Newsgroups. Newsgroups. Newsgroups. I can't see the Internet forest for all these fercockteh newsgroup trees!
What I'm trying to do -- now that I've finally gained access to the superhyped Superhighway of Information -- is find the University of Cairo. Why, I hear you cry? Because, creature of pop culture that I am, that's what they do in the phone company commercial, where this amusing if slightly obnoxious fellow tries making conversation with this pretty ice princess who's "surfing the Internet" to find information about Queen Nefertiti from the University of Cairo archives for a book she's editing. Why else?
But who knows from the University of Cairo? All I can see is newsgroups, newsgroups, newsgroups! alt-dot-journalism-dot-new-media. alt-dot-democrats-dot-clinton. alt-dot-fan-dot-star trek. alt-dot-sex-dot-everything. All I want to do is find the blasted University of Cairo -- because the TV tells me it's cool -- but I'm inundated, swamped, overwhelmed with all these newsgroups. What the heck are they and why are they there? And how can I get to where I'm going?
Dear Person Wandering around Lists of Newsgroups:
Newsgroups are simply forums where people can post questions and start discussions about various topics. They're like a message board where messages pile up, get responses stapled to them, and eventually get outdated and get taken down. If you're looking for archives of information, you're looking in the wrong place!
Sounds to me as though you need to look for an FTP or Web server at the University of Cairo. These servers will give you anonymous access to any information which U.C. has bothered to archive and make public. Now, I've no idea about U.C.'s online status, but I can point you to an index and a search program you can use to find out.
1. Yahoo! No, it's not that I'm particularly excited
about it, it's the name of the database. Yahoo is maintained at Stanford
University in California and lists more than 31,000 distinct resources
on the World-Wide Web. If the University of Cairo has a Web server,
the maintainers have probably registered with Yahoo, and you'll
be home free, since the Web interface will be much easier to use
than the FTP alternative. To get to Yahoo, point your Web browser
at http://www.yahoo.com/
(read your Web client's help information on how to "open location" or "open
URL"). Everything's indexed by subject.
2. Lycos Searching. This monster index of Web locations
lets you configure a search to meet your specific needs. Located
at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA), Lycos is
a busy but effective search application for finding what you want
in the chaos known as the Web. The Lycos URL is
http://lycos.cs.cmu.edu/ and may be a little slow since
it's so popular.
Both of these indexes provide links to other libraries and search programs, so you can spend, oh, months looking for just what you want. But here's what I found when I tried:
Yahoo lists one link to a machine named "auc-nt1.eun.eg,"
which I suspect is in Egypt, since I can't think of any other
country whose name could be abbreviated to "eg." However,
the machine is very slow and I lost patience waiting for it.
Lycos, on the other hand, tells me that, of the over 2 million
unique URL's in the database, 65378 contain at least one of the
terms "cairo university." However, most of them were
references to the U.N. Population Conference in Cairo last September.
Others were hits on "university."
My search seemed unsuccessful until I dug further into the Yahoo
listing. I tried one link that called itself a guide to all the
ancient Egypt links on the Internet. That's where I found the
correct URL for that Web server in Egypt,
http://auc-amer.eun.eg/ -- but there's still no mention of a
University of Cairo Web server anywhere.
The conclusion: I suspect you need to watch less television until you can learn how to take commercials with a bit more salt! I don't think the University of Cairo has a public archive of information available yet. The commercial was just hyping the possibilities of the Internet. While being able to search U.C.'s machines for information on Queen Nefertiti sounds like the ultimate way of going to the source for what you need, I have to conclude that the advertisers just made it up. However, you can still go to Yahoo or Lycos and search for other Egyptology links. And if you still can't find what you're looking for, you can use Yahoo or Lycos to find other indexes and libraries of stuff available on the Web.
In the meantime, you can read the newsgroups sci.archaeology and alt.culture.egyptian.
By the way, you can send questions to the Internet Guru, too! Just send e-mail to <webmaster@medio.com> and indicate that your question is for the Guru.
Copyright 1995 by M. L. Grant
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