There seem to be two issues around the new management of the SimTel archive.
The first is what these people are going to do with the files. At least two
people on the Arachne list seem to have downloaded the entire msdos
directory. This should cover us from losing some of those old gems which
might get deleted if the new management decide to downsize the archive. And
some of those DOS programmes from the 80s do a tighter, faster job than
their newer cousins. WHEREIS is about my favourite.
The second issue is about the way the new management are trying to control
access to the ftp server, by making you go through their web pages first.
Frankly, if this is their policy, and it seems to be, it does not appear to
be working very well.
In a previous post I mentioned that I had accessed ftp.simtel.net directly
using Minuet and downloaded some files. Later I went into Arachne and
entered the full url as follows with F3:
ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/msdos/
What that got me was half of the welcome page, so access did fail. This may
have been a technical failure, or it may have been their policy. But when I
tapped in
ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/simtelnet/msdos/
I was staring at the complete msdos ftp directory in a couple of seconds,
complete with an introductory paragraph from the new archive honcho who has
been causing such pain. Clearly, access to the mirrors, even the updated
ones, is not compromised yet. So what is going on? Incidentally, the sunsite
mirror also contains index files SIMDOS-I and SIMDOS-L from January 2001.
I just fired up NetTamer and accessed ftp.simtel.net using its FTP function.
No problems. I downloaded some files from the 'info' directory.
What they seem to want to prevent is links to SimTel files from _other web
pages_. The sort of thing you get with www.fdisk.com. The idea is that the
punter at the other web page is downloading a file from SimTel, without even
realising it. The host web page is seen as a freeloading competitor. Or have
I got this wrong?
How many people use an FTP programme, even a Windows one? Is it worth their
while making it difficult for that tiny minority to access anonymous ftp
without going through the web page first? Are they really trying to do that?
Regards (confused)
--aj
Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered
