This is more of a general question than a poll, but I just had to ask.
I finished reading an article, and it got me thinking. I remember back in college that ‘the Web’ was in it’s infancy (if not it’s zygote phase), but there were multiple client software packages that one could use to surf the Internet.
Well, now that the Web has basically exploded and made things more or less . . . well, ‘Web-based’, I’m curious if anyone uses those old programs anymore.
Those things like “Gopher” or “Archie” programs. Or if anyone’s using “Lynx” to surf.
Or any other number of programs that were around circa 1995 or so. . .
Tripler
Yes, I’m old enough to remember “Pine” as my main e-mail program.
I’d go back to Pine in a minute! (Of course, part of the attraction is the nice recursive name: “Pine is not ELM!” Elm was an even earlier mail program.)
I’ve also used all three of the others you mention, but AFAIK they’re all long gone, unless enthusiasts are keeping a few sit widelyes alive for historical interest. I think the only protocols still in use are SMTP for mail and ftp for file transfer, though I think ftp showed up with big security problems a while back.
Now I’ll have to go look things up and see what’s available.
AFAIK, Lynx still has popularity among the vision-impaired as there are text-to-speech routines that work well with it. Of course, now that you can point at anything in Windows XP and have the Narrator speak it, it’s not quite so important. Compatability with Lynx is also a “benchmark” in designing fully accessible websites.
Gopher and Archie? Err, well I’ve not heard reference to these in quite a while, other than a few months ago as a question on Jeopardy.
You know, I completely forgot about these ‘functions’. While I’m not surprised IRC is still around in various forms, I am surprised that the Usenet is. . .
One would have thought Google and Yahoo muscled their way into that spectrum.
Actually Google has Google Groups which is a web archive/interface for UseNet. They took over when the DejaNews usenet archive went under. Usenet is also popular for binaries, as explained in this recent Wired article.
Lynx isn’t particularly old - I don’t remember using it before Mosaic became popular. It’s still useful as a command-line driven web client, e.g. for use in a shell script.
Most sysadmins ban Telnet these days. It’s been replaced by ssh.
FTP is still widely used. A lot of the “click here to download this file” links are actually FTP links.
Now I’m wondering if there are any Internet BBS sites still operational… (Sites accessed by Telnet, that is).
(p.s. I’m old enough to remembe using Elm, and thinking of Pine users as newbies.)
Does Lynx really belong with Gopher or Archie though? I mean, it’s a web browser that uses HTTP… don’t Gopher and Archie use their own protocols? Archie was basically a program for accessing databases of available FTP files. What was another one around at the time… WAIS?
Because of spam, e-mail address harvesting, and trolls that can’t be stopped, use of Usenet for discussion has declined sharply since the mid-1990s. As some old-timers call it, it’s “the endless September.” The rise of decent message board software probably didn’t help. There are still some groups that are very active, and a few where small, core groups of regulars have been fighting decade-old flamewars. The binary groups are still going strong, though.
Checking through the logs of my Web site, there are still a few that visit with Lynx, NetPositive (BeOS), and Netscape 2 or 3.
There used to be an Internet service called WAIS, which stood for “Wide Area Information System.” WAIS was supposed to be the equivalent of a combination of Google and the Web; you would enter a search term, and relevant documents would be found in dedicated databases online. WAIS is pretty much dead.
Anyone remember “talk,” the pre-IM messaging system?
Oh yes, I remember talk. I also remember using a very similar program called phone on BITnet.
I still use Pine to read and send e-mail. It’s still supported, in fact a new version came out now long ago. And I read Usenet news with a GNU Emacs based newsreader.
Usenet is alive and well, especially if you consider binaries. The volume of binary traffic is unbelievable. Lots of DVDs are now being posted. My ISP recently went from an unrestricted plan to a highly restricted Giganews plan. Ugh. I recently blew two months quota (or so they say-I think they are counting headers even though they aren’t supposed to) and I can’t even read the discussion groups.
I use lynx on occasion.
Now for a real obscure one: I even run an FSP server and connect using an FSP client remotely. This allows me to transfer files remotely when I’m on the road without having to worry about my ISP blocking things. They’ve never heard of FSP.
I’ve also run a Nethack-telnet server a few time for giggles.
Under Unix, I use Berkeley “mail”. Even do single line email commands using StdIn redirection. Pine? Elm? Wimps.
I’ve been running a “finger” server for years and no one has tried to break in using it. Crackers go after the common stuff I guess.
As of a few years ago when I last used PINE, the documentation claimed that the acronym was “Program for Internet News and E-mail”. But every place other than the documentation itself, I’ve heard the recursive one. Hard to sa which to trust, here.
As flodnak mentioned, Pine is still being developed at the University of Washington where it was created, and is still used extensively by the staff and students.
About three years ago while I was still working at one of UW’s computer labs, I knew an ancient faculty member in the medical research department who typed all her documents using Pico, Pine’s composer. Since it never failed her, she never bothered to learn how to use MS Word, or any other WYSIWYG program for that matter.
It was funny watching an awkward mouse-masher melting into her groove once she was able to open up a terminal. She was a self-described “computer illiterate” person who was more at home with Unix/bash than with Windows or Macs.
Actually, that’s what I thought too until I read Laurence Lundblade’s clarification on the topic.
For my part, I remember back in high school (93-94) when my friends and I used to dail into UCLID, University of Cincinnati’s Online Catalog, searched “outside catalogs”, gophered to the Mother Gopher at the University of Minnesota, and then connected to any of the dozens of MUDs listed. Half-elf Rangers kick ass!
Lynx, being just another browser, albeit one without pictures, shouldn’t count, but still, I use it. When I want to test out a modem, I use the terminal emulator to call one of these numbers, and vola! I am surfing the text only web, for free. No ISP needed.
Oh, well, if we’re going to be branching off to that, I still use pico for all of my programming. With TextEdit or its ilk, you never know when it’s going to stick in funny endline characters or something that’ll prevent your code from compiling, and I’m too lazy/frugal to go out and get a dedicated code editor. But pico is always available and it’s free.
And I’m a computer geek who’s more at home with Unix and bash than Windows or Mac. It takes all kinds, I guess.
Usenet never died. Some people moved to the web and some groups died because of that, but there are still plenty of active groups in the world. comp.lang.c and alt.fan.cecil-adams are two of the many active non-binary groups.
Gopherspace, however, is tiny. There is a small core of machines that make up the current gopherspace, but I don’t think any more are coming on-line. quux.org is one of the few remaining sites. Wiretap had a gopher service but I can’t find it now.
FTP never went away. It is still used to host and transfer files. It seems to blend very well with the web, and most people don’t know it still exists.
Lynx is nice enough. Screenreader programs love it, as do people who don’t want to load a graphical system just to read the latest news. (Google has a text-centric version of Google News.) Links is a text-based browser with table support and w3m will display images in an xterm or framebuffer, in addition to being willing to take HTML from a pipe instead of a webpage. (In addition, w3m will play nice with Emacs.)
My favorite old school Internet service that I still use is Weather Underground’s telnet service (telnet rainmaker.wunderground.com). It used to be run off a server at the University of Michigan back in the day.
I still read Usenet using good old fashioned trn as well.