Skimming this makes me long for the time when the multiuser nature of Unix was really utilized as intended.
I miss being on a system and typing "who" to see who is on, and starting a chat with them with "talk". Or sending mail to other users just on that system. Using "finger" to read updates in their .plan files.
Many of the "social" aspects of the internet today existed in that multiuser aspect of Unix, in a much more intimate way.
Macs and Linux machines are still multiuser systems, but "users" are pretty much just used to provide separate configuration and permissions scoping for different application services. It would be nice to have someone hop onto a terminal on my Mac once in awhile and say hello.
I miss being on a system and typing "who" to see who is on, and starting a chat with them with "talk". Or sending mail to other users just on that system. Using "finger" to read updates in their .plan files.
Many of the "social" aspects of the internet today existed in that multiuser aspect of Unix, in a much more intimate way.
Macs and Linux machines are still multiuser systems, but "users" are pretty much just used to provide separate configuration and permissions scoping for different application services. It would be nice to have someone hop onto a terminal on my Mac once in awhile and say hello.