Subject: Just a question

From: Angeles <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:04:16 -0700 (PDT)

Hello,
Can any of you help me, please?
I was trying to have a chat with a friend in Spain. He has a American
Online adresse. He talks about a certain buddy list. What is that? I dont
have such a thing! Can I have a chat per pine, telnet or Netscape?
How is it exactly?
I am new here. It would be very nice if some of you could help me.
Thanks a million,
A.B.G

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From: "Robert J. Wilshe" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 13:10:29 -0500 (CDT)

Angeles:

As ashamed as I am to admit it, I do have familiarity with America Online.
:)  America Online is not an internet service provider, they are an
online service provider.  This means that they do have access to internet
resources, but the majority of their content is proprietary (they design
it, and it's not available elsewhere).  The chat and buddy list features
your friend has are proprietary to America Online (actually they're bad
imitations of IRC the *real* internet chat), so you can't use them on the
internet.  "Talk" is a UNIX daemon (program) that allows two users to chat
in real time on their telnet terminals.  Again, AOL does not have this.  

But!  I *think* that new versions of AOL (not sure about international
versions) have a true TCP/IP stack, so you could use an IRC client to chat
with him/her in that way.  To use "talk", both you and your friend would
have to have a UNIX shell account.  

Best advide though:  get your friend to use a *real* ISP, not AOL.  Your
possibilities are ten-fold then.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions!

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robert		 chicago  illinois
joseph		 u       s       a
wilshe		 rwilshe @ ais.net
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