Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site gatech.CSNET Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gatech!usenet From: usenet@gatech.CSNET Newsgroups: net.announce.newusers Subject: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Last changed: 14 September 1985) Message-ID: <1376@gatech.CSNET> Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 00:22:18 EDT Article-I.D.: gatech.1376 Posted: Tue Oct 1 00:22:18 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 05:21:13 EDT Expires: Sat, 9-Nov-85 23:22:19 EDT Sender: spaf@gatech.CSNET Organization: School of Information and Computer Science, Georgia Tech Lines: 179 Approved: spaf@gatech.CSNET Original-from: jerry@eagle.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz) [Most recent change: 14 September 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 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 "%" or "R". 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.