[geeks] Writing software [was Re: Can't decide on an OS]

[Mouse]

>> Actually, I disagree with that last.  They are damaging the net in
>> that they are supporting - creating, even - the idea that
>> "everybody" does this or that, that the Web is a suitable interface
>> for anyone to anything - that the net is not horribly broken.
> It's a poor interface, but it's been getting better in many ways.

Yeah, but that's hardly difficult.  And, even better, it's still pretty
dismal at a whole lot of things (including damn near everything I care
about).

The biggest damage is the erosion of caring.  There was a time when it
was reasonable to expect the admins of some random other site to (a)
make a point of being reachable and (b) to actually care about things
like protocol nonconformance.

Now?  Now there's a company I know of (I did some work for them) that
cares about being good citizens so little they are actually risking
significant legal trouble by not bothering to set up certain
world-facing data.  (I'd rather not go into details.)

> The reliance on client-side code (Javascript) is annoying, but this
> is just the next iteration of NeWS with worse controls and better
> market acceptance.

"Just" that?!  That's quite enough to be problematic.  I don't quite
understand how people can think "here, execute this code some random
server you don't know from Adam just handed you" can _not_ be a
security issue.

> I'll point out a specific use-case where I agree with you
> wholeheartedly: web forums.  These things are awful, and they are
> universally a horrible re-implementation of netnews.

The ones I've run into tend to be more a horrible reimplementation of
mailing lists.  But, yes, they are mailing lists - or netnews - as
interfaced to by a webmailer, only usually done even worse.

See that 2012-10-31 post again: "oh yes, that's ours now, we're going
to ignore good engineering and pervert what you've built in any way we
can, as long as it concentrates money in the hands of large
corporations".  Mailing lists and netnews were done, done much better,
decades before the Web forum was invented.  Yet nobody seems to even
_realize_ that, much less do anything about it.

> I'm trying to think of what a parametric search would look like on
> Mouser or Digikey without the web, though.

I'm not sure what a "parametric search" is, so I can't do more than
speculate wildly.  I once was able to get part datasheets out of
Digikey's webpages, but last time I tried to do that - and every time
I've tried to use Mouser for anything - I've failed completely.
They've improved their world-facing interfaces to the point where they
are completely useless to me.  Worse than useless, because they lead
them to provide no alternative.

> Or, perhaps what another interface to the ACM Digital Library would
> look like.  In your view, would something like a tn3720 session be
> more useful?

Possibly.  I'm not familiar with the ACM Digital Library, either.  But,
if I had a bunch of things I wanted to turn into a "digital library",
I'd put them up for FTP with a plain text index file.  Indeed, that's
what I _did_ do - see ftp.rodents-montreal.org - except that the index
file I mentioned doesn't really exist there, though some subtrees have
one of their own.  (I also have a bozohttpd serving up the same stuff
over HTTP, though I care about that a lot less.)

> I'm not trying to be snarky.  I genuinely want to understand.

Well, there is no single thing that I would call an alternative to the
Web.  No single thing is suitable to all tasks, and that's much of the
problem with the Web: everything is getting squished into a Web mold,
regardless of how good or bad a fit it is.

Depending on the task, tn3270 might be a suitable interface.  Perhaps
telnet or ssh, if the client specifies a terminal type (basically,
tn3270 except without a virtual 3270 being Procrustean).  A glass-tty
interface might be an alternative for some things.  For yet others,
something GUI might actually be a right answer.  And then there are
some for which the rightest answer is to export a network protocol and
let clients use it how they will - perhaps provide client code for some
of the most popular cases, if they want to be really nice.  (This has
happened a little today in a few cases, though the protocol is usually
twisted and bent to use HTTP as a transport; see my blah post of
2009-09-14 - http://ftp.rodents-montreal.org/mouse/blah/ is the index
page and, in this particular case, the post itself is at
.../mouse/blah/2009-09-14-1.html.)

>>> [US government at the top of Internet governance]
>> No; that is implicit in the societal structure that is rapidly
>> giving us the Corporate State.
> [...].  I really don't know that the web has anything to do with it.

It doesn't, much.  It's simply that tendency manifesting in Internet
governance; the Web is relevant only in that it is the only aspect of
the Internet that a lot of people care about.  (See my blah post of
2010-03-15, the "CIRA incompetence" one, in particular the remark about
CIRA's apparent belief that the only reason to hold a domain name is to
run a website.)

>>> [Lesson:] You can't go back.
>> That's why this is driving me into depression.
> That lesson will do that; I've been there.  Really, though, any of us
> is too small to resist the march of time.  The only way forward is to
> embrace it or run tangent.  Standing in opposition alone will just
> erode and embitter you.

It will.  Indeed, it has.  See many of my blah posts, the ones of
2012-10-31 and 2012-11-02 in particular.

>> I'm having trouble finding that "beauty", much less finding enough
>> of it to outweigh the dross.
> In 1996, I was convinced that this web thing was just a fad.

I wasn't.  I was excited by it.

But that was before it got overrun and corrupted.  See my blah post of
2009-10-25, about how the amazing potential has been frittered away.

> Somewhere along the line, I came to the realization that I can bend
> this clumsy tool into a thing that reduces the non-creative work I
> need to do in my life.

I probably could too, if I could tolerate it.

I can't.  At least not yet.  Possibly never.  See, again, the post of
2012-10-31 and the various other posts on the same general topic.

>>>    4. I don't have to worry about an unscrupulous person
>>>       intercepting paperwork that sits unmonitored in an unlocked
>>>       box in front of my house.
>> Instead, you have to worry about a _much_ larger set of unscrupulous
>> people doing something analogous to the softcopy.  Or perhaps you
>> don't worry about that.  I hope you never get bitten by it.
> That problem exists whether or not I use the web services.
> [...S]ensitive information on public-facing computers is a problem
> that pre-dates the web.  Since there's already the danger, I might as
> well benefit from it; I can't convince the companies handling my data
> to behave better unless I can leave them and I'm a valuable enough
> customer for that to matter to them.

Or you can push up the liability to them of doing so.

Some company may well mishandle my data.  That's been true for a very
long time.  But I will _not_ give them the excuse that they had to have
it on world-facing computers in order for me to look at it.  I will
_not_ give them the opportunity to blame me, to say I must have been
careless with my password - when _they_ require me to use nothing more
secure than a reusable password!

>> I don't mind the Web being available to people who, like you, want
>> to use it.  I mind it being imposed on people who, like me, don't.
>> I mind calling a company and being forced to listen to an ad for
>> their website for fifteen seconds before it pays attention to any
>> input I give.
> It's in that company's interests for you to use the web site instead
> of the phone number.  Their costs are less, and httpd doesn't ask for
> smoke breaks.

That option is not available to them and will not be.  Yet they insist
on annoying me EVERY SINGLE CALL with those ads - in some cases,
actually making claims that are outright false when said to me.

> This isn't an evil conspiracy.  This is the market sorting itself
> out.

Not as "the market" is usually protrayed.  "The market" involves
competition.  Where is the competition?  Where are these companies'
competitors, the ones who _don't_ annoy callers with ads for their
websites?

And, no, this is not an evil conspiracy, not as the term is usually
used.  This is tyranny of the majority, which often is operationally
indistinguishable, or worse.

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