~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ---------- Text of forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1993 12:21:58 -0600 From: NETTRAIN Moderator Subject: "The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet" is now available --------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================= Message forwarded by NETTRAIN moderator. Address inquiries to original sender: Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1993 13:33:37 -0600 (MDT) From: Tim Neese Hello, I recently came across the following guide to the Internet that's available free from ftp.eff.org in several formats. I recommend the postscript version if you would like to print it out to have a hardcopy. It's located in pub/EFF/papers/big-dummys-guide-texi/bdgtti-1.01.ps.z. The files with the lower case z are in the gzip format. If you transfer them back to a UNIX machine try using the gunzip command to uncompress them. To do so, type gunzip bdgtti-1.01.ps.z at your UNIX prompt and hit return. If this doesn't work, contact your local system administrator and ask for instructions on un-gzipping files. Then you'll need to find a way to print out the postscript file. On the mac, this can be done with a program called Show Pages or SendPS, both of which are available from the usual ftp sites. I think that it could be read in by most word processors as well. If you are unsure of how to print postscript files, ask around your campus, there's likely to be someone who will be able to help. The authors main goal with this book was to create a guide to the Internet that would make sense to people fairly new to computers and the Internet, yet still be useful as a guide to myriad of resources available. While it's not quite as refined as "The Whole Internet", it does seem to present things in a fairly straight forward manner. It also provides a pretty comprehensive overview to various Internet resources and the tools used to access them. I have no connection to the authors. I am merely passing along their README file because I think that this guide is well worth taking a look at. Tim -- neese@spot.colorado.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Last update: September 5, 1993] SPREAD THE WORD: "The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet is now available, at your local laser printer." This is the first Texinfo edition of a booklet entitled "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet" (aka "bdgtti.texi") written by Adam Gaffin for a joint project of Apple Computer, Inc. and The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Steve Cisler courtesy of the Apple Library, then used a Macintosh computer and converted Adams writing into a so-called HyperCard stack; this stack, readable by the HyperCard software, that comes bundled with every Mac, is available via anonymous FTP from the EFF's server "ftp.eff.org" as file "big-dummys-guide.sit.hqx" see under "pub/EFF/papers". Also available in the same directory is Adam's original ASCII version that served as the starting point for this Texinfo based release. Besides some "bug fixes," witty quotes, several additions, and a completely new layout, some more value has been added; notably, two personal articles from EFFector Online, the EFF's bi-weekly news magazine (available in comp.org.eff.news on USENET), now serving as superb afterwords: * "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold describes the social life on the Internet from the WELL's point of view. * "A Statement of Principle" by SF author Bruce Sterling discusses some moral and legal issues you will definitely get to know when becoming a "cybernaut" on Internet. Moreover a bibliography has been stuffed into this edition: * A comprehensive list of Paperware related to the Internet (This is an updated version of the bibliography section that comes with the first edition of "Zen and the Art of the Internet" by Brendan Kehoe) This guide is 216 European A4 size pages in length, (i.e. 226 US-letter size pages) and is divided into the following sections: * A 3 part Introduction - Welcome by Shari Steele (and the Texinfo editor) - Forward by Mitchell Kapor, Co-founder of EFF - Preface by Adam Gaffin * A 12 part Walk-trough-the-Internet Chapter 1 -- Setting up, Getting connected, Jacking in... Chapter 2 -- Electronic Mail Chapter 3 -- Usenet: the Global Watering Hole Chapter 4 -- Usenet: from Flame Wars to Killfiles Chapter 5 -- Mailing Lists and Bitnet Chapter 6 -- Telnet (Mining the Net, part I) Chapter 7 -- FTP (Mining the Net, part II) Chapter 8 -- Gophers, WAISs, and the World-Wide Web Chapter 9 -- Advanced E-mail Chapter 10-- News of the World Chapter 11-- IRCs, MUDs, and other things... Chapter 12-- Education on the Net * A 3 part Afterword - "Conclusion: the End?" by Adam Gaffin - "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold - "A Statement of Principle" by Bruce Sterling * 8 Appendices - Paperware on the Internet: A comprehensive list of over a dozen books and two dozen papers and magazines related to the Internet and similar topics. - An appendix on Internet Jargon - An appendix on Ms. Emily Postnews - An appendix on The Electronic Frontier Foundation - E-mail addresses mentioned - Internet Sites mentioned - Commands, Suffixes, and Tools mentioned - General Index Why do you want this? Well, for one thing it's free. It also saves some time and trouble: traditionally most users learned by word of mouth and stumbling upon things. This guide should serve as a first straw to clutch at if you're stranded in this mindboggling universe called Internet; and are curious about what else can be done. It also presents the fundamental topics on a "rookie" level that are all too often assumed and considered trivial by many experienced network users/admins/gurus. Now, how to read it. The file bdgtti-1.0.dvi is a DVI (DeVice Independent) file created by the TeX typesetting system. Filters exist to convert these DVI files into printer-specific files for a variety of printers. Also included is the file bdgtti-1.0.PS, a PostScript version. In the tar file bdgtti-1.0.tar.Z (a compressed tar file---ask your local system administrator and/or Unix guru how to extract the files from this), there are a number of files suffixed by ".texi". These are the Texinfo source to the booklet. FYI: TeX is a free typesetting system, by Don Knuth of Stanford; the source of which you can FTP or buy on a tape. Texinfo is a package of macros written on top of TeX by the GNU Project for easy manual creation. To create a DVI file of your own (e.g. to produce an A4 paper version), simply run "texi2dvi" on bdgtti.texi twice; or use the Makefile included; it does almost *everything* for you (...although "make coffee" doesn't work, yet). Right now you can't create the info file needed for reading it in the info system or in Emacs' info mode. Contact me if you'd like to find out why not, and suggest possible solutions. Given, that this is the first edition, some "bugs" or other "quirks" are inevitable, that I have overseen during Texinfo production. If you find send, drop me an e-mail; if you have any comments or questions, want to make further addition or corrections, please send "all-your-stuff" to the address below. I'll probably include them into future releases of this guide. See ya, on the Net! -joke -- Joerg Heitkoetter Systems Analysis Group "Just Do it!" University of Dortmund, Germany -- Nike Air commercial [Archivist's Note: the files are stored in gzip format, rather than Unix compress format, for space efficiency. gzip can be found on prep.ai.mit.edu among other sites.] .