Some computers have anonymous accounts set up.
These act as a common repository usually allowing public access. It is possible to start ftp from your own computer without connecting to another, simply by typing ftp . If you start ftp this way, then in order to connect to a remote machine you must type o address , where address is the machines Internet address. The 'o' stands for 'open connection'. Once you are connected to the remote machine, to show a listing of its files and directories, type ls.