From: shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 94 11:55:43 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: I Like ASCII, not MIME and Other Fancy Crap
Message-ID: <199411191955.LAA20292@netcom12.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Tim wrote:

>I really do feel we're on the edge of chaos here. Every day that
>passes I get more junk mail, more MIME mail, more > 80 column mail,
>etc. Yes, the solution is for me to either filter this junk out
>or to jump out out to the bleeding edge myself.

Re-reading the above paragraph, you know that in the long tern there is
only one answer.

>But many people won't. We risk losing our lingua franca in a
>transition to chaos.

There are a lot of new tools out there. Some will survive the test of time,
others won't. But if anything, there is less chaos today than there was two
years ago. Two years ago, nobody used URLs. They typically described the
location of a file as such: "You can get the file at ftp foo.bar.com, its
in the pub/mac directory, I think it's called wonder.sit."

So you hit ^Z to get out of tin, type ncftp, type all the stuff above, hope
it is right - it probably isn't - find the file, get it, type "quit", type
sz wonder.sit, get up to fetch a cup of coffee instead of just sitting
there and staring at the screen while the file is being transfered to your
machine, drink the coffee, ten minutes later you type "fg". Back to tin.
Neato, isn't it?

Today, most posters on USENET have learned to use URLs and it has become
easier to do so, because more and more programs supports them. This is how
the above exchange works today:

I read my news with Newswatcher. Someone mentions the new hot piece of
software at ftp://foo.bar.com/pub/mac/wonder.sit. I option-click anywhere
on the URL. Newswatcher passes it to Anarchie for retrieval in the
background. I read the next post.

I say, burn all the VT52 terminals of this world to fuel the fire of progress.
Toss the 2400 bps modems in there, too. I know that few folks will feel sad
over the long overdue end of the ASCII era.

I can, of the top of my head, name five friends with computers who, after
seeing the VT100 display of a shell account, refused to have anything to do
with the Internet. "You got be joking. I am not dealing with *this*." Now
years later and after much evangelizing and MacWeb demonstrations, they are
finally begining to show interest. The dialog was always the same: "I won't
have to do any work in one of those terminal windows, will I?" -- "I
promise, you won't." -- "Good, because I hate this ASCII garbage."

It typically takes me 1-2 hours to install and configure everything on
their machines. Yes, it is true, I have spent many hundered hours obtaining
the knowlege in the first place, but I am willing to share my knowledge
with anyone who asks. As for my friends, they all have been very happy with
their new tools. None of them has so far expressed any interest in the
telnet client that I have included.

Happy netting,

-- Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.