SECTION VII: "THE NET"

As the name implies, the Robotech Mailing List is a mailing list dedicated to discussion of all things related to Robotech. The list is moderated, though the moderator will usually not interfere with discussions unless a member of the list become abusive or threatens the list's continuation by his or her conduct. The list also has a much less "noise" (meaningless posts) on it compared to alt.tv.robotech, due to the smaller distribution and less members.

The Robotech Mailing List recently moved (June 1995) from Georgia Tech to a new address. The new address and instructions are listed below.

The rules of the list follow:

* RULES *

This is an unmoderated mailing list, so you're pretty much free to post or say whatever you like, so long as it relates in some way to Robotech. However, there are two "house rules" that I ask everyone to follow:

1. NO PUBLIC FLAMING. It's okay to disagree with other people, but please keep personal insults and flammatory material off the list. Posts like "John Doe is an ignorant a**hole" and "stupid geeks get a life" are immature and unacceptable. Repeat offenders will be barred from the list.
2. NO ENORMOUS POSTS. Stories and mecha designs are okay, but very large postings like uuencoded GIFs and compressed archives can fill up mail spools and cause important mail to bounce. Also, very large posts have a tendency to play havoc with the software that runs this list. In general, if it's over 500 lines, you should get permission before you try to send it.

To send something to the members of the mailing list, mail it to:

[email protected]

Your message will be automatically distributed to all members of the mailing list.

You can also send certain commands directly to the mailing list software, such as UNSUBSCRIBE and HELP. List commands should be sent to the following address:

[email protected]

To use a command, simply send mail to the above address with the command in the body of the message. The commands that are of most use are:

SUBSCRIBE Add your name to the mailing list. UNSUBSCRIBE Remove your name from the mailing list. HELP Sends a copy of the help file to your email address.

All commands are interpreted automatically and without my supervision. If you have a problem with any of the commands, please contact me immediately at [email protected]

Yes, the new list software supports digests. To subscribe to the digested mailing list, place the following command in the body of your message:

subscribe robotech-digest

Send this command to the Majordomo address above, NOT the list address.

Yes! The digests are archived until the list admin decides to delete them to reclaim his hard drive space! ;) If you want more info on downloading archived digests, email the list admin at:

[email protected]

There is a mailing list dedicated to Palladium Books, which by extension covers the Robotech RPG as well as Rifts and Macross II. The address for the Palladium mailing list is [email protected]. To subscribe, send email to [email protected] with the word SUBSCRIBE as your subject.

The Internet is a network of networks. There is no central control, it is simply a set of specifications that a system must conform to to send data to other sites. There is no physical object that can be accurately called 'The Internet'.

News is more accurately called 'USEnet news'. USEnet is not the same thing as Internet, however may users access USEnet groups via the Internet. Again, there is no central 'USEnet authority', simply a set of rules and technical specifications to be followed. USEnet news allows for public discussion around the world by allowing users to 'post' their comments to be read, and commented on, by others.

The undisputed *best* way is to have an account at a site that carries USEnet news. If your current site doesn't carry it, or has a poor interface, there are *many* commercial or free sites that do. Check the PDIAL and Nixpub lists to see if there is a site close to you. If you can't find a site near you, or can't afford it, there are a few other ways to go about it.

First, some groups have email echoes that you can subscribe to to get the traffic. alt.tv.robotech does *not* have such and echo, but the rec.arts.anime.* groups *do*.

These are the instructions to subscribe:

The address of the list is: [email protected] To subscribe, send a message to: [email protected], with the words "subscribe anime-l " as the body of the message. The Subject line does not matter. This will subscribe the address that you sent the message from to the list. For more info, send a one-word message, "help", to [email protected]. There are several mailing lists on that site, echoing the r.a.a.* groups: anime-l, anime-info, and anime-stories, all @solaris.cc.vt.edu.

Last, there are apparently some Gopher servers out there that allow users to read news. However, this is a cumbersome setup and it doesn't allow for easy replies.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, it is a system that allows you to grab files from special sites. There are FTP sites for all kinds of topics, and several for anime alone.

Once you have an address for an FTP site, for example 130.215.24.1 /anime, you can FTP to that site. On most systems that is accomplished by simply entering:

        ftp address (ie ftp 130.215.24.1) at your prompt.

You will then connect to the site and be asked for your name. Enter 'anonymous'. You will then be asked for a password. Enter your full email address. You are then in the site. In this case you would then 'cd /anime' to enter the anime directory. You can list the files with the standard Unix 'ls' command.

To grab a file you use 'get filename'. If you wish to grab a series of files, say all the files that start robotech.*, you use 'mget robotech*'. If a site allows for uploads you can use 'put' and 'mput' in the same way.

        This is a sample run:


> ftp 130.215.24.1
Trying 130.215.24.1...
Connected to 130.215.24.1.
220 wpi.WPI.EDU FTP server (Version 4.185 Thu Sep 23 10:06:20 EDT 1993)
ready.
Name (130.215.24.1:megazone): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd /anime
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ls robotech*
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls (0 bytes).
robotech.children.shadow.gz
robotech.liked.minmei.gz
robotech.misfold.1.gz
robotech.misfold.2.gz
robotech.misfold.3.gz
robotech.misfold.4.gz
robotech.misfold.5.gz
robotech.misfold.6.gz
robotech.orp.1.roll.call.gz
robotech.orp.2.soldiers.fortune.gz
robotech.skybeast.gz
226 Transfer complete.
remote: robotech*
432 bytes received in 0.22 seconds (1.9 Kbytes/s)
ftp> mget robotech.mis*
mget robotech.misfold.1.gz? y
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for robotech.misfold.1.gz (26521
bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: robotech.misfold.1.gz remote: robotech.misfold.1.gz
26613 bytes received in 0.17 seconds (1.5e+02 Kbytes/s)
mget robotech.misfold.2.gz? n
mget robotech.misfold.3.gz? y
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for robotech.misfold.3.gz (38410
bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: robotech.misfold.3.gz remote: robotech.misfold.3.gz
38542 bytes received in 0.21 seconds (1.8e+02 Kbytes/s)
mget robotech.misfold.4.gz? n
mget robotech.misfold.5.gz? n
mget robotech.misfold.6.gz? n
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.
> exit

If you are on a site that doesn't have FTP capability, there are FTP-by-mail servers. These allow you to mail in an FTP request and the server will grab the file for you, and then mail it back. These are the instructions:

The address is [email protected]


  -- Help --
>>> $Id: help-text,v 1.7 1993/05/05 00:49:43 vixie Exp $
>>>
>>> ftpmail is not a supported service. From time to time it stops working;
>>> we will tend to it when we get the time. Outages of a week or more are
not
>>> abnormal.


>>> commands are:


reply         set reply addr, since headers are usually wrong
connect [HOST [USER [PASS [ACCT]]]]

                        defaults to gatekeeper.dec.com, anonymous
ascii                   files grabbed are printable ascii
binary                  files grabbed are compressed or tar or both
chdir PLACE             "get" and "ls" commands are relative to PLACE
                                (only one CHDIR per ftpmail session,
                                and it executes before any LS/DIR/GETs)
compress                compress binaries using Lempel-Ziv encoding
compact                 compress binaries using Huffman encoding
uuencode                binary files will be mailed in uuencode format
btoa                    binary files will be mailed in btoa format
chunksize SIZE          split files into SIZE-byte chunks (def: 64000)
ls (or dir) PLACE       short (long) directory listing
index THING             search for THING in ftp server's index
get FILE                get a file and have it mailed to you
                                (max 10 GET's per ftpmail session)
quit                    terminate script, ignore rest of mail message
                                (use if you have a .signature or
                                 are a VMSMAIL user)

notes:

• you should send complaints to the ftpmail-admin address. our postmaster does not handle ftpmail problems and you can save her the trouble of forwarding your complaints by just mailing them to the right address. the "ftpmail-request" address is gone; don't use it.

• the "index" command depends on the "SITE EXEC INDEX" feature of some ftp servers. Gatekeeper.dec.com originated this feature, and ftp.uu.net duplicated it (with a format change to the output, naturally). Wuarchive.wustl.edu also has this feature, though their index seems to be empty. The source for an ftpd that supports this feature is on Gatekeeper.DEC.COM in /pub/DEC/gwtools.

• a password of "" or '' will be sent as a null string. if you need this you will know it, if you don't, you won't.

• the "Subject:" of your request will be contained in the "Subject:" of all of ftpmail's responses to you regarding that request. You can therefore use it to "tag" different requests if you have more than one outstanding at any given time.

• you must give a "connect" command, default host is gatekeeper.dec.com, default user is anonymous, default password is your mail address with a hyphen prepended.

• binary files will not be compressed unless 'compress' or 'compact' command is given; use this if at all possible, it helps a lot. note that many files are already compressed. if you use any of the binary-file qualifiers (compress, compact, uuencode, btoa) without setting 'binary' first, your session will abort in error.

• binary files will always be formatted into printable ASCII with "btoa" or "uuencode" (default is "btoa"). if you don't use the "binary" command, ftpmail will cheerfully try to mail you the binary data, which will absolutely, positively fail.

• all retrieved files will be split into chunks and mailed. the size of the chunk is 64000 characters unless you change it with the "chunksize" command. CompuServe users will need to set this to 49000. there is no way to set it higher than 100000, so please don't ask.

• if you ask for more than 10 files in a session, you will receive an error message and your entire request will be rejected.

• VMS/DOS/Mac versions of uudecode, atob, compress and compact are available, ask your LOCAL wizard about them if you can't locate them (but try gatekeeper.dec.com in /archive/pub/VMS if you're still using a VMS system.)

• several mail unsplitters are hiding on gatekeeper.dec.com in /pub/mail/ua/misc/unsplit. there is one in c, one in perl, and one in VMS DCL.

• there is no way to request only certain parts of a file and we do not plan to add one in the near future, so please don't ask.

• there is no way to delete things from the queue or to find out the status of things in the queue, and we do not plan to add either feature in the near future, so please don't ask.

  >>> examples:

• connect to gatekeeper.dec.com and get a root directory listing:

          connect
          ls
          quit
  

• connect to gatekeeper.dec.com and get the README.ftp file:

          connect
          get README.ftp
          quit
  

• connect to gatekeeper.dec.com and get the gnuemacs sources:

          connect
          binary
          uuencode
          chdir /pub/GNU
          get emacs-18.58.tar.Z
          quit
  

• connect to ftp.uu.net as anonymous and get a root directory list:

          connect ftp.uu.net
          binary
          chdir /index/master
          get by-name.Z
          quit
  

The following FTP sites may be of interest to Robotech and Anime fans: Clicking on the site on the left will connect you and place you in the directory on the right.

.GZ stands for GNU Zip (abbreviated "gzip"), a compression algorithm developed by the Free Software Foundation in Cambridge, MA. Gzip can be used by Unix, MS-DOS, VMS, and Macintosh computers (as well as other platforms). The following is a list of sites and paths where utilities for uncompressing .gz files can be found.

WWW stands for "World Wide Web", sometimes called "WWW", "W3", or just "the Web". WWW is the result of a network project in distributed hypermedia systems started by CERN in the late '80s and has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. WWW stores information in documents called "pages"; a page usually contains a single document containing hypertext and images. Hypertext is text with pointers to other text, which allow users to jump from text to text based on references they want to follow. Since every WWW page usually connects to dozens of other pages via hypertext links, the entire network forms a humongous "web" of information pages that stretches all over the world.

WWW pages are accessed using a "browser", like MOSAIC. A browser is a program that can read pages, follow hypertext links to other pages, and download information referenced in pages upon command. Mosaic is a browser written by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), located at the University of Illinois. It can be accessed via anonymous ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

Browsers access pages using a URL, or "Uniform Resource Locator", which is a network address pointing to the desired page. In order to view a page, you need to know the URL of the page you are looking for. A typical URL looks like:

http://www.somewhere.edu

Where is the access method you are using to access the file (http, ftp, telnet), is the name of the site that has the page you are looking for, and is the directory path to the file you want.

For more information on WWW, check out the World Wide Web FAQ, routinely posted to newsgroups like comp.infosystems.www.users, news.answers, and alt.hypertext.

The following URLs point to pages that may be of interest to Robotech fans:

To conserve space (read I am lazy) other Robotech web pages are listed at Ravi Swamy's Robotech Page.