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

e-mail

message that tells them what file you want and how you want it sent to

you. The most important command is “send,” which tells the computer you

want it to send you a particular file.

First, though, you’ll need to know where the mail server stores

that file, because you have to tell it which directory or sub-

directory it’s in. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can

send an e-mail message to the archive-server that consists of one

line:

index

The server will then send you a directory listing of its main, or

root directory. You’ll then have to send a second message to the

archive server with one line:

index directory/subdirectory

where directory/subdirectory is the directory path for which you want a

listing. An alternative is to send an e-mail message to our old friend

archie, which should send you back the file’s exact location on the

archive-server (along with similar listings for all the other sites that

may have the file, however)

Once you have the file name and its directory path, compose a

message to the archive server like this:

send directory/subdirectory/file

Send off the message and, anywhere from a few minutes to a couple

of days later, you’ll find a new message in your mailbox: a copy of the

file you requested. The exact time it will take a file to get to you

depends on a variety of factors, including how many requests are in line

before yours (mail servers can only process so many requests at a time)

and the state of the connections between the server and you.

Seems simple enough. It gets a little more complicated when you

request a program rather than a document. Programs or other files that

contain unusual characters or lines longer than 130 characters (graphics

files, for example) require special processing by the mail server to

ensure they are transmitted via e-mail. Then you’ll have to run them

through at least one converter program to put them in a form you can

actually use. To ensure that a program or other “non-mailable” file

actually gets to you, include another line in your e-mail message to the

server:

encoder

This converts the file into an encoded form. To decode it, you’ll

first have to transfer the file message into a file in your home

directory.

One further complication comes when you request a particularly

long file. Many Net sites can only handle so much mail at a time. To

make sure you get the entire file, tell the mail server to break it up

into smaller pieces, with another line in your e-mail request like

this:

size 100000

This gives the mail server the maximum size, in bytes, of each

file segment. This particular size is good for UUCP sites. Internet

and Bitnet sites can generally go up to 300000. When you get all of

these files in mail, transfer them to your home directory. Exit mail

and call up each file in your host system’s text processor and delete

each one’s entire header and footer (or “signature” at the end). When

done with this, at your host system’s command line, type

cat file1 file2 > bigfile

where file1 is the first file, file2 the second file, and so on. The >

tells your host system to combine them into a new megafile called

bigfile (or whatever you want to call it). After you save the file to

your home directory (see section 9.2 above), you can then run uudecode,

tar, etc. One word of caution, though: if the file you want is long

enough that it has to be broken into pieces, think of how much time it’s

going to take you to download the whole thing — especially if you’re

using a 2400-baud modem!

There are a number of other mail servers. To get a list, send an

e-mail message to [email protected]:

send usenet/comp.sources.wanted/How-to-find-sources-(READ-THIS-BEFORE-POSTING)

You’ll have to spell it exactly as listed above. Some mail

servers use different software, which will require slightly different

commands than the ones listed here. In general, if you send a message

to a mail server that says only

help

you should get back a file detailing all of its commands.

But what if the file you want is not on one of these mail

servers? That’s where ftpmail comes in. Run by Digital Equipment

Corp. in California, this service can connect to almost any ftp site

in the world, get the file you want and then mail it to you. Using it

is fairly simple — you send an e-mail message to ftpmail that

includes a series of commands telling the system where to find the

file you want and how to format it to mail to you.

Compose an e-mail message to

[email protected]

Leave the “subject:” line blank. Inside the message, there are

several commands you can give. The first line should be

reply address

where “address” is your e-mail address. The next line should be

connect host

where “host” is the system that has the file you want (for example:

wuarchive.wustl.edu). Other commands you should consider using are

“binary” (required for program files); “compress” (reduces the file

size for quicker transmission) and “uuencode” (which encodes the file

so you can do something with it when it arrives). The last line of

your message should be the word “quit”.

Let’s say you want a copy of the U.S. constitution. Using archie,

you’ve found a file called, surprise, constitution, at the ftp site

archive.cis.ohio-state.edu, in the /pub/firearms/politics/rkba

directory. You’d send a message to [email protected] that looks

like this:

reply [email protected]

connect archive.cis.ohio-state.edu

binary

compress

uuencode

get pub/firearms/politics/rkba/constitution

quit

When you get the file in your mailbox, use the above procedure

for copying it to a file. Run it through uudecode. Then type

uncompress file.name

to make it usable.

Since this was a text file, you could have changed the “binary” to

“ascii” and then eliminated the “uuencode” file. For programs, though,

you’ll want to keep these lines. One caveat with ftpmail: it has become

such a popular service that it could take a week or more for your

requested files to arrive.

9.5 THE ALL KNOWING ORACLE

One other thing you can do through e-mail is consult with the

Usenet Oracle. You can ask the Oracle anything at all and get back an

answer (whether you’ll like the answer is another question).

First, you’ll want to get instructions on how to address the Oracle

(he, or she, or it, is very particular about such things and likes being

addressed in august, solemn and particularly sycophantic tones). Start

an e-mail message to

[email protected]

In the “subject:” line, type

help

and hit enter. You don’t actually have to say anything in the message

itself — at least not yet. Hit control-D to send off your request

for help. Within a few hours, the Oracle will mail you back detailed

instructions. It’s a fairly long file, so before you start reading

it, turn on your communications software’s logging function, to save

it to your computer (or save the message to a file on your host system’s

home directory and then download the file). After you’ve digested it,

you can compose your question to the Oracle. Mail it to the above

address, only this time with a subject line that describes your

question. Expect an answer within a couple of days. And don’t be

surprised if you also find a question in your mailbox — the Oracle

extracts payment by making seekers of knowledge answer questions as

well!

Chapter 10: NEWS OF THE WORLD

10.1 Clarinet: UPI, Dave Barry and Dilbert.

Usenet “newsgroups” can be something of a misnomer. They may be

interesting, informative and educational, but they are often not news,

at least, not the way most people would think of them. But there are several

sources of news and sports on the Net.

One of the largest is Clarinet, a company in Cupertino, Calf., that

distributes wire-service news and columns, along with a news service

devoted to computers and even the Dilbert comic strip, in Usenet form.

Distributed in Usenet form, Clarinet stories and columns are

organized into more than 100 newsgroups (in this case, a truly

appropriate name), some of them with an extremely narrow focus, for

example, clari.news.gov.taxes. The general news and sports come from

United Press International; the computer news from the NewsBytes

service; the features from several syndicates.

Because Clarinet charges for its service, not all host systems

carry its articles. Those that do carry them as Usenet groups starting

with “clari.” As with other Usenet hierarchies, these are named starting

with broad area and ending with more specific categories. Some of these

include business news (clari.biz); general national and foreign news,

politics and the like (clari.news), sports (clari.sports); columns by

Mike Royko, Miss Manners, Dave Barry and others (clari.feature); and

NewsBytes computer and telecommunications reports (clari.nb). Because

Clarinet started in Canada, there is a separate set of clari.canada

newsgroups. The clari.nb newsgroups are divided into specific computer

types (clari.nb.apple, for example).

Clari news groups feature stories updated around the clock. There

are even a couple of “bulletin” newsgroups for breaking stories:

clari.news.bulletin and clari.news.urgent. Clarinet also sets up new

newsgroups for breaking stories that become ongoing ones (such as major

natural disasters, coups in large countries and the like).

Occasionally, you will see stories in clari newsgroups that just

don’t seem to belong there. Stories about former Washington, D.C. mayor

Marion Barry, for example, often wind interspersed among columns by Dave

Barry. This happens because of the way wire services work. UPI uses

three-letter codes to route its stories to the newspapers and radio

stations that make up most of its clientele, and harried editors on

deadline sometimes punch in the wrong code.

10.2 REUTERS

This is roughly the British equivalent of UPI or Associated Press.

Msen, a public-access site in Michigan, currently feeds Reuters

dispatches into a series of Usenet-style conferences. If your site

subscribes to this service, look for newsgroups with names that begin in

msen.reuters.

10.3 USA TODAY

If your host system doesn’t carry the clari or msen.reuters

newsgroups, you might be able to keep up with the news a different way

over the Net. USA Today has been something of an online newspaper

pioneer, selling its stories to bulletin-board and online systems across

the country for several years. Cleveland Free-Net provides the online

version of USA Today (along with all its other services) for free.

Currently, the paper publishes only five days a week, so