MIME-Version: 1.0 Server: CERN/3.0 Date: Monday, 16-Dec-96 23:19:37 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 8633 Last-Modified: Monday, 13-Mar-95 14:33:34 GMT CS 314: Assignment 1 -- Internet

Homework Number 1

Date Assigned: January 31, 1995
Date Due: February 7, 1995

To submit your answer

You will submit your answers to this assignment via email. See the instructions below.

Introduction

The Internet offers a wide variety electronic information resources. This assignment touches on three of these resources---the World Wide Web (WWW), the newsgroups, and electronic mail (email)---and on the CS 314-related information available therein.

Prerequisites

You will need access to the Internet and to a WWW browser, a newsreader, and an email application in order to complete this assignment. All four of these services are available in the Upson B7 Mac Lab, via Bear Access EZ-LINK, to those with C.I.T. NetIDs and passwords. The instructions for this assignment will be for Bear Access, but you may use a different combination of access applications---e.g., NCSA Mosaic, rn, and mail from a Unix account---if you wish.

Bear Access

In order to use Bear Access, you will need a C.I.T. NetID, a valid C.I.T. password, and two blank floppies (one for mail and one for news). Bear Access can be found on the B7 Macs under the Apple menu.

Once launched, Bear Access presents you with a menu system, from which you may access the WWW browser, Netscape, the newsreader, NewsWatcher, and the email application, Eudora. This handout contains only skeletal instructions for the use of the these applications; we recommend that you read the C.I.T. documentation on these applications if you are not familiar with them.

WWW

The WWW is an Internet hypertext resource. WWW documents may contain text, GUI forms, graphics, sound, animation, etc., as well as hypertext links to other documents on the Web. The ``web'' in ``World Wide Web'' refers to the structure implied by these hypertext links. You can jump from document to document, across machine, organizational, and geographic boundaries, by following links. If you think of the documents as nodes and the links as edges in a graph, you'll get the idea.

CS 314-related material on the Web

A fair amount of information related to CS 314 is available via the WWW from the CS 314 home page. Lecture notes, homework assignments, and course information are currently available. Videos of the lectures may be made available on the WWW in the future.

Using Netscape

Click on the World Wide Web the Bear Access top-level menu to launch Netscape. Hypertext links in documents may be displayed as blue, underlined text or as blue-outlined icons. Clicking on a hypertext link will cause the document referenced by the link to be retrieved. The title of the current WWW document is displayed in the title bar of the Netscape window (this is the ``document title from the title bar'' referred to below). The Location field gives the current URL (more on this later). The Home button may be used at any time to return you to the default document. (In the B7 Mac Lab, the default document is the CUInfo home page.) The Open button may be used to jump to an arbitrary URL. We recommend that you take a look at the Netscape handbook (select the Help -- Handbook menu item) for further instructions on how to use Netscape and for further information on the WWW.

Accessing the CS 314 home page

After Netscape has been launched, you should see the CUInfo home page. The procedure for reaching the CS 314 home page from the CUInfo home page is as follows:
Click on...                                      From document...
Other Cornell Web Servers                           CUInfo Home Page
Cornell University. Dept. of Computer Science       Other Cornell WWW Servers
Course Home Pages                                   Cornell Department of Computer Science
CS 314: Introduction to Digital...                  Cornell Course Home Pages Spring 1995
You should now be viewing the CS 314 home page. Spend some time navigating the documents linked to this page; try to get a picture of how the various documents are linked and what the overall structure is. When you've become somewhat familiar with the CS 314 page, and with Web navigation in general, answer the following questions.

1. Start from the CS 314 home page. Click on Table of Contents, then click on Generations of Computers. Click on Next (either one). What document are you now viewing? (Give the document title from the title bar.)

2. Now, navigate back to the CS 314 home page. How did you accomplish this? (Give a sequence of clicks, button presses, menu choices, etc. There are several possible answers.)

3. Finally, you should get used to searching through the Web for information whose location you do not know {\sl a priori}. Answer the following question: in which CS 314 WWW document is the acronym ``RTL'' first defined? (Give the document title from the title bar.)

URLs

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is basically an address of a WWW document. For the URLs which you'll be using in this assignment, the address is absolute (as opposed to relative); it can be used from anywhere on the Internet. ``Opening'' a URL simply means retrieving the WWW document at the address referred to by the URL; you might think of this as ``jumping'' to the document.

4. Open the URL http://www.hyperion.com/. What is the title of this document?

5. By now, you should be getting used to tracking down information on the Web. Try to answer the following question, starting from the Hyperion Web page: who was the director of the {\sl Babylon 5} epsiode, ``A Race Through Dark Places''?

Newsgroups

The newsgroups provide a sort of Internet bulletin board where messages may be posted and read by a wide variety of people with similar interests. CS 314 has a dedicated newsgroup, cornell.class.cs314, which may be used for announcements, feedback, questions of general interest, etc.

To access the CS 314 newsgroup from the B7 Macs, click on the Network News ("Usenet") menu item on the Bear Access top-level menu, then click on the NewsWatcher Help menu item and read the instructions. Configure and run NewsWatcher as specified in the instructions. Once NewsWatcher has been configured and is running, go to the Full Group List window. Scroll down through the list of newsgroups until you see cornell.class.cs314. Double-click on cornell.class.cs314. A cornell.class.cs314 window should appear, containing a list of messages (actually, a hierarchical list of authors and subjects of messages, organized by threads). Double-clicking on a message will bring up the full message, which consists of a header (the From:, To:, etc. lines above the double-line) and a body (the part below the double-line).

6. Find the message with the subject cs314 hwk1 article and date Sun, 29 Jan 1995 20:47:24 GMT. What is the body of this message? (It should be four lines of text.)

See the C.I.T. documentation for further information on the newsgroups and on NewsWatcher.

Email

The Bear Access email application, Eudora, may be accessed via the Mail menu item on the top-level Bear Access menu. Click on the Mail Help item and read the instructions there. Configure and run Eudora as specified in the instructions. Once Eudora has been configured and is running, you may send a message by selecting Message -- New Message from the menu at the top of the screen. See the C.I.T. documentation for further information on electronic mail and on Eudora.

Submitting Answers

Send an email message to cs314@cs.cornell.edu with the subject cs314 assignment 1 answers. Include the following information in your message:
  Name (Last, First):
  Cornell ID:
  Address:
  Phone:
  Grading (letter, S/U, or audit):
  College, major, and year in school:
  Proficiency (on a scale of 1-5, 1=don't know, 5=guru) in
        C:
        FORTRAN:
        BASIC:
        Pascal:
        Scheme:
        Other languages (please list):
  Computer science courses taken so far:
  Answers to questions 1-6: