Plus a million. You can still view my personal page and get the full experience in Netscape 2.0, Mosaic and so forth :O
Best, Sean On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Mouse <mo...@rodents-montreal.org> wrote: > > If you want to have a system that's network-capable, which is pretty > > much mandatory for a _really_ usable system in this day and age, i) > > that means Web-capable, and ii) if it's Web-capable today, it has to > > be able to handle what I dub 'active content' (JavaScript, etc) - > > i.e. content coming off the network which contains code, which runs > > in the local machine. > > Fortunately, neither part of that is actually true, unless you swallow > today's mass-market propaganda that the Web is the Internet and the > Internet is the Web, the Web is the One True Interface for anyone to > anything, that the world is divided into content producers (large > companies) and content consumers (end users), and that the consumer is > obliged to tolerate whatever crap the producer feels like inflicting. > > As a refutation to part (i), I offer two of the computers on my desk > today. I don't know whether they're Web-capable, because I've never > even tried to do anything Web with either one (I know they're > HTTP-capable, but it's an abuse of HTTP, since it's used to transport > config files rather than hypertext, and is not the Web). As I have > them configured, they speak SIP, RTP, FTP, and SNTP, and I think that's > it. I find them highly useful. (Well, one of them's broken at the > moment, but before it broke....) > > As a refutation to part (ii), I point out that what little Web I do I > do with lynx, which (as I have it set up) does not support any kind of > active content - and I want it that way. > > Perhaps you feel you "need" to do things that can't be done within that > paradigm. If so, this is because of your idea of "usable", which not > everyone shares. > > > To paraphrase a certain well-known SF work, IMO active content is > > probably the worst idea since humans' fore-fathers crawled out of the > > mud. > > I agree. That's why I will have no truck with it. > > > I mourn the early days of the Web, when there was no active content - > > just text, images, etc, etc. > > You can still live there, if you're willing to. I am - and, watching > over others' shoulders, I believe I am far happier this way than I > would be if I had the likes of Facebook and YouTube infesting my > "experience". (I do wish I could find a copy of Mosaic source, > though.) > > Of course, like everything, it comes at a price. I find that price far > lower than the prices that would be involved in putting up with today's > mass-market Web. > > /~\ The ASCII Mouse > \ / Ribbon Campaign > X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org > / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B >
