OT - Re: SC - Ras and his 400 disks

[Phil & Susan Troy]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 10/22/98 10:09:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time, troy at asan.com
> writes:
> 
> << Then, of course, there's always the ol' Unix shell account, but I expect
> AOL
>  would rather keep their members in the dark about such things...;  )
> 
>  Adamantius >>
> 
> OK. I'll fall for this. What are you referring to..?
> 
> Ras

For practical purposes it's kinda like having your own server.

Basically your online service has a server, which is like your computer, only
bigger. It runs on some variant of the Unix OS (usually). It has a hard drive,
only larger than yours. Every customer has what is called a shell (well,
everybody with a shell account has one), and they use their home computers as
terminals to access the shell. The shell contains things like Unix e-mail
programs like PINE or ELM, as well as your mailbox itself. Many online
services provide shells with maybe 10 MB's of space on their server per
customer, with extra 10MB increments on an as-needed basis, so people like
authors can allow their books pending publication, for example, to be
downloaded by an ftp command. Many businesses use such a shell for backup
record storage, too. In fact, there are companies whose sole service is
maintaining such shells for other companies' backup record storage.

Unix shell accounts are less common nowadays than they used to be, now that
everyone demands graphical rather than text interface with the World Wide Web,
and such, but for a long time you couldn't get a PPP internet account for
using things like Netscape or Internet Explorer _without_ having a Unix shell.
My own ISP has perversely begun providing free shells again, upon request,
after years of selling PPP accounts without them.

Generally the more serious net types are the only ones who still use shells.

Adamantius (not a geek!!!)
Østgardr, East 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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