The Best Internet Programs/BESTINTERNET.bin/internet/lrn_inet/li_db.txt

Text File | 1994-09-06 | 17.1 KB | 484 lines

 Finger

The main purpose of the finger command is to display certain
limited public information about users of the Internet.  As
you will see, however, it can be used in clever ways.

First, if you enter the command finger by itself, you will
be shown who is logged in on the same unix system with you.
The who command does the same thing, but displays different
information.

Secondly, and more importantly, if you enter the command
finger [userid] you will be shown certain specific infor-
mation about that particular user.

 The Fickle Finger

Finger services are available throughout the Internet, but
they are implemented differently according to the whims of
the system administrator.  A fully implemented finger
server will not only identify a user (you can ask for users
by full userid, first name or last name), but also specific
information about the person, such as office hours, phone
number and whether the person has read his email lately.






 My .Project My .Plan

The finger service also displays the contents of user created
files called .project and .plan.  When the finger program
cannot find a file called .plan it reports back "No plan."
This makes the subject of the finger command seem aimless,
which in fact he may be.  Many people, however, have used
these files to display a great deal of useful, and sometimes
clever information.  For instance, if you enter the command:
     finger [e-mail]
you will see displayed all the latest baseball scores and
standings.



 Let's Try It

Remember, to finger someone on the same unix system you are
using just type finger [userid], but to finger someone on a
remote computer enter: finger [full user address].  For
example:

     finger [e-mail]

Let's try using the finger command.  Press PgDn to log in
and practice fingering.




 GopherSpace

The internet has two BIG problems:
     -- 1) So much is available its unmanageable.
     -- 2) There are too many complicated tools.

Gopher is the answer.  It is the best way to tunnel through
the internet.

Gopher is an interface that reduces everything to a system
of menus.  You start at your local gopher client and connect
elsewhere transparently.  Any menu item can reside on a
host computer far removed in gopherspace.  Gopher takes care
of all the interconnections and the messy technical details.

 Gopher Digs 4 U

Gopher combines the functions of other stand alone internet
tools which are, by themselves, often difficult to use.  As
needed Gopher will:

     * telnet - perform remote log in.
     * archie - search file archives.
     * ftp    - transfer files to your home directory.
     * email  - mail documents to your email inbox.

Gopher is the easiest and most fun way to get things done
on the internet.


 Why Do They Call It Gopher?

Now to answer the BIG question:

It is called Gopher for two good reasons:

     -- Gophers are very industrious.
     -- It is a pun of GO FER, it goes fer yer files.

The fact that it was developed at University of Minnesota,
the Mother Gopher computer resides there, and the school's
mascot is the gopher has nothing at all to do with it.



 What Are We Waiting 4?

To start Gopher type the command gopher (using lower case)
letters) at the % prompt.  You have to log in first--but
('we''ve speeded up the dial in process this time.  Don't
forget your login name and password.

Press PgDn now to dial in...







 I Gopher U

You did it!  This is just a tiny taste of Gopher.  You can
use Gopher to travel the world.  Gopher menus followed by a
? allow entry of search terms.  The Mother Gopher has
a search engine called Veronica which searches mega-gopher
resources.  You can also add bookmarks to your Gopher
sessions and call them up--customizing your own menus.  In
addition, you can use the Gopher D command to download files
--a step that combines transferring the file to your home
directory and then re-transferring it to your own PC.

Ain't Gopher Grand.


 Veronica In The Meta-Burrow

Gopherspace is vast and cavernous.  It's fun to burrow, but
if you are looking for something specific burrowing randomly
is very frustrating.  That's where Veronica comes to the res-
cue.  Veronica is an Internet service that maintains an index
of titles of gopher items.  When you ask Veronica to find
a word(s), it returns the results of its search as a gopher
menu which can be accessed like any gopher menu.  This is
pretty cool.





 Veronica, Veronica Wherefore Art Thou Veronica

To find a Veronica server (there are about eight of them in
the world) you must start gopher and find a menu item titled:
"Search titles in gopherspace using veronica/."  The top
level mother gopher menu at U of Minnesota will have this
under "Other Gopher and Information Servers/."

The best Veronica server is the "Experimental Veronica query
interface" at U. of Nevada Reno (the original developers of
Veronica).  This server processes your search request by
looking at all the other Veronica servers and reporting
back from one of them.


 Words or Directories

When querying Veronica, you can search for keywords in gopher
directories or in all gopher titles.  A directory search will
be less inclusive, but perhaps more fruitful, depending on
your needs.

A word of warning.  If you attempt to use Veronica during
peak Internet traffic hours be prepared for the message:
"Too many connections--Try again soon."  This is a polite
message, but aggravating after about the tenth time.
During work hours, it is better to choose a foreign Veronica
server (Bergen, Cologn, Pisa) than one in the US. Sadly,
everyone knows this.

 How Does It Work?

From the "Search Gopherspace via Veronica" menu choose a
Veronica server.  A "words to search for" box opens.  Type
in your search term(s).  Note that you may use the boolean
operators AND, OR and NOT.  You also may use the * character
as a truncation wildcard.  Note that a space between search
words is treated as an AND.  For example, a search term like
"meat tofu" is the same as "meat AND tofu."  It will return
only titles with both "meat" and "tofu" in them.

The search term "cat*" will return cats, catfish, catsup, etc.
Veronic is not case sensitive, so CAT, Cat and cat are the
same.

 Veronica Tricks

There are several switches you can use with Veronica to
affect the outcome.  Placing -m[number] after your search
word(s) will cause Veronica to return [number] of responses.
This is most useful in increasing the number of responses
from the standard 200 to a higher number.  For example,
"cat* -m1000" will return 1000 gopher items containing the
word cat.

A -d[domain name] after your search word(s) will cause
Veronica to look at gopher servers only in that domain.
For example, "cat* -d.edu" will cause Veronica to return
only gopher titles found at edu domain gopher servers.

 Jughead

Ok.  If Veronica searches all gopherspace for you, what does
Jughead do?

Jughead is Veronica with her wings clipped.  Jughead servers
limit the amount of gopherspace to be searched by your
queries, usually to the computers in one University or org-
anization.  That way the users of Jughead can focus their
searches in known, local databases.  For Jughead to be use-
ful to you, you have to have a local Jughead server (of which
there are many) or be particularly interested in the data-
bases served by one of the Jughead servers on the Internet.


 What's In A Name?

The official Internet party line is that Veronica means:

Very Easy Rodent Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives

and that Jughead (developed by programmer Rhett Jones) means:

Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display

Nice mla's.  But not true.  The original Veronica programmers
modelled their work on the Archie ftp file archive program.
Hence Veronica, Archie's friend, and also hence Jughead.
Watch for programs called Betty, Reggie or Moose ahead.

 Missing Persons Bureau

The most poorly developed part of the Internet is the part
that permits you to find someone--called white pages services.

There are two good reasons for this:
   1) The Internet is so vast, and grows so quickly that
      keeping netwide track of new accounts is impossible.
   2) Because no one is in charge of the Internet, there is
      no central authority to enforce local identification
      and tracking.

The good news is we are not troubled by an efficient
bureaucracy.  The bad new is, it's hard to find someone.

 Strategy

Nevertheless, if the person you are looking for uses the
Internet regularly, and especially if you have some idea
where geographically they may be, there is a pretty good
chance of locating them using existing Internet tools.

There is no single way to proceed.  Rather you need to be
aware of the tools at your disposal and develop a strategy
for using them depending on your search criteria.





 Gopher

The easiest and often the best tool is good ol' gopher.  You
will find gopher menu titles like "Phone books/" for many
universities and other organizations.  Also, gopher has
menu titles followed by <CSO> which are phone book services.

The gopher at Notre Dame has a menu titled: "Phone Books--
Other Institutions/" that will lead you to many resources.
gopher to it at gopher.nd.edu.





 Whois Servers
There are many computers on the Internet designated as whois
servers.  You may obtain a list of them via anonymous ftp.
Use archie to find it.

Use the whois program by issuing the command: whois [name].
For example, whois Fudd.  Your host's whois server (if your
host has one) will be the default server.  Otherwise the
whois server at whois.internic.net will probably be the
default.  If you want to issue a whois command to a named
server enter it as: whois -h [named server] [name].  If
you are searching for firstname lastname strings, enter them
within single quotes: whois -h whois.internic.net 'ed jones'.
To telnet to a whois server log in as whois.

 The Knowbot and Fred

The knowbot at info.cnri.va.us 185 is a system (called KIS)
which will search various whois servers for you.  After
connecting enter the ? command to get help.  The search is
done by entering: query [name].  For example, query elmer
fudd.  The knowbot will return a screenful of names/addresses
at a time.  This program can be very useful because it also
searches the database of MCI Mail subscribers.

Fred is a program (hard to use and not real useful) which
searches what is called the X.500 directories.  Telnet to
it at wp.psi.com or wp2.psi.com and log in as fred.  Once
in issue the help command for search details.

 Usenet Addresses

If the person you are looking for has ever posted a Usenet
Newsgroup article there is a chance you may find their
email address by sending an email request to:

  [e-mail]

Leave the subject line blank and in the body of the letter
place the text: "send usenet-address/[name] where [name]
is the last name of the person you are trying to find.
You can include multiple lines in the letter with varia-
tions on the spelling of the last name.  This same data-
base (usenet-addresses) may be searched via WAIS.

 Netfind
A program called netfind can search many white page services
throughout the Internet, but you need to have some idea
where the person is located.  To use netfind telnet to
a netfind server (a partial list can be printed at the con-
clusion of this lesson).  Log in as netfind.  When the
initial menu appears, choose number 2: "Search."  Then you
will be prompted to enter your search criteria.  For ex-
ample: fudd csusm california.

When you find someone you are looking for, it's a great
experience.  But when using white page services over the
Internet be prepared for some frustration and disappoint-
ment.

 WAIS

The Wide Area Information Service is a program capable of
searching many databases but, unfortunately, in a very
single minded fashion.  The basic idea is, you tell WAIS
what subject you are interested in, and where you want to
search, and WAIS does the rest.  It reports back to you
with a list of documents which you may read or mail to
yourself (or someone else).  The problem, as with any search
tool, is that the output is only as good as: 1) the questions
you ask, and 2) the databases that are searched.




 How Does It Work?

WAIS can search hundreds of databases, called "sources."  You
tell WAIS which source(s) to use and what to look for (called
"keywords") and WAIS performs a full text search of all the
documents in the source, looking for your keywords.  WAIS
handles all the details of connecting to various computers and
running the search engine.  WAIS reports back to you with a
list of "hits," ranked using a scoring system that awards
1000 to the document containing the most occurences of your
keywords and a proportional value to all other items in the
list.  You can then choose to browse the documents WAIS
has found and mail them to yourself if they look useful.


 Limitations

WAIS is very single minded.  It searches every significant
word of every source without evaluating the context of the
words.  For example, if you want agricultural information
on hogs, WAIS will also report documents about people who
"hog" resources or and football team called "The Hogs."
Successful WAIS searches must be focused by using a set of
keywords, such as "hogs, agriculture, and meat."

A more serious problem is the limited number of sources.
Even though WAIS can search several hundred databases, this
is just a small fraction of the scope of human knowledge.


 Using WAIS

If you do not have a WAIS program on your Internet host
you will have to telnet to a public WAIS server.  The
printed summary of this lesson contains a list.  Different
WAIS servers offer access to different sources, so it takes
time to learn which is best.  Bear in mind when using WAIS
that it does not have the intuitive skills of a real, human
reference librarian, so it is up to you to learn your
sources and focus your searches.  Though gopher is a vastly
easier search tool, a successful WAIS search can often
return valuable information unavailable from gopher.
To get a feel for WAIS, let's practice...


 WAIS And Means

This has been just the barest introduction to WAIS.  WAIS
has many keystroke commands, and can be used to perform
some very sophisticated searches, but it takes practice.
At first you will find it frustrating.  Inadvertantly press-
ing the "q" key from any source screen in WAIS will terminate
the session.  This will happen to you often, so just get
used to it.  The printed summary to this lesson describes
many of the other navigation and keystroke commands for
controlling WAIS.




 Caught In The Web

The World Wide Web, or WWW, or W3, or simply "the web," is an
ambitious attempt to organize all the information available on
the Internet as a set of interrelated hypertext documents.
Hypertext is text that contains embedded links to other text,
which contains links to yet other text, and so on, forming
an interrelated web of active cross references.  Each link is
actually a pointer to another document or Internet resource.
When you select a link you jump to that location.  In this way
the world of Internet information is tied together.




 Web Power

The web is so powerful because the links within documents may
point to any type of Internet resource: a telnet session, a
Usenet newsgroup, a gopher menu, an ftp site, a WAIS search,
etc.  To use the web you need a browser--one as simple as the
line oriented browser you are about to practice with, or as
rich and complex as the Mosaic program which runs as an
Xwindow, Mac or Windows program capable of displaying images,
playing sounds, and leaping to links with mouse click ease.
The browser you are about to use is primitive, but it will
teach you the basic concepts of the web.



 Public Web Browsers

Web browser client software is free, but if your system does
not have one (it may be called www or lynx) you may telnet
to a public web browser.  There are many of them.  Once you
get a taste for the web, however, we strongly recommend that
you obtain the software to take full advantage of the web--
a program such as Mosaic, Cello, Winweb, or Macweb.  These
are available at numerous ftp sites.  Get someone who knows
how to help you configure them.  In any event, you may use
any of the public web browsers listed in the printed summary
to this lesson.



 How Does It Work?

To get the basic idea we will telnet to where the web began,
at CERN near Geneva Switzerland.  You will notice that the
line oriented browser you find there is very easy to work
with.  You simply type one word commands, or enter the num-
ber of the link to which you wish to jump, and the browser
responds.  The commands are as simple as "next," "back,"
"home," "top," "find," and so on.

To demonstrate the web let's solve a puzzle.  We know that
the web began at CERN, and CERN  is an acronym, but what does
CERN stand for?  Press PgDn to get started...