Description
Still the best book on the Internet. This is the second edition of our comprehensive introduction to the Internet. An international network that includes virtually every major computer site in the world, the Internet is a resource of almost unimaginable wealth. In addition to the World Wide Web, electronic mail, and news services, thousands of public archives, databases, and other special services are available. This book covers Internet basics -- like email, file transfer, remote login, and network news. Useful to beginners and veterans alike, also includes a pull-out quick-reference card.
Full Description
Still the best book on the Internet.
The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, 2nd Edition is a comprehensive introduction to the international network of computer systems called the Internet, a resource of almost unimaginable wealth.
As a complete introduction to the Internet, this book covers the basic utilities you use to access the network: mail, telnet, ftp, and news readers. But it also does much more.
The Guide pays close attention to several important information servers (Archie, Wais, Gopher) that are, essentially, databases of databases: they help you find what you want among the millions of files and thousands of archives available. There's also coverage of the World Wide Web. We've also included our own database of databases: a resource index that covers a broad selection of several hundred important resources, ranging from the King James Bible to archives for USENET news.
So if you use the Internet for work or for pleasure -- or if you'd like to, but don't know how -- you need this book. If you've been around the Net for a few years, you'll still be able to discover resources you didn't know existed. Also includes a pull-out quick-reference card.
Now more comprehensive than ever, here's what you will find in the second edition:
- An expanded, easy-to-use resource catalog. New and experienced users alike can refer to the catalog to discover what's available on the Net.
- Descriptions of three resources that serve as the Internet's "card catalog": InterNIC, GNN, and Almanac (what they are, what they're for).
- An explanation of multimedia mail (MIME): what it means, how to deal with it.
- An introduction to pine, a popular mail program that supports MIME.
- More on ftp-mail servers, and different kinds of mailing list managers, including Majordomo and Almanac.
- An introduction to xarchie, a popular X-based Archie client with an FTP client built-in, along with other improvements to the Archie service.
- What's new in the "white pages," or the Internet's telephone book. In particular, the book covers Netfind.
- An introduction to tin, another popular newsreader.
- New features of Gopher, including Veronica and Jughead.
- New coverage of the swais line-oriented WAIS client.
- An expanded list of internet access providers.
Colophon
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The image featured on the cover of The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog is an alchemist. Alchemy, the precursor of modern chemistry, first appeared around 100 AD in Alexandria, Egypt--a product of the fusion of Greek and Oriental culture. The goal of this philosophic science was to achieve the transmutation of base metals into gold, regarded as the most perfect of metals.
Alchemy was based on three key precepts. The first was Aristotle's teachings that the basis for all material objects could be found in the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. By altering the proportions in which the qualities were combined, elements could be changed into one another. The second precept arose from the philosophic thought of the time: metals, like all other substances, could be converted into one another. The third precept was taken from astrology: metals, like plants and animals, could be born, nourished, and caused to grow through imperfect stages into a final, perfect form.
Early alchemists were generally from artisan classes. As alchemy gained adherents, philosophers became more involved, and the cryptic language used by the early artisan-alchemists to protect trade secrets became virtually its own language with symbols and fanciful terms. Over the centuries, the language of alchemy became ever more complex, reaching its height in Medieval Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Alchemy was superseded by the advent of modern chemistry at the end of the eighteenth century. ...
Edie Freedman designed this cover using an image adapted from a nineteenth century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover design was created in QuarkXPress.
The inside formats were implemented in sqtroff by Lenny Muellner. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and ITC Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book are a combination of figures created by Chris Reilley, and wood engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive and the Ron Yablon Graphic Archives. They were created using Adobe Photoshop and Aldus Freehand.
