BKNAVINT.RVW 940110 Prentice Hall/SAMS Publishing 11711 N. College Avenue, Suite 140 Carmel, IN 46032 1-800-428-5331 Fax: 1-800-835-3202 "Navigating the Internet", Gibbs/Smith, 0-672-30362-0, U$24.95/C$31.95 rjs@lis.pitt.edu mgibbs@rain.org 75600.1002@compuserve.com With this title, one would expect an emphasis less on introduction and more on the search tools of the Internet. This is not the case; what we have here, is, again, another introductory guide to the Internet. The book leans quite heavily on the "Internet as ocean" metaphor in the first chapter, but thereafter abandons it. The choice and organization of individual chapters is reasonable, but tends to be application specific rather than function specific. The discussion of LISTSERV mailing lists gets a chapter of its own rather than being combined with either email, which is how you use them, or Usenet news, to deal generically with conferencing or discussion type activities. The organization within chapters is somewhat discontinuous, with topics being discussed in two or three places within a chapter, but most chapters are short enough that this should not be a problem. Coverage is not exhaustive; the topic on finding people does not list the extremely useful MIT "usenet-addresses" mail server; but should be enough to get a novice started. The tone is very light, at times flippant. (The computer humour literate will immediately recognize a description of a FORTRAN specific ftp site as coming from the "Rambo Guide to Real Programmers".) This should not prove too much of a problem as most of the asides are clearly that, and could not be mistaken for directions. Indeed, one story by Mark Gibbs about carelessly reading a message and confusing "resent" (as in taking offense) for "re-sent" (as in forwarding of a message) is a fine object lesson in the importance of thoughtful reading of email. (I am glad to see the extended coverage given to network etiquette.) One bad fault is in the proofreading, confusing ".ed" for ".edu" as the educational domain, and calling the "rn" newsreader "nr". The UNIX bias is even more deeply embedded than with Krol (cf. BKKROL.RVW) or Dern (cf. BKTIGFNU.RVW) and assumes that everyone is on a UNIX system with Elm and rn. Strangely, though, there seems to be an underlying BITNET bias as well. One example is the insistence that domain names can be shortened as long as a unique version remains. In the Internet this would very much depend upon the (possibly multiple) domain name servers between the user and the target system. In BITNET, however, all sites have unique machine names, and so the .BITNET domain can be dropped. The LISTSERV program discussed is also limited to the BITNET version, with no discussion of the general differences between it and the Internet version, and no mention of the JANET (UK) MAILBASE system. Finally, there seems to be an odd confusion between BITNET and Usenet, referring to BITNET "newsgroups" and to Usenet as if it were an actual network. Nonetheless, the book is a handy introduction. Appendix B is a command reference for archie, elm, ftp, gopher, LISTSERVE, rn, telnet, WAIS and World Wide Web (WWW). There is also a tear-out reference card for common mail gateways, ftp, telnet and gopher. Appendix E, the Internet Navigator's Gazetteer, is a resource guide. It is a nice counterpoint to Krol's Catalogue. Where Krol goes overboard on WAIS, WWW and gopher, this Gazetteer is almost exclusively mailing lists (most of them BITNET). Many are outdated. The listings are by no means complete. A complete list, of course, would be an enormous task, and one which would be out of date before it ever saw print. Nevertheless, in my own searching I could find no entries for computer communications, data communications, or telecommunications, nor did I find any for computer security. I looked in vain for a general listing on ecology, although I did find an ecology list under another topic. Part of the difficulty lies in the practice of major headings with subdivisions. The subheads can go on for pages, and the major topics are not "carried forward" to following pages. (I found a subheading of "Viruses" under the "Computer" topic. I noted two listings for VIRUS-L one of which had an obsolete address, and VALERT-L list, a list I'd never heard of which didn't seem to have much to do with the topic, three listings for the cert.org ftp site, and one for the VTC site at the University of Hamburg. And there, at the end of the subsection on Page 350, is your humble scribe's Quick Reference Antiviral Review Chart. Fame!) A substantial number of people will have access through UNIX systems, and will have elm and rn available. Even for those who do not, this work is a good guide. The errors are not major, and the included resources may be a very handy start. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKNAVINT.RVW 940110 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag