E-Text/Zines FTP sites
"If you ever get bored with the Net, then you're either a really fast reader or an incurably boring stiff. In case things do start to get a bit dull, there are plenty of places to get new reading material. Try FTP-ing to any of these sites."
Still online? Yes! Well, not really. The best stuff is available via Internet Archive, and [x/y] have digitally dissolved, but we still have Etext! And a few of these ISPs are still around!
- etext.archive.umich.edu (archived) became etext.org, but those files are offline, and the site now points to Internet Archive's copies.
- quartz.rutgers.edu disappeared, but was copied to ... etext, now on Internet Archive.
- http://ftp.msen.com and www.msen.com both display information about "Michigan's Best-Run Internet Service Provider™," and the actual FTP still exists, but not with anonymous access.
- http://ftp.halcyon.com actually works! So does ftp://ftp.halcyon.com! With anonymous access! But ... there's not much in all those folders. Bah.
- world.std.com is another old ISP that's still online, but no FTP.
"If you're a lucky little monkey with Mosaic or other Web access, you may want to check out the hypermedia linked e-zines."
Still online? No, and not archived, either.
Still remembered? Yes. Here's another copy of a posting from John, in full "hacker" black and green, plus hyperlinks (to dead sites), which captures some reference to the old Northwestern University domain and its ezine archive.
Fonts of All Knowledge
All the FAQ files
FTP
"Sometimes you just gotta know! Well, luckily there are know-it-all freaks out there who are obsessed with collecting answers to your questions."
Still online? No, and not archived.
Still remembered? Yes, on an MIT page that links to (dead) sites you may want to see.
Anything like it? Yes! FAQs.org has USENET FAQs sorted by hierarchy.
Stanford Netnews Newsreading Service
Web
"The Net rodents at Stanford have created one of the coolest services on the Net. Tell them what you're interested in and it'll comb USENET groups and mail you excerpts from articles with the info you need."
Still online? No.
Still remembered? Yes, and my favorite source is "All the Dang Search Engines," a very impressive of embedded search engines, from when this was a common thing (well, more common than it is now), and also before Google. Here's their description of what was later renamed SIFT, the Stanford Information Filtering Tool:
"Stanford Netnews Filtering Service (e-mail search service covering net news) Netnews, or USENET News, is a bulletin board system on the Internet. It is organized into discussion groups (called newsgroups) covering a wide variety of topics, e.g., from robotics to video game tips, from food recipes to politics. Its total readership is in millions and daily traffic in tens of MBs. One problem with Netnews is the volume and diversity of information. Our filtering service allows the user to express her interests in finer granularity (using profiles) than newsgroups, and hopefully can provide a better match of interests."
That's right, tens of MBs daily! Consider now in 2017, the average webpage was 3mb, it seems like a much different time.
Alt.Urban.Legends FAQ
FTP
"Well, my friend knew someone this happened to, so it must be real!" Right. Check the validity of most common urban legends with a brief peek at this expansive FAQ. Do killer tarantulas really inhabit cactus bought at Ikea? Of course they do.
Still online? Yes, but not that FTP. FAQs.org has the alt.folklore.urban five-part FAQ, and there's an archive of UrbanLegends.com, which is a much fancier version of the FAQ.
Interestingly, Snopes.com has been online since 1994 and is still going strong, replacing those old text files traded 'round the net.
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