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Assignment 1
Electronic Communications and Tools
Modern biology depends to an increasing extent on electronic skills so
the first two weeks are extremely important! Don't expect too much protein
stuff yet. Most of this will be a check list for you to go through. For many
of you it may seem trivial, but for others it may need quite some work.
If you have a friend who can help with all of these, great! You aren't
expected to do all this by yourself if you don't want to.
DONT MAIL US ANYTHING AFTER READING THIS DOCUMENT. NO MAIL! NO MAIL! NO MAIL!
Simple E-mail
- Do you know whether your mailer supports MIME?
- Can you file your e-mail somewhere where you can find it again?
- Do you understand what the "Reply:" field does on your system?
- Do you *know* precisely who is receiving your mail when you send it?
- Do you know how to use the >>> in your reply? And to cut down the
size of replies?
- Do you know how to make your signature very small?
- Do you understand how to interpret a mail address? Do you understand
what the numeric address looks like. Do you know how to tell what country
a mail message has come from.
- What is a mail bounce? What should you do about it?
Lists and Groups
- Do you know how to use the "Subject:" field to reply to a message and
keep the same thread.
- Do you understand that many addressees (e.g. vsns-pps-all) represent
large groups of people?
- What do you think they feel if they get irrelevant messages? Think
of something they might do to you!
- Do you know what a 'flame war' is? Do you know what a 'moderator' is?
What a lurker is? What an FAQ is?
- Have you read any BIONET newsgroups? What ones are relevant to
this course?
- What are the (seven) public lists on this course? What happens when
someone sends a message to one? Will you receive mail from it?
- When you wish to unsubscribe from a list, how do you do it?
- Where are the messages on our lists visible? In what different ways
can you read them?
DONT REPLY! NO MAIL! DONT REPLY! NO MAIL! DONT REPLY! NO MAIL!
Other communications
- Can you use FTP? Could you use it under WWW?
- Can you use telnet? Do you have to configure your telnet client?
Does it work under your W3 browser?
- Can you use gopher? Under W3?
- What is MIME? are you configured to use chemical/MIME? Can *you*
do that or do you have to ask your sysadmn?
- Are you friends with your sysadmn? Would s/he help get a client
installed if the course needed it?
DONT REPLY! NO MAIL! DONT REPLY! NO MAIL! DONT REPLY! NO MAIL!
WWW
- What does your browser do? Can you run FORMS? Can you display graphics?
- Do you have viewers for *.gif and *.ps?
- Do you know how to save files? Including *.gif and *.ps? Are there
different ways of saving HTML files? Can you print any of
them (many people won't be able to print the pictures :-(
- Can you make multiple windows? Do you know how to save links in a
hotlist? And look them up? Can you switch off inlined
graphics?
- Can you use a clickable map?
(e.g. http://seqnet.dl.ac.uk:8000/HOME.html)
- Do you know how to configure the browser for different MIME types.
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MOO
- Where is BioMOO? Can you connect as guest? Do you know how to
register?
- Can you go to the classroom? Can you
"look", "say", "page" "@join" "@go" "@examine" "@describe me"
- Can you read the pps board? or the whiteboard? Can you *write* to
pps?
- On your second visit, do you recgnise any names? Talk to one of them!
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Course material
Can you locate :
- the backbone?
- the listproc? (and read some lists)
- the glossary? (and read some entries)
- the lists of people?
- the list of contributed material?
- the technology section
Can you add an entry to the PRACTICE glossary?
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Tools
- Can you run RasMol?
- Can you run Mage?
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Bored?
Here are some more ideas:
- start adding glossary items
- talk to people in the MOO
- think about what *you* would have liked to have seen at this
stage , create it and tell us!
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Next Assignment (for end of next week)
This will be about navigating the biological Internet.
You might start here:
http://www.embl-heidelberg.de/~andrade/hotlist.html
or here.
pmr 3rd.Feb'95
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