Hi all, In recent weeks I've noticed an interesting phenomenon on our large and volatile university shared drive (a "scratch" drive accessible to all faculty and students, which is wiped clean once a week). Students are using folder names and file names as public announcements. For example, a student might put a folder on the scratch drive called "Last Samurai here plz", asking any student who has the film to upload it to there for her to copy. There's one today called "plzzzz we need the new version of adobe photoshop". There's also a folder called "movies", containing (among other things) a text file with the following name: "can u put ur requests in this (Text document and not folders) cuz we dont know which folder contains something or not and have to enter each ONE.txt" People also use the drive for backing up their data for short periods (e.g. for transfer between computers); last week I found a folder on the scratch drive called "Please don't touch my documents". Of course I opened it :-) and found just one subfolder called "I'm warning you". Opening that I got a single subsubfolder called "Shame on you", and within that was one called "everything", which contained the student's data. Do institutions in other parts of the world have a drive like this? Do similar things happen there? David Palfreyman Dubai :-D
well it might be part of the reason why, but there are innumerable other reasons to avoid shared public folders. there is actually quite a history surrounding these things in computing, you can likely find evidence of it on any multi-user system. On Dec 12, 2004, at 11:51 AM, elijah wright wrote:
Do institutions in other parts of the world have a drive like this? Do similar things happen there?
not anymore, and this is exactly why.
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Students are using folder names and file names as public announcements. For example, a student might put a folder on the scratch drive called "Last Samurai here plz", asking any student who has the film to upload it to there for her to copy. There's one today called "plzzzz we need the new version of adobe photoshop". There's also a folder called "movies", containing (among other things) a text file with the following name: "can u put ur requests in this (Text document and not folders) cuz we dont know which folder contains something or not and have to enter each ONE.txt"
This is (or was) common practice on filesharing networks - not the p2p kind, but the kinds where you use a client to log onto a network of servers, some of which will let you in for free, others which only let you in if you type in the fifth word of the twentieth line of a website you only get to after viewing a long ad for porn, some which will let you in but won't let you download any warez unless you upload some first, and yet others which only let members or perhaps even friends log in. Of course these servers are there for you to "backup" your applications, music and movies, not for piracy. Though I think the clients often permit chat, there's not much opportunity for chatting - so communication between users and administrative information is all given through the file system. I assume gopher used to work like this before the web, though I never tried it? Jill
This is (or was) common practice on filesharing networks - not the p2p kind, but the kinds where you use a client to log onto a network of servers, some of which will let you in for free, others which only let you in if you type in the fifth word of the twentieth line of a website you only get to after viewing a long ad for porn, some which will let you in but won't let you download any warez unless you upload some first, and yet others which only let members or perhaps even friends log
sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend?
Though I think the clients often permit chat, there's not much opportunity for chatting - so communication between users and administrative information is all given through the file system.
in the case of IRC-driven Fserves, sure, you can chat. In the case of FTP, not.
I assume gopher used to work like this before the web, though I never tried it?
As a pre-web gopher user, I never had the sense that gopher was tremendously different than the web. That might just be a symptom of the way that I used gopher, though. Gopher was (typically) pretty directory- and hierarchy-oriented. I think there are some reasonable analogies to be drawn, here, yes. Gopher, Veronica, and Archie were all good, useful tools. --elijah
On Dec 12, 2004, at 4:16 PM, elijah wright wrote:
This is (or was) common practice on filesharing networks - not the p2p kind, but the kinds where you use a client to log onto a network of servers, some of which will let you in for free, others which only let you in if you type in the fifth word of the twentieth line of a website you only get to after viewing a long ad for porn, some which will let you in but won't let you download any warez unless you upload some first, and yet others which only let members or perhaps even friends log
sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend?
I as thinking bbs's Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments
only get to after viewing a long ad for porn, some which will let you in but won't let you download any warez unless you upload some first, and yet others which only let members or perhaps even friends log
sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend?
I as thinking bbs's
Fido and kin?
On Dec 12, 2004, at 4:31 PM, elijah wright wrote:
only get to after viewing a long ad for porn, some which will let you in but won't let you download any warez unless you upload some first, and yet others which only let members or perhaps even friends log sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend?
I as thinking bbs's
Fido and kin?
dial-up, such as citadel, telegard, etc. http://bbsfiles.com/bbssoftware.html and http://www.textfiles.com/directory.html
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sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend?
I as thinking bbs's
Fido and kin?
dial-up, such as citadel, telegard, etc. http://bbsfiles.com/bbssoftware.html and http://www.textfiles.com/directory.html
do you happen to remember what the name of the bbs-to-bbs [inter-fidonet-node] file transfer mechanism was? i'm drawing a blank, here. i used to know this stuff :) citadel i disliked. i used lots of telegard, and then later renegade and searchlight, and even later "wildcat", bbses. we even wrote one, at one point. *embarassed* --elijah
I think it was called 'file transfer' on most menus. On Dec 12, 2004, at 4:41 PM, elijah wright wrote:
sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend? I as thinking bbs's Fido and kin?
dial-up, such as citadel, telegard, etc. http://bbsfiles.com/bbssoftware.html and http://www.textfiles.com/directory.html
do you happen to remember what the name of the bbs-to-bbs [inter-fidonet-node] file transfer mechanism was? i'm drawing a blank, here. i used to know this stuff :)
citadel i disliked. i used lots of telegard, and then later renegade and searchlight, and even later "wildcat", bbses. we even wrote one, at one point. *embarassed*
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I think it was called 'file transfer' on most menus.
answering my own question - the fidonet inter-bbs file transfers were called "freqs" (freaks) -- for "file request".
do you happen to remember what the name of the bbs-to-bbs [inter-fidonet-node] file transfer mechanism was? i'm drawing a blank, here. i used to know this stuff :)
On Sun, 12 Dec 2004, elijah wright wrote:
Fido and kin?
Actually, Fidonet isn't a bad analogy at all. re: Gopher - that was the protocol; Veronica and Jughead were search engines. Archie was a search engine for ftp sites, making it a bit more related. Some of this stuff still functions. - Alan http://www.asondheim.org/ WVU 2004 projects: http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/ http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
This is (or was) common practice on filesharing networks - not the p2p kind, but the kinds where you use a client to log onto a network of servers, some of which will let you in for free, others which only let you in if you type in the fifth word of the twentieth line of a website you only get to after viewing a long ad for porn, some which will let you in but won't let you download any warez unless you upload some first, and yet others which only let members or perhaps even friends log
sounds to me like you're talking about a melange of IRC DCC Fserves and 0-day warez FTP sites. which, or both, did you intend?
I as thinking bbs's
No, actually I was thinking of the kind of software people use to, uh, share their "backups" of games, movies and other software. Hotline and Carracho are too popular clients for the Mac. Perhaps this is a kind of FTP, I don't really know enough about it to say. They're still active, though I think p2p systems like Kazaa and Limewire and BitTorrent (which works differently) are more popular because it's so much easier to search them and everything's open. My understanding is that the servers you get access to through Hotline and Carracho are often more "elite" - if you've got the passwords and get in with the right people, this is where you get freshly-cracked warez first. One of our MA students wrote a fascinating thesis on software pirate a couple of years ago. It's a very complex and nuanced realm, and I may well be misrepresenting things a little here due to lack of understanding. I assume the file naming structure is common to many of these kinds of servers. [Sorry about the late answer, btw] Jill Dr Jill Walker, Dept of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen http://huminf.uib.no/~jill
On Sun, 12 Dec 2004, Jill Walker wrote:
I assume gopher used to work like this before the web, though I never tried it?
Jill
Not really. Gopher was menu-driven and hierarchical; it used fixed protocols. There were also things like Scott Yanoff's list - which was a compilation of everything available, pretty much, early on - that did seem to be more of a group effort. But that just sent you to other sites. Alan http://www.asondheim.org/ WVU 2004 projects: http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/ http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
David and others, don't know about folder and file names as direct speech, but I had two associations: 1. Comments in del.icio.us used for a conversation - http://del.icio.us/url/d68ad90c9c8c03c1939404e6e9b1a25f 2. IM nicknames as messages. Particular group of my MSN friends changes their display names according to their mood or events in life. Right now one of them says "Twente! got milk!", I guess indicating that the author who is supposed to be in Mexico is in Twente, Netherlands (he is offline, so can't check :) Funny how people use everything to communicate :))) Lilia
participants (6)
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Alan Sondheim -
David Palfreyman -
elijah wright -
jeremy hunsinger -
Jill Walker -
Lilia Efimova