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... p of Disapproval."
11.6 GO, GO, GO (AND CHESS, TOO)!
Fancy a good game of go or chess? You no longer have to head for
the nearest park with a board in hand. The Internet has a couple of
machines that let you engage people from around the world in your
favorite board games. Or, if you prefer, you can watch matches in
progress.
To play go,
telnet hellspark.wharton.upenn.edu 6969
log on as: guest
You'll find prompts to various online help files to get you started.
For a chess match,
telnet news.panix.com 5000
log on as: guest
You'll find prompts for online help files on the system, which lets you
choose your skill level.
11.7 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
All is not fun and games on the Net. Like any community, the Net
has its share of obnoxious characters who seem to exist only to make
your life miserable (you've already met some of them in chapter 4).
There are web designers naucalpan edo mex people who seem to spend a bit more time on the Net than many
would find healthy. It also has its criminals. Clifford Stoll writes in
"The Cuckoo's Egg" how he tracked a team of German hackers who were
breaking into U.S. computers and selling the information they found to
the Soviets. Robert Morris, a Cornell University student, was convicted
of unleashing a "worm" program that effectively disabled several thousand
computers connected to the Internet.
Of more immediate concern to the average Net user are crackers
who seek to find other's passwords to break into Net systems and people
who infect programs on ftp sites with viruses.
There is a widely available program known as "Crack" that can
decipher user passwords composed of words that might be found in a
dictionary (this is why you shouldn't use such passwords). Short of
that, there are the annoying types who take a special thrill in trying to
make you miserable.
The best advice in dealing with them is to count to
10 and then ignore them -- like juveniles everywhere, most of their fun
comes in seeing how upset you can get.
Meanwhile, two Cornell University students pleaded guilty in 1992 to
uploading virus-infected Macintosh programs to ftp sites. If you plan
to try out large amounts of software from ftp sites, it might be wise to
download or buy a good anti-viral program.
But can law enforcement go too far in seeking out the criminals?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation was founded in large part in
response to a series of government raids against an alleged gang of
hackers. The raids resulted in the web designers naucalpan edo mex. near bankruptcy of one game
company never alleged to have had anything to do with the hackers,
when the government seized its computers and refused to give them
back. The case against another alleged participant collapsed in court
when his attorney showed the "proprietary" and supposedly hacked
information he printed in an electronic newsletter was actually
available via an 800 number for about $13 -- from the phone company
from which that data was taken.
11.8 FYI
You can find discussions about IRC in the alt.irc newsgroup.
"A Discussion on Computer Network Conferencing," by Darren Reed
(May, 1992), provides a theoretical background on why conferencing
systems such as IRC are a Good Thing. It's available through ftp at
nic.ddn.mil in the rfc directory as rfc1324.txt.
Every Friday, Scott Goehring posts a new list of MUDs and related
games and their telnet addresses in the newsgroup rec.games.mud.announce.
There are several other mud newsgroups related to specific types of MUDs,
including rec.games.mud.social, rec.games.mud.adventure,
rec.games.mud.tiny, rec.games.mud.diku and rec.games.mud.lp.
For a good overview of the impact on the Internet of the Morris
Worm, read "Virus Highlights Need for Improved Internet Management," by
the U.S. General Accounting Office (June, 1989). You can get a copy via
ftp from cert.sei.cmu.edu in the pub/virus-l/docs directory.
It's
listed as gao_rpt.
Clifford Stoll describes how the Internet works and how he web designers naucalpan edo mex. tracked
a group of KGB-paid German hackers through it, in "The Cuckoo's Egg:
Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage," Doubleday
(1989).
Chapter 12: EDUCATION AND THE NET
12.1 THE NET IN THE CLASSROOM
If you're a teacher, you've probably already begun to see the
potential the Net has for use in the class. Usenet, ftp and telnet have
tremendous educational potential, from keeping up with world events to
arranging international science experiments.
Because the Net now reaches so many countries and often stays
online even when the phones go down, you and your students can "tune
in" to first-hand accounts during international conflicts. Look at
your system's list of Usenet soc.culture groups to see if there is one
about the country or region you're interested in. Even in peacetime,
these newsgroups can be great places to find people from countries you
might be studying.
The biggest problem may be getting accounts for your students, if
you're not lucky enough to live within the local calling area of a
Free-Net system. Many colleges and universities, however, are willing
to discuss providing accounts for secondary students at little or no
cost. Several states, including California and Texas, have Internet-
linked networks for teachers and students.
12.2 SOME SPECIFIC RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
In addition, there are a number of resources on the Internet aimed
specifically at elementary and secondary students and teachers. You
can use these to set up science experiments with classes in another
country, learn how to use computers in the classroom or keep up with the
latest advances in teaching everything from physics to web designers naucalpan edo mex physical
education.
Among them:
AskERIC Run by the Educational Resource and Information Center,
AskERIC provides a way for educators, librarians and
others interested in K-12 education to get more
information about virtually everything.
The center
maintains an e-mail address (askeric@ericir.syr.edu) for
questions and promises answers within 48 hours. It also
maintains a gopher site that contains digests of
questions and answers, lesson plans in a variety of
fields and other educationally related information. The
gopher address is ericir.syr.edu.
Health-Ed: A mailing list for health educators. Send a request to
health-ed-request@stjhmc.fidonet.org
K12Net: Begun on the Fidonet hobbyist network, K12Net is now also
carried on many Usenet systems and provides a host of
interesting and valuable services.
These include
international chat for students, foreign-language
discussions (for example, there are French and German-
only conference where American students can practice
those languages with students from Quebec and German).
There are also conferences aimed at teachers of specific
subjects, from physical education to physics. The K12
network still has limited distribution, so ask your
system administrator if your system carries it.
Kidsphere: Kidsphere is a mailing list for elementary and secondary
teachers, who use it to arrange joint projects and
discuss educational telecommunications. You will find
news of new software, lists of web designers naucalpan edo mex sites from which you can
get computer-graphics pictures from various NASA
satellites and probes and other news of interest to
modem-using teachers.
To subscribe, send a request by e-mail to kidsphere-
request@vms.cis.pitt.edu or joinkids@vms.cis.pitt.edu and
you will start receiving messages within a couple of
days.
To contribute to the discussion, send messages to
kidsphere@vms.cis.pitt.edu.
KIDS is a spin-off of KIDSPHERE just for students
who want to contact students.
To subscribe, send a
request to joinkids@vms.cis.pitt.edu, as above. To
contribute, send messages to kids@vms.cist.pitt.edu.
Knoxville Using the newspaper in the electronic classroom. This
News- gopher site lets students and teachers connect to
Sentinel the newspaper, and provides resources for them naucalpan edo mex. web promotion derived
Online from the newsroom. Use gopher to connect to
gopher.opup.org
MicroMUSE This is an online, futuristic city, built entirely by
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