VBOK Issue # 18 - Gopher January 1, 1998 ______________________________________________________________________ Last month's question was "Which browser do you use". There were 61 voters and they voted a little something like this: Votes Percent IE 30 49 NN 30 49 Opera 0 0 Other 1 2 This month's question is "How many computers do you own?" Go here to vote: ------ Speaking of voting, click here to vote for VBOK as one of the best newsletters in the "E-zines Top Ten Poll"! It's just a click, no need to fill anything out. ------ Many VBOK subscribers have expressed an interest in a forum just for you all. Well, we've got one now! It also has a live chat feature. You may discuss anything computer related and it's a good place to get help with any computer questions you may have. Go here to check it out: ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. Gopher 2. Software Review 3. Cool Sites 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's 5. That's the news! If the columns in the below articles appear misaligned, it's because you are using a non-fixed width font. If you would like to see them nice and straight, change your e-mail font to Times New Roman. ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Gopher ------ What does a small, furry rodent have to do with computers? Well, they're kind of like a software bug, but only BIGGER! Just kidding. Welcome to part II of the five part series on Internet services that you can take advantage of to get the most out of your on-line time. So what is this gopher thing? Glad you asked, because that's why I'm writing this. Gopher originated at the University of Minnesota, which is considered the mothergopher and home to all gopher systems. These systems are set up mainly by universities and originally were used so that departments could post bulletins and such so that anyone could see them. Nowadays, you can find some of the same stuff you would find on the web, but nowhere near the same volume. So why use it? Well, because they are run by universities, there is a reputation at stake. That means you can be reasonably assured that the information you find is accurate. Ok, ok, so what is it already? In a nutshell, Gopher is basically a distributed document service, meaning that a great majority of the things you find will be text. What a gopher system does is to allow you to move through servers using text menus. You may stay on one server or move across multiple ones just like you do on the web. In fact, you don't even need any special software to use gopherspace, as your browser already has the capability to do it. Here's the mothergopher URL: Here is what a gopher URL looks like with port specs: This particular one is for the University of New Mexico and if you noticed the ':70' right after the '.edu', that is what port you are accessing their server through (If you would like more information on ports, see edition #10.) The '/1' is a directory just like you would see in a web URL i.e. . If you went to the UNM gopher URL, you would see a menu that looked like this: Gopher Menu Welcome to the UNM gopher server UNM Ethics Code and Policy for Computer Use CIRT, Campus Computing Calendars, Events and Schedules Phone Books, Email addresses and Directories News Services Libraries Student Information Faculty, Staff Information Academic, Research and Departmental Info Exploring the Internet Not all gopher menus look like this, but they will all be similar, and they will always be a text based menu system (although in a browser they look just like a directory structure.) If some of you jumped ahead and tried to navigate some of the menus, you may have run into an error like this: "Access restricted to UNM accounts see main menu Welcome message." This is because you are logged onto their server as an anonymous user. This is the default login name for browser based gophering (as well as browser based FTP.) If you have stand-alone gopher software that allows login/passwords and you have an account with whatever gopher server you are using, then you would be able to access those areas. Gopherspace has it's own search engine. It's (she's?) called Veronica. Why? Well, Archie (as in archive) was already taken by another service called FTP, so it seemed logical to name it after Archie's girlfriend (If any of you are wondering who the heck these people are, they are characters from a '50s comic book series called Archie.) Unlike all the search engines on the web (AltaVista, HotBot, Yahoo etc.), Veronica is the same on all servers, so one search on one is going to return the same "hits" as a search on any other Veronica. Let's make it more fun, there is another search engine in gopherspace called Jughead (Archie's friend), but this one *only* searches on the server that you are currently on. This is useful if you remember that a particular document was on a certain server, but just didn't quite remember where, and do not wish to search *all* of the servers. One thing to remember about Jughead is that a search on one Jughead will result in different "hits" than another server's Jughead search. If you'd like to take a look at stand-alone gopher software, go here: This is via FTP, but your browser will handle it. Happy gophering! ______________________________________________________________________ ** A word from our sponsors ** Get the Scoop on Free Advertising, and where to Find it. The Classified News is delivered Free and weekly. Visit ------ The Most USEFUL Internet RESOURCE TOOL for ezine advertising that there is! Our "searchable" easy-to-use database has over 300 ezines that accept advertising with ALL the info you need to place your ads! Generate traffic and sales every month! Visit us today before your competition does! ------ Want to see your advertisement here? Send mail to with the text 'Advert' in the SUBJECT line for more information. ______________________________________________________________________ 2. Software Review ------ Name: Copernic 98 by Agent Technologies Genre: Internet Search Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 2,110KB Homepage: Download Software: Some of you may have used software like WebFerret, E-mailFerret etc. Well, this is something on the same order, but much greater. If you've never used any of the Ferret series applications, then here's an explanation. The Ferret applications are programs you download that perform search functions. They are considered META searchers, which means that they search multiple search engines, compile the results and remove redundancies. The problem with the Ferret series, was that you had to install each one (one for e-mail, one for FTP, one for the web etc.) Copernic includes these and a whole lot more. If you want to search the web in style, this is the way to do it. ------ Name: KillAD by FSC Genre: Anti-SPAM Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 28KB Homepage: Download Software: How many of you get really annoyed when you go to either a Tripod or Geocities web site? I do. I really hate those all advertisements that you are force fed via a new window (called a popup). Enter KillAD. This program's whole purpose is to "kill" those popups so you don't have to. There are two things that really make this program great. The first is that it is written in assembly (a very svelte 28KB) which means that there are no runtime libraries for you to download. The second is that you can configure what windows that you want to "kill" by filtering on the window title or the URL that the window derives it's information from. This is akin to defining a filter in your e-mail program to move SPAM to the trash can. Adding a popup to the "kill" list is a snap. All that you have to do is to drag a crosshair from the KillAD application to the window that you wish to add, and shazam, it'll bother you no more. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ The Freebie Times A free weekly newsletter with something for everyone. In each issue they have great contests, Sweepstakes, free stuff, and much more. E-mail with the text 'Subscribe FT' in the SUBJECT to subscribe. ------ Yaromat Ever want to see what a MAC OS looks and feels like? Temporarily turn your desktop (actually your browser) into a Macintosh. This web page looks like your computer is transforming into a MAC to include a DOS look-alike window that deletes all of your DLLs. The desktop interface is very nicely recreated with working icons and a resource meter. Just click on the "Wanna be an Apple" link from the Yaromat page. Another useful page on this site is the "Never the same color", which displays a box with text on a colored background. You move the RGB sliders on the left side of the window to get the colors to look like you want. Once that is done, you cut the HEXcode displayed below and paste it into your pages for a perfect color match. Thanks to Eli Allen for sending this one. ------ The Internet FAQ Consortium FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions. It's a compilation of questions and answers that attempt to answer your question before you have to ask someone. They range from being pretty cheesy to being better than the documentation that came with your hardware/software. Not only do they cover topics like computers, but others such as movies, birds, aviation etc. The Internet FAQ Consortium has placed all the best ones on an easy to access web site for you to get your grubby little paws on. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ Here's an additional anti-SPAM trick provided by Andrew Graner. If I go to a site, which asks for my e-mail address and I suspect that they will either give it out or inundate me with unsolicited offers, I give them my Hotmail address. Then, every couple weeks, I go check it to see if they have sent me SPAM. If they have, no big deal! I just delete all the messages. If however, what they sent turns out to be useful or actually what they said, I look in the message for a way to change my e-mail address so I can get it sent to my normal e-mail account. ------ I have gotten a large number of requests from subscribers who want to know how the math behind RAM works. i.e. How do they get 64MB from 1x16x32, or how much RAM do you need to run a screen resolution of 1024x768x24bpp? I did a piece on RAM in edition #12, but I'll go ahead and expound upon it here. Let's take for example the RAM configuration 2x16x32. The first number (two) is the number of physical SIMM modules. if it was 4x16x32 then you would have four physical SIMM modules. Here's how you work the math: The last number is the data path in bits. 32 is for non-parity and 36 is for parity, so 2x16x36 means that you have two physical modules that are parity (see edition #12 for more info on what parity is.) To work the math on these, just pretend that the 36 is a 32. So like I was saying, this number is in bits. To convert this to bytes, we divide by eight. 32 / 8 is 4. Now take your middle number (sixteen in this case) and multiply that by the last answer (four). This gives us 64MB. Now multiply that by the first number (which is the number of physical modules) and you get 64MB of RAM. Pretty easy huh? Here's the math without all the words: 1x16x32 32 / 8 = 4 4 * 16 = 64 64 * 1 = 64MB Here's another example: 4x32x32 32 / 8 = 4 4 * 32 = 128 128 * 4 = 512MB As always, there is another way when dealing with math. You can also take the last two numbers and multiply them together (remember, if it's parity (36), then just pretend it's non-parity (32) while calculating.) Now, take that result and divide by 8 (eight bits make a byte), then multiply by the first number (the number of physical modules.) This works equally well, but if math isn't your strong point, this way will most likely involve a calculator or at least scratch paper. Here is the last example we did but using the second formula. 4x32x32 32 * 32 = 1024 bits 1024 / 8 = 128 MB 128 * 4 = 512 MB ---- Here's how you determine how much RAM you need to run at a certain resolution and bpp (bits per pixel). If you are interested in learning more about graphics cards, resolution and bpp, please see edition #8. Take the resolution and bpp that you would like to run at. Let's use 1024x768 at 24bpp (16.7 million colors). What the resolution means in the above example is 1024 pixels horizontally, and 768 pixels vertically. Multiply these two numbers together. 1024 * 768 is 786,432. This is the *total* number of pixels displayed on your screen. Multiply this number by the bpp. For our example, this would be 786,432 * 24 which is 18,874,368 bits. Convert this to bytes by dividing by 8 which gives us 2,359,296. Now, because 1MB is not 1,000,000 bits (it's actually 1,024,000 bits) we further divide our number by 1024 which gives us 2.3MB. This is how much display adapter RAM you would need to display 16.7 million colors (24bpp) at 1024x768. Let's do this without all of the words. 1024 * 768 = 786,432 pixels 786,432 * 24 = 18,874,368 bits 18,874,368 / 8 = 2,359,296 bytes 2,359,296 / 1024 = 2.3MB Here's another example using my settings: 1600 * 1200 = 1,920,000 pixels 1,920,000 * 24 = 46,080,000 bits 46,080,000 / 8 = 5,760,000 bytes 5,760,000 / 1024 = 5.62MB Because I have 8MB on my graphics adapter, I could probably bump this up to 32bpp. Let's see. 1600 * 1200 = 1,920,000 pixels 1,920,000 * 32 = 61,440,000 bits 61,440,000 / 8 = 7,680,000 bytes 7,680,000 / 1024 = 7.5MB Look at that! I could run 32bpp if I wanted to. Be forewarned that the higher you set your resolution and the greater your bpp, the more information (pixels and colors) your computer must keep track of. This results in something of a performance hit. Depending on how fast your computer and graphics card are, it may be unnoticeable. Just in case you're interested, here's a conversion for bpp vs colors. 1bpp = 2 colors (MDA) 2bpp = 4 colors (CGA) 4bpp = 16 Colors (EGA) 8bpp = 256 colors (VGA) 16bpp = 65,536 colors 24bpp = 16,777,216 colors 32bpp = 4,294,967,296 colors ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ How about signing up for more than a hundred 800 numbers and then resell them to ISPs. Sound normal? What if you took the money an ran? That's what Gregory Evans did, leaving ISPs with disconnected 800 numbers after one month of non-payment. Go here to read the whole story. ------ When anyone can build a web site anonymously, you can tell the world anything. Maybe that's the case with these so called "pleased customers" of the Divx system. Marketing hyperbole or real people? You decide. ------ Should ISPs be held accountable for allowing access to pornography? ______________________________________________________________________ Well, that concludes this issue. Have fun. Leif Gregory Copyright (c) 1998 by Leif Gregory. All rights reserved. You may share this copy of the VBOK newsletter with others as long as it is reprinted/resent in it's entirety to include this copyright notice. If you've received this edition of the VBOK newsletter from a friend or colleague and wish to start receiving your own copies, then click the below link and send the generated e-mail message. Virtual Book Of Knowledge (VBOK) VBOK Editor VBOK Homepage Unsubscribe Back-Edition Titles