Internet Resources for PC Users

Prepared by Dave Watson (davew@wimsey.com) 
Knossopolis Media (knossopolis@wimsey.com) 
http://www.wimsey.com/~jmax/Knossopolis/

Usenet Newsgroups

comp.answers

This is a source for a lot of the Internet's collective knowledge on computers. As time went on and people got tired of seeing the same questions asked by "Newbies" every week, they compiled documents called FAQs, for Frequently Asked Questions. A wide variety of topic-oriented FAQs are regularly posted here. Each major subgroup of Usenet generally has an .answers newsgroup, such as soc.answers or rec.answers, containing the FAQs for its subgroups. The group news.answers carries most of the FAQs, well over 1,000 documents a month.

comp.binaries.ibm.pc
.ms-windows
.os2

These are sources of shareware software, distributed in "UUencoded" form, or translated into a form of gibberish text. Often this text is split up into chunks under 50K in size. You need to join the UUencoded sections together in numbered order, then run the resulting file through a program than un-UUencodes it. Presto! Instant software and documentation.

comp.graphics.*

This group includes up to a dozen subgroups like comp.graphics.animation and comp.graphics.research.

comp.lang.*

For programmers, this hierarchy contains groups devoted to dozens of languages, from comp.lang.ada to comp.lang.visual.

comp.org.eff.news
comp.org.eff.talk

The EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, co-founded by Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus, and John Perry Barlow, a lawyer and Grateful Dead lyricist. This organization is the centre of civil rights on the Net, protecting privacy and trying to establish the societal rules of electronic interaction.

comp.os.*

This hierarchy is devoted to operating systems. Examples are comp.os.386bsd.apps, comp.os.cpm, comp.os.linux.help, comp.os.msdos.programmer, comp.os.ms-windows.misc and comp.os.os2.advocacy, around 40 IBM-compatible-related groups in all.

comp.sys.*

Lots more computer specific groups, like comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim, etc.

The World Wide Web

First, for a creative use of Web technology, check out the magazine NWHQ.

Some good general references:

The Online World Resources Handbook is now available through the World Wide Web at URL: http://login.eunet.no/~presno/

John December has compiled an excellent Internet Tools summary:
http://www.rpi.edu/Internet/Guides/decemj/itools/toc2.html

The completely revised, updated and expanded version of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's free beginner's guide to the Internet, is currently available by anonymous ftp at ftp.eff.org in the pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy directory. It was written by Adam Gaffin, who calls himself The big dummy behind the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet. A ton of other resources on political, legal and social aspects of the Net live here. Use the URL http:www.eff.org/

The Best of the Web '94 Awards were presented at the WWW Conference in Geneva. The award recipients (including International Teletimes, published by a teenaged Vancouverite) and other nominees are on permanent display at: http://wings.buffalo.edu/contest/

Over 100 Games related links including FAQs, Home pages, 'Net games, Walkthroughs, FTP sites, and loads more can all be viewed by pointing to: http://wcl-rs.bham.ac.uk/~djh/index.html

A collection of USENET Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on 879 topics is a HUGE collection of information! It's at URL: ftp://pit-manager.mit.edu/pub/usenet/

Some Resources for Creating WWW Documents:

Netscape Communications "How to Create Web Services: http://home.mcom.com/home/how-to-create-web-services.html
NCSA's HTML Primer: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/html-primer.html
Clarkson's HTML Guide: http://fire.clarkson.edu/doc/html/htut.html
NASA's Tools for Aspiring Web Weavers: http://www.nas.nasa.gov/RNR/Education/weavers.html
CyberWeb's collection of documentation: http://www.charm.net/~web/Vlib.html

Happy Surfing!

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