Big Dummy's Guide To The Internet - Electronic Frontier Foundation (reading rainbow books .txt) 📗

you’ll have to

get your weekend news fix elsewhere.

Telnet: freenet-in-a.cwru.edu or

freenet-in-b.cwru.edu or

freenet-in-c.cwru.edu

After you connect and log in, look for this menu entry: NPTN/USA

TODAY HEADLINE NEWS. Type the number next to it and hit enter. You’ll

then get a menu listing a series of broad categories, such as sports and

telecommunications. Choose one, and you’ll get a yet another menu,

listing the ten most recent dates of publication. Each of these

contains one-paragraph summaries of the day’s news in that particular

subject.

10.4 NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

Look in the alt.radio.networks.npr newsgroup in Usenet for summaries

of NPR news shows such as “All Things Considered.” This newsgroup is

also a place to discuss the network and its shows, personalities and

policies.

10.5 THE WORLD TODAY, FROM BELARUS TO BRAZIL

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty are American radio stations

that broadcast to the former Communist countries of eastern Europe.

Every day, their news departments prepare a summary of news in those

countries, which is then disseminated via the Net, through a Bitnet

mailing list and a Usenet newsgroup.

To have the daily digests sent directly to your e-mailbox, send a

message to

listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu

Leave the subject line blank, and as a message, write:

subscribe rferl-l Your Name

Alternately, look for the bulletins in the Usenet newsgroup misc.news-

east-europe.rferl.

The Voice of America, a government broadcasting service aimed at

other countries, provides transcripts of its English-language news

reports through both gopher and anonymous ftp. For the former, use

gopher to connect to this address:

gopher.voa.gov

and for the latter, to this address:

ftp.voa.gov

Daily Brazilian news updates are available (in Portuguese) from the

University of Sao Paulo. Use anonymous ftp to connect to

uspif.if.usp.br

Use cd to switch to the whois directory. The news summaries are stored

in files with this form: NEWS.23OCT92;1. But to get them, leave off the

semicolon and the 1, and don’t capitalize anything, for example:

get news.23oct92

Daily summaries of news reports from France (in French) are availble

on the National Capital FreeNet in Ottawa, Ont. Telnet to

freenet.carleton.ca

and log on as: guest. At the main menu, select the number for “The

Newsstand” and then “La presse de France.”

10.6 E-MAILING NEWS ORGANIZATIONS

A number of newspapers, television stations and networks and other

news organizations now encourage readers and viewers to communicate with

them electronically, via Internet e-mail addresses. They include:

The Middlesex News, Framingham, Mass. sysop@news.ci.net

The Boston Globe voxbox@globe.com

WCVB-TV, Boston, Mass. wcvb@aol.com

NBC News, New York, N.Y. nightly@nbc.com

The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ont. ottawa-citizen@freenet.carleton.ca

CJOH-TV, Ottawa, Ont. ab363@freenet.carleton.ca

St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times 73174.3344@compuserve.com

Illinois Issues, Springfield, Ill. gherardi@sangamon.edu

WTVF-TV, Nashville, Tenn. craig.ownsby@nashville.com

Santa Cruz County (Calif.) Sentinel sented@cruzio.com

Morning Journal, Lorain, Ohio mamjornl@freenet.lorain.oberlin.edu

WCCO-TV, Minneapolis, Minn. wccotv@mr.net

Tico Times, Costa Rica ttimes@huracon.cr

10.7 FYI

The clari.net.newusers newsgroup on Usenet provides a number of

articles about Clarinet and ways of finding news stories of interest

to you.

To discuss the future of newspapers and newsrooms in the new

electronic medium, subscribe to the Computer Assisted Reporting and

Research mailing list on Bitnet. Send a mail message of

Subscribe carr-l Your Name

to listserv@ulkyvm.bitnet.

Chapter 11: IRC, MUDs AND OTHER THINGS THAT ARE MORE FUN THAN THEY SOUND

Many Net systems provide access to a series of interactive

services that let you hold live “chats” or play online games with

people around the world. To find out if your host system offers

these, you can ask your system administrator or just try them — if

nothing happens, then your system does not provide them. In general,

if you can use telnet and ftp, chances are good you can use these

services as well.

11.1 TALK

This is the Net equivalent of a telephone conversation and

requires that both you and the person you want to talk to have access

to this function and are online at the same time. To use it, type

talk user@site.name

where user@site.name is the e-mail address of the other person. She will

see something like this on her screen:

talk: connection requested by yourname@site.name

talk: respond with: talk yourname@site.name

To start the conversation, she should then type (at her host system’s

command line):

talk yourname@site.name

where that is your e-mail address. Both of you will then get a top

and bottom window on your screen. She will see everything you type in

one window; you’ll see everything she types in the other. To

disconnect, hit control-C.

One note: Public-access sites that use Sun computers sometimes have

trouble with the talk program. If talk does not work, try typing

otalk

or

ntalk

instead. However, the party at the other end will have to have the same

program online for the connection to work.

11.2 INTERNET RELAY CHAT

IRC is a program that lets you hold live keyboard conversations

with people around the world. It’s a lot like an international CB

radio – it even uses “channels.” Type something on your computer and

it’s instantly echoed around the world to whoever happens to be on the

same channel with you. You can join in existing public group chats or

set up your own. You can even create a private channel for yourself

and as few as one or two other people. And just like on a CB radio,

you can give yourself a unique “handle” or nickname.

IRC currently links host systems in 20 different countries, from

Australia to Hong Kong to Israel. Unfortunately, it’s like telnet —

either your site has it or it doesn’t. If your host system does have it,

Just type

irc

and hit enter. You’ll get something like this:

Connecting to port 6667 of server world.std.com

Welcome to the Internet Relay Network, adamg

Your host is world.std.com, running version 2.7.1e+4

You have new mail.

If you have not already done so, please read the new user information with

+/HELP NEWUSER

This server was created Sat Apr 18 1992 at 16:27:02 EDT

There are 364 users on 140 servers

45 users have connection to the twilight zone

There are 124 channels.

I have 1 clients and 3 servers

MOTD – world.std.com Message of the Day –

MOTD – Be careful out there…

MOTD –

MOTD – ->Spike

End of /MOTD command.

23:13 [1] adamg [Mail: 32] * type /help for help