From: joke@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter) Originator: joke@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,de.newusers.questions,unido.general,comp.org.eff.talk,comp.infosystems.announce,alt.folklore.computers,gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sys.amiga.datacomm,alt.internet.services Subject: FAQ: Big Dummy's Guide 2.0, Life, and Everything... Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk Date: Summary: This posting tells you everything you ought to know about an exciting project that helps so-called Newbies to survive their first year on The Net. It gets you softly into most of the often severe details of mindboggling complexity that popup when you're hooked into The Net. It is also intended to help you get around the trap doors, avoid pitfalls and other non-funny things (e.g. local gurus that laugh at you), you'll encounter during life as a Netizen in Cyberspace. It is styled after a FAQ list, ie. "Frequently Asked Questions and their respective Answers". Keywords: Internet, Big Dummy's Guide, Newbies, Introduction, Babelfish, Help The-FAQ-Version: 9 Day-of-Last-Changes: February 2, 1994 Period-of-posting: quarterly parody /'paeredi/ n. & v. -- n. (pl. -ies) 1 a humorous exaggerated imitation of an author, literary work, style, etc. 2 a feeble imitation; a travesty. -- v.tr. (-ies, -ied) 1 compose a parody of. 2 mimic humorously. --- The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary Ahoy! This is a reminder to get your hands on a copy of the EFF's "BIG DUMMY'S GUIDE TO THE INTERNET." (Version 2.0) It's your free ticket to a round trip through Global Networks, Life in Cyberspace, and Everything... So, SYSTEM ADMINSTRATORS everywhere: Get this for your LOCAL DUMMYS! Throw printouts into your terminal pools, install it online, do whatever you want, only *selling* it is NOT ALLOWED! This electronic version comes for FREE! -=- * -=- * I READ THIS BEFORE, WHAT'S NEW? The changes, updates and re-arrangements are too numerous to mention here; all bug fixes I received have been incorporated, including the changes Adam Gaffin made to his original ASCII version 2.0 (cf VERSIONS below). For a test drive, point your favorite Worl Wide Web client to URL: "http://www.germany.eu.net/books/bdgtti/bdgtti.html". I'd like to say THANKS! to Adam Gaffin, who's now with "Network World", and also to Stanton McCandlish , the EFF's new online activist, who smoothed out some of my variations on English grammar and punctuation. Additonal thanks to Holger Hoffstaette for his volutary work on the AmigaGuide version, that since January '94 reflects the same state as the rest of the Texinfo project. -=- * -=- * WILL DUMMY'S GET INTO THE *PROJECT GUTENBERG* ARCHIVES? Since Fri, 14 Jan 1994 12:00:35 -0500 (EST), we know that Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text, Executive Director of Project Gutenberg Etext, Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL 60532, is adding DUMMY'S to the Gutenberg e-text archives! -=- * -=- * SO, WHATZ THE PROBLEM? (with apologies to Douglas Adams) There are of course many problems connected with young ape-descended life forms, of which some of the most popular are `What is life all about?' `Will I ever be able really to understand young ape-descended life forms of the oppopsite sex?' And `What is the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet?' The Encyclopedia Galactica defines the "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet" as a mostly interesting attempt by the EFF to bring knowledge to the people. The marketing division of Sirius Cybernectics Corporation defines the "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet" as `Your Electronic Online Pal Who's Fun To Be With.' The Texinfo editor of "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet" (aka "bdgtti.texi") defines it as `The Best Stuff I've Been Involved In Since Breakfast.' Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet" as a mostly interesting but useless attempt by the EFF to bring knowledge to the people...? -=- * -=- * WHO WROTE IT? This Guide, originally written by Adam Gaffin, then a senior news reporter, of Middlesex News, Boston, MA, comes in an easily understood language, and provides almost all information you'll ever need to survive, when you got stranded in this mindboggling universe called Internet, ie. the Net of all Nets on this crazy planet. So take this writing as kind of electronic Babelfish, that helps you to understand what the hell everybody out there is talking about. -=- * -=- * WILL I BE ABLE TO READ IT? DUMMY's is available (in one format at least) for all currently running computer architectures, from Amiga to CRAY, although some IBM EBCDIC main- frames might have problems with the ASCII versions. But usually you won't work with these anyway. (And thus won't have to worry what EBCDIC is all about...) It comes in printable (TeX DVI, PostScript, ASCII) and electronically readable formats (World-Wide Web/HTML, GNU Info). You will definitely be able to read one version at least! -=- * -=- * WHAT ABOUT AN OVERVIEW OF THIS FAQ LIST? Enclosed in this posting you'll find 5 files from the Texinfo version (cf below) of DUMMY's: (1) WELCOME, the original, official welcome message by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Shari Steele; the foundation that hired Adam Gaffin for this writing job. (2) README, a file that answers most of your questions concerning the Texinfo project of DUMMY's. (3) SERVERS, a file that lists all Internet resources/locations DUMMY's is accessible from; either as simple file(s), or as online readable HyperText multimedia book! (4) VERSIONS, a file, ie. a table, that lists all the currently available versions of DUMMY's (cf README for the differences). (5) CREDITS, a list of all the people (consciously and unconsciously) involved in this project. If I should have forgotten you, please I'd regret it. Please, drop me your address once again. (6) COPYLITE, terms and conditions under which the sources of DUMMY's are distributed. -=- * -=- * WHERE DO I FIND DUMMY's? DUMMY's actually *is* wide-spread, globally speaking; distribution site locations range from KOREA to JAPAN to AUSTRALIA to USA to CANADA to the UNITED KINGDOM to GERMANY to SWITZERLAND to AUSTRIA to BETELGEUZE to SOUTH AFRICA to RUSSIA. Only LATIN AMERICA is missing at present. So what about the Southern hemisphere, folks? Where are you, Netizens? (The complete list is appended below.) -=- * -=- * HOW CAN I CONTRIBUTE? If you find any mistakes/typos/inaccuracies/whatever in this posting drop me a mail; if you have newer informatio than the ones listed below drop me a mail; if you have questions, please folks, *READ THE GUIDE FIRST*, it's all in there. Given you're a system/ftp/WWW administrator: Please consider installation of DUMMY's on your site; and please let me know. The more sites carry DUMMY's, the sooner these postings will go away... ;-) Anyway, enjoy the trip! -joke -=- * -=-