12.8  FYI
 
You can find discussions about IRC in the alt.irc newsgroup. 

"A Discussion on Computer Network Conferencing," by Darren Reed (May, 
1992), provides a theoretical background on why conferencing systems such 
as IRC are a Good Thing.  It's available through ftp at nic.ddn.mil in 
the rfc directory as rfc1324.txt. 

Every Friday, Scott Goehring posts a new list of  MUDs and related games 
and their telnet addresses in the newsgroup rec.games.mud.announce. There 
are several other mud newsgroups related to specific types of MUDs, 
including rec.games.mud.social, rec.games.mud.adventure, 
rec.games.mud.tiny, rec.games.mud.diku and rec.games.mud.lp. 

For a good overview of the impact on the Internet of the Morris Worm, 
read "Virus Highlights Need for Improved Internet Management," by the 
U.S. General Accounting Office (June, 1989).  You can get a copy via ftp 
from cert.sei.cmu.edu in the pub/virus-l/docs directory.  It's listed as 
gao_rpt. 

Clifford Stoll describes how the Internet works and how he tracked a 
group of KGB-paid German hackers through it, in "The Cuckoo's Egg: 
Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage," Doubleday (1989). 

For information on keeping your e-mail private, use anonymous FTP 
or ncftp to connect to ftp.eff.org and switch to the 
pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/Updates directory and get the file 
netupdate.003.