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Groups > comp.infosystems.www.misc > #271
| From | Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.infosystems.www.misc |
| Subject | [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned |
| Date | 2025-08-14 12:55 +0000 |
| Organization | Dbus-free station. |
| Message-ID | <ii6tqUtTe0Vi-Fnh@violet.siamics.net> (permalink) |
| References | (11 earlier) <87cybb4838.fsf@nightsong.com> <AdZti608eZMoyhay@violet.siamics.net> <10788vk$1g8ve$1@dont-email.me> <Mf78sQ4PEdT8GlJ_@violet.siamics.net> <107dsmb$2u9o3$1@dont-email.me> |
>>>>> On 2025-08-11, Doc O'Leary wrote:
>>>>> For your reference, records indicate that Ivan Shmakov wrote:
This is going to be somewhat tangentially related to web proper
and is posted here merely for convenience & completeness. Perhaps
we'll veer back to topic in the downthread discussion (if any.)
Summary: I /am/ old-fashioned. I appreciate finer things in
life, and those finer things IMO tend to be either old-fashioned,
or just plain old. Hopefully sharing the URIs below will help
others see the light and better sense, and start appreciating
such finer things as well. (Or something.)
JFTR, the 38 resources referenced below, sans [4, 5] were
/at some point/ tested by me to be readable with Lynx, and
presumably should work with other "imaginary" browsers as well.
Aside of a single https: instance in [4] (which requires a
workaround), the list in [4, 5] is usable with mpg123(1).
>> Then again, my Lynx is 2.9.0dev.12 from January 2023. Is it
>> already considered "old"?
> In every way that matters, yes. Just like a new Usenet client could
> be released tomorrow and instantly be outdated, because the
> underlying technology is not fit for purpose. Which is to say that,
> while usable for *a* purpose (simple text discussions), Usenet is no
> longer anybody's idea of a *modern* messaging platform.
Somehow, I'm reminded of Paul S Person's comment in
news:anlqnjpmqud10vgutc5onnaujil0ai3lit@4ax.com :
PSP> Beethoven is a bit late for my taste. I prefer JS Bach and friends.
PSP> Also harpsichord music -- played on harpsichords, not on pianos.
I find that even though I'm no fan of harpsichords, I can
relate to the sentiment at large.
Web is as much part of human culture as music or computer
games. Why is it that I can appreciate centuries-old music
(or music written in styles that were popular centuries ago,
and no longer are), yet it's suddenly morally reprehensible
to enjoy "old-school," Lynx-compatible websites, such as
http://malvaceae.info/ and Wikipedia?
Once again, it fits rather well with the rest of my lifestyle.
Consider my choice of music; most of it is from Magnatune (see
[1]); a fair chunk - http://modarchive.org/ http://scene.org/
http://remix.kwed.org/ , a bit from http://opengameart.org/
(say, [2].) The rest is from local CDDA shops. No Youtube,
no Spotify, not even concert DVDs (because, seriously, "how music
changes through the years?" [3].) Though not a fan, I can relate
to people who get their cassettes from http://dataairlines.net/ .
No streaming, aside of a handful of Shoutcast / Icecast
radios [4, 5]. I particularly like publius shows at [5],
though my personal schedule is at odds with that of his shows
(e. g., [6]), so I have to resort to using station archives [7].
[1] http://users.am-1.org/~ivan/misc-2025/004.magnatune.en.xhtml
There's a .json version, too:
http://pin13.net/mf2/?url=http://users.am-1.org/~ivan/misc-2025/004.magnatune.en.xhtml
[2] http://opengameart.org/content/arrival-1
[3] http://web.archive.org/web/2010/http://queenwords.com/lyrics/songs/sng13_01.shtml
[4] http://relay4.slayradio.org:8000/ http://listen.181fm.com/181-buzz_128k.mp3
http://radio.wanderingsheep.tv:8000/jazzcafe
https://iskatel.hostingradio.ru:8015/iskatel-128.mp3
[5] http://anonradio.net:8000/anonradio
[6] http://anonradio.net/schedule/
[7] http://archives.anonradio.net/
On that note, I've long had my sights on
http://archive.org/details/OTRR_Dragnet_Singles . Got to
actually listen to it recently. Yes, it's 1950s. Still good.
But perhaps 70 years isn't old enough for a cultural artifact
that's not a website? Well, I /do/ quite enjoy these authors:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Gilbert_Keith_Chesterton
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Howard_Phillips_Lovecraft
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Robert_Erwin_Howard
Or what about this one (one of my favorites since I've first
read it c. 1994; though not the Wikisource edition, of course):
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kwaidan:_Stories_and_Studies_of_Strange_Things
If even that's not "old enough" for a book to be comparable to
a non-mainstream, Lynx-friendly website in 2025, then (1872
and, say, the "Sibylline Leaves" version from 1817):
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/In_a_Glass_Darkly/The_Room_in_the_Dragon_Volant
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner
If everything above fails, well, I do refer to the following
book at times, though mostly its "common era" (so to say) parts:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)
Now, someone may object that "no one's ever interested in that
PD junk" and that "contemporary writers never release anything
in electronic form without Adobe DRM." And here my argument
gets weak: there're of course Baen Books, Tor Books, and a few
other publishers that make their books available in DRM-free form
(I personally have copies of "Princess Holy Aura" and "The Eye
of the World" in .epub that I can unzip(1) and read with Lynx.)
Still, I know of no Lynx-compatible website where you can
(legally) /obtain/ any of them: paywalls are typically JS-based.
There're several well-known websites hosting amateur writing, but
all of them seem to have been captch'd recently, presumably due
to bot abuse, and are no longer readable with Lynx (or archived.)
So, aside of using Wayback Machine to reach what of them has
been archived over the years, I can only suggest http://lib.ru/ .
In particular, http://fan.lib.ru/l/lokhard_d/ is one of my
favorite contemporary Russian (I mean language, not ethnicity;
though frankly, I've never asked) writers.
But let's get back to computers. As with many (I believe) of
my generation, my early interest in computers and programming
was stimulated by computer games, even though that interest
largely waned by c. 2005.
Take Wolfenstein 3D, for example, which I've first played in
1993 (if not 1992), and has been somewhat of a fan ever since.
I went as far as to write a fair bit of [8], and I still play
the game on occasion (under FreeDOS, too.)
That's an old game, sure. Of "new" ones, I play OpenTTD and
Crispy Hexen. Though of course the first one is a free
software clone of a game first iteration of which came out in
1994; and the second is a maintained fork of the engine for a
game originally released in 1995 (you'll need to obtain a .WAD
file separately; a demo is at [9], use Wayback Machine if
needed, and the complete one can be bought at GOG.)
"The Impossible Bottle" [10] is, so far as I can tell, a brand
new game released in 2020. It's not my usual fare, but I still
managed to complete it back in the day.
It's interactive fiction, though, so even being relatively
recent, and a competition winner at that, it's still pretty
old-fashioned.
But then again: so would be any computer game of interest
to me. Consider my requirements:
* no DRM;
* playability without connectivity (say, on an air-gapped PC);
* playability without GPU; (at least until affordable GPUs
start appearing at http://ryf.fsf.org/ .)
So, yes, either it's old-fashioned, or I won't play it.
[8] http://ru.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_3D
[9] http://classicdosgames.com/game/Hexen%3A_Beyond_Heretic.html
[10] http://linusakesson.net/games/the-impossible-bottle/
Then, of course, there're programming languages. ES 5.1 [11]
/is/ old. All the same, unlike newer versions, it has a bunch
of independent implementations: Duktape, MuJS, likely QuickJS,
and I'm not sure how many of independent ones are in the usual
list of Node.js, Gecko, Webkit and Safari. I find it
particularly convenient to run tests with $ duk testsuite.es
(as opposed to spawning a full-blown "real" browser.)
Ones I use daily, though, are Dash, Bash, Awk (both Busybox and
GNU versions), Perl 5. Occasionally I'd use Tcl (8.6 or Jim)
and NetBSD /bin/sh.
Recently, I've been looking for a Forth implementation.
GNU Forth? Well, actually, no: one that'd run, and compile
itself, on a relatively small, "old or old-fashioned" system,
such as 16-bit 8086/DOS, or a 8-bit AVR MCU.
Doubting that anyone still writes DOS software? Well, take
a look at the examples [12].
Frank Sergeant's Pygmy Forth [13] looks promising, even if
somewhat idiosynchratic. (Then again, what Forth isn't?)
[11] http://262.ecma-international.org/5.1/
[12] http://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/command/0.86/
http://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/fdisk/1.4.4
http://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/kernel/2043/
http://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/emm386/jemm/5.85/
(Artistic license on this last one, though.)
[13] http://pygmy.utoh.org/pygmyforth.html , and also
http://ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/forth/pygmy/
That'd be all for today. Conclusion per Summary: at the top.
HTH and TYC.
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non-mainstream web (browsers) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-09 14:05 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-09 19:53 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-10 08:15 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-11 00:47 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 15:55 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-11 23:00 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2025-08-13 10:21 +1000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-13 19:18 +0000
[OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-14 12:55 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-15 16:42 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 21:25 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-17 02:07 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-17 22:47 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-19 21:02 +0000
Re: [OT] appreciating things old and old-fashioned Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-22 18:39 +0000
I complain! Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-17 22:55 +0000
non-mainstream web Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 15:05 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-16 21:42 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-17 07:12 +0000
(non-)mainstream web and its costs Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-13 19:00 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-13 19:17 +0000
non-mainstream web browsers Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-15 15:55 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web browsers Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-16 22:46 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web browsers Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-13 19:13 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web browsers Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-13 23:02 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 08:53 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-11 21:51 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-11 14:57 -0700
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Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2025-08-13 12:48 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-15 15:14 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-15 09:03 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-16 23:36 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-17 07:09 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-18 10:45 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-18 23:25 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-08-19 08:14 -0700
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-19 21:58 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-20 00:39 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) Doc O'Leary , <droleary.usenet@2023.impossiblystupid.com> - 2025-08-25 03:24 +0000
Re: non-mainstream web (browsers) "B. Pym" <Nobody447095@here-nor-there.org> - 2025-08-24 14:42 +0000
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