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

service puts its marks on every piece of

mail it handles, so do Net postal systems. Only it’s called a

“header” instead of a postmark. Each system that handles or routes

your mail puts its stamp on it. Since many messages go through a

number of systems on their way to you, you will often get messages

with headers that seem to go on forever. Among other things, a header

will tell you exactly when a message was sent and received (even the

difference between your local time and Greenwich Mean Time — as at the end

of line 4 above).

If this had been a long message, it would just keep scrolling

across and down your screen — unless the people who run your public-

access site have set it up to pause every 24 lines. One way to deal

with a message that doesn’t stop is to use your telecommunication

software’s logging or text-buffer function. Start it before you hit

the number of the message you want to see. Your computer will ask you

what you want to call the file you’re about to create. After you name

the file and hit enter, type the number of the message you want to see

and hit enter. When the message finishes scrolling, turn off the

text-buffer function. The message is now saved in your computer.

This way, you can read the message while not connected to the Net

(which can save you money if you’re paying by the hour) and write a

reply offline.

But in the meantime, now what? You can respond to the message,

delete it or save it. To respond, type a lowercase r and hit

enter. You’ll get something like this:

To: adamg

Subject: Re: test

Note that this time, you don’t have to enter a user name. The

computer takes it from the message you’re replying to and

automatically addresses your message to its sender. The computer also

automatically inserts a subject line, by adding “Re:” to the original

subject. From here, it’s just like writing a new message. But say you

change your mind and decide not to reply after all. How do you get out

of the message? Hit control-C once. You’ll get this:

(Interrupt — one more to kill letter)

If you hit control-C once more, the message will disappear and you’ll

get back to your mail’s command line.

Now, if you type a lowercase d and then hit enter, you’ll

delete the original message. Type a lowercase q to exit your

mailbox.

If you type a q without first hitting d, your message is

transferred to a file called mbox. This file is where all read, but

un-deleted messages go. If you want to leave it in your mailbox for

now, type a lowercase x and hit enter. This gets you out of mail

without making any changes.

The mbox file works a lot like your mailbox. To access it,

type

mail -f mbox

at your host system’s command line and hit enter.

You’ll get a menu identical to the one in your mailbox from which

you can read these old messages, delete them or respond to them. It’s

probably a good idea to clear out your mailbox and mbox file from

time to time, if only to keep them uncluttered.

Are there any drawbacks to e-mail? There are a few. One is that

people seem more willing to fly off the handle electronically than in

person, or over the phone. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to hit r

and reply to a message without pausing and reflecting a moment.

That’s why we have smileys (see section 2.4)! There’s no online

equivalent yet of a return receipt: chances are your message got to where

it’s going, but there’s no absolute way for you to know for sure unless

you get a reply from the other person.

So now you’re ready to send e-mail to other people on the Net.

Of course, you need somebody’s address to send them mail. How do you

get it?

Alas, the simplest answer is not what you’d call the most

elegant: you call them up on the phone or write them a letter on paper

and ask them. Residents of the electronic frontier are only beginning

to develop the equivalent of phone books, and the ones that exist

today are far from complete (still, later on, in Chapter 6, we’ll show

you how to use some of these directories).

Eventually, you’ll start corresponding with people, which means

you’ll want to know how to address mail to them. It’s vital to know

how to do this, because the smallest mistake — using a comma when you

should have used a period, for instance, can bounce the message back

to you, undelivered. In this sense, Net addresses are like phone

numbers: one wrong digit and you get the wrong person. Fortunately,

most net addresses now adhere to a relatively easy-to-understand

system.

Earlier, you sent yourself a mail message using just your user-

name. This was sort of like making a local phone call — you didn’t

have to dial a 1 or an area code. This also works for mail to anybody

else who has an account on the same system as you.

Sending mail outside of your system, though, will require the use

of the Net equivalent of area codes, called “domains.” A basic Net

address will look something like this:

[email protected]

Tomg is somebody’s user ID, and he is at (hence the @ sign) a site

(or in Internetese, a “domain”) known as std.com. Large organizations

often have more than one computer linked to the Internet; in this case,

the name of the particular machine is world (you will quickly notice

that, like boat owners, Internet computer owners always name their

machines).

Domains tell you the name of the organization that runs a given

e-mail site and what kind of site it is or, if it’s not in the U.S.,

what country it’s located in. Large organizations may have more than

one computer or gateway tied to the Internet, so you’ll often see a

two-part domain name; and sometimes even three- or four-part domain

names.

In general, American addresses end in an organizational suffix,

such as “.edu,” which means the site is at a college or university.

Other American suffixes include:

.com for businesses

.org for non-profit organizations

.gov and .mil for government and military agencies

.net for companies or organizations that run large networks.

Sites in the rest of the world tend to use a two-letter code that

represents their country. Most make sense, such as .ca for Canadian

sites, but there are a couple of seemingly odd ones. Swiss sites end

in .ch, while South African ones end in .za. Some U.S. sites have

followed this international convention (such as well.sf.ca.us).

You’ll notice that the above addresses are all in lower-case.

Unlike almost everything else having anything at all to do with Unix,

most Net mailing systems don’t care about case, so you generally don’t

have to worry about capitalizing e-mail addresses. Alas, there are a few

exceptions — some public-access sites do allow for capital letters in

user names. When in doubt, ask the person you want to write to, or let

her send you a message first (recall how a person’s e-mail address is

usually found on the top of her message). The domain name, the part of the

address after the @ sign, never has to be capitalized.

It’s all a fairly simple system that works very well, except,

again, it’s vital to get the address exactly right — just as you have

to dial a phone number exactly right. Send a message to [email protected]

(which is the University of New Mexico) when you meant to send it to

[email protected] (the University of Minnesota), and your letter will either

bounce back to you undelivered, or go to the wrong person.

If your message is bounced back to you as undeliverable, you’ll

get an ominous looking-message from MAILER-DAEMON (actually a rather

benign Unix program that exists to handle mail), with an evil-looking

header followed by the text of your message. Sometimes, you can tell

what went wrong by looking at the first few lines of the bounced

message. Besides an incorrect address, it’s possible your host system

does not have the other site in the “map” it maintains of other host

systems. Or you could be trying to send mail to another network, such

as Bitnet or CompuServe, that has special addressing requirements.

Sometimes, figuring all this out can prove highly frustrating.

But remember the prime Net commandment: Ask. Send a message to your

system administrator. He or she might be able to help decipher the

problem.

There is one kind of address that may give your host system

particular problems. There are two main ways that Unix systems

exchange mail. One is known as UUCP and started out with a different

addressing system than the rest of the Net. Most UUCP systems have

since switched over to the standard Net addressing system, but a few

traditional sites still cling to their original type, which tends to

have lots of exclamation points in it, like this:

uunet!somesite!othersite!mybuddy

The problem for many host sites is that exclamation points (also

known as “bangs”) now mean something special in the more common systems

or “shells” used to operate many Unix computers. This means that

addressing mail to such a site (or even responding to a message you

received from one) could confuse the poor computer to no end and your

message never gets sent out. If that happens, try putting backslashes in

front of each exclamation point, so that you get an address that looks

like this:

uunet!somesite!othersite!mybuddy

Note that this means you may not be able to respond to such a message

by typing a lowercase r — you may get an error message and you’ll

have to create a brand-new message.

If you want to get a taste of what’s possible through e-mail,

start an e-mail message to

[email protected]

Leave the “subject:” line blank. As a message, write this:

send quote

Or, if you’re feeling a little down, write this instead:

send moral-support

In either case, you will get back a message within a few seconds to

a few hours (depending on the state of your host system’s Internet

connection). If you simply asked for a quote, you’ll get back a

fortune-cookie-like saying. If you asked for moral support, you’ll also

get back a fortune-cookie-like saying, only supposedly more