Gophers, Telnet and
Newsgroups - OHH MY!
Good Day Everyone,
I would like to
congratulate each of you on your hard work and perseverance so far.
The concept of a listserv is a little hard to grasp for some. E-mailing
machines instead of humans and a series of commands that have to be issued
via e-mail is a foreign concept to most people at first. You have
all worked very diligently and most importantly with good humor.
Give yourselves another well-earned pat on the back. Reminder:
The purpose of the following reading is to generate as many questions as
possible. Use a highlighter, write down questions, almost anything
but throwing rotten produce is generally acceptable. I’ll trust that
I have done a good job for now. Let me know.
Now onward and
upward! Today I would like to tell you that we have thus far led
a rather sheltered life on the Internet. We have experience with
using e-mail, listservs, the Web, search engines and other research tools
such as directories and subject guides. This would be a good example
of what some would call “typical Internet use.” But we are
the technological elite! We will master ALL PARTS OF THE INTERNET!!!
Today we will begin to introduce services that predate the Web. These
services allow users to accomplish a varied number of types of communication.
First we will discuss
little golden burrowing rodents who are almost completely extinct.
That’s right, the Gopher who hails from the University of Minnesota.
Guess who their mascot is? Bingo! it’s the Golden Gopher. Gophers
all over the world used to index resources geographically and by file type
down “Gopher Holes.” No, I am not kidding. It was a very effective
way to index and manage information. This information had a more
well defined structure than that of the World Wide Web. It could
be searched across all of the gopher servers in the world with Veronica,
gophers broad-based search tool. If you only wanted to search your
local gopher for information you would employ Jughead. Again, I am
serious. Gopher could only store one type of information in each
directory though. Sound in one, graphics in another, yet another
for text. Thus, it was eclipsed by the Web and is all but dead.
I miss the organizational structure that was imposed by Gopher. Ask
and I’ll explain…
OK Internauts,
now I would like to tell you that you can call up someone else’s computer
on the Internet, Log in - with a username and password and take over
some of the resources of the distant machine. This is called telnetting.
Telnet asks you to enter a domain name, log in, and then issue commands.
The only limitation that is placed on your activities is that you cannot
transfer files from the distant computer to yours (download) or transfer
files from your computer to the distant machine (upload.) For that
purpose we must utilize a process called FTP or File Transfer Protocol.
We will discuss this at a later date. We can try this together in
class. It’s fun! Our access to this service is text based (not graphical
user interface or GUI.) Additionally many ISPs these days are limiting
access because this is one of the methods employed by hackers who try to
gain unauthorized access to other computers.
Last but not least
we should discuss newsgroups. Imagine posting your e-mail to a topical
bulletin board where everyone who was interested in the topic could read
it and respond if they chose to do so. Not every user will “choose
to read” your posting, but they could if they wished. This differs
from listserves who send your message to the personal inbox of everyone
who subscribes to the list. Newsgroup readers have to choose to
1. Download the “newsfeed” from their “news server” probably hosted by
their ISP every so often 2. Subscribe to the newsgroup such
as “news.answers.newusers”, which is a group that posts interesting things
about newsgroups for new users to read, so that they can see the topic
of your posting 3. They have to open the posting with a newsreader
or news client and read it or a related thread. If the ISP
does not carry the particular newsgroup in the newsfeed you can request
it. It might be a good idea to have a friend request the same newsgroup
as well. These groups are topical. Be sure that you are posting
to the right group for the purpose that you intend. You can converse
with experts, get technical or logistical help, or just shoot the breeze.
It is a good idea to “lurk” for a while before posting and to read the
“faq” or frequently asked questions about the newsgroup and any information
directed toward new users. All of this will decrease the possibility
that you will be FLAMED by another angry reader of the group. The
best way to deal with such a churl is to ignore them completely.
They hate that.
While we are in class
you might try copying and pasting some of the more "sticky" terminology
to the clipboard and pasting it into the search dialog at PCWebopedia.
This will give you a definition and enhanced information. Alternatively
you could ask me to define it for you in class. The latter is fine,
but that will not facilitate your bookmarking of it to continue building
your online journal;-)>