[TUHS] FYI: Internet Old Farts Club

[Grant Taylor]

On 1/29/22 1:48 AM, Andy Kosela wrote:
> I can speak only for myself, but I love that TUHS/COFF mailing lists 
> are still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way.

Usenet is still a thing that I use daily.

> I hate all those modern web 2.0 technologies with extremely bloated js 
> stacks which you can only use if you have the latest version of Chrome. 
I too dislike what the Web 2.0 world has turned into.

I believe that it's possible for web pages to by dynamic via AJAX 
without all the bloat.  Sadly this isn't done.

> I am still using old Atari DOS, Amiga Workbench, MS-DOS/Win9x/WinXP 
> and of course Linux/FreeBSD.

:-)

> This is probably one of the last places on the Internet that is 
> still preserving one of its core ideas in the 80s/90s -- plain 
> text communication.  It has been slowly dying in the last 15 years. 
> Text based Internet of the 80s and 90s has slowly been replaced by 
> binary protocols and image based interaction with a computer.

Usenet.

> I still just love using text based protocols and command line and 
> read it on a real CRT monitor in full screen text mode.  We lost 
> something when the world moved on.

I used to have similar thoughts.  Then I realized that things like 
OpenSSL's s_client and curl allow interaction with encrypted and other 
protocols.  So, that got me to questioning "what is the command line" 
(UI / UX) really?

Does OpenSSL's s_client (Secure / TLS) client provide a textual 
interface to TLS encrypted servers?  Yes it does.  Does it count as 
"command line"?  I think so.

So, what if there was a different command line utility that allowed 
similar interface with HTTP2 / QUIC connections.  Would that mean that 
they are similarly CLI?  I think so.

Extrapolating out even further, does it actually matter that the bits on 
the wire are ASCII and / or unencrypted if I have a UI / UX that is akin 
to a Network Virtual Terminal interface (e.g. telnet, OpenSSL's 
s_client, etc.)?  Or does the client provide an abstraction to fulfill 
my CLI desires?  I think that it probably would.

I agree completely that HTTPS is decidedly different on the wire than 
venerable HTTP which I can communicate with using telnet (et al.).

However, the /telnet/ *client* is still there and being used.  So when 
you back up and look at what that /client/ does in providing an 
abstraction between the end user and the underlying / backing protocol, 
it turns out that the underlying / backing protocol is less important.

> So please do not go anywhere....

I'm not planing on discontinuing using mailing lists or Usenet any time 
soon.  Despite the fact that they have migrated from unencrypted to 
encrypted communications.  Even my MUA / NUA is using encrypted 
connections to the servers.  But /my/ /personal/ /interaction/ with my 
MUA / NUA hasn't changed.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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