On Sun, 20 Sep 1992 01:51:37 +0200 Eric Thomas said:
>On Sat, 19 Sep 1992 19:37:25 EST Murph Sewall said:
>>I typically run CMS in a window on a Macintosh. I've done so using a Mac
>>Plus with a nine  inch screen.
>
>That  is  the Internet/unix  approach  -  you  create  a problem  out
>of laziness, religious  bigotry or plain  oversight, and then claim  it
>does not exist because it  can be solved by cheap hardware  (in the US).
>I still have to see a legitimate justification for why I should have to
>open a window, start a FTP session, wait for the prompt, type a n o n y
>m o  u s (a word that was chosen for  its combined brevity and ease of
>typing),  wait for  the prompt,  type any  obscene word  containing an
>@-sign to  make the stupid server  happy, then a CD  command, then
>decide that the file has to be transferred in binary, type BINARY, then
>GET, and then get back to my business after some rodent relocation
>business.
>
>What  does this  state-of-the-art procedure  give  me as  compared to  my
>stone-age one-line command, which furthermore never needs to be restarted
>because there  is no potential for  forgetting binary mode or  losing the
>connection?
 
On the one hand, I'd argue that it's not THAT hard.  There a few
shortcuts even in the unix cryptocode and things can be "batched" with
clever use of cut & paste.  Nevertheless, your main point that the
interface is user hostile if valid.  BITNET's GET by message or mail is
LESS user hostile, but NOT friendly enough for the mass of humanity that
doesn't want to look under the hood (same reason we got rid of the choke
and the clutch pedal :)
 
Stan's right about Gopher (or Fetch, or other examples of the breed).
Clever people are at work on solutions that will make everything we've
been using seem quaint long before the millennium turns.  John Norstad,
whose a principal author of NewsWatcher--a NetNews reader, posted a
pretty good (if rambling) piece on elegance as it applies to computer
programs on one of the comp.sys. lists (I forget which one because I got
a "reprint") not long ago.
 
Stan's note points at the REAL issue--the service that is provided.  If
BITNET hopes to survive it's going to have to provide services users
find it worth keeping around for.  Somehow, I don't think the fact that
being able to put a simple GET command into email (which really is more
convenient than many busy Internet servers which either tell one to "try
again later" or are dog slow because of the load) is going to be
sufficient.  The challenge is going to be to develop user software that
makes the whole business transparent (make the "window" to the network
look and act pretty much like the one for a word processor, spreadsheet,
or database--and not dBase at that).
 
Those who have not seen Gopher should take a look.  It won't be long
before even Gopher seems like a Model-T Ford (and that will make what
most of us have been using seem like a buckboard wagon :)  As the
bandwidth gets wider (there now talking about a backbone in TERAbits per
second--for those not into the jargon, a tera is a thousand giga which
is a thousand mega ;-) and the gateways themselves become transparent
(it won't be long before the difference between the Internet and
Compuserve and UUCP will be only a matter of who gets the bill) the
opportunity to provide interfaces that are BOTH more capable AND easier
to use will grow as well.  Service providers who seize that opportunity
will be the ones left a decade or so from now (we're talking marketing
more than technology and that's something I do know a little about ;-)
 
/s Murph Sewall <[log in to unmask]>