[citw150] Re: CITW 150 L6 Q6
- From: "Azrael Leviticus" <azeral777@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: citw150@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 21:59:50 -0400
Telnet and other such strictly text-based clients are definitely not a thing
of the past. MUDs, MUSHes, MUCKs, MOOs, games like Nethack...these things
all have gigantic fanbases. Hell, the MUD I'm logged into 24/7 and code for,
UOSSMUD (the Unofficial Squaresoft MUD, which is a lot better than it
sounds), has well over 500 characters at any given time, frequently running
purges of characters who haven't logged in within the last month or two.
During peak hours, there tend to be about 25 to 40 people logged on, which
fluctuates based on the season. Alternatively, MUDs like Realms of Despair
(commonly known as RoD) have a few hundred people on during peak hours, as
do MOOs/MUCKs like Harper's Tale and Southern Cross. Nethack, which I
mentioned previously, is one of the oldest games still updated and played
fanatically, with a gigantic fanbase and the ability to keep people
entertained for years. I've been playing it for about three years and still
play it just about every day.
Anyhow, the thing that all of these games have in common is that they are,
by default, accessed through telnet. There are tile-based versions of
Nethack, but they can't compare to pure ASCII. There are alternative clients
for MUDs/MUCKs/MOOs/MUSHes such as GMUD and MUSHclient, all of which are
excellent (MUSHclient in particular is amazing and my program of choice),
but things remain text-based.
Text will never die, for there will always be those of us who long for the
old days of gaming, before people accepted flashy graphics as a substitute
for actual gameplay.
On 4/16/06, Scott Sullivan <scottgregorysullivan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Telnet is as old as the Internet. Before the WWW telnet was an invaluable
> way to exchange information online. Today telnet is not really used for
> anything, maybe for remote administration. However it is a very bad idea to
> use telnet for remote administration. Rather than use telnet it would be
> wise to use ssh. This is because telnet exchanges it's authentication data
> (as well as everything else) in clear text. This means that a malicious user
> could sniff the network and retrieve any data, including usernames and
> passwords. With ssh all data transmitted is encrypted to help prevent these
> kinds of attacks. Today ssh is used primarily for remote administration on
> UNIX based systems. More information about telnet can be found here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TELNET
> I practiced using telnet at LOCIS: Library of Congress Information System.
> The URL is telnet://140.147.254.3. Upon connecting I was greeted with a
> main menu, prompting me with options. I was also told that the LC catalog
> files are available at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catalog. When you are using
> telnet it becomes obvious that everything is text based and menu driven.
> There is no real use for a mouse in a telnet session.
> Some people may think that text based interfaces are a thing of the past,
> but they are quite wrong. More than half of today's web servers run some
> type of UNIX; the heart of a UNIX machine is the command line. I think more
> user's today should become more acquainted with a command line interface. I
> think if more people gave it a chance they would realize that it has its
> advantages.
>
> Scott Sullivan
>
>
> "The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next." --Henry
> Ward Beecher
>
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--
--------------------------
Ryan Bailey
Azeral777@xxxxxxxxx
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off is if nothing ever happened."
- Sir Winston Churchill
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