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- Why Gopher?
-
- Deep beneath the realm of the world wide web lives the hidden world of the
- gopher, a forgotten curiosity seemingly inhabited only by computer geeks who
- refuse to have the common sense to use the web as it exists today. To the
- casual observer, gopher usually elicits a scowl followed by a condescending
- "Text only?", "Monaco?" or, most commonly, "Why!?" Despite Cameron's excellent
- retort to the gopher-scoffers, I thought I might comment briefly on the last
- common scathing retort of "Why."
-
- And to that "why?", I reply: "Why not?" In forgotten days of yore, we traveled
- by buggy, by stream trains, horse, foot and many other obsolete and even absurd
- forms of travel. Yet, to this day, we still use these slow forms of travel.
- Many find such inefficient forms of travel to be enjoyable, calling such
- activities "quaint" or "nostalgic" with no reference to their efficiency at
- getting them from point A to B.
-
- For example, the fall time ritual of the "Hay Ride" is a most ridiculous
- and absurd form of travel imaginable yet, come autumn, people routinely
- give up their comfortable car seats, conditioned air, and spring/shock
- suspension to endure a bumpy, uncomfortable, hay fever filled ride that
- usually costs more than if you had simply drove your car around the
- block. Indeed, I have seen them - they flock in droves to country
- tractor trailer, gleefully exhorting their somewhat doubtful children
- with gleeful pleas, exclaiming "Isn't this FUN?" (Not to be overly demeaning of
- hay ride participants, in most fun is a fair bit of absurdity) Can a person
- not, with all this in mind, consider an alternate form of traversing the
- Internet?
-
- But, more so - with that in mind, imagine, if you will, finding a forgotten
- walking trail in the woods, hidden from the view of the world of mass transit,
- accessible only by those who don sneakers and take the proverbial road less
- traveled. Would you not be tempted to explore? Imagine, all the more, if the
- trail turned out to be a shortcut? Who, other than the dullest of the
- dullards, would not find that of at least some interest?
-
- You may say it's a stretch, but I argue it's not far off base from gopher.
- Indeed, here is that forgotten trail in the woods, that abandoned railway, that
- Internet superhighway of days of yore hidden from view beneath the surface of
- the World Wide Web. Not only does it still work but, for some purposes, it
- works quite well! Be your destination simple news (thanks floodgap), a or a
- quick weather report, gopher fetches your information with a speed that is very
- hard to beat!
-
- Dwell not on missing pictures, but think instead on what else is missing: Ads?
- Tracking cookies? Animated gifs or, worse, flash video ads? All gone in the
- realm of the gopher! Java vulnerabilities? Browser vulnerabilities? Java
- script nonsense? Not in the gopher tunnels. Computer old? Got windows 95 or
- even dos? Gopher doesn't care. With a half way decent firewall in front, a
- hacker is hard pressed to find any holes in gopher. Slow connection? Got a
- 56k modem? That's plenty more bandwidth than gopher needs. Ad sponsors make
- you carefully consider what you write on your blog? Write as you want on
- gopher.
-
- Come one, come all - see the gopher holes of the Internet! Pull that 486 out
- of the closet and put it to good use! Enjoy the pure text goodness that the
- Internet founders intended. Pure text is the best, and even Courier can be
- cool! And, who knows, you may actually find something worth reading. That
- much I can't guarantee, but this I can almost certainly guarantee: You won't be
- disappointed with its speed.
-
- -Helpdeskdan
-
- ***
-
- gopher://sdf.org/0/users/helpdeskdan/why.txt
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