Point 'n' Click's Internet Pointers
#2 Point 'n' Click's Internet Pointers
#2
Point: Bauds are quite versatile. My wife keeps throwing them out when they accumulate, but I say it's better to keep a sack or two of bauds in the basement just in case they might come in handy.
Click: You're being ridiculous--once again undermining our credibility in the pediatric community.
Point: OK, OK. If you really want to know what a baud is and what bps stands for, you have to understand what a "bit" is.
Click: Right. A bit is a binary digit--either a 1 or a 0. When computers talk to each other via wires or phone lines, they send streams of bits to convey information. How many bits flow in one second is the bits-per-second (bps) rate. Faster modems transmit information at speeds of up to 28,800 bps.
Point: That's a lot of bits! You can tell how many bits per second a modem is capable of by looking at the specifications on the box. This is confusing, but here's the basic information:
ANSI Specification bps ------------------ ------ V.32 9,600 V.32bis 14,400 V.34 28,800
Click: So the fastest modem you can buy today is a V.34. What about V.fast or V.42 or V.superduperfast? and what's with all the V's anyway?
Point: The naming convention for modem speeds is arcane, but all you really need to know is in the table above. V.fast is a specification which never took hold, and V.42 refers to a type of error correction protocol. There are other confusing acronyms out there which refer to other aspects of modem technology. V.superduperfast is a figment of your imagination. Just remember to look for one of the above three labels when buying your modem. And remember the old adage about buying computer equipment: buy the fastest, biggest, newest stuff you can so you can be up to date with computer technology for three months. After three months, soething better, faster, and cheaper we be out and you will kick yourself for not waiting.
Click: So in a few months we'll have 57,600 bps modems?
Point: Probably not. 28,800 bps is about as fast as one can push bits through a conventional phone line. The bandwidth of an analog phone line has a theoretical limit which we are fast approaching. Digital phone lines, like ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) will bring greater speeds, but then our modems won't work on these kind of phone lines.
Click: Wasn't there something about a "baud" in that question?
Point: Yup--a baud is a detectable signal change, like a change from 0 to 5 volts on a wire or a change of tone on a phone line. Modems transmit information by signal changes. Each change may represent more than one bit of information. For instance, a modem might recognize four different tones, each of which represents the binary numbers 00, 01, 10, and 11, respectively. If one bit is encoded with each signal change, then baud rate is equal to the bits per second. If two bits are encoded for each signal change, then a 2400 baud modem will transmit at 4800 bps, get it?
Click: Well that's as clear as mud.
Point: Exactly. we don't usually speak in terms of baud any more, simply because it's confusing. Better to speak in terms of bps, since that's the important number. But to re-introduce confusion, we have the V.this and V.that I described earlier. Hey, the computer people need some kind of job security, right?
Dear Point 'n' Click:My whiz-kid neice told me to aim my gopher at this Internet address and I'd be able to download some cool stuff. I'm not sure I have a gopher, and if I did, I'm not even sure which end of it to aim. Help me out here so I don't look like such an idiot to the eleven-year old.
Point: Ah, nothing like a child to make us feel foolish.
Click: Nothing like a child with Internet access to make us fell really foolish.
Point: A gopher is a tunneling rodent which ...
Click: Not that kind of gopher. He means the Internet gopher.
Point: I knew that. Gopher is a method of accessing information on the Internet by means of hierarchical menus. One uses a gopher program (a "client" program) to connect to a gopher site (a "server") to access information using the gopher protocol. One must have the site of a server in mind, usually, to make any use of gopher. You can "aim" your gopher client at a gopher server by specifying an address, like gopher.wustl.edu. Exactly how you do this depends on your particular operating systems and software. If you have a text-based terminal, you might just type:
gopher gopher.wustl.edu
and hit return to connect to the site called "gopher.wustl.edu.".
Click: Oh boy--let's try it.
Point: OK, here's what the screen looks like after I type the line above. I can use my arrow keys to go up and down this list. When I find something I like, I hit return to enter it. Let's navigate to the item called "Phone books at other institutions," and then pick "North America" from the subsequent screen.
Root gopher server: gopher.wustl.eduNow we have a list of Internet "white pages" at various places. If you can find the institution on this list, chances are you can find someone's Internet address or phone number. Just navigate to the right institution, hit return, and follow the instructions to the search screen where you will be able to enter the name of the person you are looking for.--> 1. Washington University in St. Louis Press Releases/ 2. Washington University On-Line Help 3. Departmental Information Servers/ 4. Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica/ 5. Washington University FTP Archives/ 6. Washington University FTP Archives 7. Olin Library's Archives 8. Washington University Phone Book
9. Class listings and other Course information/ 10. Phone books at other institutions/ 11. Weather Forecast for St Louis, MO. 12. Selected Gopher servers at other institutions/ 13. Other Gopher and Information Servers/ Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/
Click: So you *can* find someone on the Internet.
Point: That's just one way. More on that later. Another way to get at a gopher site is to use a World Wide Web browser like Netscape or Mosaic. Enter the URL:
gopher://gopher.wustl.edu
to do what we just did. The World Wide Web allows you to use gopher sites as well as World wide Web sites. Neat, huh?
Cliniweb, which is an index of 4200 medical sites organized by Medical Subject Heading (like MEDLINE) by the good folks at Oregon Health Sciences University: http://www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/
Medical Matrix, the old standby, is new and expanded, especially an effort to use MeSH to categorize the information: http://www.kumc.edu/mmatrix
Ohio Valley CHIN: a community health information network devoted largely to consumer information. The group has set up terminals in public libraries so that folks without other computer access can reach internet information. Lots of pamphlets from CDC etc. They also have an "ask an expert" section. The only expert available is a pharmacist, but the idea is to include some primary care types. The intended service area includes parts of Appalachia and the Ozarks. http://www.ovchin.uc.edu.
There is a demonstration of using the web to transfer medical records from Columbia Universty: http://www.cpmc.columbia.edu/cisdemo.
And there is a very interesting expansion of the Visible Human Project. Not only are the sample images available, but there are also samples from the various derivitive projects. One that works particularly well is the University of Pennsylvania radiology project that labels structures in sagital and cross section MRI images of the knee, and gives information about the structure. Best to start at the main site for the Visibile Human Project and follow the links they have established: http://www.nlm.hig.gov/extramural_research.dir/visible_human.html.
*Doug Stetson, MD, FAAP, and Andy Spooner, MD, Candidate FAAP