Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

O >> Odd de Presno. All >> Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

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Have fun
--------
The online world has an abundance of joke clubs, dramatic adventure
games with multiple players, and large archives filled with computer
game software. You can transfer these programs to your personal
computer and be ready to play in minutes.
Others may feel more entertained when things get "interesting."
Surely, those calling Moscow in August 1991 for news about the coup
must have had a strange sensation in the stomach.
Some online users react quickly when dramatic events occur.
They go online to read the news directly from the wires, from
Associated Press, TASS, Reuters, Xinhua Press, Kyodo News and
others.
Usually, the online news is coming directly to you from the
journalists' keyboards. Often, you heard it here first.
Other people prefer to socialize. They meet in online "meeting
places" to debate everything from Africa and the administration of
kindergartens to poetry, LISP programming and compressed video for
multimedia applications.
It has been claimed that increased use of online networking in
a country can effect social changes within politics, economics,
communication and science. It can support democratic tendencies,
the transition to a market economy, the formation and support of
businesses, the spreading of interpersonal and mass communication,
the forging of invisible colleges among scientists, and breaking-up
of traditional and closed information systems developed in some
societies.
No matter whether your application is useful or just a pastime,
online services queue up to help give your life a better content.
Some people fear that language might be a problem, and in
particular if English is not their first language. Don't worry. You
are in the driver's seat. If something is hard to understand, just
log off to study the difficult text. Take your time. Nobody is
watching.
Will you being member of the online world make you rich?
Probably not. On the other hand, it most certainly provides the
opportunities to help you achieve such a goal, no matter how you
define the word "rich."

Chapter 2: The online world
===========================

This chapter is about the structure and contents of the online
world. You will read about Bulletin Board systems, discussion
lists, conferencing systems, online data bases, packet data
services, and network services like FidoNet, i-Com, Infonet,
and the Internet.

From papyrus to bits and bytes
------------------------------
Around 1500 B.C., the world's first library was established in Tell
el Amaran, Egypt. Eight hundred years later, the first public
library opened in Athens, Greece.
It took another two thousand years for the computer to be
invented. The first known mention of a possible future online
information service was printed in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in
1945.
Nine years later, the Naval Ordinance Test Station opened their
online search service in California (U.S.A.) The first full-text
database came six years later. MEDLARS was a bibliographic database
containing references to medical literature. From now on, things
started to roll at a faster pace:

* In 1972, DIALOG (U.S.A.) opened their Educational Resources
Information Center and National Technical Information Service
databases for online searching. (Appendix 1 contains infor-
mation about the major online services referred to in this
book.)
* In 1974, Dow Jones News/Retrieval (U.S.A.) launched a
financial information service for stock brokers.
* In 1978, the first bulletin board was put into operation in
Chicago (U.S.A.).
* CompuServe (U.S.A.) launched a service for home users in
1979.

The online world was born in the United States. Little happened in
the rest of the world until the late 1980s. American companies and
users still dominate, but they are no longer alone.
Today, we can access over 5,000 public databases. They are
available from more than 500,000 online systems ("host computers")
all over the world.
With so many online services, it is difficult to find our way
through the maze of offerings. This book therefore starts with a
map of the online world.

The structure and contents of the online world
----------------------------------------------
The online world can be described as a cake with multiple layers,
where the information sources are the bottom layer. You - the user
- are the marzipan figure on the top. The online world contains the
following tiers:

(1) Database producers and information providers
(2) Online service companies
(3) Gateways and networks
(4) The services
(5) The user interface
(6) The data transport services
(7) The User.

1. Database producers and information providers.
------------------------------------------------
I have a bulletin board system in Norway (at +47 370 31378). My BBS
is running on a small personal computer, and offers shareware and
public domain software.
Anybody can call my board to have programs transferred to their
personal computers by modem (see appendix 2 for how to do this).
When you call this BBS to "download" a free program for to your
computer's hard disk, don't expect to find one made by me. I don't
write programs. All available programs have been written by others.
When you call Data-Star in Switzerland, or CompuServe in the
U.S. to read news, you may find some stories authored by these
companies. Most of their news, however, are written by others.
InfoPro Technologies delivers Russian scientific and technical
articles from "Referativnyi Zurnal" through online services like
Orbit, Pergamon and BRS. InfoPro is not the originator. The text
has been prepared by VINITI (the Institute for scientific and
technical information of the xUSSR).
My BBS (the "Saltrod Horror Show"), Data-Star, NIFTY-Serve,
Orbit, Pergamon, BRS, and CompuServe are online services. We call
those who have provided the news and information on these services
for information providers or database producers.
The American news agency Associated Press is an information
provider. They write the news, and sell them to online services
like Dialog, CompuServe, Nexis and NewsNet. These online services
let you read the news by modem.
The information providers sell the right to distribute their
news. Your news reading charges may be imbedded in the online
service's standard access rates. Some services will ask you to pay
a surcharge when reading news.
Most subscribers pay US$12.80 per hour (1993) to use CompuServe
at 2400 bits per second (bps). At this speed, you typically receive
around 240 characters of news per second. If you access at higher
speeds, you will have to pay more.
CompuServe pays Associated Press part of what they earn each
time you read their news. There is no surcharge for reading AP news
on this service.
Others charge more. To read Mid-East Business Digest through
NewsNet, you pay a surcharge of US$72.00 per hour at 2400 bps
(1993). Scanning newsletter headlines and conducting keyword
searches are cheaper. You pay the the basic connect charge, which
is US$90.00 per hour at this speed.
Thus, your total cost for reading Mid-East Business Digest
amounts to US$2.70 per minute.
CompuServe's database service IQuest lets you search NewsNet
through a gateway to find and read the same articles. Here, reading
will only set you back US$21.50/hour (provided the articles are
among the first hits in your search).
Many information providers also distribute information through
grassroots bulletin boards. The Newsbytes News Network and the USA
Today newsletter services (also in full text on Dialog and Nexis)
are two examples.
The rates for reading the same article may therefore differ
considerably depending on what online service you are using. If you
are a regular reader, shop around for the best price.
Information providers may have subcontractors. The Ziff-Davis
service Computer Database Plus, a database with full-text articles
from magazines like Datamation and Wall Street Computer Review,
depends on them.
Datamation pays journalists to write the articles. Ziff-Davis
pays Datamation for the right to distribute the articles to
CompuServe's subscribers. CompuServe pays Ziff-Davis part of what
you pay when reading the text.

2. Online services
------------------
The term "online services" refers to information services provided
by computer systems, large or small, to owners of personal
computers with modems.
What is offered, differ by system. It may include access to
libraries of programs and data, electronic mail, online shopping
malls, discussion forums, hardware and software vendor support,
games and entertainment, financial data, stock market quotes, and
research capabilities.
You do not always need a phone and a modem when "dialing up."
Some services can be accessed through leased phone lines, amateur
radio, or other methods.
Check out appendix 1 for a list of major services mentioned in
this book, with addresses, phone numbers, and a short description.
CompuServe (U.S.A.), Twics (Japan), and Orbit (England) are
commercial. They charge you for using their services.
Some online services are priced like magazines and newspapers
with a flat subscription rate for basic services. You can use this
part of a service as much as you like within a given period. GEnie,
CompuServe, BIX, America Online, and Delphi are among those
offering such pricing options.
Other online services charge for 'connect time'. They have a
rate per hour or minute.
MCI Mail uses "no cure, no pay." You only pay to send or read
mail. To check for unread letters in your mailbox is free.
There are all kinds of creative pricing schemes. Some services
have different rates for access during the day, night and weekends.
Others have different rates for users living far away. Sometimes
the remote subscriber pays more, in other cases less than ordinary
subscribers.
Still, most online services are free. This is particularly true
for the over hundred thousand bulletin board systems around the
world. The owners of these services often regard them as a hobby, a
public service, a necessary marketing expense, or do it for other
reasons.
The cost of setting up and operating a bulletin board system
is low. Consequently, the BBS systems are as varied as the people
who run them. Each BBS has its own character.
My BBS is also free. I consider it an online appendix to this
book and the articles I write.
National Geographic BBS in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. (tel.: +1-
202-775-6738) is run by the magazine of the same name. This board
is also free. They regard it as a part of their marketing strategy.
It provides them with input to the editors, and it is an easy way
of maintaining contacts with schools.
Semaforum BBS in Norway is run by a company. Its purpose is
customer support and to give information to prospective customers.
The cost is a marketing expense.
Some large, international online services on the Internet,
BITNET, and UUCP are almost free. They address research and
educational institutions and are financed by public funds. These
services are now being made available to other users at very
moderate rates.
Some users fear that using online services will increase their
telephone costs dramatically, and especially when using services in
other countries. This is often unjustified. Read chapter 13 and 15
for tips about how to keep your communications costs down.

3. Gateways and networks
------------------------
CompuServe users select the Computer Database Plus from a menu.
This prompts CompuServe to dial another online service and lets you
use this, as if you were still using CompuServe. You hardly notice
the difference. You are using Computer Database Plus through a
gateway.
CompuServe users searching the IQuest databases get the
following welcome message:

One moment please...

Connected to 19EASYN

Welcome to IQuest

(c) 1991 Telebase Systems, Inc.
U.S. Patent No. 4,774,655

Through another gateway, CompuServe connects you to the online
service Telebase Systems, Inc. Telebase lets you go through other
gateways to search in databases on online services like BRS,
MEDLINE and NewsNet.
While searching, you may get similar progress reports:

Dialing BRS
Connect BRS
Scanning .... Please wait
Dialing Medline
Connect Medline
Scanning .... Please wait

All the time, your modem is connected to CompuServe. You are
mentally using IQuest and not other online services. Technically,
you are going through various gateways to reach the information
libraries. You pay CompuServe for the privilege. In turn, they pay
a fee to Telebase, and others.
You can read The New York Times on Down Jones News/Retrieval
through gateways from MCI Mail and GEnie.
Accessing information through a gateway is often simpler than
logging on to several online systems. Calling several systems
often costs more, and it certainly takes time.
Users of BBSes connected to RelayNet or FidoNet can join in
global discussions. Participants in other countries also call their
favorite local systems. To the individual user, it looks as if they
all use the same bulletin board system.
The networks that tie these boards together regularly send new
discussion items to the other participating boards. Write "This is
not correct!" in a distributed conference on a Norwegian FidoNet
BBS, and others may soon read your line on San Bernardino BBS in
Colton (Canada), Wonderland Board in Macau or the HighTech BBS in
Sidney (Australia).
SciLink (Canada) administers a network for distribution of
conferences between systems using the Caucus software system.
Participants in Tokyo, Toronto and San Francisco can discuss as
if they were all logged on to the same online service.
The main purpose may not be to make it simpler or cheaper
for the user. One typical motive is to reduce an online service's
own communications costs.
KIDLINK is a global project for children between 10 - 15 years
of age. It allows kids to discuss through a system of electronic
mail.
Part of the dialog takes place by the children sending email to
a recipient called KIDCAFE. A message to 'the cafe' goes through
the international networks to a host computer in North Dakota
(U.S.A.). There, a computer program called LISTSERV distributes
copies of the message to names on an electronic address list.
(Conferences administered by a LISTSERV are called 'discussion
lists'.)
SciLink in Toronto is one recipient. Messages forwarded from
North Dakota are made available for users as entries in a 'local'
conference called KIDCAFE. A user in Tokyo can read a message, as
if it had been entered locally. If she wants to reply, her answer
is sent back to the LISTSERV for redistribution to the world.
Western Michigan University (U.S.A.) is also a recipient. Here,
another LISTSERV program is in charge of forwarding the mail to yet
another list of (local) addresses. We call it a 'mail exploder'.
This mailing list has been set up by local administrators to
reduce costs. The individual user is not allowed to receive copies
of messages all the way from North Dakota.
One Michigan recipient may be a local area network. You will
find many smart technical solutions in the online world.
Actually, this is how the online world got started. Two systems
were interconnected for exchange of electronic mail. Then, another
system was added, and another. One day it was a global network of
computer systems.
Some network systems are connected by leased telephone lines.
Other networks, like FidoNet, depend mainly on dial-up using
regular voice-grade telephone service. Each BBS dial regularly to
other computers in the network to send or receive mail and files.
They may do it once per day, twice per day or whatever.
Then someone got the idea of interconnecting networks. FidoNet
was connected to the UUCP network, which was connected to the
Internet, which in turn was connected to the Bergen By Byte BBS in
Norway, CompuServe, SciLink, MCI Mail, and various local area
networks.
Today, the online world is a global web of networks. The world
is 'cabled'. You, me and all the other modem users stand to benefit
enormously.

4. The services
---------------
The most popular online services are electronic mail, chat, file
transfers, conferences and discussion forums, news, reading of
online journals and grassroots publications, database searching,
entertainment. The online world has an infinite number of niches,
things that people are interested in and have fun doing.

Electronic mail
---------------
is not just like paper mail. Email is faster, easier to edit and
use in other applications.
Your mail may be private, or public. It can be 'broadcasted' to
many by a mailing list. The principle is the same on all systems.
Typically, an email message is sent to your mailbox in the
following form:

To: Odd de Presno
Subject: Happy Birthday
Text: I wish you well on your birthday. -Ole

The mailbox systems automatically add your name (i.e., the sender's
return email address), the creation date, and forward it to the
recipient. If the recipient's mailbox is on another system, the
message is routed through one or several networks to reach its
destination.
Several email services offer forwarding to fax, telex or
ordinary postal service delivery. Some offer forwarding to paging
services. When new mail arrives in your mailbox, messages with text
like 'MAIL from opresno@extern.uio.no' will be displayed on your
beeper's small screen.
Soon, you can send electronic mail to anyone. By the turn of
the century, it probably will be difficult to tell the difference
between fax messages and email. The services will automatically
convert incoming faxes to computer-readable text and pictures, so
that you can use them in word processing and other computer
applications.
Automatic language translation is another trend. You will soon
be able to send a message in English, and have it automatically
translated into Spanish for Spanish-reading recipients, or into
other languages. Conference systems with automatic translation are
already being used in Japan (English to/from Japanese).
One day we may also have a global email address directory.
"What is the address of Nobuo Hasumi in Japan." Press ENTER, and
there it is.
Today, the largest commercial players email vendors are MCI,
Dialcom, Telemail, AT&T Mail and CompuServe. The fight for
dominance goes on.

'Chat'
------
Email has one important disadvantage. It may take time for it to be
picked up and read by the recipient. The alternative is real-time
conferencing, a form of direct keyboard-to-keyboard dialog between
users. We call it 'chat'.
Most large systems let you chat with many users simultaneously.
Even small bulletin boards usually have a chat feature.
Chat is set up in several ways. On some systems, you see each
character on the screen once it is entered by your dialog partners.
Other systems send entries line by line, that is, whenever you
press ENTER or Return. Here, it may be difficult to know whether
the other person is waiting for you to type, or if he is actively
entering new words.
You will find regular chat conferences in CompuServe's forums.
Often, they invite a person to give a keynote speech before opening
'the floor' for questions and answers. John Sculley of Apple
Computers and various politicians have been featured in such
'meetings'.
In May 1991, the KIDLINK project arranged a full-day chat
between kids from all over the world. Line, a 12-year old Norwegian
girl, started the day talking with Japanese kids at the Nishimachi
and Kanto International School in Tokyo. When her computer was
switched off late at night, she was having an intense exchange with
children in North America.
The chats took place on various online services and networks,
including Internet Relay Chat (IRC), BITNET's Relay Chat, Cleveland
Free-Net (U.S.A.), TWICS in Tokyo, the global network Tymnet, and
the Education Forum on CompuServe.
The discussions had no moderator. This made the encounters
chaotic at times. The kids enjoyed it, though! One-line messages
shot back and forth over the continents conveying intense
simultaneous conversations, occasionally disrupted by exclamations
and requests for technical help.
Speed is a problem when chatting. It takes a lot of time since
most users are slow typists.
If individual Messages span more than one line, there is always
a risk that it will be split up by lines coming from others. It
takes time to understand what goes on.
Users of SciLink (Canada) use a method they call 'semi-sync
chat'. The trick is to use ordinary batch-mode conferences for
chatting. Instead of calling up, reading and sending mail and then
log out, they stay online waiting for new messages to arrive.
This approach allows you to enter multiple-line messages
without risking that it to broken up by other messages. The flow
of the discussion is often better, and each person's entries easier
to understand.

File transfers
--------------
The availability of free software on bulletin boards brought the
online world out of the closet. Today, you can also retrieve books
and articles, technical reports, graphics pictures, files of
digitized music, weather reports, and much more.
Millions of files are transferred to and from the online
services each day. File transfers typically represent over 75
percent of the bulletin boards' utilization time. Downloading free
software is still the most popular service.
In June 1991, users of my BBS (which has only one phone line)
downloaded 86 megabytes' worth of public domain and shareware
programs. (86MB equals around 86,000,000 bytes.) In May 1993, users
downloaded 108 megabytes distributed over 1,446 files.
Add to this the megabytes being downloaded from hundreds of
thousands of other bulletin boards. The number is staggering.

If you want to download free software: read in appendix 3
about how to do it.

Downloading is simple. Just dial an online service, order transfer
of a given file, select a file transfer protocol (like XMODEM), and
the file comes crawling to you through the phone line.
Services on the Internet offer file transfer through gateways
using a command called FTP (File Transfer Protocol). It works like
this:

Say you're logging on to the ULRIK service at the University of
Oslo in Norway. Your objective is to download free programs
from a large library in Oakland, U.S.A.
After having connected to Ulrik, you enter the command
'ftp OAK.Oakland.Edu' to connect to the computer in California.
A few seconds later, the remote host asks for your logon
id. You enter 'anonymous', and supply your email address as
password. This will give you access.
You use the cd command (change directory) to navigate to
the desired library catalog on the remote hard disk. You locate
the desired file, and use a GET command to transfer the file
to your file area on Ulrik.
When done, you logout from the remote computer to be
returned to Ulrik's services. Your final job is to transfer
the file from Ulrik to your personal computer using traditional
methods.

Being able to send Internet mail does not guarantee access to the
ftp command. If ftp is unavailable, you may transfer the file by
email using a technique called UUENCODEing.
Here, the file is converted before transfer into a format that
can be sent as ordinary mail (into a seven bits, even character
code).
When the file arrives in your mailbox, you 'read' it as an
ordinary message and store the codes in a work file on your disk.
Finally, you decode the file using a special utility program (often
called UUDECODE). Read more about this in Chapter 12.

Conferences and discussions
---------------------------
Online conferences have many things in common with traditional face-
to-face conferences and discussions, except that participants don't
physically meet in the same room. They 'come' by modem and discuss
using electronic messages (sometimes also through "Chat").
There are discussions about any conceivable topic, from How to
start your own company, Brainstorming, Architectural design, The
Future of Education and Investments, to AIDS, The Baltic States,
Psychology, and Cartoons.
Instead of calling these discussions "online conferences," some
services use terms like echos, discussion or mailing lists, clubs,
newsgroups, round tables, SIGs (Special Interest Groups), and
forums. They use other terms in an attempt to make their offerings
more attractive and exclusive.
Others refer to "conferences" by using the name of the software
used to administer the discussions, like LISTSERV, PortaCom, News,
Usenet, Caucus, or PARTIcipate.
On the bottom line, we're still talking email. However, while
private mail is usually read by one recipient only, 'conference
mail' may be read by thousands of people from the whole world.
All of them can talk and discuss SIMULTANEOUSLY. It is almost
impossible for one single individual to dominate. The number of
active participants can therefore be far larger than in 'face-to-
face' conferences.
The conferencing software automatically records all that is
said. Every character. Each participant can decide what to read and
when. He may even use the messages in other applications later on.
Opinions and information can easily be selected and pasted into
reports or new responses.
Some conferences are public and open for anybody. Others are
for a closed group (of registered) participants.
They are normally structured by topic and the structure is
influenced by the participants' behavior. If the topic is limited,
like in "The football match between Mexico and Uruguay," it may
start with an introduction followed by comments, questions, and
answers like pearls on a thread. After some time the conference is
'finished'.
Conferences called 'IBM PC' or 'MS-DOS' often contain so many
different sub-topics that they seem chaotic to the outsider. The
message subject headings typically have references to computer
equipment (like in 'Wyse 050 or TVI 925'), requests for help (like
in 'Need Xywrite help!'), experience reports, equipment for sale,
news reports, etc. The sequence of messages are often illogical.

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