Value/modem/PPP/download (was: Lisp/Unix impedance [a programming...])

> From: Tim X <t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I can't state any clearer - YOU CAN GET BETTER VALUE THAN THAT.

Actually I would like you to state it clearer: Do you mean everything I
currently have at lower cost, or do you mean something extra I don't
currently have and which I could immediately use, at no increased cost?
You can't do that??? You are not capable of resolving that ambiguity???

FYI, here's what I have currently:
http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/NewPub/mySituation.html#isp
About the only additional things I'd like and be able to use are listed
in the next section after that.

> There is no reason technically you cannot run PPP on your MAC.

But is there any reason with only 8 metabytes I can't anything
resembling decent performance at all when running PPP with MS IE &
MailAndNews, and why IE freezes my whole machine when I try to run it
now?

> You could also pick up a better modem for next to nothing.

Better than the 56K modem on my Mac, which is already faster than my
VT100 emulator can run, which is every bit as fast as I ever need to
eyeball textual data flying by? Or better than the modem in my laptop
that doesn't work at all currently? Like the TV ads that say our brand
is 40% better, you have to say what you're comparing to or your remark
is meaningless.

> I'm actually a bit amazed you have a modem that is soooo old it only
> runs at 19k

I'm amazed you aren't capable of reading:
VT100 emulator (USASCII *only*, max speed 19200 BPS)
modem (SupraExpress56 data/FAX)
and correctly understanding what I think is quite clear there.
What do you think the "56" in the name of the modem means, the pre-y2k
notation for the year it was built??

> A shell account is most definitely NOT absolutely necessary to install
> CGI scripts - absolute and utter rubbish.

Without PPP runnable in any decent way on my computer, a shell account
is necessary for *any* decent net access whatsoever, CGI or anything
else you care to name and quibble over. Also it's awfully difficult to
debug software in an interactive mode on a server without a shell
account there. For example, do you know of *any* free Web site whereby
I could go into a read-eval-print loop via CGI, and enter one
expression at a time, and in case of an error go into an interactive
break loop, and have all the usual commands for executing commands from
inside the break or exiting the break up to various restarts, and
maintain my context over a multi-hour session, and eventually form my
lines of code into function definitions and install them in the same
session and continuing as if my new function definitions were part of
the API? And then switch from inteactive mode to running my full
application in CGI mode any time I want without having to move any
files to another machine or even to another directory on the same
machine?

> By the way, your claim you cannot download any data is also bogus.

I haven't made that claim, except in regard to my laptop where the
modem doesn't work at all currently. With my Mac, I can upload and
download just fine, although the FreeBSD version of Kermit has a bug
whereby it expects all files to be in DOS format before download and it
uploads all files into DOS format, so I have to convert Unix files to
DOS format before download and convert files back to Unix format after
upload. (For small files I use copy&paste over VT100 emulator, which
doesn't have that problem. I go through that Kermit hassle only for
large files.)

But note that Kermit handles only text files. Even a single character
that is not 7-bit USASCII causes Kermit to crash at that point in the
file.

> You could easily ftp data from remote hosts into your shell account
> and then download it to your MAC ...

I already do that for applications that are available in BinHex format,
which is a text conversion format (similar to UUENCODE but handles
Macintosh resource/data forks and special desktop data), whereby I can
download the BinHes file to my Mac and then unBinHex it there. But for
Mac applications that aren't available in BinHex format, I don't know
how to even find out on Unix what kind of Mac file they are (pure
resource fork, pure data fork, or MacBinary format) before somehow
converting them to BinHex format for download.
.

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