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Subject: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Last changed: 20 August 1985)
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Date: Sun, 1-Sep-85 00:19:07 EDT
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Posted: Sun Sep  1 00:19:07 1985
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Original-from: jerry@eagle.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz)
[Most recent change: 20 August 1985 by spaf]

		Frequently Submitted Items

This document discusses some items that occur repeatedly on Usenet.
They frequently are submitted by new users, and result in many
followups, sometimes swamping groups for weeks. The purpose of this
note is to head off these annoying events by answering some questions
and warning about the inevitable consequence of asking others.  If you
don't like my answers let me know and I may include revisions in future
versions of this note.

 1.  What does UNIX stand for?

     It is not an acronym, but is a pun on "MULTICS".  MULTICS is a
     large operating system that was being developed shortly before
     UNIX was created.

 2.  What is the derivation of "foo" as a filler word?

     The favorite story is that it comes from "fubar" which is an
     acronym for "fouled up beyond all recognition", which is supposed
     to be a military term.  (Various forms of this exist, "fouled"
     usually being replaced by a stronger word.) "Foo" and "Bar" have
     the same derivation.

 3.  Is a machine at "foo" on the net?

     These questions belong in net.news.config if anywhere, but in fact
     your best bet is usually to phone somebody at "foo" to find out.
     If you don't know anybody at "foo" you can always try calling and
     asking for the "comp center."  Also, see the newsgroup
     mod.map.uucp where maps of Usenet and the uucp network are posted
     regularly.

 4.  What does "rc" at the end of files like .newsrc mean?

     I'm not sure of the exact history.  It seems to be related to the
     phrase "run command". It is used for any file that contains
     startup information for a command.  One belief is that the "rc"
     stands for "ReConfiguration" which is what the file does.

 5.  What does "- (nf)" in an item's title mean?

     It means that the item was created by "notefiles," an alternative
     netnews interface that many people prefer.  If you want to find
     out more you can contact uiucdcs!essick.  This interface is also
     the source of "Orphaned Response" items.

 6.  What does :-) mean?

      This is the net convention for a "smiley face".  It means that
      something is being said in jest.  If it doesn't look like a smiley
      face to you, flop your head over to the left and look again.

 7.  How do I decrypt jokes in net.jokes?

     The standard cypher used in net.jokes in called "rot13."  Each
     letter is replaced by the letter 13 farther along in the alphabet
     (cycling around at the end).  Most systems have a built in command
     to decrypt such articles; readnews has the "D" command, rn has the
     "X" or "^X" commands, notes has "%".  If your system doesn't have
     a program to encrypt and decrypt these, you can quickly create a
     shell script using "tr":
	tr A-Za-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m
     On some versions of Unix, the "tr" command should be written as:
	tr "[a-m][n-z][A-M][N-Z]" "[n-z][a-m][N-Z][A-M]"

 8.  net.general: Is John Doe out there anywhere?

     I suspect that these items are people looking for Freshman room-
     mates that they haven't seen in ten years.  If you have some idea
     where the person is you are usually better off calling the
     organization.  For example, if you call any Bell Labs location and
     request John Doe's number they can give it to you even if he works
     at a different location.  If you must try the net, use newsgroup
     net.net-people *NOT* net.general.

 9.  net.math: Proofs that 1=0.

     Almost everyone has seen one or more of these in high school.
     They are almost always based on either division by 0 or taking the
     square root of a negative number.

10.  net.games: Where can I get the source for empire or
     rogue?

     You can't.  The authors of these games, as is their right, have
     chosen not to make the sources available.

11.  net.unix-wizards: How do I remove files with non-ascii
     characters in their names?

     You can try to find a pattern that uniquely identifies the file.
     This sometimes fails because a peculiarity of some shells is that
     they strip off the highorder bit of characters in command lines.
     Next, you can try an rm -i, or rm -r. Finally, you can mess around
     with i-node numbers and "find".

12.  net.unix-wizards: There is a bug in the way UNIX handles
     protection for programs that run suid.

     There are indeed problems with the treatment of protection in
     setuid programs.  When this is brought up, suggestions for changes
     range from implementing a full capability list arrangement to new
     kernel calls for allowing more control over when the effective id
     is used and when the real id is used to control accesses.  Sooner
     or later you can expect this to be improved.  For now you just
     have to live with it.

13.  net.women: What do you think about abortion?

     Although abortion might appear to be an appropriate topic for
     net.women, more heat than light is generated when it is brought
     up.  Since the newsgroup net.abortion has been created, all
     abortion-related discussion should take place there.

14.  net.singles: What do MOTOS, MOTSS, and MOTAS  stand for?

     Member of the opposite sex, member of the same sex, and member of
     the appropriate sex, respectively.
     SO stands for "significant other".

15.  net.columbia: Shouldn't this name be changed?

     The name was devised to honor the first space shuttle.  It was
     realized at the time the group began that the name would quickly
     become out of date.  The intent was to create a bit of instant
     nostalgia.

16.  net.columbia: Shouldn't this group be merged with net.space?

     No.  Net.columbia is for timely news bulletins.  net.space is for
     discussions.

17.  How do I use the "Distribution" feature?

     When postnews prompts you for a distribution, it's asking how
     widely distributed you want your article.  The set of possible
     replies is different, depending on where you are, but at Bell Labs
     in Murray Hill, New Jersey, possibilities include:
	mh3bc1	local to this machine
	mh	Bell Labs, Murray Hill Branch
	nj	all sites in New Jersey
	btl	All Bell Labs machines
	att	All AT&T machines
	usa	Everywhere in the USA
	na	Everywhere in North America
	net	Everywhere on Usenet in the world (same as "world")

     If you hit return, you'll get the default, which is the first part
     of the newsgroup name.  This default is often not appropriate --
     PLEASE take a moment to think about how far away people are likely
     to be interested in what you have to say.  Used car ads, housing
     wanted ads, and things for sale other than specialized equipment
     like computers certainly shouldn't be distributed to Europe and
     Korea, or even to the next state.

     The newsgroup "na.forsale" exists for postings of sale
     announcements.  Its distribution is limited to North America;
     posters should restrict this distribution even further, if
     possible and appropriate.

18.  Why do some people put funny lines ("bug killers") at the beginning
     of their articles?

     Some earlier versions of news had a bug which would drop the first
     512 or 1024 bytes of text of certain articles.  The bug was
     triggered whenever the article started with whitespace (a blank or
     a tab).  A fix many people adopted was to begin their articles
     with a line containing a character other than white space.  This
     gradually evolved into the habit of including amusing first
     lines.

     The original bug has since been fixed in newer version of news,
     and sites running older versions of news have applied a patch to
     prevent articles from losing text.  The "bug-killer" lines are
     therefore probably no longer needed, but they linger on.