Rob Studdert wrote:
> In W2K/XP O/S an FTP address location can be mounted as a resource in
> the file > manager to allow drag and drop transfers or other file
> management function just like any other data folder. Very handy for
> quick transfers where detailed transfer logs aren't so important.
#blink# Yowza. Makes what I was going to point out (that
most (all?) versions of Windows have an ftp command that
can be run from the command prompt or the "run" item on the
Start menu) sound so much less impressive. Now to go try
this on my Win2K box and see whether it can use "passive mode"
to get past my NAT gateway.
The thing about FTP[*] is that the protocol pretty much just
Does What It Needs To Do to solve The Problem It's Supposed
To Solve, and that's why they haven't needed to update the
protocol since 1985 (thanks to Herb for that date) -- it's
been a standard part of the networking toolkit for as long
as I've been using networked computers, spreading to most
platforms shortly after they got TCP/IP support (i.e., the
ability to connect to the Internet). And because of how it
works, even the most basic of ftp programs is usually perfectly
reasonable to use (other than some versions of the Windows
one not working through a masquerading firewall). And better
ftp apps tend to be freeware or shareware -- enough so that
I've never been tempted to find out whether there are uberspiffy
commercial ones or not. (Then again, I tend to use the old
command-line Unix/Linux ftp command and like it ... but I've
used Fetch under MacOS ... uh ... 6, 7, 8, 9, maybe 4 and 5
... and that was both cute and useful, even though under
OS X I would just type "ftp [hostname]" in a terminal window
instead of taking the time to figure out whether a GUI FTP
client were available.)
What's more, there are a lot of other programs that grok
FTP. Every web browser that I know of can resolve -- and
download -- URLs that start with "ftp:..."[**], as can several
other general "deal with files on remote machines" utilities.
The telnet program I use most often (NetTerm, under Windows)
even has a built-in FTP _server_ that I can turn on if I
need it! (And yes, I have needed it. I was in Peoria and
realized I needed to copy files from one of my machines at
home in Baltimore to the laptop I was using.) And now I
find out that Windows has done the "make it look like part
of the file system" trick.
Basically, FTP is *the most generic way to copy files from
one computer to another*.
Not always the best way (though it often is). Not always
the fastest way (though it often is). Not always the
simplest-seeming to the user (though it sometimes is).
Not always the "most native to your OS" (though it's often
"more native to the user" if the user jumps back and forth
between mulitple operating systems). It's the most generic.
So it's good to know about. Yes, yes, it's one of those
"geek details" which, despite not being hard to learn, are
"more than I wanted to have to know in order to use this
computer that's supposed to make life easier" from the point
of view of many users, so it's not as surprising that a
modern user is unaware of it as my cheeky "Sheesh, kids"
comment earlier was supposed to make it sound. But it's
useful to know "this tool exists" so that ifwhen you need
it, you can actually find it and learn it. The day you
actually do find you have a use for it, you'll discover
it's easy; until then, for folks who don't play with
computers for the delight of playing with them, it's
One More Thing To Learn and it's okay to merely know
it's there waiting for you to need it, and delay getting
into the details.
Me, I use ftp by hand (that is, typing ftp commands to
get something done) at least once a week. (And I've
got a cron script that uses it every ten minutes, as
part of how I deal with email).
-- Glenn
[*] If you want to pick nits, "FTP" would be the name of
the protocol, and "ftp" would be the name of the program
that transfers files using that protocol on most systems
(unless you're using a more fancy program, such as fetch
or wget or a web browser). But I'm not going to pick nits;
this footnote is just here to make my back-and-forth
capitalization less mysterious in case anyone was wondering.
I'm not sure whether it should be capitalized when used as
a verb (e.g., "I FTP'd those files up this morning.").
[**] For anyone who didn't know this ... that's right, a
URL does not have to start with "http:...". It starts
with the name of the protocol used to access the resource.
I don't think I've seen any web browsers that fail to
recognize "ftp:" and "mail:" URLs, though I've seen some
that don't seem to know what to do with "news:";. I don't
remember what other protocols are considered fair game in
a URL off the top of my head -- there's a list somewhere.
I think "finger:" is, or used to be, supported, but most
sites turn off the finger daemon these days for various
reasons. Also, the URL concept and syntax has been picked
up by some applications other than web browsers which may
need to access distant files. So sometimes typing a URL
into the "Open File" dialog will Do The Right Thing ...
often enough to be worth trying when it seems it could
be useful.
