Big Dummy's Guide To The Internet by Electronic Frontier Foundation (early reader chapter books .txt) 📕

on Usenet. Bill

Wohler posts a guide to using the nn newsreader in the news.answers and

news.software newsgroups. Look in the news.announce.newusers and

news.groups newsgroups on Usenet for “A Guide to Social Newsgroups and

Mailing Lists,’’ which gives brief summaries of the various soc.

newsgroups.

“Managing UUCP and Usenet,’ by Tim O’Reilly and Grace Todino

(O’Reilly & Associates, 1992) is a good guide for setting up your own

Usenet system.

Chapter 5: MAILING LISTS AND BITNET

5.1 INTERNET MAILING LISTS

Usenet is not the only forum on the Net. Scores of “mailing

lists” represent another way to interact with other Net users.

Unlike Usenet messages, which are stored in one central location on

your host system’s computer, mailing-list messages are delivered right

to your e-mail box, unlike Usenet messages.

You have to ask for permission to join a mailing list. Unlike

Usenet, where your message is distributed to the world, on a mailing

list, you send your messages to a central moderator, who either re-mails

it to the other people on the list or uses it to compile a periodic

“digest” mailed to subscribers.

Given the number of newsgroups, why would anybody bother with a

mailing list?

Even on Usenet, there are some topics that just might not generate

enough interest for a newsgroup; for example, the Queen list, which is

all about the late Freddie Mercury’s band.

And because a moderator decides who can participate, a mailing list

can offer a degree of freedom to speak one’s mind (or not worry about

net.weenies) that is not necessarily possible on Usenet. Several

groups offer anonymous postings — only the moderator knows the real

names of people who contribute. Examples include 12Step, where people

enrolled in such programs as Alcoholics Anonymous can discuss their

experiences, and sappho, a list limited to gay and bisexual women.

You can find mailing addresses and descriptions of these lists

in the news.announce.newusers newsgroup with the subject of “Publicly

Accessible Mailing Lists.” Mailing lists now number in the hundreds,

so this posting is divided into three parts.

If you find a list to which you want to subscribe, send an e-

mail message to

list-request@address

where “list” is the name of the mailing list and “address” is the

moderator’s e-mail address, asking to be added to the list. Include

your full e-mail address just in case something happens to your

message’s header along the way, and ask, if you’re accepted, for the

address to mail messages to the list.

5.2 BITNET

As if Usenet and mailing lists were not enough, there are Bitnet

“discussion groups” or “lists.”

Bitnet is an international network linking colleges and

universities, but it uses a different set of technical protocols for

distributing information from the Internet or Usenet. It offers hundreds

of discussion groups, comparable in scope to Usenet newsgroups.

One of the major differences is the way messages are

distributed. Bitnet messages are sent to your mailbox, just as with a

mailing list. However, where mailing lists are often maintained by a

person, all Bitnet discussion groups are automated — you subscribe to

them through messages to a “listserver” computer. This is a kind of

robot moderator that controls distribution of messages on the list. In

many cases, it also maintains indexes and archives of past postings in a

given discussion group, which can be handy if you want to get up to

speed with a discussion or just search for some information related to

it.

Many Bitnet discussion groups are now “translated” into Usenet

form and carried through Usenet in the bit.listserv hierarchy. In

general, it’s probably better to read messages through Usenet if you

can. It saves some storage space on your host system’s hard drives.

If 50 people subscribe to the same Bitnet list, that means 50

copies of each message get stored on the system; whereas if 50 people

read a Usenet message, that’s still only one message that needs storage

on the system. It can also save your sanity if the discussion group

generates large numbers of messages. Think of opening your e-mailbox

one day to find 200 messages in it — 199 of them from a discussion

group and one of them a “real” e-mail message that’s important to you.

Subscribing and canceling subscriptions is done through an e-

mail message to the listserver computer. For addressing, all

listservers are known as “listserv” (yep) at some Bitnet address.

This means you will have to add “.bitnet” to the end of the

address, if it’s in a form like this: listserv@miamiu. For example, if

you have an interest in environmental issues, you might want to

subscribe to the Econet discussion group. To subscribe, send an e-mail

message to

listserv@miamiu.bitnet

Some Bitnet listservers are also connected to the Internet, so if you

see a listserver address ending in “.edu”, you can e-mail the

listserver without adding “.bitnet” to the end.

Always leave the “subject:” line blank in a message to a

listserver. Inside the message, you tell the listserver what you

want, with a series of simple commands:

subscribe group Your Name To subscribe to a list, where “group”

is the list name and “Your Name” is

your full name, for example:

subscribe econet Henry Fielding

unsubscribe group Your Name To discontinue a group, for example:

unsubscribe econet Henry Fielding

list global This sends you a list of all available

Bitnet discussion groups. But be careful

— the list is VERY long!

get refcard Sends you a list of other commands you

can use with a listserver, such as

commands for retrieving past postings

from a discussion group.

Each of these commands goes on a separate line in your message

(and you can use one or all of them). If you want to get a list of

all Bitnet discussion groups, send e-mail to

listserv@bitnic.educom.edu

Leave the “subject:” line blank and use the list global command.

When you subscribe to a Bitnet group, there are two important

differences from Usenet.

First, when you want to post a message for others to read in the

discussion group, you send a message to the group name at its Bitnet

address. Using Econet as an example, you would mail the message to:

econet@miamiu.bitnet

Note that this is different from the listserv address you used to

subscribe to the group to begin with. Use the listserv address ONLY

to subscribe to or unsubscribe from a discussion group. If you use the

discussion-group address to try to subscribe or unsubscribe, your message

will go out to every other subscriber, many of whom will think unkind

thoughts, which they may share with you in an e-mail message).

The second difference relates to sending an e-mail message to the

author of a particular posting. Usenet newsreaders such as rn and nn

let you do this with one key. But if you hit your R key to respond to

a discussion-group message, your message will go to the listserver,

and from there to everybody else on the list! This can prove

embarrassing to you and annoying to others. To make sure your

message goes just to the person who wrote the posting, take down his

e-mail address from the posting and then compose a brand-new message.

Remember, also, that if you see an e-mail address like IZZY@INDYVMS, it’s

a Bitnet address.

Two Bitnet lists will prove helpful for delving further into the

network. NEW-LIST tells you the names of new discussion groups. To

subscribe, send a message to listserv@ndsuvm1.bitnet:

sub NEW-LIST Your Name

INFONETS is the place to go when you have questions about Bitnet.

It is also first rate for help on questions about all major computer

networks and how to reach them. To subscribe, send e-mail to info-nets-

request@think.com:

sub INFONETS Your Name

Both of these lists are also available on Usenet, the former as

bit.listserv.new-list; the latter as bit.listserv.infonets (sometimes

bit.listserv.info-nets).

Chapter 6: TELNET

6.1 MINING THE NET

Like any large community, cyberspace has its libraries, places you

can go to look up information or take out a good book. Telnet is one of

your keys to these libraries.

Telnet is a program that lets you use the power of the Internet to

connect you to databases, library catalogs, and other information

resources around the world. Want to see what the weather’s like in

Vermont? Check on crop conditions in Azerbaijan? Get more information

about somebody whose name you’ve seen online? Telnet lets you do this,

and more.

Alas, there’s a big “but!’’ Unlike the phone system, Internet is not

yet universal; not everybody can use all of its services. Almost all

colleges and universities on the Internet provide telnet access. So do

all of the for-fee public-access systems listed in Chapter 1. But the

Free-Net systems do not give you access to every telnet system. And if

you are using a public-access UUCP or Usenet site, you will not have

access to telnet. The main reason for this is cost. Connecting to the

Internet can easily cost $1,000 or more for a leased, high-speed phone

line. Some databases and file libraries can be queried by e-mail,

however; we’ll show you how to do that later on. In the meantime, the

rest of this chapter assumes you are connected to a site with at least

partial Internet access.

Most telnet sites are fairly easy to use and have online help systems.

Most also work best (and in some cases, only) with VT100 emulation.

Let’s dive right in and try one.

At your host system’s command line, type

telnet access.usask.ca

and hit enter. That’s all you have to do to connect to a telnet site!

In this case, you’ll be connecting to a service known as Hytelnet, which

is a database of computerized library catalogs and other databases

available through telnet. You should see something like this:

Trying 128.233.3.1 …

Connected to access.usask.ca.

Escape character is ‘^]’.

Ultrix UNIX (access.usask.ca)

login:

Every telnet site has two addresses — one composed of words that

are easier for people to remember; the other a numerical address better

suited for computers. The “escape character” is good to remember. When

all else fails, hitting your control key and the ] key at the same time

will disconnect you and return you to your host system. At the login

prompt, type

hytelnet

and hit enter. You’ll see something like this:

Welcome to HYTELNET

version 6.2

...................

What is HYTELNET?