Yet Another Newbie's Internet Guide
By Simon Levi
Yet Another Newbie's Internet Guide
===================================
This document is available on the web, thanx to Uri Raz, at
http://www.private.org.il/yanig.html
Any feedback (comments, corrections, suggestions for additions, etc)
are welcome. Please email them to mailto:simon.levi@corporate.public.org.il
I. ntro
2. FTP
3. Archie
4. Electronic Mail
5. Mailing Lists
6. Usenet
7. Gopher
8. World Wide Web
9. Yellow pages
X. Yellow pages ][
11. Anonymity and security
I. ntro
-------
The computers on the internet use a protocols suites call TCP/IP in
order to communicate with each other. A part of the protocol is
the IP addressing scheme, in which every computer is given a unique
IP address. The address is nothing more then a number, which serves
as an identifier of the computer on the network, and allows
computers to send information to one another, as usual mail
addresses do for the mail system.
As people have a problem remembering mane of those large numbers,
a mechanism (called DNS) which gives each computer a name, and
then translates transparently names to addresses.
The names are built in a hierarchal manner, which helps both
remember computers' names, and eases identification of computers.
There are fourteen major domains :
edu - U.S. (with exceptions) educational institutes.
org - not for profit organizations.
int - Intl treaty organizations &
intl databases supporting public Internet architecture functions.
com - U.S. & international commercial companies.
gov - U.S. government organizations.
mil - U.S. military organizations.
net - sites dealing with the internet itself.
aero - air transport industry
biz - businesses
coop - non profit cooperatives
info - unrestricted use
museum - museums
name - for individuals
pro - accountants, physicians, and lawyers
In addition, every country has a domain of itself, constructed
from two letters from the country's name. Examples - fr for france,
and il for israel. Under the countries domains, a similar
subdivision exists, as following :
.ac.xx - academical institute in country xx
.co.xx - commercial company in country xx
.gov.xx - governmental institute of country xx
The table of all country codes is available at
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/websoft/wwwstat/country-codes.txt
The domains are added right to left, rather then left to right,
with every domain separated from the previous with a dot, and
refines the identification of the computer.
Examples :
<xxx>.org.il is a computer which belongs to an Israeli
not-for-profit organization.
www.cs.technion.ac.il is the world-wide-web server of the
computer-science department of the
Technion, which is an academic institute
in the state of Israel.
<xxx>.w3c.org is a computer which belongs to the World
Wide Web Consortium, which sets the
standards for web related protocols.
Sites containing further info :
1. RFC1580 - "Guide to Network Resource Tools"
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1580.txt
RFC2664 -
"Answers to Commonly asked 'New Internet User' Questions"
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2664.txt
RFC1739 - "A Primer On Internet and TCP/IP Tools"
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1739.txt
2. Infinite Ink's Internet in a Nutshell
http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/
3. EarthLink's Internet & Web Help
http://www.earthlink.net/nethelp/
4. Newbie.net
http://www.newbie.net/
5. New User University
http://www.newbie-u.com/
6. NetWelcome
http://www.netwelcome.com/
7. Alain Gourbault's site
http://www.tout.com/gic/owwi.html
8. NetAnnounce site.
http://www.netannounce.org/
http://www.netannounce.org/news.announce.newusers/
9. The FAQs FAQ, by Russ Hersch.
http://www.irwa.org/about/faqa.html
10. Introductory FAQs repositories.
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.newusers.questions/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.groups/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.groups.questions/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/alt.newbie/
11. The Jargon Dictionary page
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/
12. ILC Glossary of Internet Terms
http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html
whatis.com is an excellent dictionary
http://www.whatis.com/
Back to Top
2. FTP
------
Some sites on the internet keep files containing games, utilities,
pictures, FAQs etc on their disks, and allow anyone with internet
access to copy those files to his computers.
Copying those files is done using the File Transfer Protocol,
which is a part of the internet protocols.
There are several ways to copy a file using FTP :
1. Using the FTP utility.
You run the FTP utility by entering the command :
ftp <site-name>
and logging in as user "anonymous" and giving as a password
your email address. When given the prompt, enter "help" to
get instructions as for how to change directories, list files,
copy files, etc.
2. Using a browser.
Enter the URL ftp://<site-name>/{path} in your browser's URL
line. This line might be hidden, in which case you'll need
to change your browser's preferences.
3. Using ftpmail.
Send an email message to ftpmail@<site-name>, with whatever
subject you like (it's ignored), and commands in the email's
body ("help" is a recognized command, try it). The ftpmail
will answer you by email, thus transferring files via email.
For a list of sites that support ftpmail, see Gerry Boyd's
page - http://www.expita.com/howto1.html
Perry Rovers' list of FTP sites available at :
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/sitelist/part*
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/doc-net/ftp-list.zip
ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/msdos/info/ftp-list.zip
Perry Rovers' FTP FAQ is available at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/faq
3. Archie
---------
If you're looking for a file (which contains a utility, picture,
or whatever you want) you can do it in two ways :
1. Using the archie utility.
You run the archie utility by entering the command :
archie -options file-name/pattern
if you enter just "archie", the utility will produce several
lines of help, explaining the options.
The archie utility talks to an archie server. A default server
will be accessed (which is just fine most of the time), but
you can have the archie utility search via another server.
For a list of sites that support archie via email, see Gerry
boyd's page - http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1236/
2. Using email.
Send email to archie@<archie-site-name>
3. Using a browser.
Web based archie can be found at :
http://www.wg.omron.co.jp/AA-eng.html
4. As a replacement for archie, you can use web based
search engines, available at :
http://www.filez.com/
http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/ftpsearch
http://castor.acs.oakland.edu/cgi-bin/vsl-front/
http://www.dogpile.com/
4. Electronic Mail
------------------
Email is another internet application, which allows you to send
files to and receive files from other people. All email programs
allow you, at the least, to send and receive plain text files
written in english. Some email packages have more sophisticated
features, and allow to send and accept messages that contain
pictures (graphics), sound, etc.
As most of the application side of email is package specific,
I'm not going to explain this side, and concentrate on the
interaction of email with the internet.
I. If you look for somebody's email address, there are
search engines which serve as internet phone books,
and can find email addresses.
Several of them are :
http://www.anywho.com/
http://www.addresses.com/
http://www.bigfoot.com/
http://people.yahoo.com/
http://www.iaf.net/
http://www.infospace.com/
http://www.switchboard.com/
http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/
http://www.worldemail.com/
And you can get more info by reading David Alex Lamb's
"How to find people's E-mail addresses" FAQ, available at
http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/FAQs/email/finding.html
II. Some sites offer free email account accessible via the web.
This will allow one to keep an email address for life (even
when he changes ISP, workplace, etc).
http://certifiedmail.com/
http://www.easypost.com/
http://mail.starting-point.com/
http://mail.yahoo.com/
http://netaddress.usa.net/
http://netforward.com/
http://traveltales.com/
http://www.apexmail.com/
http://www.bigfoot.com/
http://www.email.com/
http://www.eudoramail.com/
http://www.funmail.co.uk/
http://www.goplay.com/
http://www.grabmail.com/
http://www.hotmail.com/
http://www.iname.com/
http://www.jaydemail.com/
http://www.konx.com/
http://www.mail.com/
http://www.mailandnews.com/
http://www.mailcity.com/
http://www.mailexcite.com/
http://www.mailtag.com/
http://www.myownemail.com/
http://www.n2mail.com/
http://www.netbox.com/
http://www.nettaxi.com/
http://www.newmail.net/
http://www.pemail.net/
http://www.rocketmail.com/
http://www.softhome.net/
http://www.theglobe.com/
http://www.vanityemail.com/
http://www.pop3now.com/
If you have a POP3 mailbox which is _not_ behind a firewall,
and wish to read your email, but have no POP3 client, you
can read it with a browser via
http://www.mailstart.com/
And if you want to visit an extensive site about free email,
with good explanations and reviewed free email sites, you
will enjoy the following
http://www.emailaddresses.com/
III. The Email FAQ, by David Alex Lamb :
http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/FAQs/email/
IV. The Signature, Finger, & Customized Headers FAQ :
ftp://ftp.halcyon.com/pub/ii/internet/signature_finger_faq.txt
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/signature_finger_faq
V. The ASCII Art FAQ may be found at :
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/7373/faq.htm
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/
============================================================
The movements of Macarena !!!
o o o o o o <o <o>
^|\ ^|^ v|^ v|v |/v |X| \| |
/\ >\ /< >\ /< >\ /< >\
o> o o o o o o o
\ x </ <|> </> <\> <)> |\
/< >\ /< >\ /< >\ >> L
Mr. Ascii does the Macarena. Adopted from unknown artist.
============================================================
VI. The spam FAQ, maintained by Ken Hollis, is available at :
http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-abuse-faq/spam-faq.html
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/alt.spam/
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/admin/net-abuse/misc/
The Reporting Spam page, an excellent resource
http://www.ao.net/waytosuccess/
Reading Mail headers, from stopspam.org
http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers/headers.html
Julian Haight's Spam Cop page will automatically parse mail headers
pasted into a window and point to the correct address to which to
send complains !
http://www.julianhaight.com/spamkiller.shtml
Ken Hollis's trolling FAQ is available at :
http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html
Chris Hibbert's Junk Mail FAQ is available at :
http://www.fortnet.org/WidowNet/faqs/junkmail.htm
George Crissman's Spamhunter's Resource
http://www.tmisnet.com/~strads/spamhunt/
Other docs which would be useful fighting spam :
http://spam.abuse.net/
Several sites on the web will help in tracing spam :
1. To find traceroute gateways in any country, visit here.
http://www.traceroute.org/
To run traceroute from several places to one, visit here.
http://www.tracert.com/
2. Allwhois.com gates to whois on any domain world-wide
http://www.allwhois.com/
3. A list of whois servers, collected by Matt Power
ftp://sipb.mit.edu/pub/whois/whois-servers.list
4. IP Networks Index
http://ipindex.dragonstar.net/
5. Alldomains.com site - links to NICs worldwide.
http://www.alldomains.com/
A similar page can be found at
http://www.forumnett.no/domreg.html
Sam Spade, Spam hunter might help as well :
http://samspade.org/
Wayne Aiken's "War on Spam!" page
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~aiken/antispam.html
Penn's Page of Spam
http://home.att.net/~penn/spam.htm
ISP Knotwork: Spam
http://isp.knotwork.com/spam.spider
MindSpring's page explaining how to get an email's headers
http://help.mindspring.com/features/emailheaders/extended.htm
UXN Spam Combat page
http://www.ultradesign.com/engineering/uxn/
News articles about spam :
http://www.reference.com/cgi-bin/pn/listarch?list=spam-news@concordia.ca
and click "Browse Archives"
The procmail FAQ, by era eriksson.
http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/procmail/
Sven Guckes's procmail page.
http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/procmail/
VII. Take care to follow the Netiquette when using email with
people you dont know, and when roaming the Internet.
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/index.html
VIII. "Doctor Bob" Rankin's Accessing The Internet By E-Mail FAQ
explains how to access various net resources, such as the
web, ftp, gopher, etc, using email.
You can find it at :
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email
To get the FAQ via email, send an email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu,
with the following text in the email's body:
send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email
5. Mailing Lists
----------------
A mailing list is similar to a discussion forum (or like
citizens' band, were everybody can be heard by everybody).
People may join in the forum, and then hear everything the other
forum members say, and every other forum member hears what he says.
Of course, one may ignore, or filter, what he hears, but the
material is broadcasted to all the participants.
There are tens of thousand of mailing lists on the internet,
discussing varied subjects, such as local politics, specific types
of computers, specific software packages, hobbies, trivia, etc.
In reality, the forum is implemented by email, as implied by the
name. The mailing list has two addresses - one for users to join
or leave (subscribe or unsubscribe) to the mailing list, and the
other email is used for broadcasting - whatever you send to that
address, is redistributed to all the users subscribed to the list.
When you first contact the mailing list (via the subscription
request), remember to send the "help" command, which will send you
email containing the commands accepted by the mailing list
management software. Also, remember to keep a copy of the
instructions email automatically sent to you when you subscribe
to the list - it contain instructions as to how to unsubscribe
from the mailing list, as well as other important info.
1. Finding mailing lists on the web.
The mailing list directory site, is at http://www.liszt.com/,
is a good place to look for a mailing list you could like to
join. Just connect to the site, and follow the instructions.
The site will find mailing lists, and supply instructions as
to how to subscribe to the mailing lists.
Another site is listTool.com, at http://www.listtool.com/, which
helps in both finding mailing lists (though with ~600 mailing
lists at the time I've checked, it doesn't carry that many), and
in easily subscribing to the mailing lists.
2. Finding mailing lists on usenet.
A list of several thousands of mailing lists is posted
regularily by Stephanie da Silva to news.answers,
and has 20 parts.
This list may be accessed
via FTP ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.lists/
via the web http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/
3. Finding mailing lists by email.
The makers of the listserv mailing list server have an email
address at which mailing lists may be searched, which is
listserv@listserv.net. Start by sending a message containing
the word "help". The command "lists global <word>" will send
you the list of mailing lists, which contain the word in
their name (though it might appear as a part of another word)
4. Creating mailing lists on the internet.
See Brian Edmonds's "INTERNET MAILING LIST PROVIDERS"
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/usenet/ml-providers.txt
or send email to majordomo@edmonds.home.cs.ubc.ca with the single
line "get faq ml-providers.txt" in the body of the message
The ListBot site allows anyone to create mailing lists for free.
http://www.listbot.com/
The One List site allows anyone to create mailing lists for free.
http://www.onelist.com/
5. The Majordomo FAQ, by Dave Barr, is available at
http://www.visi.com/~barr/majordomo-faq.html
or send email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu, with the following
text in the body:
send usenet/comp.mail.list-admin.software/Majordomo_Frequently_Asked_Questions
6. Usenet
---------
Usenet is a collection of newsgroups, with each newsgroup being
like a bulletin-board, were people can post messages. A message
can be a followup to somebody else's message, so people can post
questions and get answers, start discussions on various subjects,
find penpals, etc.
There are thousands of newsgroups, discussing varied subjects.
Luckily, the names of newsgroups are organized hierarchly, so it
is easier to find newsgroups that discuss specific subjects.
Some of the groups are moderated, and some are not. A moderated
group is a group in which every post is read by a moderator
(possibly one of a group of moderators for the group), and is
allowed to be distributed only if the moderator approves it.
This mechanism is used when the people participating in the
discussion want to prevent advertisements from being posted into
the group, as well as for stopping any discussion that trails of
into uncalled directions (name calling, defamation, etc).
Usenet groups and mailing list are very similar in both their aims
and their implementation in the internet. The similarity is large
enough, that some usenet groups are "gated" to mailing list. When
a mailing list is gated to a usenet group, every post made to the
newsgroup is automatically mailed to the mailing list,
and vice versa.
Many groups have a document called FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
which contains a collection of questions posted to the newsgroup,
as well as answers to them. It might also contain some extra
information, such as a more detailed explanation of the group's
discussion subjects, posting rules, who moderates the group, etc.
Those FAQs are usually written and maintained by volunteers.
1. Usenet group names
Usenet groups are named in an hierarchal manner, by subject.
The main hierarchies are :
comp - discusses subjects relating to computers.
Examples are comp.sys.hp48 which discusses the HP48 line
of calculators, and comp.lang.c which is a forum for
the language C.
news - discusses subjects relating to usenet.
The news.newusers.questions is a good newsgroup to ask
basic questions regarding both usenet and the internet.
sci - discusses scientific subjects, like math & physics.
soc - discusses social issues.
Every cultural group has (or should have) a group in
this hierarchy, as well as every religion. Examples
are soc.culture.canada, soc.culture.jewish,
and soc.relgion.christian
talk - discussion oriented groups, usually argumentative.
Examples are talk.abortion and talk.politics.crypto
rec - groups discussing recreational subjects.
Examples are rec.puzzles, rec.radio.cb, rec.food.cooking.
misc - groups discussing subjects that do not fit any of the
categories listed above.
Examples are misc.headlines and misc.invest.
alt - this hierarchy is an alternative to the rest of the
hierarchies. It was created because the other
hierarchies are too conservative or slow to create.
The group creation in this hierarchy both faster and
easier then it is on the other hierarchies.
The alt & misc allow for quicker creation of groups discussing
subjects of the day (a high-profile trial, a disaster, etc),
or subjects that most people find too controversial to discuss
in newsgroups in other hierarchies.
Notice that sometimes there are several groups discussing the
same subject (e.g. talk.atheism, soc.atheism, and talk.atheism)
This might happen because some people might want a moderated
group, while the existing one isnt, or vice versa.
Other reasons exist as well, e.g. different hierarchies might
call for different tone of speech, attitude, or angle.
Additional hierarchies exist for :
gnu - hierarchy for groups that discuss the gnu software.
k12 - hierarchy for groups that discuss educational issues.
vmsnet - hierarchy for groups that discuss the VMS OS.
And there are hierarchies for countries and universities, which
discuss subjects that are local for the country or university.
You can find the list of all usenet top level hierarchies at :
http://home.magmacom.com/~leisen/master_list.html
ftp://ftp.magmacom.com/pub/misc/Master_List.txt
Most hierarchies (and some sub-hierarchies) have an answers
group (e.g. news.answers, comp.answers, sci.answers). The FAQ
documents for the hierarchy are posted regularily to the answers
group (usually every month). Every FAQ posted to those groups is
archived at several FTP sites as well.
To look for FAQs look at :
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/
ftp://ftp.uu.net/ (an rtfm.mit.edu mirror)
http://www.faqs.org/
http://ps.superb.net/FAQ/
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/cgi-bin/faqwais
To find newsgroups' charters, which define the newsgroups' appropriate
discussion subjects, use the following search engine :
http://www.landfield.com/usenet/ghelp.html
The rtfm.mit.edu contains an updated list of sites accessible
via various protocols (ftp, www, gopher, mail, etc) of FAQ sites.
The list is available at :
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers/introduction
The rtfm.mit.edu site has a mail-server which can send FAQs by
email, as described earlier in this doc. You can contact it at
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu, and start with a message saying "help"
in the body to get instructions.
The following is a reference to an FTP file containing a list
of all newsgroups, their topics, and their moderators :
ftp://ftp.ksc.nasa.gov/pub/winvn/data/
2. Posting to usenet groups.
When posting a message to a newsgroup, one is advised to follow
certain rules of manner, which help to both get good results
(get an answer, a civilized discussion, whatever) and prevent
anarchy from completely taking over usenet.
Read RFC1855 is a good guide, and is available at
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
The following is my list of rules / advices :
I. Post to the right group.
If you have a question or wish to discuss a subject, do
it on the right group(s). You can find which group(s)
using the techniques described in this doc.
In case you are not sure which group is right, find two
or three (but not more !) which seem to you to discuss
the relevant subject, and post your message their, with
a two or three lines request to redirect you if those
are not the correct groups. If you've missed, someone
will tell you were to repost the message.
II. Use a good subject line.
Write a subject line which would describe the contents
of the post well. The post is a kind of a small article,
and the subject serves as a headline. If the headline
is misleading as to the contents of the article, people
who are interested in the subject or can answer the
question, might skip it over. If the subject is phrased
badly, in might lead the reader to misinterpret the
content of the post.
III. Remember that the post is read by a crowd of people.
It's people who read your message. Edit the post so it
would be readable, don't insult, don't lie
(it will be caught), etc.
- Quote as much material as needed to keep a
discussion's continuity, no more and no less.
If you cut out material, insert a comment at the
place (e.g. [snip]). Make sure you attribute quotes
to the people who wrote them.
- Mail an answer only if you would have liked to receive
a copy, were you on the other side. If you both mail &
post, make a comment to the effect at the top of the
post (e.g. [Posted & Mailed]).
- Be careful with what you say. What you post may be
read by thousands and thousands of people, so be
careful when writing something you might regret later
(insulting somebody, defaming material, things that
might present you badly, etc).
- Try to make your post readable. Read your post twice
to look for spelling and grammar mistakes, make sure
the relevant details are in the post, if you ask a
question - write it clearly. Check if would have
looked good to you.
IV. Read the FAQ.
Before posting a question, it's wise to check if it's in
the FAQ, or was asked in the past using dejanews. In both
cases you could get a quick answer, without bothering the
newsgroup's readers in general.
V. Read the newsgroup for a while.
It's a good habit to read some of the posts before
posting anything, just in order to get a good impression
of the subjects really discussed in the newsgroup,
accepted and unaccepted posting style specific to the
group, who are the characters who post to the group, etc.
Today, this doesn't have to take several days - you can
get the posts for the last few days from dejanews, the
FAQ from an FTP or web site, and get a feeling quickly.
If the group is gated to a mailing list, the mailing list
software might automatically archive the posts to some
FTP site, from which you could fetch the last weeks's
posts in a few files.
VI. Dont send advertisements.
Though the internet seems like a cheap way to advertise
to a huge audience, people on the net don't like
advertisements neither on newsgroups nor via email, and
doing so will most probably give you very few sales
(something like 1 sale per 10-100K emails), and might
lead to actions taken against you (having your internet
account being canceled).
If you do wish to use the internet for advertisement,
read the following -
"Advertising on Usenet: How To Do It, How Not To Do It."
by Joel K. Furr
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/advertising/how-to/part1/
VII. Dont use Usenet to make your homework
Just don't post homework / assignments given to you on a
newsgroup, hoping posters would spit out the answers that
would grade your work A+
These kind of post (somebody posts a slightly reworded
question of a teacher to a newsgroup, sometimes from an
.edu domain, sometimes requesting the information quickly
by email, obviously hoping he could get an answer by
the next day's morning) just makes the poster look lazy
or stupid, especially as the teacher might come across it.
If you have a problem to post to newsgroups (dont have a newsreader,
newsgroup isnt carried by your ISP, etc), you can post via other
ways, including DejaNews (free, you'll need an Email account, which
you can get for free), NewsGuy / SuperNews (fee, you'll need an
Email account and credit card), mail2news gateways (free, you'll
need an Email account)
3. Finding usenet groups on the newsreader.
Most newsreaders allow you to see the list of newsgroups that
are available for you. Netscape has a button which allows you
to see the newsgroups hierarchially, and tin allows yanking
a flat list of all newsgroups and search for words in it.
4. Finding usenet groups on the web.
The DejaNews site, now a paert of google, archives usenet.
The site, at http://groups.google.com/, enables users to search
through posts sent over the past few years using different
methods, which may be combined, such as words from articles,
authors, and newsgroups.
The ability to find past posts discussing unfamiliar subjects
is an endless source of information, and may supply immediate
answers to questions asked on usenet in the past.
If you wish to have a post of yours not archived in dejanews
add the header "X-No-Archive: Yes" to your posting's header,
or write it as your article's first line. Notice that this
wouldn't prevent other people from quoting your article, thus
causing the quoted material to be archived.
Other useful features of DejaNews :
- Get poster profiles.
This gives a count of how many posts did a poster
send to each newsgroup, with a poster identified
by it's email address.
- Search for newsgroups discussing given subjects.
As the search is done by frequency of words in posts,
the results should be taken with a grain of salt, e.g.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWSGROUPS WHERE PEOPLE TALK ABOUT: christianity
All the newsgroups in the following list contain christianity in some
article. The confidence rating indicates how sure we are that people
talk about your query in the newsgroup. Clicking on the newsgroup
name will show you all of the articles within the group which match
your query.
Confidence Newsgroup
99% alt.atheism
63% rec.games.frp.misc
54% rec.music.christian
39% alt.religion.christian
38% soc.religion.christian
38% soc.penpals
33% austin.general
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A resource nearly as good is dejanews is feedme.org. The site carries
about 30,000 newsgroups, and allows, using a simple web interface,
to read and post to newsgroups.
http://www.feedme.org/
Lists of freely accessable news servers can be found at
http://newsbuster.webjump.com/
http://www.freenewsgroups.com/
http://www.jammed.com/~newzbot/
There are several sites that will give newsgroup access for payment
NewsGuy http://www.newsguy.com
Airnews http://www.airnews.net/
Altopia Corp http://www.altopia.net/
barditch http://www.barditch.com
Easynews http://www.easynews.com/
Newsreader.Com http://www.Newsreader.Com
remarq http://www.remarq.com/
5. Finding newsgroups on usenet.
A list of several thousands of newsgroups is posted
regularily by David C Lawrence to news.answers,
and has several parts.
This list may be accessed
via FTP ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.lists/
Alternatively, you can use the Virtual Interactive Center's
web page to point and click up & down the hierarchies to
find newsgroups & their FAQs, at
http://www.vic.com/news/
6. Creating a newsgroup.
Sometimes you may find that no newsgroup in the whole usenet
that discusses a subject of interest to you. In this case,
you may wish to create a new usenet newsgroup.
The following resources will help you to start the process :
1. Jon Bell's "Creating New Newsgroups"
http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/newgroup/
2. David Barr's "So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup"
http://news.acns.nwu.edu/alt.html
3. Guides for Creating Newsgroups
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/creating-newsgroups/
4. The Usenet Volunteer Votetakers home page
http://www.uvv.org/
7. InterNet abuse FAQS can be found at :
1. The Net Abuse FAQ
http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html
2. The Cancel Messages FAQ, by Tim Skirvin
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/cancel-faq/
3. Email abuse FAQ, by WD Baseley
http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.html
ftp://members.aol.com/emailfaq/emailfaq.txt
4. news.admin.net-abuse hierarchy FAQs
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/admin/net-abuse/
5. The mail filtering FAQ can be found at
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/filtering-faq
8. Further info can be found at :
1. Usenet Info Center Launch Pad
http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/
2. Professor Jon Bell's usenet page
http://web.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/
3. Dave Taylor's Guide to Social Newsgroups & Mailing Lists
http://www.intuitive.com/social-faq.html
4. "Rules for posting to Usenet", by Mark Horton
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers/usenet/posting-rules/part1
5. Newsgroup Information for Beginners
http://cs1.presby.edu/~jtbell/usenet/
6. Lists of freely accessible usenet servers
http://www.freenewsgroups.com/
7. Usenet Access FAQ
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/ua.txt
7. Gopher
---------
Gopher is a text based utility, which enables users to search for
text articles world-wide, using a menus system, in which each
selectable item leads either to another menu, or to an article.
It predates the world wide web, and was built for similar reasons -
allow users to find materials of interest to them.
Though the web is graphics oriented, it may be access through a
text based interface, using such browsers as lynx.
There are search engines for gopher - veronica searches for
keywords in the gopher menus themselves, while WAIS looks for
keywords in the documents themselves, which makes it more
useful, if somewhat slower.
FAQS can be found at -
Gopher - ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/gopher-faq
Veronica - gopher://gopher.scs.unr.edu/00/veronica/veronica-faq
WAIS - ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/infosystems/wais
8. World Wide Web
-----------------
1. The World Wide Web Consortium's home page is http://www.w3.org/
The HTML Writers Guild's home page is http://www.hwg.org/
2. Guides & References :
HTML 3.2 Reference Specification
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32
HTML 4.0 Specification
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40
David W. Baker's Guide to URLs
http://www.netspace.org/users/dwb/url-guide.html
Dezine's Ultimate Web Publisher's Guide
http://www.dezines.com/ultimate/
3. There are some nice HTML & Java courses & FAQs at
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
http://www.htmlhelp.com/
http://www.webreference.com/
4. The following FAQs are very useful :
Web Author's FAQ in Plain English
http://www.hobsonsquare.com/HTMLFAQ.htm
WWW Security FAQ, by Lincoln D. Stein, is available at
http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/WWW/faqs/www-security-faq.html
The WWW FAQ, by Thomas Boutell, is available at
http://www.boutell.com/faq/
The CGI FAQ, by Nick Kew, is available at
http://www.webthing.com/tutorials/cgifaq.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/www/cgi-faq/index.html
The Perl (a language commonly used as for CGI) FAQ is available at
http://language.perl.com/faq/
The "How To Announce Your New Web Site" FAQ is available at
http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html
The "Secrets of Searching the Web & Promoting Your Website" page
http://www.gocee.com/eureka/eureka_i.htm
5. The following resources page are as useful as well :
Max Lee's Free Webpage Provider Review
http://www.fwpreview.com/
Mark J. Welch's Web Page Access Counters and Trackers page
http://www.markwelch.com/bannerad/baf_counter.htm
The Counters, Counters, Counters page of free counters
http://www.merlet.com/counterlinks.htm
The BrowserWatch site, which covers browsers in whole,
including latest news, a list of all plugins, etc.
http://www.browserwatch.com/
There are several sites that give out statistics collected
from many sites detailing what are the most commonly used
browsers, OSs, etc.
http://www.websnapshot.com/
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/
The SearchEngineWatch site a great site about search engines,
which includes tutorials, mailing list about search engines,
submission aids, and lots of other good stuff.
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
Web hosting services finders
http://www.hostfinders.com/
http://www.hostindex.com/
http://www.hostinvestigator.com/
http://www.hostsearch.com/
http://www.hostspot.com/
http://www.ispcheck.com/
http://www.tophosts.com/
http://www.webhostseek.com/
FreeWebspace.Net
http://www.freewebspace.net/
Definitive Guide to World Wide Web Providers
http://www.webhosters.com/
The Web-Server Online Magazine web site
http://webserver.cpg.com/
The Free Web Magazine web site
http://www.freewebmag.com/
FreeLinks: The Ultimate Web Site Traffic Builder
http://www.freelinks.com/
6. The stars.com web site contains an excellent index of web
page authoring tools, starting with HTML, through CGI, Java,
to just about anything a web page author might need.
http://www.stars.com/
The Elsop Webmaster Resource Center
Home page at http://www.elsop.com/wrc/
Other excellent sites for various guides and resources :
http://kresch.com/
http://www.builder.com/
Another useful site is CGIresources, which contains, beside
CGI script, Java scripts as well.
http://www.cgiresources.com/
And yet another useful site is WebResources, which serves
free scripts, links to HTML guides, and lots of other goodies.
http://www.websiteresources.com/
And yet another useful site is Free Code, which serves free
code in various languages.
http://www.freecode.com/
And yet another free web related sites :
http://www.free-bee.net/
http://www.freefever.com/
ReallyBig - The Complete Resource for All Web Builders
http://www.reallybig.com/
The following sites are great resources for Java developers
http://www.inside-java.com/
http://www.gamelan.com/
http://java.sun.com/
7. Pages describing cookies.
RFC 2109 - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2109.txt
Netscape's pre spec - http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html
Penn's Cookie Page - http://home.att.net/~penn/cookies.htm
Junkbuster's page - http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/cookies.html
EPIC's page - http://www.epic.org/privacy/internet/cookies/
Cookie Central - http://www.cookiecentral.com/
A cookie FAQ - http://www.cookiecentral.com/faq/
8. The following sites will submit URLs to search engines -
http://www.123add-it.com/
http://www.addme.com/
http://www.all4one.com/all4submit/
http://www.mmgco.com/top100.html
http://www.submit-it.com/
http://www.virtual-stampede.com/
http://register-it.netscape.com/
9. There are several sites that can supply help with site building
Web Advisor http://www.webadvisor.com/
Creative Good http://www.creativegood.com/
As meta-tags are important, e.g. in making your site easily
found and described in search engines, the meta-tag auto-builder
would be useful.
http://vancouver-webpages.com/VWbot/mk-metas.html
The meta-tags dictionary can be found at
http://www.vancouver-webpages.com/META/
The GIF Wizard can help compress GIF files to make pages
load faster. This is a product sold for money, but a page
down the hierarchy will help compressing single GIF files.
http://www.gifwizard.com/
The scripts search engine can aid in finding ready to use
scripts in many languages, such as Perl and Java.
http://www.scriptsearch.com/
10. There are several sites that can check existing sites.
Those tests include spelling errors, links validations, etc.
Net Mechanic http://www.netmechanic.com/
Dr. Watson http://watson.addy.com/
Bobby http://www.cast.org/bobby/
Web Site Garage http://www.websitegarage.com/
Site Inspector http://www.siteinspector.com/
11. There are several sites which offer free web pages
AngelFire http://www.angelfire.com/
FortuneCity http://www.fortunecity.com/
Free Servers http://www.freeservers.com/
GeoCities http://www.geocities.com/
HomePage http://www.homepage.com/
HomeStead http://www.homestead.com/
MyFreeOffice http://www.MyFreeOffice.com/
Nether.Net http://www.nether.net/
Tripod http://www.tripod.com/
Web Jump http://www.webjump.com/
12. There are several sites which offer free banner advertising,
using an exchange deal - you add banner space to your page,
used to display other people's banners, and get your banner
displayed on other people's pages.
Banner Exchange http://www.bannerexchange.com/
Banner Source http://www.bannersource.com/
Hyperbanner http://www.hyperbanner.net/
The AssociatePrograms.com is a searchable directory of associate
programs, which allow yoy to make money from your site.
http://www.associateprograms.com/
9. Yellow pages
---------------
1. tile.net is another search engine, which can search for
newsgroups, mailing lists, and ftp sites by various indices
(country, alphabetical, description, etc)
http://tile.net/
2. The Internet Resources Database site contain lists of gopher
servers, FTP servers, mailing lists, and more. Downloading the
lists to your computer allows you to search for sites without
being connected to the internet, saving you in connection fees.
http://www.internetdatabase.com/
3. Popular WWW search engines are :
http://www.metagopher.com/
http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.cyber411.com/
http://www.debriefing.com/
http://www.directhit.com/
http://dmoz.org/
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.go2net.com/
http://www.infoseek.com/
http://www.isleuth.com/
http://www.lycos.com/
http://www.mamma.com/
http://www.nlsearch.com/
http://www.search.com/
http://www.starting-point.com/
http://www.whatuseek.com/
http://www.webcrawler.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
4. Some more user friendly search-engines are :
http://www.askjeeves.com/
http://www.humansearch.com/
5. Another fine search engine, which can search through
FTP sites, news, the web, and newswires, is Dogpile,
which has an easy interface.
http://www.dogpile.com/
6. The Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library
allows to search for computer science articles, as well as
get some of those articles on-line.
http://www.ncstrl.org/
TechFest - the ultimate source of technical information on
networking and computer technology. An excellent source of
info on computers and networks.
http://www.techfest.com/
7. The following is a site with pointers to dictionaries of many
languages, as well as thesauruses and other language aids.
http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/rbeard/diction.html
8. Microsoft's TerraServer serves many satellite pictures of earth.
Coverage is mainly in the U.S., but pictures from elsewhere in
the world can be found as well.
http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/
X. Yellow pages ][
------------------
Bill Gates FAQ.
By Sami Sihvonen
http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/4211/bill-faq.htm
Book Shops -
Search multiple book shops for cheapest offer http://www.addall.com/
Search for rare books in multiple shops http://www.bibliofind.com/
The Computer Network site contains lots of useful stuff, including
news, manuals, product reviews, sharewares, and more.
Home page at http://www.cnet.com/
The Copyright Resource Page, by Terry Carroll
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/law/copyright/faq/part1/
Cyberian Outpost
http://www.outpost.com/
Cartoons sites :
The Dilbert Zone - http://www.dilbert.com/
Garfield Online - http://www.garfield.com/
Snoopy - http://www.snoopy.com/
PJ's Comix - http://www.pjcomix.com/
King Features Syndicate - http://www.kingfeatures.com/comics/
Comic Strip Cornucopia - http://www.sdsc.edu/~jeff/comics/Cornucopia.html
Downloads, freewares, & sharewares sites
http://cws.internet.com/
http://nonags.com/
http://www.1SmartSite.com/
http://www.asp-shareware.org/
http://www.download.com/
http://www.filepile.com/
http://www.freehound.com/
http://www.freesaver.com/ (Screen Savers)
http://www.freewareplus.com/
http://www.freshmeat.net/
http://www.jumbo.com/
http://www.linuxberg.com/
http://www.novellshareware.com/
http://www.passtheshareware.com/
http://quality-shareware.com/
http://www.shareware.com/
http://www.sharewarejunkies.com/
http://www.sharewaremall.com/
http://www.slaughterhouse.com/
http://www.tucows.com/
http://www.tudogs.com/
http://www.windowsware.com/
http://www.winfiles.com/
http://www.zdnet.com/
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
There a couple of MP3 music search engines :
Lycos MP3 search - http://mp3.lycos.com/
MP3.com - http://www.mp3.com/
The Dumb Laws site - lists dumb laws from around the world.
http://www.dumblaws.com/
The Darwin Awards site
"In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate
(the remains of) individuals who eliminate themselves in an
extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby dousing our gene pool
with chlorine. "
Home page at http://www.darwinawards.com/
The Electronic Text Archive. From it's home page :
"The Etext Archives (est. 1992) are home to electronic texts of
all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, from the political
to the personal. Our duty is to provide electronic versions of
texts without judging their content."
Home page at http://www.etext.org/
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Home page at http://www.eff.org/
Encyclopedias on-line :
Webopedia - http://www.webopedia.com/
What Is - http://www.whatis.com/
The Free Site
Home page at http://www.thefreesite.com/
The Free of Charge Site
http://home.hkstar.com/~hochui/
HealthGate -
"Your online source for health, wellness,
and biomedical information"
Home page at http://www.healthgate.com/
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, inc.
Home page at http://www.ieee.org/
Inquiry.com is a search engine that can search through
publications and product descriptions relating to
Information Technology.
Home page at http://www.inquiry.com/
The Jokes Search Engine
http://www.POPULUS.net/jokes/search.shtml
Microsoft Windows pages
1. Windows in general
http://www.windows.com/
http://www.windowscentral.com/
2. Windows-95
http://www.windows95.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/
3. Windows-98
http://www.barkers.org/windows/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/
4. Windows-NT
http://www.ntsecurity.com/
http://www.winntmag.com/
http://www.ntfaq.com/
http://www.nthelp.com/
Modem FAQs & pages on the Internet
1. Navas 28800-56K Modem FAQ
http://modemfaq.home.att.net/
2. Costmo's "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Modems" page
http://modems.rosenet.net/
3. Curt's High Speed Modem Page
http://www.teleport.com/~curt/modems.html
4. The 56k Modem Info Page
http://www.sirius.com/~rmoss/
5. The 56k Modem Home Page
http://www.56k.com/
6. The V90 Standard site
http://www.v90.com/
7. AT Command Reference Manual
http://www.modems.com/general/extendat.html
8. Lynn Larrow's Modems, Networking and Communications Links page.
http://www.webcom.com/~llarrow/comfaqs.html
9. Data Communications FAQ (Windows Version)
http://www.malch.com/comfaq.html
The 100 Hot Sites site.
http://www.100hot.com/
Script-O-Rama site of movie scripts
http://www.script-o-rama.com/
Search engines pages
http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/lists/listsc.html
http://www.ccsf.caltech.edu/~roy/others.html
Social Security Number info
http://www.ssa.gov/employer_info/quick_ref_guide.html
Survey-Net
"Survey-Net is the source for user demographics on the Internet.
We invite everyone to participate in our online surveys - the
first of their kind where you can instantly see the compiled results!"
http://www.survey.net/
Technical support pages
Experts Exchange http://www.experts-exchange.com/
Support & Help http://www.supporthelp.com/
Tip World http://www.tipworld.com/
PC Help Online http://www.pchelponline.com/
The PC-Mechanic http://pcmech.pair.com/
The Technology Site http://www.techweb.com/
The PC Guide http://www.pcguide.com/
The Internet Help Desk http://w3.one.net/~alward/
The Unix Book, by David Jones.
http://kholosso.di.fct.unl.pt/unix_book/
The Urban Legends Archive
http://www.urbanlegends.com/
Vatican sites
Home page at http://www.vatican.va/
Museum home page at http://www.christusrex.org/www1/vaticano/0-Musei.html
The Weather Channel
Home page at http://www.weather.com/
The World @ Software Tools & Die
Home page at http://world.std.com/
x86.org - the unofficial 80x86 site
Home page at http://www.x86.org/
CPU-Central - a central source about x86 processors.
Home page at http://www.cpu-central.com/
Tom's Hardware - a site explaining hardware clearly and in depth.
Home page at http://www.tomshardware.com/
Ziff-Davis's site
Home page at http://www.zdnet.com/
11. Anonymity and security
--------------------------
1. How to mail anonymously
http://www.publius.net/rlist.html
http://www.stack.nl/~galactus/remailers/
2. How to post anonymously
http://www.all-nettools.com/privacy/
news:alt.privacy.anon-server
3. How to surf anonymously
http://www.anonymizer.com/
http://www.iproxy.com/
http://www.lpwa.com/
http://www.merletn.org/anonymizer
4. Security resource lists
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/links.html
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/coast/hotlist/
http://oliver.efri.hr/~crv/security/
5. Privacy sites
http://www.privacy.org/
http://www.junkbusters.com/
http://net-condom.com/
http://www.fulldisclosure.org/
http://www.consumer.net/
6. Pretty Good Privacy
A. Home page
http://www.pgp.com/
B. FAQs
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pgp-faq/where-is-PGP/
7. Security publication libraries :
A. Rainbow series of books online
http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/secpubs/rainbow/
B. NIST's library
http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/secpubs/
C. Raptor's library
http://www.raptor.com/lib/index.html
D. ISS's security vulnerability database
http://xforce.iss.net/
8. Security organizations home pages
ASIS - http://www.asisonline.org/
CERT - http://www.cert.org/
CIAC - http://www.ciac.org/
CPSR - http://www.cpsr.org/
CSI - http://www.alw.nih.gov/Security/security.html
FAS - http://www.fas.org/
http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/
FIRST - http://www.first.org/
HTCIA - http://htcia.org/
ICSA - http://www.icsa.com/
INFILSEC - http://www.infilsec.com/
ISCISC - http://www.isc2.org/
ISS - http://www.iss.net/
MCI - http://www.security.mci.net/
Mining - http://netsecurity.miningco.com/
NCSA - http://www.ncsa.com/
NIST - http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/
NSA - http://www.nsa.gov:8080/
REPSEC - http://www.repsec.com/
SANS - http://www.sans.org/
SNI - http://www.securenetworks.com/
SoftWar - http://www.softwar.net/
TFIC - http://www.echotech.com/
2600 magazine - http://www.2600.com/
8 Legged Groovin' Machine - http://www.8lgm.org/
Anti OnLine - http://www.antionline.com/
Counterpane Systems - http://www.counterpane.com/
Cult of the Dead Cow - http://www.cultdeadcow.com/
Def Con - http://www.defcon.org/
Exploit World - http://www.insecure.org/sploits.html
Fravia - http://www.fravia.org/
Geek-Girl - http://www.geek-girl.com/
Hacker.org - http://www.hacker.org/
Hackers.com - http://www.hackers.com/
Hacker News - http://www.hackernews.com/
Hack Net - http://www.hack-net.com/
InfoWar - http://www.infowar.com/
InfoWar - http://www.infowar.co.uk/
InterHack - http://www.interhack.net/
l0rd's site - http://www.xs4all.nl/~l0rd/
Net Security - http://net-security.org/
Network Command - http://www.networkcommand.com/
NT BugTraq - http://www.ntbugtraq.com/
OSAll - http://www.aviary-mag.com/
Phrack - http://www.phrack.com/
PreText Magazine - http://www.pretext.com/
RootShell - http://www.rootshell.com/
Secure Zone - http://www.SecureZone.com/
SecuriTeam - http://www.securiteam.com/
Security Portal - http://www.securityportal.com/
Security Writers Guild - http://www.securitywriters.org/
InfoSysSec - http://www.infosyssec.net/
System One - http://www.sysone.demon.co.uk/
Granite Island Group - http://www.tscm.com/
TechTronic - http://www.technotronic.com/
The Codex - http://www.thecodex.com/
l0pht - http://www.l0pht.com/
r00t - http://www.r00t.org/
Warzone pharmaceuticals - http://www.warzone.org/
Security Focus = http://www.securityfocus.com/
9. Security mailing lists
A. BugTraq - defining and preventing use of UNIX security holes
Served by mailto:listserv@netspace.org
B. NTBugTraq - Windows NT BugTraq Mailing List
Served by mailto:listserv@listserv.ntbugtraq.com
C. Firewalls - discussions of Internet firewall security systems
Served by mailto:majordomo@greatcircle.com
D. Sneakers - discussions of legal evaluations and experiments
in testing various Internet "firewalls" and other
TCP/IP network security products.
Served by mailto:majordomo@cs.yale.edu
There's a Security Mailing Lists FAQ
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-security/secmaillist/
10. There are several FAQs about viruses :
A. Good Times Virus Hoax FAQ
http://www.public.usit.net/lesjones/goodtimes.html
B. The alt.comp.virus mini-FAQ
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/mini-faq/index.html
11. The Internet Explorer Security FAQ, by Scott Schnoll
http://www.nwnetworks.com/iesf.html
The firewalls FAQ, by Marcus J. Ranum and Matt Curtin
http://www.interhack.net/pubs/fwfaq/
12. The Kevin Mitnick case is covered in a special site
http://www.kevinmitnick.com/
Back to my
page.