8 posts from 2007

ICQ

I added all the ICQ numbers I could find from the discussion board to my contact list.

I searched for the ICQ number of 'advanced netstudies' every way I could think of, including going to the ICQ site www.icq.com and searching from there, to no avail. The closest I could come up with was a 34 year old from Adelaide, going by the nickname of 'Netstudies'.

However, I met up with 'benno' on ICQ, asked him, and he graciously obliged with the number 257853416.  He got it from Alida, buggered if I know how. Thanks, Alida.

3:04 PM JUGPOLE: G'day, benno. Are you from the course?
3:06 PM benno32: yes, net11.  How is the study going?
3:06 PM JUGPOLE: Very slowly. I've been slack.
3:07 PM JUGPOLE: I'm just finishing up task 2 today. I'll fire up next week. I promise.
3:12 PM benno32: I haven't done anything in a while. Is this your first unit?
3:12 PM JUGPOLE: Yes. Yours?
3:13 PM benno32: yes. I'd like to do two per study period. But I'm starting to think that's a bit much.
3:14 PM JUGPOLE: All it takes, benno, is discipline, hard work and no procrastinating, which is why I won't prescribe it for myself.
3:22 PM benno32: are you planning on completing the entire degree?

3:24 PM JUGPOLE: Probably not. Did you find an icq number for 'advanced netstudies'? I can't find it.
3:24 PM benno32: 257853416
3:25 PM JUGPOLE: Thanks. How did you find that?
3:26 PM benno32: from the webct discussion board. I think Alida found it.
3:30 PM JUGPOLE: Just looking at the task description again, I see we are meant to Talk about which chat service you prefer, and what forms of communication chat is most useful for. Woohoo

3:31 PM benno32: Yeah I know. I haven't used ICQ in 6 years.
3:32 PM JUGPOLE: Frankly, I don't like any chat service much. My brother has his set up on the computer I use, so I sometimes get into inane chat with his people. But I don't type fast, and my head hurts after a while
3:32 PM JUGPOLE: Email, or forums are more my speed. They are more considered.
3:34 PM benno32: yes, I agree.  What's your motivation for doing Net11?
3:36 PM JUGPOLE: Well I had this idea that I wanted to study web design.
3:38 PM JUGPOLE: Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I got into this, my local TAFE advertises a part time web design course which is probably more appropriate.
3:40 PM JUGPOLE: I especially hate IRC. That's the one where everyone yabbers away at the same time, isn't it? I tried it a few times years ago, and it was like 30 drunks trying to talk over the top of each other
3:41 PM JUGPOLE: And I was probably trying to get a sensible conversation out of a swarm of American teenagers.
3:41 PM benno32: Yes that's IRC, I never got into it. Like you say, full of kids.
3:46 PM JUGPOLE: Have you started on the resource project yet?
3:52 PM benno32: That's the bibliography right? No I haven't started, I haven't started the essay yet either.
3:57 PM: benno32 is now Away (was Online)
3:58 PM: benno32 is now Online (was Away)
3:58 PM benno32: I've got to run. Nice talking to you.

* found a publicly available newsgroup server (news.aioe.org)

* set up a newsgroup account in my email client (thunderbird)

* found an interesting newsgroup on www.newzbot.com (alt.sports.baseball.ny-yankees)

* subscribed to it in thunderbird

* downloaded the latest 500 messages (headers only)

* posted a message (listed below, including the header)

From - Sun Jun 24 12:29:26 2007
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:29:23 +1000
From: Brad Fuller 
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (Windows/20070326)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: alt.sports.baseball.ny-yankees
Subject: old pitchers
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I am fairly new to baseball, and there is something that doesn't make 
sense to me. Since pitching is so unavoidably (pre the Mike Marshall 
revolution) damaging to the human body, why are so many of the best 
pitchers 'ancient' in athletic terms, and why do teams pay so much for 
them? I would expect that they would wear out fast.	

What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?

You have a record on your hard drive with an email list, while with a discussion board, you have have to go to the website to view old messages.

You only have to send an email to post a message on an email list. With a discussion board you have to go to the website, sign in, and post the message there.

Neither email list or discussion board guarantee an immediate answer, but a message to a discussion board will probably get a faster response, since email lists are usually sent at specific intervals, often daily or weekly.

A list can be set to forward messages individually, but in that case you may receive an annoying volume of emails from that source. An individual message on a discussion board, because it must be actively sought out, is not potentially annoying in that way.

However, because in that sense an email list is passive, and a discussion board active, a message to an email list is more certain to come to the individual's notice, despite fluctuating levels of interest in the topic. Because the messages are usually bundled into one regularly delivered email, the individual receives all the information from the group. In a discussion board important information may be passed over. Of course, if you don't read it, it won't make any difference.

Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?

Because email lists are more regular, less immediate, but leave a permanent individual record, they are more suited to more formal, longstanding groups. They enable you to stay informed, with no more effort required than the reading of the regular email. Because everyone is receiving the same information, they help to keep a group together, but because all communications are directed to the entire group, they cannot easily be personalised and particular.

Discussion boards are more suited to faster paced, more ephemeral discussions, of a less formal nature. A topic is raised, it usually attracts only some, not all of the group, the topic is exhausted, and not revived, leaving no individual record of the discussion.

I found the Email Tutorial useful and well set out. I'll get back to that Ohio State Universities net.TUTOR. See if it can help me out in other areas.

1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

A user's email can tell you a lot, apart from the obvious. It can tell you :

-the urgency of the message. Does the subject demand attention?

-the priority the sender is placing on getting a reply. Does it ask for a response? How?

-the thoughtfulness of the sender. Is the message clear, concise, easy on the eye, technically compatible?

-the user's perception of their relationship with you. Is the language formal and businesslike, familiar, or over familiar?

- the user's perception of you. Have they shared an offensive, racist, sexist joke with you? Porn?

-if the user composed the message just for you. Is it a reply to your own message? Has it been forwarded to you from someone else? 

-where the email came from. Does the email address indicate that it comes from the workplace? Is the message's intent commercial?

-the message's source. It will show the IP addresses it has gone through, the other email addresses it has been sent to, what email program was used to write the message, the encoding type of the text.

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?

'cc' (carbon copy) is used to send an email message to multiple recipients. It is useful for sending messages within a group of people who know each, because it tells each individual recipient the sender's name and email address, and the name and email address of all other recipients. Everyone is receiving the same information, and everyone knows it. 

 'bcc' (blind carbon copy) sends email messages to multiple recipients, but does not contain the recipient's email address in the message. It is useful for preserving privacy, when the individual recipients' do not know each other. It may also be useful for keeping people out of the information loop, if they are the subject of the email, particularly if it is unfavourable.

'reply all' sends a reply message to both the original author of the message, and everyone else who received that message through a 'cc' or a 'To' list. I have never used this function, and cannot figure out why you would, as it means you are replying to a group of people who haven't asked for one. It is likely to send unwanted information to an unintended audience.

3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?

-assume nothing. Make sure the recipient is familiar with attachments. Make sure the recipient can read the attachment file you intend sending. Find out if they using Windows or a Macintosh, and save the file in a suitable format.

-find out what type of software they are using. If in doubt, use plain text (ASCII) for text files.

-show the file names of any attachments, and the  program/operating system used to create them, in the body of the text, ie  "A file called boof_data.xls (Excel 2000, Windows) is attached."

- if the attachment is large, compress it by 'zipping' or 'archiving' it. I use the archiving program Winrar  http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

-find out if the recipient has a slow internet connection. If they do, restrain yourself severely with any attachments.

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

I use gmail which filters out spam very effectively, but for the purposes of this exercise I ran a filter which deletes everything from certain people that is too large- over 500kb. This is useful to guard against time consuming joke videos and the like being sent to you.

I ran subject filters on a number of words and symbols- money, $, viagra, enlargement, etc etc, in an attempt to block the usual suspects from getting through.

I also ran a filter that sends to the junk file, any email that does not have my first name somewhere in the body of the message. This is to stop unwanted mail getting through.

5. How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?

The following folders are used:

• INBOX
• UNSENT
• DRAFTS
• SENT
• TRASH

This is the default layout in my email program (Thunderbird) and it is suitable for me. The program allows custom folders to be created, so if you needed to store a category of emails separately, they could be moved to a custom folder.

Here is the traceroute from centralops.net/co to curtin.edu.au

There are 18 'hops' on this route.

The average time in milliseconds from the centralops.net/co to the curtin server was 234

The IP NUMBER of the hostname curtin.edu.au is 134.7.134.47

Trace Route

I tried pinging webct.curtin.edu.au (ip 134.7.34.197), from both centralops.net/co and from my computer, using http://www.diamondcs.com.au/portexplorer/       Despite playing with the timeout, it failed everytime.

Pinging  curtin.edu.au (ip 134.7.134.47), however, showed an average time of 85ms from my home computer, and 234ms from centralops.net/co , which I hope is the point of the exercise. Presumably it is quicker because it has less distance to travel, cutting out the US part of the journey.

It takes 17 hops, basically from my computer to my ISP, and across the continent on the universities aarnet system

Required to use an FTP client to transfer a text file from Curtin. I used Ipswitch.

FTP

The answer to the question is that CAPITALIZATION MATTERS.

The task was to access a record from a university library. This is something I vaguely remember doing for real, back in the day.

I tried to entering telnet://library.deakin.edu into Opera (my usual web browser) and it started up the telnet client that comes with Windows XP and logged into the telnet site. As Opera isn't on the list of browsers supported by WebCT, I tried the same thing in Internet Explorer (version 7) and nothing happened, so after doing some googling, discovered that, although Telnet is supported in this version, it is disabled by default. After more googling, I found a quick fix that re-enables it by modifying the Windows registry. http://library.osu.edu/sites/it/CSS/faqtips/ie7_telnet_fix.php

 I got this screen after entering telnet://library.deakin.edu into IE7.

Telnet pic1

This is the result screen after searching for author name "Bennahum".

Telnet 2

And finally, for a bit of old fashioned nerd fun

telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl

Telnet pic 3

Snooped around WebCT on Monday, May 28, the official start of the course, but couldn't find anyone. I spent a while online tracking down a copy of the textbook, or maybe not the textbook, Internet: The Complete Reference. Seems it was last published in 2002, and I found a dusty, new copy in Leicester, England, for $2.50 + postage of $25.

I'll put it on hold till I find out  if it will be useful. I suspect it was the textbook for a previous offering of NET11- Internet Communications, which is the reason I've started this blog. I have to keep a Learning Log.

Found some activity on the discussion board on Tuesday, May 29. Introductions were made on the message board- a friendly mob. I suspect many of them have far greater technical experience than moi. But I have my secret weapon.

I haven't got around to writing this up till Saturday, June 2, so this bit is retrospective.