Big Dummy's Guide To The Internet by Electronic Frontier Foundation (life changing books .txt) 📖

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. Note that both the

“>” and the “:” are required.

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.com” to the end

of the GEnie user name, for example: walt@genie.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.

Peacenet

To send mail to a Peacenet user, use this form:

username@igc.org

Peacenet subscribers can use your regular address to send you

mail.

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 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.

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: stufftext), 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 command.

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 (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 will 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