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Tricks of the Internet Gurus
l In troduction
m O verview
m F oreword
m A bout the Authors
Part I - First Things First
l C hapter 1 - Getting Connected: The Guru's Options
l C hapter 2 - Access at All Costs
l C hapter 3 - Tricks of the Trade: Tools
l C hapter 4 - Where's the Complaint Department? Or, What to Do When Things Don't Work
Part II - Everyday Guru Facilities
l C hapter 5 - E-Mail
l C hapter 6 - Faxing from the Internet
l C hapter 7 - FTP
l C hapter 8 - Telnet
l C hapter 9 - Usenet
l C hapter 10 - World Wide Web
Part III - A Guru's Diversions
l C hapter 11 - Online Entertainment for the Internet Guru
l C hapter 12 - Listservs and Mailing Lists
l C hapter 13 - MBone: The Internet's Multimedia Backbone
l C hapter 14 - Community Computing
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Part IV - Finding Stuff: You Name It, a Guru Can Find It (and So Can
You)
l C hapter 15 - Life with Archie
l C hapter 16 - Veronica
l C hapter 17 - Discussion Forums
l C hapter 18 - Gopher
Part V - Tricks of the Professional Internet Gurus
l C hapter 19 - Internet in The Classroom: How Educators Use the Internet
l C hapter 20 - Business and Commerce
l C hapter 21 - Finding Information You Want
l C hapter 22 - Art on the Internet
l A ppendix A - Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
l A ppendix B - Signature Files
l A ppendix C - Standards and Where To Find Them
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Tricks of the Internet Gurus tigfm.htm
m T ricks of the Internet Gurus
m T ricks of the Internet Gurus
n C opyright © 1994 by Sams Publishing
n T rademarks
m O verview
m F oreword
n -- by James "Kibo" Parry
m A bout the Authors
m I ntroduction
n -- by Billy Barron
Tricks of the Internet Gurus
Tricks of the Internet Gurus
Philip Baczewski
Billy Barron
Kevin Barron
Robert Bickford
Jon Callas
Earl Fogel
Tod Foley
Kenny Greenberg
David Gulbransen
Joseph Janes
John Katsaros
Dave Kinnaman
Max Metral
Kevin Mullet
James "Kibo" Parry
Joseph Poirier
Lou Rosenfeld
Margaret Russell-Gonzalez
Kevin Savetz
Peter Scott
Stephen Volan
Sams Publishing
201 West 103rd Street
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Indianapolis, Indiana 46290
Copyright © 1994 by Sams Publishing
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained
herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author
assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting
from the use of the information contained herein. For information, address Sams Publishing, 201 W.
103rd St., Indianapolis, IN 46290.
International Standard Book Number: 0-672-30599-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-67090
97 96 95 94 4 3 2 1
Interpretation of the printing code: the rightmost double-digit number is the year of the book's printing;
the rightmost single-digit, the number of the book's printing. For example, a printing code of 94-1 shows
that the first printing of the book occurred in 1994.
Composed in Helvetica and MCPdigital by Macmillan Computer Publishing
Printed in the United States of America
Trademarks
All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been
appropriately capitalized. Sams Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term
in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.
Publisher
Richard K. Swadley
Associate Publisher
Jordan Gold
Acquisitions Manager
Stacy Hiquet
Managing Editor
Cindy Morrow
Acquisitions Editor
Grace Buechlein
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Development Editor
Phillip W. Paxton
Production Editor
David Bradford
Editors
Anne Owen
Marla Abraham
Adam Banta
Fran Hatton
Sean Medlock
Editorial Coordinator
Bill Whitmer
Editorial Assistants
Carol Ackerman
Sharon Cox
Lynette Quinn
Technical Reviewers
Billy Barron
Philip Baczewski
Interviewer
Tod Foley
Marketing Manager
Gregg Bushyeager
Cover Designer
Nathan Clement
Book Designer
Alyssa Yesh
Director of Production and Manufacturing
Jeff Valler
Imprint Manager
Juli Cook
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Manufacturing Coordinator
Paul Gilchrist
Production Analysts
Dennis Clay Hager
Mary Beth Wakefield
Graphics Image Specialists
Teresa Forrester
Clint Lahnen
Tim Montgomery
Dennis Sheehan
Greg Simsic
Susan VandeWalle
Jeff Yesh
Page Layout
Elaine Brush
Mary Ann Cosby
Rich Evers
Ayanna Lacey
Kim Scott
Proofreading
Don Brown
Mona Brown
Cheryl Cameron
Kimberly K. Hannel
Donna Harbin
Beth Rago
Suzanne Tully
Karen Walsh
Holly Wittenberg
Indexer
Greg Eldred
Overview
Foreword
Intro
Part I First Things First
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1 Connection Requirements
2 Access at All Costs
3 Tricks of the Trade: Tools
4 Where's the Complaint Department?
Part II Everyday Guru Facilities
5 E-mail
6 Faxing from the Internet
7 FTP
8 Telnet
9 Usenet
10 WWW
Part III A Guru's Diversions
11 Online Entertainment
12 Listservs and Mailing Lists
13 Mbone: The Internet Multimedia Backbone
14 Community Computing
Part IV Finding Stuff: You Name It, a Guru Can Find it (and So Can You)
15 Archie
16 Veronica
17 Discussion Forums
18 Gopher
Part V Tricks of the Professional Internet Gurus
19 Internet in the Classroom
20 Business and Commerce
21 Research on the Internet
22 Art on the Internet
Appendix A Uniform Resource Locators
Appendix B Signature Files
Appendix C Standards and Where to Find Them
Index
Foreword
--by James "Kibo" Parry
Yesterday I was talking to my dog, Spot.
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"Hey, Spot," I said, "with the massive amount of cash this Foreword has brought me, I felt generous, and
so I bought you your very own computer."
Spot looked across the room to where I'd set up the machine next to his water dish. Still shiny with that
putty-gray factory finish, it was the very latest model—the IBM Dog Computer 3000 with a cordless
pawboard and a squeaky mouse! A 999,000-baud modem was connected to Spot's very own phone line.
"Gosh," drooled Spot, "Thank you, Kibo! It's the most wonderful thing anyone ever gave a dog like me!
Now I can log on to that amazing new Information Superhighway!"
"Uh, Spot, before you do, you know how to use the Internet, right?"
Spot barked happily and ran in a little circle. "Sure I do! I've seen The Lawnmower Man and WarGames
and every episode of William Shatner's awesome Tekwar. I know all about this stuff. First you put on
your virtual reality helmet and your glowing blue neon datasuit, then you fly through the maze, and laser
beams come out of your eyes and you have to shoot the computer viruses before they turn you into a
skeleton and then you have twenty seconds to guess the three-letter password before all the nuclear
missiles in the world come out of the screen at you!!!" Spot turned on his new computer and the screen lit
up:
>
Spot cried. "Waah! This sucks! Kibo, you tricked me. I hate you!"
"Now, now, little Spot, it wasn't I who cruelly deceived you. It was the media. Remember, everything can
be blamed on the media. Who told you it was called 'The Information Superhighway'?"
"The media," sobbed Spot.
"And who told you it was a super-cool new thing they just invented last week?"
"The media," sobbed Spot.
"And who told you it was a dangerous and scary thing that could molest your children while they sleep?"
"The media!" bawled Spot. "Oh, how I hate them! They're evil. I guess I don't know anything about what
the so-called Information Superhighway is really like. Kibo, you'll have to show me what to do here."
I leaned over and typed in Spot's password, DOG$BONE. Spot was now logged in to the world's most
powerful information service, Dogidy.
WELCOME TO DOGIDY™, AN INFORMATION SERVICE WITH A DIFFERENCE.
A JOINT VENTURE OF MacBURGER AND COLA-SODA.
You have 13 new pieces of mail from long-lost friends and people who
want to date you.
There are 637 news articles clipped for you, on subjects that you care
deeply about, with all others omitted.
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The President of the United States would like to talk to you personally
via videoconferencing. He is offering you a Cabinet post.
You are our one millionth customer! Press "Y" now to receive a year's
free supply of your favorite brand of dog food.
Spot burst into tears again. "Waah! I can't read, I'm just a dog!"
The "Information Superhighway," for some reason, has become the hot new topic. Every magazine has
done at least one article on it, usually emphasizing its hip trendiness.
The Internet has been around for decades in various forms. Heck, you could even trace its precursors back
to the laying of the first transcontinental phone cable. Early computer networking often involved
computers making phone calls to each other. Then, someone came up with the bright idea of connecting
special lines directly between the computers so that they could communicate faster, and without paying
the phone company. Various computers were connected to different networks, such as ARPAnet, Bitnet,
and so on. Eventually these networks were linked together in various ways, so that now, effectively, all
the well-connected computers in the world are on one network—the Internet. The computers
communicate with one another in various ways—via cables, via microwave dishes, via satellite, and yes,
some still call each other on the phone.
The commercial "information services" are now getting in on the game as well—if you have a
CompuServe account, you can send mail to someone who has an America Online account, through the
magic of the Internet. Businesses are offering electronic catalogs of their goods over the network, so that
you can shop with your computer. You can send letters to people ranging from Conan O'Brien to the
President over the network, without having to pay for a stamp. (Whether you pay for the network is
different, but there certainly are ways of getting on for free.) You can browse through massive libraries of
information, and even download entire books within minutes.
Ten years ago, you could have done many of the same things. You couldn't have sent electronic mail to
President Clinton (or even President Reagan), and CompuServe users were forced to chat only with other
CompuServe users, but the basic capabilities for dealing with large quantities of information rapidly were
there. So why is there this sudden craze for the "Information Superhighway?"
Is it because someone coined that damned term?
Is it because computers are slowly getting easier to use?
Because they're rapidly getting more powerful?
Or is it just a "hundredth-monkey" situation, where enough people have gotten "into" it so that it's now
chic?
I don't know, but the number of people connected to the Internet, and the quality of their connections, and
the quantity of information moving over the network, continues to increase. I've had access for only eight
years, but in that time, I've seen an amazing increase in the amount of stuff that happens on the network.
For instance, on my favorite Internet service, Usenet, I can recall when I could read most all the articles in
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one day. Today, there are over 9600 topics on Usenet (it'll be ten thousand by the time the book is
printed!), and many of them contain enough articles to keep you busy for several hours.
As the network grows and grows, the users (and their interfaces) need to grow more sophisticated just to
be able to keep up with the flood of information. To be a "power user" these days, you need finely-honed
skills that let you find the information or service or discussion you want, without having to wade through
ten zillion irrelevant things. Just finding the documentation on how to do something (let alone reading
possibly hundreds of pages of it) can be a difficult task.
Speaking of reading hundreds of pages, Spot finally managed to teach himself to read by following the
self-guided tutorial in GNU EMACS. In just fifty easy lessons, Spot could read like a pro! With newfound
enthusiasm, he logged into Dogidy and read the first screenful of text.
Spot was so excited by the availability of billions of bytes of information that he instantly forgot how to
read. Poor Spot!
About the Authors
Philip Baczewski ([email protected]) is the Assistant Director of Academic Computing at the
University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Baczewski holds a doctoral degree in music composition,
and in addition to his activities in computing support and instruction, he is a published composer of
classical music and a researcher in the field of music cognition.
Kevin Barron is the system manager for the Institute for Theoretical Physics, at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. Kevin has been roaming the Net for more than 11 years, and for the past
several years he has taught "Beyond E-Mail", a seminar on navigating the Internet. He is also a
contributing author to The Internet Unleashed.
Billy Barron ([email protected]) is currently the network services manager for the University of Texas
at Dallas and has an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Texas. Billy is best known
for his previous work on the CICNet Electronic Journal Project and the electronic book Accessing Online
Bibliographic Databases. His articles can regularly be found in publications such as the Internet Society
Newsletter and ConneXions.
Robert Bickford ([email protected]) is a software consultant who lives in Marin County, California,
often hacking late into the night, and (usually) enjoying it immensely. His .sig file reads: "I recognize that
a class of criminals and juvenile delinquents has taken to calling themselves 'hackers,' but I consider them
irrelevant to the true meaning of the word—just as Mafia members call themselves 'businessmen' but
nobody pays that fact any attention."
Jon Callas is a founder and Director of Technology of World Benders, Inc. He has nearly twenty years'
experience in computing, and has been a denizen of the Internet since 1978 or 1979 (he can't remember
which), when it was still the ARPAnet. He has worked on many things including satellite ground systems,
operating systems, windowing systems, and cross-platform networked communications applications. He
was trained as a classical musician, and became a mathematician when he learned that there is a reason
for the expression "starving musician." He went into software after learning that mathematicians don't fare
much better. He is also a silversmith, needing a hobby that produces things that are material.
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