---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash THE BIG DUMMY UPDATE Number 2 - April, 1994 SunFLASH Vol 65 #10 May 1994 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65.10 THE BIG DUMMY UPDATE Number 2 - April, 1994 An online publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation From: adamg@world.std.com (Adam M Gaffin) Edited by Adam Gaffin CONTENTS: 1. Just the fax, ma'am 1.1 TPC - The Phone Company 1.2 Chickening out in Ontario 1.3 Faxinet - commercial faxing 1.4 When things go wrong 1.5 FYI 2. Downloading Usenet articles 2.1 Directories 2.2 Saving the articles 2.3 Getting the articles 2.4 ASCII and ye shall receive 2.5 When things go wrong 3. Archie and Veronica meet the Web 3.1 Searching via Switzerland 3.2 Searching via Texas 4. Services of the Month 4.1 Gopher 4.2 FTP 4.3 World-Wide Web 4.4 Mailing lists 5. Public-access Internet sites 6. Changes/errata 7. Big Dummy goes into print! Can movie deal be far behind? 8. Contact info (591 lines) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. JUST THE FAX, MA'AM Yes, the Internet is by far the world's largest computer network. But not everybody's connected to it -- yet. Thanks to some Internet pioneers, however, you can now extend the reach of the Net to people who still rely on fax machines. These services take an e-mail message from you and turn it into a fax message delivered to the fax number you specify (you can even get fancy and send images to a fax machine). Two are free, and so far only allow you to send faxes, and then not everywhere. The other is a commercial venture that says you can send a fax almost anywhere and has devised a system for letting you receive images of a fax across the Internet as well. 1.1 TPC - THE PHONE COMPANY In 1993, Carl Malamud, founder of the Internet Multicasting Service (which now provides everything from a half-hour talk show broadcast over the Internet to databases of patent and SEC information) and Marshall Rose, a computer consultant, created a mechanism for translating Internet e-mail messages into faxes. Today, you can reach a number of metropolitan areas in the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Korea, Portugal, New Zealand and the United Kingdom via their service. TPC depends on a series of volunteers, from individuals to large corporations, who have agreed to provide Internet-to-fax services in a given geographic area. Technically, TPC is an experiment at this point; one of the issues Malamud and Rose are looking at for the long term is how to make the system pay for itself. Sending a fax via TPC is as easy as sending an e-mail message, with the exception of figuring out the e-mail address to use for a given fax, which, to an outsider, looks awfully bizarre. First, you want to get a TPC coverage list to see if the person you want to reach is in an area served by TPC. Send an e-mail message to tpc- coverage@town.hall.org (it doesn't really matter what you say in the message; "send info" works fine). You'll get back a list showing the metropolitan areas now covered, as well as, in many cases, the specific exchanges within those areas you can reach. Assuming the person you want to reach is in one of these areas, you're ready to go. At least to start, it'll help to have a piece of paper. Write down the long-distance telephone number for the person's fax machine, including the country code, if any. For example, in the U.S. or Canada, that would be of the form 1-508-555-1212. Do NOT include whatever digits you normally dial just to get an international line (for example, 011 in the U.S.) Strip out any hyphens, so that you get, for example, 15085551212. Now reverse it, to get 21215555081. Then put periods between all those, to get 2.1.2.1.5.5.5.5.0.8.1. Now add tpc.int, to get 2.1.2.1.5.5.5.5.0.8.1.tpc.int. And now you're finished with the part of the address to the right of the @ sign! The left half of the address will look something like this: remote- printer.John_Doe/5th_floor. This is actually a clever way to have a cover sheet printed for your fax. All TPC addresses start with "remote- printer." The next part, as you can see, is the name of the person you want to reach. Since you can't have spaces in an Internet address, always separate the names with a _. A TPC fax server interprets a / as a message to move to the next line on the cover page. So put all this together, and you get: remote-printer.John_Doe/5th_floor2.1.2.1.5.5.5.5.0.8.1.tpc.int. Phew! But it works! Now compose your e-mail message and send it to the address you've just created. Once your fax is delivered, you'll even get a confirmation notice via e-mail. If you have addresses you plan to write to more than once, it would make eminent sense to put them in your Pine or Elm address book. Speaking of Pine, you can use its ability to forward message attachments to send graphics as part of the fax. See under FYI to see how to get information on this. 1.2 CHICKENING OUT IN ONTARIO Digital Chicken in Toronto bills itself as: "an experiment in government communications, and international remote printing and faxing." What that means is that you can use the service to send faxes to any number of government agencies, members of parliament, newspapers, radio and TV stations and even public libraries in Ontario. The system is easier to use than TPC's because there is no backwards writing of fax numbers. Instead, Robert Riley, who rules the roost at DC (along with Planet Communications and Computing), has set up a series of e-mail nicknames for people and agencies reachable via his service, under the Chicken Internet domain: chicken.planet.org. If, for example, you wanted to send a fax to Chief McCormack of the Metro Toronto Police, you'd send an e-mail message to mccormac@chicken.planet.org. At Digital Chicken, your e-mail would be converted into a fax image and sent to the chief's fax machine. There's no reverse way for the chief to respond, however, so include your phone number or address if you want a reply. You can get a complete list of the agencies, etc. covered by Digital Chicken by writing to Riley at riley@chicken.planet.org. He can also provide instructions on sending graphics and other images via the system. 1.3 FAXINET - COMMERCIAL FAXING AnyWare Associates of Boston provides a for-fee service called Faxinet that's similar to that of TPC. Two major differences (beyond the obvious fact that you have to pay them): Their service covers far more countries and cities, and they say that people with fax machines can write back to you. The company has an individual plan that costs $20 to set up and then 75 cents per page for delivery to U.S. fax machines. Corporate rates start at $35 to set up and $9.95 a month to maintain, with a charge of 49 cents a page for faxes delivered within the U.S. In both cases, charges are higher for faxes to other countries. The company also offers related services, for example, you can have them scan and store a copy of your letterhead and signature to be appended to all outgoing faxes. As with TPC, you can also send graphics or images. For more information, call (617) 522-8102 or write sales@awa.com. 1.4 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG * You get back an error message that your fax could not be delivered. With TPC, that could mean one of two things. Either you tried sending a fax to an area not covered by TPC or you made a mistake converting the fax number into a TPC address. Double-check both the list of TPC coverage areas and the address you created. 1.5 FYI TPC (which gets its name from the 1967 movie "The President's Analyst") maintains a mailing list to discuss the project. To get on it, send your request to tpc-rp-request@aarnet.edu.au. To get more detailed information on TPC, send a message to tpc-faq@town.hall.org. 2. DOWNLOADING USENET ARTICLES 2.1 DIRECTORIES One of the nice features of many public-access Internet sites is the ability to store messages and files until you're ready to retrieve them. But then how do you get them? The following assumes you are connecting to a Unix public-access site that allows you access to its underlying Unix functions (if you use rn or nn, chances are you are on such a site). For other systems, please ask your system administrator for advice. Basic to what follows is the concept of a home directory. When you dial into your public-access site and get a command prompt, you are put in your home directory. When you retrieve a file from an ftp, Gopher or World-Wide Web server, the file will end up here (assuming you have not changed directories for some reason). As on an MS-DOS or Unix system, you can create sub-directories off this home directory (if you are used to Macintoshes, think of it as creating a folder within a folder). In fact, many systems will automatically create a sub-directory called Mail, which is where you will find messages if you hit the wrong key while exiting a mail program such as elm. If you use a Usenet reader such as rn, you will find another sub-directory called News. Retrieving a file from your public-access site to your home computer takes two steps. One is getting it into one of your directories in the first place (for example, by getting a file through ftp). Then comes the actual transferring from your host system to your own computer. We'll look at how to do that in detail for Usenet this month. Next month, we'll look at e-mail and files from remote sites (although the general principals are the same as those you'll read about now). 2.2 SAVING THE ARTICLES Let's say there is an article in Usenet you want to save to your home computer. There are a couple of ways to do this. One would be to use your own telecommunication's logging or screen-capture function to capture the text as it scrolls down the screen. This method is good if there's just one or two articles you want to save. But what if there are a whole lot of messages on a particular topic you want to download, or if you want to temporarily store them online before getting them? It might make sense to save them all to one file that you then download (note for you MS-DOS folks: be sure to name the file something you're computer can handle, for example, manual.txt, rather than something it can't, such as computer.manual.txt). To do this in rn, hit a lower-case s while in the article. You'll be given a default file name in which to save the article. You can either use that or type in your own name. Hit enter, and you'll be asked if you want to save the article "in mailbox format." Hitting y or n here makes little practical difference unless, for some reason, you later want to view the article from within elm or some other mail program. The article will then be saved in a file in your News directory. To save another article to that file, repeat the process, and make sure you use the same file name. The article will be appended to the end of the file you created. To do this in nn, hit a capital S while in the article. You'll get something like this: Save on (+~|) +alt/internet/services If you hit enter a couple of times, the file will be saved. But note those backslashes. That means you'll actually be creating a series of Unix sub-directories in addition to a file (in the example above, you'd be creating a directory path called alt/internet in which you'd save the file called services). This can be a pain! Instead, backspace as far as you can and type in whatever you want to call the file. Now hit enter a couple of times, and the file will be saved in your home directory. Repeat for other articles until done. 2.3 GETTING THE ARTICLES So how do you get this thing home? First you have to tell your host system that you want to transfer, or download, the file. If your telecommunications program has Zmodem, that's all you'll have to do -- the downloading will then start automatically. If you are using something like Xmodem, Ymodem or Kermit, however, you'll then have to tell your own computer to get ready to receive a file. To start a Zmodem download in Unix, type sz filename where "filename" is the file you want and hit enter. With Zmodem (and also batch-Ymodem), you can initiate several downloads at once by either typing in a series of filenames after 'sz' (for example: sz file1 file2) or by using Unix wildcards (which are very similar to MS-DOS wildcards; for example, sz man* would send you manual1, manual2 and manoman.txt). If you use Ymodem, the command would be in the form sz -k filename while if you want to use Xmodem, it would be sx filename Note that in Xmodem, you have to issue an sx command for each file you want. Now you rn users, recall how the files you created were being stored in your News directory. That means that to get them, you'd have to type something like: sz News/filename Otherwise, you'll get some error message. 2.4 ASCII AND YE SHALL RECEIVE That was easy, wasn't it? Alas, it can get more complicated. Unix, MS- DOS and Macintosh computers all handle the end of lines of text differently. That means that when you download a text file (such as a collection of Usenet postings), it could look awfully odd on your computer, to the point of being almost unreadable. There are a couple of ways to handle this. One is to use an ASCII "flag" after sz (or sx or sz -k). If you're lucky, your public-access site and your own computer will be able to figure out that you need to have the line endings translated. The command would look like this: sz -a filename or sz -ka filename etc. If you still get weird results, most Unix systems have a translator program that can put the proper line endings in. Typing unix2dos file.txt file.txt would convert file.txt into a valid MS-DOS file. A similar program called unix2mac works the same for Macintoshes. 2.5 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG * Nothing happens or you get a lot of garbage on your screen when you try to download a file with Zmodem. Unfortunately, transferring files over high-speed modems can still sometimes be troublesome. Diagnosing and fixing the problem often means tinkering with settings either on your end (for example, if your modem supports hardware "handshakes" but your telecom program is set for software "handshakes"); the public-access site's end (with various flags) or both. The best thing to do when having problems is to send e-mail to your system administrator or post a message in your site's "general" or "help" newsgroup if there is one. If you're having a problem, chances are somebody else has gone through the same thing and can help out. It would probably make sense to include the type of modem you're using and the speed at which it connects. 3. ARCHIE AND VERONICA MEET THE WEB 3.1 SEARCHING VIA SWITZERLAND Was it only last month that your faithful Big Dummy was busy proclaiming that there were no Archie or Veronica-style search mechanisms on the World-Wide Web? Well, although there may not yet be a Web-wide search standard (as veronica is to gopher), there are some experimental search tools out there that could help you find things. At least one of them might be worth putting into your Web bookmark list (see Big Dummy Update No. 1 for more details on this). One of the easiest to use is run by the University of Geneva's Centre Universitaire d'Informatique. Connect to it, via Lynx or Mosaic, at: http://cui_www.unige.ch/w3catalog You'll get an intro screen. As soon as you do, hit a lower-case s to get a prompt for a keyword. Type the word or topic you're looking for and hit enter. Assuming the system finds any hits, you'll then get a standard Web screen listing all the entries that apply. 3.2 SEARCHING VIA TEXAS The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. also runs an experimental search tool. It offers you greater choices in searching (in addition to Web resources, you can also hunt for things on Gopher), but is more difficult to use with Lynx (Mosaic users should have no problems, because of the way they can click on options with their mouse). You'll find it at: http://galaxy.einet.net/ Once you get there, scroll down a page or two. Eventually, you'll get a search form. But don't click on "Search" right after you type in the word you're looking for! First, go down another page and tell the system where you want to look (you can choose everywhere, only the Web, only Gopher, etc.) You can also specifiy how many occurrences you want to see for each search. Then, go back to the line with your keyword and use your down arrow (or mouse) to get to "Search." Hit enter, and you'll then get a Web page of items that match your keyword. 4. SERVICES OF THE MONTH The U.S. Census Bureau went online in a big way last month, simulataneously launching World-Wide Web, Gopher and ftp servers, with the respective addresses of www.census.gov; gopher.census.gov; and ftp.census.gov. You'll find all sorts of press releases and abstracts of Census reports. What you won't find are detailed numbers from the 1990 census. However, the Web and Gopher systems do let you connect to other servers that do provide this sort of information. 4.1 GOPHER CURRENCY gopher.uni-paderborn.de You can look up the daily value of various 4234 European currencies against the ECU, a trade unit used by the European Community. At the main menu, select "Database Searches," then look for "Info: Current ECU rates" (you may have to go to the second page). Note: You will have to include the 4324 when connecting to this site. MARYLAND seymour.md.gov Look under "Maryland State Information" for a a variety of government info, from public-TV schedules to directories of state agencies. 4.2 FTP BLACK AND AFRICAN RESOURCES ftp.netcom.com Look in the pub/amcgee/african/my_african_related_lists directory for pointers to resources and information available via the Internet. INTERNET ftp.farces.com The Ventana Press Electronic Visitors Center contains Internet freeware and shareware programs mentioned in Ventana Press's Internet Tour Guide series, as well as general Internet news. ZINES ftp.netcom.com Look in the pub/johnl/zines directory for e-zine-list. This lists dozens of online zines, or publications that you likely will never find at your corner newsstand. 4.3 WORLD-WIDE WEB NOTE: To use the World-Wide Web most effectively, you'll need access to a "browser" program such as Mosaic or Lynx (see Big Dummy Update No. 1 for information on Lynx). CHICAGO http://www.psych.nwu.edu/biancaTroll/chicago/chicago.html Welcome to BiancaTroll's Chicago Smut-Shack, which features an unusual guide to Chicago's points of interest, from nightclubs and restaurants to the best places to get beer at 3 a.m. or crushed red peppers anytime. You can also see what's on Bianca's coffee table on a given day or even electronically scrawl some grafitti on her bathroom wall. ECONOMICS/FINANCES http://riskweb.bus.utexas.edu/finweb.htm The beginnings of a Web-based guide to databases and other resources of interest to those with an interest in finances. LAW http://venable.com/vbh.html Venable, Batejer, Howard and Civiletti is a Washington, D.C. law firm. Their Web server includes online newsletters on various legal topics. PATENTS http:/town.hall.org/patent/patent.html. This database, developed by the Internet Multicasting Service, lets you search for U.S.-issued patents from 1994 on. 4.4 MAILING LISTS A couple of mailing lists will provide you with an eclectic mix of information dug up on the Internet by intrepid cybersurfers. Fishnet describes itself as "A Weekly Compendium of Assorted Discoveries Found in the Crannies of the Internet.'' Subscribe by sending a request to fishnet-request@cs.washington.edu. The Red Rock Eater News Service is a similar mailing list "containing whatever RRE's editor, Phil Agre, finds interesting on his travels around the Internet. These days most of the messages concern the social and political aspects of computers, but others concern linguistic sociology and anthropology, classical and medieval scholarship, environmental controversies, cognitive science, and community and labor organizing." To subscribe, send a message to rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu. As your "subject:" line, write: subscribe Your Name substituting your first and last name for "Your Name." Don't send anything within the message itself. For more help, send a message with a subject line of: help 5. PUBLIC-ACCESS INTERNET SITES These are either changes to listings in the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet or entirely new sites. Providers listed here all offer, at a minimum, access to electronic mail, Usenet, telnet, gopher and ftp. Additional services are noted. CALIFORNIA Concord/Walnut Creek. CCnet. Unix and menu. Modem number (510) 988-7140. $15 setup. Flat fee of $18 a month for unlimited usage with credit card billing. Voice: (510) 988-0680. FLORIDA Clearwater. Intelligence Network Online. Call voice number for modem number. $29 set-up fee; $29 a month. Voice: (813) 442-0114. Southeast Florida. Satelnet, (305) 434-7340. Follow log-in prompts to set up account. $17 a month or $60 for four months. ILLINOIS Naperville/Hoffman Estates. XNet. (708) 983-6435 (Naperville); (708) 882-1101. $45 for three months or $75 for six months. Voice: (708_ 983- 6064. NORTH CAROLINA Raleigh. NandO Net. Call voice number for modem number. Menus. Access to archives of the Raleigh News and Observer. $30 a month, for up to five accounts per household. Voice: (919) 836-2808. ONTARIO Ottawa. National Capital Freenet, (613) 564-3600. Menus. Free. Voice: (613) 788-3947. 6. CHANGES/ERRATA NOTE: Chapter numbers refer to chapters in the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet. Chapter 2. The correct domain for reaching somebody on GEnie is ge.geis.com, for example: user@ge.geis.com. If you know GEnie users who want to send mail to you, tell them to go to the mail menu and create a mail message as they normally would. At the TO: prompt they can enter your address in this form: YourID@YourAddress@INET# For example: tomg@world.std.com@INET# Chapter 6. The correct e-mail address for submitting queries to the Knowbot Information Service "White Pages" is kis@cnri.reston.va.us. You can also write to netaddress@sol.bucknell.edu. See chapter 6 for more information on using the service. Chapter 7. The Library of Congress has changed the address for the ftp server for its online exhibits. The new address is ftp.loc.gov. Chapter 10. The ftp address for Brazilian news is correct, but the name of the file you need to get has changed. It is now news.new for the day's news and news.old for previous days' news. 7. BIG DUMMY GOES INTO PRINT! CAN MOVIE DEAL BE FAR BEHIND? Yes, the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet will soon be available at a bookstore near you. M.I.T. Press will put out the print version of the guide, which has now been available online for more than a year. Look for it in early to mid-summer, with a cover price of $14.95. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. CONTACT INFO The Big Dummy Update is published monthly by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is available by several routes. To receive the newsletter by e-mail, send a message to big-dummy-update-request@eff.org As the message, write: add big-dummy-update (don't include your name). Current and back copies are available by anonymous ftp at ftp.eff.org in the pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy/Updates directory; by gopher at gopher.eff.org (select Net Info, then Big Dummy then Updates); and by WWW at http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy/Updates/ To contact the editor, Adam Gaffin, write adamg@world.std.com. To obtain a copy of the entire Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, use anonymous ftp to connect to ftp.eff.org and look in the /pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy directory, or use gopher to connect to gopher.eff.org and then select Net Info and then Big Dummy. You'll find several versions for different types of computers. The file bigdummy.txt is the generic ASCII version. For general information on the Electronic Frontier Foundation, send an e- mail message to info@eff.org. To ask a specific question, write ask@eff.org. ********************************************************************** For information about SunFlash send mail to info-sunflash@Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@Sun.COM. For last month's digest, send email to flashadm@sun.com with a Subject line of 64.00 For Gopher and WAIS access: sunsite.unc.edu. (Login as 'gopher' for a simple gopher client, 'swais' for a simple WAIS client (over 500 databases). All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. 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