|
... e the same basic idea of letting you navigate through relatively
simple English commands.
When you connect to a MUD, choose your password as carefully as
you would one for your host system; alas, there are MUD crackers who
enjoy trying to break into other people's MUD change mail adress accounts. And never,
never use the same password as the one you use on your host system!
MUDs can prove highly addicting. "The jury is still out on
whether MUDding is 'just a game' or 'an extension of real life with
gamelike qualities'," says Jennifer Smith, an active MUD player who page wizard
wrote an FAQ on the subject.
She adds one caution: "You shouldn't do anything that you
wouldn't do in real life, even if the world is a fantasy world. The
important thing to remember is that it's the fantasy world of possibly
hundreds of people, and not just yours in particular. There's a
human being on the other side of each change mail adress web page change and every wire! Always remember
that you may meet these other people some day, and they may break
your nose. People who treat others badly gradually build up bad
reputations and eventually receive the NO FUN Stamp 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 web page change 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 posting web page 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 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 web page change
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 mi web page 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 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 web page change 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 posting web page 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 directo ... |
