Subj : Re: Computers
To   : MIKE POWELL
From : tenser
Date : Sun Jul 21 2024 12:53:06

On 20 Jul 2024 at 10:08a, MIKE POWELL pondered and said...
 
 MP> ³ We had that before the web; people ran public anonymous FTP
 MP> ³ servers running at many, if not most, sites well before the
 MP> ³ web was a thing.  It was common to create directories for
 MP> ³ users so that they could drop things into that part of the
 MP> ³ filesystem exposed to anon FTP; lots of stuff got shared that way.
 MP> ÀÄ[T=>N]
 MP>  
 MP> At the time, that was quite useful.  I believe I would still prefer it to
 MP> what we have now.
 MP>  
 MP> I can remember being logged on to a dumb terminal at university, ftping
 MP> to a site from my uni account, downloading a file to my account, and then
 MP> later downloading from my account to my PC when I was home.

Yup.  I was running Unix at home, so I just slip'ed in
and ran FTP from my home computer, or occasionally I'd
use kermit or `sz`.  I still use xmodem almost daily, to
load kernels onto development machines over a UART.

 MP> Found some utilities for the BBS that way, which was cheaper than the
 MP> long distance dial-up it would have required otherwise.  I also remember
 MP> needing to UUdecode some binaries before I could unarchive and use them.

I count the author of uudecode as a friend.  :-)  She
makes a credible claim that this was the first form of
"email attachment".

Even FidoNet was more or less dependent on the Internet
ca 1991 for transferring data between Europe and North
America.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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