From: Sierra On-Line <webmaster@sierra.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 23:19:42 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Sierra On-Line FAQ
Message-ID: <199704130619.XAA09452@cerberus.sierra.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Thanks for visiting SierraWeb! This message contains important
information regarding your subscription, so we recommend that you
keep a copy for future reference. In particular, you will need to
know your username and password to access certain features of our
web site:

    USERNAME: cypherpunks
    PASSWORD: cypherpunks

We can't change your password or look up your existing information,
so if you lose your password, you'll have to re-apply under a
different name.

The rest of this message contains an introduction to our site and
answers to frequently asked questions. Thanks again for visiting
SierraWeb!

               - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
Questions!  When you have a web site, you tend to hear the 
same questions from a lot of different people.  And so your 
friendly webfolks at Sierra put together a list of questions 
that we hear on a regular basis, complete with the answers 
that we've typed so many times that we see them in our sleep.  
And we call it:

THE SIERRAWEB FAQ (that's Frequently Asked Questions, not 
                   Frantic About Queensryche.  Read on!)

Q:  Okay, I've managed to live this long without logging onto 
    your really cool web site, but I just can't take it any more!  
    How do I log on?

A:  Well, first you're going to have to go there.  The SierraWeb 
    address is:

          http://www.sierra.com/

    This will take you to our main menu page.  From this page, 
    you can register to be a member of our site (which we'd 
    probably like to call the Sierra Club, except that the 
    name's already taken, and they don't do computer games).  
    Click on Join to register, and you'll be asked to choose a 
    user name and password, and write them down somewhere where 
    the dog won't chew `em up.

Q:  I've spent the last six months in a freak time warp/in my 
    aunt's house in Pittsburgh/in a pit/writing my thesis/on 
    an archaeological expedition to Egypt/trying to solve the 
    Chinese Checkers puzzle in Shivers, and in the meanwhile 
    I've forgotten my username or password.  Can you tell me 
    what it is?

A:  Nope! We have no way to tell what your password or user 
    name is. If you've forgotten yours, it's time to pick a 
    new one. Just fill out the registration form again, this
    time choosing a different username and password.

Q:  You've got enough pages on your web site to keep Victor Hugo
    happy (cultural reference, here, folks ... French author, 
    wrote Les Miserables, you could get a hernia lifting the 
    unabridged version). So how am I supposed to find all the 
    info I want about a specific product without having to dig
    through all those pages?

A:  You're in luck. The Search feature of our site will allow 
    you to go to just the topics you're interested in and 
    skip the rest, like picking through the dessert buffet and
    selecting only the stuff that has jell-o in it. So if you
    only like baseball simulations, or low-fat recipe programs,
    or computer games with robots in them, all you need to do is
    click on Search (always found at the bottom right-hand corner 
    of each page), and type in the word you're looking for. This
    will provide you with a list of all the places on our site
    that your subject is mentioned.  Look through the list, click
    on anything that looks interesting, and it'll take you there!

Q:  Okay, so I've looked through 97 different pages on your site,
    downloaded 8 demos and enough screenshots to fill a bucket of
    zip cartridges, talked for three hours with the folks in the
    Chat rooms, and, frankly, my brain is fried and I really don't
    want to hit "<- Back" about 183 times to get back to the 
    index page.  Isn't there an easier way?

A:  Yep. At the bottom of each page is a "Home" button. Click it.

Q:  I clicked to download a file, and it gave me an error message
    which said, "FTP anonymous access denied".  What's up with 
    that?  I wasn't trying to be anonymous.  Doesn't your system
    recognize me any more?  This is starting to sound like an 
    episode of "Nowhere Man"!

A:  Don't worry about it.  It just means that the file you want
    can't be downloaded from the server at the moment.  Our 
    server is usually busier than a colony of ants at a Fourth 
    of July picnic, so it may take several tries to get a file.
    Just try your download again later.