of Usenet is the newsgroup, which is a collection of messages with a related theme (on other networks, these would be called conferences, forums, bboards or special-interest groups). There are now more than 9,000 of these newsgroups, in several diferent languages, covering everything from art to zoology, from science fiction to South Africa (not all systems carry all newsgroups, however). Some public-access systems, typically the ones that work through menus, try to make it easier by dividing Usenet into several broad categories. Choose one of those and you're given a list of newsgroups in that category. Then select the newsgroup you're interested in and start reading. Other systems let you compile your own "reading list" so that you only see messages in conferences you want. In both cases, conferences are arranged in a particular hierarchy devised in the early 1980s. Newsgroup names start with one of a series of broad topic names. For example, newsgroups beginning with "comp." are about computer-related topics. These broad topics are followed by a series of more focused topics (so that "comp.unix" groups are limited to discussion about Unix). The main hierarchies are: bionet Research biology bit.listserv Conferences originating as Bitnet mailing lists biz Business comp Computers and related subjects misc Discussions that don't fit anywhere else news News about Usenet itself rec Hobbies, games and recreation sci Science other than research biology soc "Social" groups, often ethnically related talk Politics and related topics alt Controversial or unusual topics; not carried by all sites In addition, many host systems carry newsgroups for a particular city, state or region. For example, ne.housing is a newsgroup where New Englanders can look for apartments. A growing number also carry K12 newsgroups, which are aimed at elementary and secondary teachers and students. And a number of sites carry clari newsgroups, which is actually a commercial service consisting of wire-service stories and a unique online computer news service (more on this in chapter 11). 3.2 NAVIGATING USENET WITH nn How do you dive right in? As mentioned, on some systems, it's all done through menus -- you just keep choosing from a list of choices until you get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command. On Unix systems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program. Two of the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no news" -- because it's supposed to be simpler to use). For beginners, nn may be the better choice because it works with menus -- you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you choose which ones you want to see. To try it out, connect to your host system and, at the command line, type nn news.announce.newusers and hit enter. After a few seconds, you should see something like this: Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW a Gene Spafford 776 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions b Gene Spafford 362 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community c Gene Spafford 387 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette d Gene Spafford 101 Hints on writing style for Usenet e Gene Spafford 74 Introduction to news.announce f Gene Spafford 367 USENET Software: History and Sources g Gene Spafford 353 What is Usenet? h taylor 241 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists i Gene Spafford 585 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I j Gene Spafford 455 >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II k David C Lawrenc 151 How to Create a New Newsgroup l Gene Spafford 106 How to Get Information about Networks m Gene Spafford 888 List of Active Newsgroups n Gene Spafford 504 List of Moderators o Gene Spafford 1051 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I p Gene Spafford 1123 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II q Gene Spafford 1193 >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III r Jonathan Kamens 644 How to become a USENET site s Jonathan Kamen 1344 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I -- 15:52 -- SELECT -- help:? -----Top 85%----- Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated) Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of Usenet! Here's what all this means: The first letter on each line is the letter you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense that a "newsgroup" would have "articles"). Next comes the name of the person who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and what the article is about. At the bottom, you see the local time at your access site, what you're doing right now (i.e., SELECTing articles), which key to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles in the newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post messages to it. This is generally limited to groups such as this, which contain articles of basic information, or for digests, which are basically online magazines (more on them in a bit). Say you're particularly interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to say about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and the line will light up. If you want to read something else, hit the key that corresponds to it. And if you want to see what's on the next page of articles, hit return or your space bar.