[ale] FTP files

[Mike Harrison]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2013, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> I remember the old days when uucp was the way to go.   Also with the cu command you had ~get and ~put options.

Oh dear.. memories of UUCP. Once upon a time I built custom email gateways 
for CC:mail to UUCP and lots of other strange variations of UUCP to old 
non standardized pre-internet email systems.

At $work, we doing a lot of work with "smart grid" integration, which does 
a lot of store and forward file transfers, meters to collectors to 
communictions engines to.. databases.. and back down the chain as well. 
Every vendor seems to be re-inventing their own variation of what we would 
consider UUCP, without standards to bind the vendors together.
It's frustrating, especially when the 20-something engineer at the 
metering company thinks he has invented store and forward 
communications...

I often think studying the history of technology is as important as
the future of technology.

Spikey Haired Kid:
Why do all these fixed length text files have to be so narrow with 
multiple lines and line format indicators?

Geezer:
The data format originated on punch cards.

Kid:
What's a punch card?