[OT] general whine about the net
OK, here's how I understand it. When the web first came out it
was like a nice way for nuclear physicists etc. to share data.
You knew what you wanted, you went to
www.foggybottomuniversity.edu and got it. Great.
Then the common man found out about the web and it became a huge mess.
Then search engines came and tried to sort out the mess. These were
neat for a while and then people got bored of them: outdated
links, too much "control of information", etc. Then the file
sharers came along and proposed to automate what web users
were originally doing by hand: sharing information.
That sounds like a good idea. So I tried looking into a gnutella
client and what do you know, there's not one but about five
hundred billion different gnutella-ish programs. Most of them not
necessarily compatible with each other.
Of course I haven't tried all of them but I bet
most of these pieces of software not only don't work, but
never will work, because they're written by amateurs for no
purpose whatsoever save the self-gratifying gloat of putting
their greasy code on the net. I bet half these things are
written by the same type of person who did that really
sophisticated, visually stunning checkers game in my
second-year programming class, which segfaulted after every
attempt at a move. And what is the stated intent of these
tools? To help people search for stuff on the net? That is, to help
people wade through the extravagant amounts of redundant information on
the net? Hah.
-chris
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