shell accounts [was RE: strangest systems I've sent email from]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2016, Tony Aiuto wrote: Okay, well you are entitled to your view, just like the rest of us, obviously. However, a bit less caviler condescension might lubricate the discussion more effectively. I don't run a "full suite of servers". I run an SGI Challenge S that runs on minimal power (about 14-30W most of the time, thus sayeth my Kill-a-watt meter). It's the only system in my entire constellation of systems that stays on all the time. At my electricity rates, it costs me about four to eight dollars a year. So, it's not like it requires a full rack of mainframes spinning the meter and burning a hole in my pocket. It's likely _less_ than I'd pay to get decent hosted + managed version of the same service. I use free dyndns so I don't even pay a NIC. I guess I could hook up an old AMD Geode board or use a RPI+ or something and lower my costs a bit more. I don't trust corporations. Most of them are crooked as a dog's hind leg and I have no doubt they'd do _anything_ with my data if it made them a dollar (and that despite whatever they'd said or agreed to in the past). I _know_ where *my* backups are and when they were last taken. I don't have to depend that the low-paid foreigners working for some hosted version of the service are actually rotating those tapes out of the silo etc... I've worked for these people all my life (dirty corporations) and I know how the sausage is made, unfortunately. Cool, but that's definitely just your personal preference based on your own style, not some immutable logic which failed to make itself apparent to me in the same epiphany you experienced. If someone else gets a kick out of running an old application, what is the harm in that? I respectfully disagree. Creativity and problem solving are the essence of all engineering, in my opinion. The tradeoffs you mention are simple considerations that factor into a constellation of variables leading to a finished effort. Again, that's your style and your preference. I have vision problems. I often read pages in elinks (I dislike lynx) for the purpose of having strict control over the fonts without having to create CSS, faster load times, exclusion of advertisements, availability over text-only connections such as ssh or telnet for testing sites from alternate locations, and finally so I can focus on the content to the exclusion of any surrounding graphics. That's just a few of many reasons folks use text browsers. That's not at all what I'm thinking when I do it (regularly). If they did write it on a cave wall they might have a prayer of someone finding it 10,000 years from now. They will likely store them on digital media that will be worthless in less than 100 years if some corporate dirtbag doesn't deign to store them on their $$$-only server. If it's "cloud" storage, then it'd go away as soon as they quit paying. If it was CDROM, Floppy, HDD etc.. it'll degrade. So, to extend your analogy, perhaps the Archaeologist should consider using a medium that might see their work survive to be meaningful far into the future. That might be a MOdisc or it might be a clay tablet. One size does not fit all when humans are involved since they all have different needs and preferences. The reason we know more about the Babylonians versus some much newer literate cultures is that they wrote on stone (clay) tablets. Laugh all you want (privately, please) at the "luddites" but it worked for them, and continues to do so. Frankly, I find your advice condescending and bereft of merit. I disagree that is was what we were doing in our discussion. "Best" != Newest. I can ssh into my place from anywhere and read my mail faster than using webmail (no contest, there are no graphics, and ssh keys get me in hyper-fast). What's best for you isn't always going to best for me or others and visa-versa. At best, it misses your point from your perspective. You seem to be completely dismissing and marginalizing folks who have some categorically bulletproof reasoning to run older applications that you don't seem to have considered at all. One of those reasons is "some people think it's fun" and that's totally valid, too. Another (more common) reason is that it's what they know. My father-in-law built a reproduction of a clock from the 1600's and he used an _ancient_ version of IBM CAD for DOS to design various parts since that's what he knew best and he already had an interface built between IBM CAD and his milling machine. It turned out wonderful and there wasn't any good reason why I should have stopped marveling at the work he did to harangue him to "upgrade" to AutoCAD. The _results_ matter far more than the tools, in my opinion. The preferences of the people using the tools, matters, too. There is also the fact that some folks *like* using tools that might actually be slower or less effective. I do woodworking 100% with hand tools. It's MUCH slower than using power tools and often the results are almost always less precise and sloppier than what a C&C rig could give me. I could care less. I do it because it relaxes me and focuses my mind. Which has little or no bearing on any of your assertions. It's also condescending which is counterproductive to moving a discussion toward a meaningful destination. I believe you are wrong, on both points, sir. It's completely historically accurate since they are the exact digital duplicates (or originals) running in many cases on the exact hardware. How is that inaccurate in the slightest way besides the fact that it's not 1990 ? Your second point that it's not useful leaves me stunned at the factual bankruptcy of the statement. Do you have any idea how much "legacy" tech is still out there doing both trivial and critical jobs? Things that you depend on every day like power and water are most likely operated in large part on "historical" applications. I won't bother making a list, since I doubt the list-server is going to accept a 100MB email. Did you know that George RR Martin writes all his books using a DOS machine running Wordstar? Do you think he'd have turned out better work fighting the paper clip in MS Word ? Will you eschew his work since he used a not "useful" application to create it ? -Swift