The Online User's Encyclopedia: Review by Eric Theise
Reviewed by Eric S. Theise,verve@well.sf.ca.us
copyright (c) 1993 by Eric S. Theise
I used to tell anyone who'd listen that there was a trilogy of books they needed to achieve net literacy. To get a handle on connecting a personal computer to the outside world, particularly bulletin board systems and BBS-based networks like FidoNet and RIME, Bernard Aboba's *BMUG Guide to Bulletin Boards and Beyond* was the way to go. For detailed information about using just about every Internet service in existence, Ed Krol's *Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog* was essential. And for tightly organized, big picture information about the whos, whats, wheres, whys, and whens of the global networks, John Quarterman's *The Matrix* was in a class of its own. For a hundred bucks, you'd have a library that you could start using immediately and still be growing into in a year, maybe more.
Then I discovered the horrible truth. Aboba's book, published by the Berkeley Macintosh User Group, had an initial print run of 2500. What I'd been recommending was a collector's item, not a widely available resource.
Thankfully, Addison-Wesley has just released a vastly enlarged and updated version of Aboba's BMUG Guide. One of the only disadvantages of the aptly renamed *Online User's Encyclopedia* is that, although it'll be on national bookstore shelves in time for Christmas, it's not going to fit into anybody's stocking.
Aboba's book retains most of its introductory material, although some of the very specific BBS information has been rolled over into a short pamphlet, *The BMUG Online Services Reference*. Its real contribution is that it fires a solid volley into the mid-1990s Internet, going beyond the assumption that users will be connecting via dial-up or a direct connection at work or school and speaks to the user that wishes to put their personal computer onto the Internet via SLIP or PPP for use as a file server or conferencing system.
The first six chapters fall under the heading of "Quickstart". Aboba covers the reasons why you'd want to get online with an overview of online activities, screen shots of various online systems (America OnLine, the MAGIC First Class BBS), and a goofy detour into "Lifestyles of the online and infamous", thumbnailing ingenues, cyberpunks, mensches, and others. Good overviews of software and detailed reviews of modem speeds, standards, chips, and cabling are followed by clear explanations of file transfer protocols and the often confusing Macintosh quirks (smart punctuation, file forks). There are good chapters on viruses ("Safe Hex") and bulletin board systems. The BBS chapter has a liberal dose of screen shots showing First Class, NovaLink, NAPLPS, and other graphical BBS possibilities as well as information on a sampling of civic and community network systems.
Chapters 7 through 15 deal with the Internet. Chapter 7 is a remarkable piece of work, beginning with a general overview of what's possible on the Internet and progressing through growth, governance, range of services, protocol layers, ports, seemingly every known Internet protocol, and another silly detour into "Dubious Achievements" (e.g., SLAUP Suits: Strategic Lawsuits Against USENET Participants, used by vendors to silence critics). This chapter crystalized a lot of my hazy thinking about the way Internet protocols worked.
Good chapters on access and security/privacy are followed by chapters devoted to Internet services such as e-mail (including Eudora and POP servers), mailing lists, ftp (and fetch), archie, telnet and telnetable libraries, USENET (with coverage of tin, nn, Nuntius, and WinVN), talk, Internet Relay Chat, MUDs and MUSEs, Z39.50/WAIS, gopher/veronica, and World Wide Web/Mosaic. These chapters are short and dense; there's not as much how-to information as you'll find in *Whole Internet*, but the information-to-number of pages ratio is very high. Chapter 15 gets into the details of TCP/IP, its implementation on PCs and Macintoshes, and strategies for hooking up bulletin board/conference systems.
Chapters 16 through 20 deal with store and forward networks, including UUCP, BITNET, FidoNet (and EchoMac), PCBoard (PCRelay, Postlink, RIME, and ILink), and message readers. While O'Reilly and Associates publishes two books on UUCP and USENET, and LISTSERVs provide access to as much information about BITNET as you care to request, the information about personal computer-based networks is very difficult to find elsewhere. The coverage in all of these chapters is excellent.
Chapters 21 through 27 fall under the "Tutorial" umbrella, and cover a range of subjects including strategies for reducing connect time costs; file transfer, conversion, and compression; emoticons and jargon; K12Net, and home control. The file manipulation chapters are especially useful for people moving data from system to system. The home control chapter on X-10 software is an odd, but interesting addition.
The twelve-chapter section entitled "Memories and Visions" is a great repository of net history, folklore, and predictions. A rant on the economics of information by Bruce Sterling is followed by reflections on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Free-Nets, the Internet, FidoNet, UFGATE, QMAIL, PCRelay, FrEdMail, and the EchoMac Network, told in essays or interviews with Tom Grundner, Vint Cerf, Tom Jennings, Tim Pozar, Al Rogers, and many others. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff; even if you're not, I bet that once you start reading one of these, you won't be able to put it down.
And then there are the appendices. There are eleven of these, all useful, but I found "Choice Products", "Cable Compendium", "UNIX Tips and Tricks", and the glossary to be outstanding resources. "Choice Products" is keyed to each section and chapter of the book, and products are classified according to the author's experience. There are, perhaps, more "downright speculations" than I'd like, but the fact that access information is provided gives the reader a real head start when doing his or her own research.
Could it be improved? Yes. I read this monster cover to cover on a three week trip down and up the east coast, and I have no regrets about lugging it around on trains, buses, and planes. When I returned home, eager to log in and try out some of the tips I'd picked up in my reading, I couldn't find them again. Working with the subsections of the Table of Contents subsections helped some, but I suggest that if you find something in this book that you'd like to follow through on later, you should apply a Post-It or some other device to the page in question. Putting an eleven-page index on a book of this size and scope has the effect of partially crippling it.
But that's its only flaw. Aboba's *Online Users' Encyclopedia* is a major contribution to the computer networking and communications field. It's back in my trilogy.
Addison-Wesley is making *The Online User's Encyclopedia* available at a discount for sysops, user groups, and other parties buying in volume. Contact their Corporate, Government, and Special Sales Department at 617/944-3700, x.2915 for more information. For a sampling of information from the book, ftp to netcom1.netcom.com and cd to /pub/mailcom.
