Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 14:36:12 -0500
From: brian@pongonova.net
To: gopher@complete.org
Subject: [gopher] Gopher block!
Message-ID: <20050529193612.GL12306@pongonova.net>
References: <20050529063117.GA10967@pongonova.net>
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If this is a dupe, I apologize...I don't believe I posted this the
first time around from a subscribed e-mail address...

====================================================================

OK, I have a gopher server up and running...problem is, I really don't
know where to start!  Sure, I've read the pygopherd documentation, but
I don't have a clear picture of what a typical gopher file looks like
(formatting of selectors, layout, etc.).

Would someone be willing to offer up a file or two to help get me
started?  Once I have a starting point, I'll be good to go.  (I've
checked out the gophermap example in the pygopherd distro, but I'm
looking for a bit more detail...) 

BTW, I'm doing this solely for sentimental reasons, and because I can.
Alessandro put it quite eloquently in an earlier post, much better
than I could ever dream of doing, about a world "that is no
more...little or no more of on-line command-line dungeon games, telnet
logins, talk sessions, gopher sites..."   

Like Alessandro, I too miss the simpler times. I often wonder where
technology went wrong when it turned down the path of what I call
"prerequisite complexity," something I see quite often in my IT life:
The idea that technology requires ever-increasing complexity, whether
or not the problem that is being solved actually warrants it.  

Many IT "problems" today could be easily solved by using simpler
approaches, but for the fact that there is no money to be made in IT
unless there is "innovation" to excite company shareholders and VCs.
Complexity produces a self-perpetuating IT industry that ensures its
continued survival by coming up with advanced technologies that
require ever-increasing sums of capital to support these
"innovations," capital which is generated by massive marketing
machines that convince people to invest in technologies they know
absolutely nothing about. 

Setting up a gopher server is my insignificant way of protesting the
bloat that permeates all that is Internet-related.  

  --Brian