Internet Surfer 2.0

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Internet Surfer 2.0 / Internet Surfer 2.0 (Wayzata Technology) (1996).iso / pc / text / mac / faqs.544 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1996-02-12 | 28.0 KB | 587 lines

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.544 Be Brief Never say in ten words what you can say in fewer. Say it succinctly and it will have a greater impact. Remember that the longer you make your article, the fewer people will bother to read it. Your Postings Reflect Upon You -- Be Proud of Them Most people on USENET will know you only by what you say and how well you say it. They may someday be your co-workers or friends. Take some time to make sure each posting is something that will not embarrass you later. Minimize your spelling errors and make sure that the article is easy to read and understand. Writing is an art and to do it well requires practice. Since much of how people judge you on the net is based on your writing, such time is well spent. Use Descriptive Titles The subject line of an article is there to enable a person with a limited amount of time to decide whether or not to read your article. Tell people what the article is about before they read it. A title like "Car for Sale" to rec.autos does not help as much as "66 MG Midget for sale: Beaverton OR." Don't expect people to read your article to find out what it is about because many of them won't bother. Some sites truncate the length of the subject line to 40 characters so keep your subjects short and to the point. Think About Your Audience When you post an article, think about the people you are trying to reach. Asking UNIX(*) questions on rec.autos will not reach as many of the people you want to reach as if you asked them on comp.unix.questions or comp.unix.internals. Try to get the most appropriate audience for your message, not the widest. It is considered bad form to post both to misc.misc, soc.net-people, or misc.wanted and to some other newsgroup. If it belongs in that other newsgroup, it does not belong in misc.misc, soc.net-people, or misc.wanted. If your message is of interest to a limited geographic area (apartments, car sales, meetings, concerts, etc...), restrict the distribution of the message to your local area. Some areas have special newsgroups with geographical limitations, and the recent versions of the news software allow you to limit the distribution of material sent to world-wide newsgroups. Check with your system administrator to see what newsgroups are available and how to use them. If you want to try a test of something, do not use a world-wide newsgroup! Messages in misc.misc that say "This is a test" are likely to cause large numbers of caustic messages to flow into your mailbox. There are newsgroups that are local to your computer or area that should be used. Your system administrator can tell you what they are. Be familiar with the group you are posting to before you post! You shouldn't post to groups you do not read, or post to groups you've only read a few articles from -- you may not be familiar with the on-going conventions and themes of the group. One normally does not join a conversation by just walking up and talking. Instead, you listen first and then join in if you have something pertinent to contribute. Be Careful with Humor and Sarcasm Without the voice inflections and body language of personal communications, it is easy for a remark meant to be funny to be misinterpreted. Subtle humor tends to get lost, so take steps to make sure that people realize you are trying to be funny. The net has developed a symbol called the smiley face. It looks like ":-)" and points out sections of articles with humorous intent. No matter how broad the humor or satire, it is safer to remind people that you are being funny. But also be aware that quite frequently satire is posted without any explicit indications. If an article outrages you strongly, you should ask yourself if it just may have been unmarked satire. Several self-proclaimed connoisseurs refuse to use smiley faces, so take heed or you may make a temporary fool of yourself. Only Post a Message Once Avoid posting messages to more than one newsgroup unless you are sure it is appropriate. If you do post to multiple newsgroups, do not post to each group separately. Instead, specify all the groups on a single copy of the message. This reduces network overhead and lets people who subscribe to more than one of those groups see the message once instead of having to wade through each copy. Please Rotate Messages With Questionable Content Certain newsgroups (such as rec.humor) have messages in them that may be offensive to some people. To make sure that these messages are not read unless they are explicitly requested, these messages should be encrypted. The standard encryption method is to rotate each letter by thirteen characters so that an "a" becomes an "n". This is known on the network as "rot13" and when you rotate a message the word "rot13" should be in the "Subject:" line. Most of the software used to read usenet articles have some way of encrypting and decrypting messages. Your system administrator can tell you how the software on your system works, or you can use the Unix command "tr [a-z][A-Z] [n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]". (Note that some versions of Unix don't require the [] in the "tr" command. In fact, some systems will get upset if you use them in an unquoted manner. The following should work for everyone, but may be shortened on some systems: tr '[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]' '[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]' Don't forget the single quotes!) Summarize What You are Following Up When you are following up someone's article, please summarize the parts of the article to which you are responding. This allows readers to appreciate your comments rather than trying to remember what the original article said. It is also possible for your response to get to some sites before the original article. Summarization is best done by including appropriate quotes from the original article. Do not include the entire article since it will irritate the people who have already seen it. Even if you are responding to the entire article, summarize only the major points you are discussing. When Summarizing, Summarize! When you request information from the network, it is common courtesy to report your findings so that others can benefit as well. The best way of doing this is to take all the responses that you received and edit them into a single article that is posted to the places where you originally posted your question. Take the time to strip headers, combine duplicate information, and write a short summary. Try to credit the information to the people that sent it to you, where possible. Use Mail, Don't Post a Follow-up One of the biggest problems we have on the network is that when someone asks a question, many people send out identical answers. When this happens, dozens of identical answers pour through the net. Mail your answer to the person and suggest that they summarize to the network. This way the net will only see a single copy of the answers, no matter how many people answer the question. If you post a question, please remind people to send you the answers by mail and at least offer to summarize them to the network. Read All Follow-ups and Don't Repeat What Has Already Been Said Before you submit a follow-up to a message, read the rest of the messages in the newsgroup to see whether someone has already said what you want to say. If someone has, don't repeat it. Check the Headers When Following Up The news software has provisions to specify that follow-ups to an article should go to a specific set of newsgroups -- possibly different from the newsgroups to which the original article was posted. Sometimes the groups chosen for follow-ups are totally inappropriate, especially as a thread of discussion changes with repeated postings. You should carefully check the groups and distributions given in the header and edit them as appropriate. If you change the groups named in the header, or if you direct follow-ups to a particular group, say so in the body of the message -- not everyone reads the headers of postings. Be Careful About Copyrights and Licenses Once something is posted onto the network, it is *probably* in the public domain unless you own the appropriate rights (most notably, if you wrote the thing yourself) and you post it with a valid copyright notice; a court would have to decide the specifics and there are arguments for both sides of the issue. Now that the US has ratified the Berne convention, the issue is even murkier. For all practical purposes, though, assume that you effectively give up the copyright if you don't put in a notice. Of course, the *information* becomes public, so you mustn't post trade secrets that way. When posting material to the network, keep in mind that material that is UNIX-related may be restricted by the license you or your company signed with AT&T and be careful not to violate it. You should also be aware that posting movie reviews, song lyrics, or anything else published under a copyright could cause you, your company, or members of the net community to be held liable for damages, so we highly recommend caution in using this material. Cite Appropriate References If you are using facts to support a cause, state where they came from. Don't take someone else's ideas and use them as your own. You don't want someone pretending that your ideas are theirs; show them the same respect. Mark or Rotate Answers and Spoilers When you post something (like a movie review that discusses a detail of the plot) which might spoil a surprise for other people, please mark your message with a warning so that they can skip the message. Another alternative would be to use the "rot13" protocol to encrypt the message so it cannot be read accidentally. When you post a message with a spoiler in it make sure the word "spoiler" is part of the "Subject:" line. Spelling Flames Considered Harmful Every few months a plague descends on USENET called the spelling flame. It starts out when someone posts an article correcting the spelling or grammar in some article. The immediate result seems to be for everyone on the net to turn into a 6th grade English teacher and pick apart each other's postings for a few weeks. This is not productive and tends to cause people who used to be friends to get angry with each other. It is important to remember that we all make mistakes, and that there are many users on the net who use English as a second language. There are also a number of people who suffer from dyslexia and who have difficulty noticing their spelling mistakes. If you feel that you must make a comment on the quality of a posting, please do so by mail, not on the network. Don't Overdo Signatures Signatures are nice, and many people can have a signature added to their postings automatically by placing it in a file called "$HOME/.signature". Don't overdo it. Signatures can tell the world something about you, but keep them short. A signature that is longer than the message itself is considered to be in bad taste. The main purpose of a signature is to help people locate you, not to tell your life story. Every signature should include at least your return address relative to a major, known site on the network and a proper domain-format address. Your system administrator can give this to you. Some news posters attempt to enforce a 4 line limit on signature files -- an amount that should be more than sufficient to provide a return address and attribution. Limit Line Length and Avoid Control Characters Try to keep your text in a generic format. Many (if not most) of the people reading Usenet do so from 80 column terminals or from workstations with 80 column terminal windows. Try to keep your lines of text to less than 80 characters for optimal readability. If people quote part of your article in a followup, short lines will probably show up better, too. Also realize that there are many, many different forms of terminals in use. If you enter special control characters in your message, it may result in your message being unreadable on some terminal types; a character sequence that causes reverse video on your screen may result in a keyboard lock and graphics mode on someone else's terminal. You should also try to avoid the use of tabs, too, since they may also be interpreted differently on terminals other than your own. Summary of Things to Remember Never forget that the person on the other side is human Don't blame system admins for their users' behavior Be careful what you say about others Be brief Your postings reflect upon you; be proud of them Use descriptive titles Think about your audience Be careful with humor and sarcasm Only post a message once Please rotate material with questionable content Summarize what you are following up Use mail, don't post a follow-up Read all follow-ups and don't repeat what has already been said Double-check follow-up newsgroups and distributions. Be careful about copyrights and licenses Cite appropriate references When summarizing, summarize Mark or rotate answers or spoilers Spelling flames considered harmful Don't overdo signatures Limit line length and avoid control characters (*)UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T. ----------- This document is in the public domain and may be reproduced or excerpted by anyone wishing to do so. -- Gene Spafford Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825 Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu news.admin:25964 news.misc:9010 news.software.readers:2549 news.software.b:12417 news.answers:3576 Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!think.com!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!gatech!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.misc,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers Subject: Changes to USENET Software: History and Sources Message-ID: <spaf-c_software_719471768@cs.purdue.edu> Date: 19 Oct 92 05:16:09 GMT Expires: 18 Dec 92 17:16:08 GMT Followup-To: news.misc Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Lines: 155 Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU Supersedes: <spaf-c_software_716962678@cs.purdue.edu> Archive-name: usenet-software/diff1 Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 18 Oct 1992 by spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) *** old/software.n Sat Sep 19 23:18:02 1992 --- ./src/software.n Sun Oct 18 23:39:15 1992 *************** *** 5,7 **** Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) ! Last-change: 19 Sep 1992 by rsalz@osf.org (Rich Salz) --- 5,7 ---- Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) ! Last-change: 18 Oct 1992 by spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) *************** *** 59,61 **** is specified in RFC 1036 (see below). B News has been declared "dead" ! by a number of people, including Rich Adams, and is unlikely to be upgraded further; most new UUCP sites are using C News (see next --- 59,61 ---- is specified in RFC 1036 (see below). B News has been declared "dead" ! by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and is unlikely to be upgraded further; most new UUCP sites are using C News (see next *************** *** 100,104 **** ! A screen-oriented NEWS client for VMS is also available via ftp from ! ftpvms.ira.uka.de (contact Bernd Onasch <ONASCH@iravcl.ira.uka.de> for ! details). --- 100,105 ---- ! A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS, ! MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from ! iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd ! Onasch <onasch@ira.uka.de> for details). *************** *** 250,251 **** --- 251,262 ---- + "trumpet" is a NNTP based news reader for DOS which will also run + under Windows (although only as a DOS application). There is Lan + Workplace version which is also available. It works using the + Clarkson Packet Drivers either over a Novell network or a PC with an + 'ordinary' TCP/IP connection. It offers a very intuitive interface + with most of the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but + without some of the 'bells and whistles found in something like rn). + It has facilities for using SMTP to forward/reply etc. The latest + version is 1.05g and is shareware available at most main ftp sites. + At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is *************** *** 284,287 **** ! Special note on "notes" and pre-2.11 news ! ----------------------------------------- Users of these systems may note problems in their interactions with the --- 295,298 ---- ! Special note on "notes" and old versions of news ! ------------------------------------------------ Users of these systems may note problems in their interactions with the *************** *** 302,304 **** release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenix conference. The ! current release of notes is version 1.7; it is no longer being actively maintained. --- 313,315 ---- release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenix conference. The ! last release of notes was version 1.7; it is no longer being actively maintained. *************** *** 309,313 **** "news.lists", or else they should post from a system running ! up-to-date B news software (i.e., 2.11). "notes" users may obtain ! some patches from the comp.sources.unix archives which enable recent ! versions of "notes" to interact with moderated groups properly. --- 320,325 ---- "news.lists", or else they should post from a system running ! up-to-date news software (i.e., C news or INN). "notes" users may ! obtain some patches from the comp.sources.unix archives which enable ! the most recent versions of "notes" to interact with moderated groups ! properly. *************** *** 315,323 **** some other current B news features, such as the "checkgroups" message. ! "notes" continues to be a "foreign" system, and B news versions before ! 2.10.2 are considered "obsolete." The various maintainers of the ! Usenet software have never expressed any commitment to maintain ! backwards compatibility with "foreign" or obsolete news systems and ! are unlikely to do so; it is the responsibility of the users to ! maintain compatibility of such software if they wish to continue to ! interact with the Usenet. --- 327,335 ---- some other current B news features, such as the "checkgroups" message. ! "notes" continues to be a "foreign" system and B news versions are ! considered "obsolete." The various maintainers of the Usenet software ! have never expressed any commitment to maintain backwards ! compatibility with "foreign" or obsolete news systems and are unlikely ! to do so; it is the responsibility of the users to maintain ! compatibility of such software if they wish to continue to interact ! with the Usenet. *************** *** 326,334 **** -------------------------------- ! You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing the ! "v" command in either "vnews" or "readnews." The "rn" version is ! obtainable by typing the "v" command to the top level prompt. ! Type "V" to see the version number of "nn". - Current software is obtainable from almost any major Usenet site. - Source to the 'rn' newsreader program is also widely available. --- 338,345 ---- -------------------------------- ! You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing ! some form of "v" command to show the current version -- consult the ! man page for details. Current software is obtainable from almost any ! major Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of the ! article, above. *************** *** 347,351 **** ! Sources for news 2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in ! the comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the ! sources from their nearest Eunet backbone site. --- 358,363 ---- ! Sources for most of the news readers and software, including news ! 2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in the ! comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the sources ! from their nearest Eunet backbone site. *************** *** 385,386 **** Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley, ! Bob Page, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall. Thanks, folks. --- 397,398 ---- Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley, ! Bob Page, Rich Salz, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall. Thanks, folks. -- Gene Spafford Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825 Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu news.admin:25960 news.announce.newusers:918 news.software.readers:2548 news.software.b:12416 news.answers:3562 Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!gatech!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.announce.newusers,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers Subject: USENET Software: History and Sources Message-ID: <spaf-software_719471677@cs.purdue.edu> Date: 19 Oct 92 05:14:38 GMT Expires: 18 Dec 92 17:14:37 GMT Followup-To: news.admin Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Lines: 400 Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU Supersedes: <spaf-software_716962651@cs.purdue.edu> Archive-name: usenet-software/part1 Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 18 Oct 1992 by spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford) Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of software packages and programs. This article mentions the important ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign" and "obsolete" software. At the very end is a list of sites from which current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained. Note that the number of software packages available to run news, especially on PCs, is increasing. This article lists only a few of the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any particular software package should not be construed as indicating anything about its suitability usefulness. History ------- Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7 Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. Steve Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did another implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott made further modifications, and this became the "A" news release. In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News was intended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite was the "B" News version. The first public release was version 2.1 in 1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the net grew, the news software was expanded and modified. The last version maintained and released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1. Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the 2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems. In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and other features. The current release of B News is 2.11, patchlevel 19. Article format is specified in RFC 1036 (see below). B News has been declared "dead" by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and is unlikely to be upgraded further; most new UUCP sites are using C News (see next paragraph). A new version of news, known as C News, was developed at the University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For more information, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in The Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. The current version of C News is labeled 27-Aug-1991. C News can be obtained from its official archive site, cs.toronto.edu, using FTP. Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by Rich Salz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. INN is designed to run on Unix hosts that have a socket interface. It is optimized for larger hosts where most traffic uses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support. INN is very fast, and since it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to administer only one package. The package was publicly released on August 20, 1992. For more information, see the paper "InterNetNews: Usenet Transport for Internet Sites" published in the June 1992 Usenix Technical Conference Proceedings. INN can be obtained from many places; its official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory networking/news/nntp/inn. ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS systems. ANU-NEWS is complete news system that allows reading, posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion closely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC 1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a VAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet object is also included. The ANU-NEWS interface is similar to standard DEC screen oriented systems. The license for the software is free, and there are no restrictions on the re-distribution. For more info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff Huston). ANU-NEWS is available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. Contact SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info. A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS, MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd Onasch <onasch@ira.uka.de> for details). A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is available. The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>, and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lerctr.org>. Also, Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved the UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp from ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon. The package also includes a newsreader very loosely like the real rn. Dillon also has a "vn" port provided by Eric Lee Green. This software is also available on Bix, and for ftp from ab20.larc.nasa.gov. Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been developed in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews" interface. The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by Kenneth Almquist. "vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning. It appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system (described below). "vnews" is currently distributed with the standard 2.11 news source.