Getting on with people on-line

nettiquette

It is worth imagining the Internet as a giant tailgate party. There are all sorts of different people on-line from all sorts of different cultures and different walks of life. And that means apologizing when you bump into someone if you don't want a punch in the nose. Because people are not actually face to face on- line they tend to be a little more irritable than they would be if you and your softball buddies were standing over them with a couple of baseball bats. Thus, you can venture the smallest personal preference, say, Yogi Bear is Fred Flintstone's intellectual superior and you can get seriously flamed.

being flamed

This can be the WRITING IN CAPITALS (which is the same as shouting) and people JUST PLAIN RANTING ABOUT THE ALIENS LIVING IN THEIR FRONT ROOM. Or it comes in the form of the most appalling personal abuse. This is being flamed. Rather than try to find their address and get your softball buddies to visit them, it is best to ignore them - either that or send a used car salesman to see them.

the smiley

One of the simplest ways of avoiding misunderstandings is the use of the smiley :-) which is a colon: hyphen - and a closed bracket) - although it isn't a guarantee.

Those of you who are clever will have spotted that you can also swap the closed bracket for an open bracket (and turn the face into a sad face :-(. As a rule it is best to keep quiet for a little while before you jump into a conversation, simply because it gives you time to realize that you are in the wrong conference and leave quietly.

your signature

Another area where you can distinguish yourself is your signature. This is the thing at the end of your messages that identifies you - unless you are a doctor, in which case no one can read it. It is all very well to have a signature that tells the world who you are and what you do and how to get hold of you, but, frankly, the world doesn't care. And you will get flamed for sigs that are longer than 4 lines.

acronyms

There are also acronyms that make life easier to type. Phrases like, OTOH - on the other hand, ROFL - rolling on floor laughing, IMHO - in my humble opinion and RTFM read the, er, frigging manual, are there to make life easy. There are lists of these around, but all the same it is best not to over use them or use obscure ones OPWHACWYATA (otherwise people won't have a clue what you are talking about).

Army surplus tin helmets are a help - but not a lot

SOFTWARE TO ACCESS THE NET

In order to make use of the Net, you will need network drivers (either SLIP/PPP or TCP/IP), e-mail clients and servers, FTP clients and servers, NEWS clients and Web browsers. All of these component parts are available as free or shareware software, either from BBS, network access suppliers or the Net itself, they can also be found for just about every computer or operating system ever invented. A typical working environment will need between 10 and 20 different modules or programs. Setting all of these up and getting them working can be a major undertaking, and once they are working there are many issues of support and accountability to consider. The alternative is to buy a complete Net access package from a reliable vendor. One big plus with Net software under MS-Windows or OS/2 is that the interface to the network driver is vendor independent, this means that you can mix and match offerings from different suppliers - the same is unfortunately not true of DOS based software

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