PSY 409
7 Oct 94
Lab 3 Report
Summary of Activity on the Internet for the Period of 23 September to 6 October
I. Navigation
During this report period, I spent more than 915 minutes (15 hours, 15 minutes) on-line. Once again, I spent unlogged time on-line composing, sending, receiving, and handling e-mail. The use of e-mail has increased the efficiency of my communications with research associates, classmates, and my brother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Additional off-line time was spent reading material regarding the internet: The Whole Internet, information regarding URLs, help/commands for lynx and other programs, and a number of printed e-mail messages. The second half of the report period focused on accomplishing certain tasks set by Dr. James. Also, during the second half of the report period (this last week), my e-mail burgeoned as more associates, other amateur radio operators, and classmates discovered that I am on Internet. Quite a bit of activity was generated by my response to Dr. James's query on the best way to disseminate information to all class members of his Psychology 409 class.
This report period began with an innocent trip to the Computer Learning and Instruction Center (CLIC) in Sinclair Library on 26 September at 4:45PM to check my e-mail for the day. The intent was to spend fifteen or twenty minutes checking e-mail then go home to dinner and homework. AT 7:30 PM, I left the library and called my wife and told her not to call the police that I was all right but had been sucked into cyberspace. Seriously, after spending a few minutes in pine taking care of messages, I quit pine and decided it would not hurt to enter Mosaic and the W3 to download my own copy of Mosaic for Windows for my home computer. I can run many programs, such as pine, gopher, rn, and kermit, from home but I really wanted to be able to run Mosaic from home and avoid the complications and inconvenience of going to one of the computing centers on campus. I entered W3 and linked my way into the software programs path. There I found documents (README type) pertaining to the acquisition and installation of Mosaic for Windows. I learned that I needed the files of Win32 (a 32 bit networking processing program found in Windows NT) before I could run Mosaic at home. I downloaded the compressed files for Mosaic for Windows and the Win32 plus a few other tidbits from other companies' public access/domain (such as Microsoft Publishing). I spent some anxious moments trying to download the files through Mosaic and had to ask for help from the CLIC assistants which led to my using WinFTP to download the files to my home directory in UNIX. That evening after dinner, I downloaded the files from my home directory in UNIX to my home computer. I used pkunzip from the self-extractable file pkz204g.exe to unzip/uncompress the files, except it did not work. I tried a number of times, and always got a warning saying that the file that I was attempting to unzip was defective and that I would have to run pkfixzip to fix it up. However, that program told me that the file that I was trying to unzip probably was not a pkzip'ed compress file. Blocked in this pursuit, before closing this session, I did some file maintenance to clean up my ever expanding directories and printed catalogs of my diskettes that I take to school. I have learned long ago that it is very easy just to continue acquiring files, programs, documents, and that without organizing them into directories ( and sub-directories, and even sub-directories of sub-directories), it is very easy to lose track of files and whether they are still of any use.
My next session, on 27 September, focused on obtaining another copy of pkzip, perhaps a more recent version. I spent more time than I thought necessary trying to search for it through Mosaic; however, after quite a while, I remembered that I had seen it in gopher. I switched to gopher (actually WinGopher - which makes three operating environments I work in: DOS at home, Windows and Mac at CLIC - I think I have three different bookmarks- very confusing sometimes). I went to the home page and from there I followed the path computing and technology\archive\pc-dos\compressin\zip and there I found pkz204g.exe among a myriad of other pkzip executable files. With insufficient time to grab all of them and check them out, I just downloaded pkz204g.exe and gunzip.exe. The file, gunzip.exe, did not work. After creating a separate directory for this new pkz2044g.exe and letting it uncompress itself, I tried to use its pkunzip to unzip the Mosaic for Windows, a calendar/scheduler program, and a screensaver program. It failed and gave me the same warnings as before. Undaunted, I put this project at the bottom of my To Do List
My next session on Monday, 3 October, saw increased focus due to a need to accomplish a specific task. We were asked to find Immanuel Kant's The Science of Right and answer a few questions regarding it and the search to it. We were also asked to find how the Internet treats the subjects of religion and ethics. As usual, I began my session by tending to new e-mail. With each logon, there seems to be more and more messages. I used the method of triage (as an emergency room would do in dealing with a sudden influx of casualties) and quickly went through the messages (by titles) and tended to the most important, first, then the most pressing and then the FYI messages. Included in the messages were a few from Dr. James, one of which was particularly interesting. He wondered if there were some way to get a forum going or, at least, the same message to all class members. Having had messages sent to me through a distribution list of research team members, I know it could be done. Knowing that it could be done, I knew I could do it. I checked the different commands in pine and found that through AddressBook, I could create a distribution list with a long name and a nickname. In order to save time, I overcame my reluctance to ask for help and once again, asked the CLIC assistants how to make the distribution list. The assistant was not very sure either, but with the two of us doing it, I quickly learned how to build the distribution list. To test its functionality, I composed a message explaining how to build the distribution list and e-mailed it to all the members of the class on the distribution list using the nickname for the list. I suspected one of the addresses on the list was incorrect and sent a test message separately to that person. By the time I had finished my small project, the automated Postmaster had sent me a message that my test message had been kicked back to me for using a bad address. With time running out for this session, I felt that I had accomplished something even though I had not found the book by Kant.
The last major session for this period occurred on 5 October from 4:57 PM to 8:45 PM in CLIC and , 10:10 PM to 12:30 AM at home. With no IBM computers available, I took a Mac, knowing that anything I downloaded would still go to my home directory from which I could retrieve files at home. I triaged about twenty messages in e-mail, answering some ( pressing r for reply and composing a quick response usually does not take too much time) and deferring action on others until I could think through an appropriate response. My message on the distribution list generated a flurry of responses from my classmates. Almost an hour after I had originally sat down, I entered lynx and under Options, I entered my Personal Mail Address ( my e-mail address). Previously I had encountered an acronym, URL, for which I had no meaning. This time I pounced on "Help on URLs" in W3 and learned that it means the Uniform Resource Locator which is appended to the files we see in W3 and allows immediate linkage to that file through HyperText. I also downloaded a file into my home directory on "How to Provide Data" to W3, in preparation for our class possibly placing itself on the W3 map. Next, I linked to Subjects and then to Philosophy, in order to begin my search for Immanuel Kant. When I tried to link to Immanuel Kant, I was confronted with a screen of symbols that looked like a cross between hieroglyphs and Korean phonetic symbols. That was not so bad, but, when I tried to continue, I found that my keyboard had linked up. So, I rebooted and tried an index search for the book. That search was fruitless. I, then, went down to philosophy and to the American Philosophical Association and could not connect. I next tried another heading of philosophy and stared at a message, "Http request sent, waiting for response," for over three minutes before I gave up and rebooted. Frustrated, impatient, and even more goal-oriented, I returned to what I knew worked: Gopher. I tried a number of veronica searches for the words of the name of the book, science and right. Nothing seemed to work. I backed up to Other Gophers and called up my bookmark thinking there might have been something in there that could help. I had remembered that I had placed a bookmark on the way to finding The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. After following one unsuccessful trail, I used my bookmark for the Virtual Reference Library. Ultimately, my path from the home page of gopher looked like this: 8. Other gophers and information servers, 5. Interesting finds through the Internet, 9. Virtual Refence Desk, 38. Libraries/, 38. \PEG, a Peripatetic, Eclectic Gopher, 13. Philosophy, 5. GOPHERS, 19. University of Liverpool (England)/, 7. Electronic Texts, 2. Philosophy Texts/, 14. Immanuel Kant/, 7. The Science of Right (of-right). I downloaded the file on the book and held my breath until it finished. With Kant's book in my home directory, I scouted around for anything on religion and ethics.
Gophering through cyperspace, I found a few indices that show works of religion, such as the Bible or Quran, and works about religions, such as The Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS. The Internet seems to treat Religion as just another subjects, such as Philosophy or Social Sciences. I found references to ethics, but I did not find any articles, books, or other publications on the topic. I realize that this apparent lack of information on ethics does not necessarily mean that there is none, only that I was unable to locate it. Since I was on a Mac computer, it was easy to open a new document in Word 5.0 and copy/paste sample indices showing items of religion and ethics. I printed these indices out just before CLIC shut down for the night. Continuing at home, I downloaded the file containing The Science of Right. and printed out the its first page and its forty-third page which contains the first reference to God. I had opened the file in Word for Windows and used the command, Find, to locate each instance of the use of God in the document. In the same way, I searched for any instance of the use of the word, love, and found none. Incidental to all my searches, I saw nothing on how to put up our own Gopher index/page. In trying to place myself in one of the six stages of searching, I find that I do not neatly fit into any of the stages. Between the first stage, Task Initiation, and the sixth stage, Search Closure, I find myself bouncing between stages such as when I was looking for items on religion. After going through Topic Selection, Prefocus Exploration, Focus Formulation and then not finding what I want, I had to drop back, even to the stage of Topic Selection, and begin anew. Searching through cyberspace is much less straightforward than searching through a paper library. Heuristics and fuzzy logic seem to aid me as much as anything else. (And I snagged an article/file on Fuzzy Logic in passing on one of my searches.)
II. Resources
I have downloaded, used, or read:
Pearl: the uhunix server on 956-5080
UNIX: the operating system that allows me to access other application programs
Gopher: the application program that allows me to look at indices of indices leading to documents/information.
lynx: an application program similar to mosaic without images that allow retrieval.
Mosaic: A program for navigating through hypertext documents and indices.
mm: another e-mail program that is more complicated and less forgiving than pine, but more powerful.
Procomm: a communication program that includes kermit (a file transfer program) that I obtained from Keller 214, Computing office. I have installed this program on my computer at home. I now use it instead of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 Terminal program because Procomm has more features (such as kermit) and I can capture from screen to disk or printer more easily than using Terminal.
pine: a simple and forgiving e-mail application program.
Veronica: a search program accessed through gopher.
Archie: a file transfer program that I have not used
newsgroups: sci.psychology, rec.ham-radio.swap, sci.psychology.digest, rec.arts.startrek.info, rec.radio.amateur.misc, rec.radio.info, and many, many more
For additional items, please see Appendix A, a directory of my home directory in the unix account, bogan.
III. Glossary
New Terms
Cyperspace: All the electronic work and storage areas on all the disks on all the computers in the world and the electronic linking that lets them interact.
Emulation: the process whereby one apparatus or program takes on the operating characteristics of another.
Hypertext: Any text that has URLs associated with imbedded words or phrases to allow linking to that file referred to by the words or phrases.
Mosaic: A program for navigating through hypertext documents and indices.
URLs: Uniform Resource Locators appended to file names which locate it anywhere in the Internet.
Virtual: having the effect but not the actual form of the item being considered.
Old Terms
Archie: a file transfer program that I have not used
bookmark: electronic place marker that allows easy return to that item or menu
etext: Any electronically portable document, book article message, etc.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions - often seen in gopher listings to inform initiates to that service or menu that lists it.
Gopher: the application program that allows me to look at indices of indices leading to documents/information
Internet: The network of networks
NIC, Network Information Center, which has provided some direction and directory service in the past
Pearl: the uhunix server on 956-5080
pine: e-mail application program
Procomm: a communication program that includes kermit (a file transfer program) that I obtained from Keller 214, Computing office. I have installed this program on my computer at home. I now use it instead of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 Terminal program because Procomm has more features (such as kermit) and I can capture from screen to disk or printer more easily than using Terminal.
UNIX: the operating system that allows me to access other application programs
UUCP: unix to unix copy program, loose association of systems all communicating with UUCP protocol
Veronica: a search program
WAIS, Wide Area Information Server: directory of servers
IV. Plans
I plan to install and use Mosaic on my home computer, to find an easy way to downloaded files, to learn how to put up our own Gopher page/index, and to be able to use search engines more efficiently and effectively.
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