Firefox dnload manager sux

[Alma J Wetzker]

Ric Moore wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-05-30 at 18:31 -0500, Michael Hipp wrote:
>> Preaching: it would be worth your time, IMHO, to learn to use wget and 
>> bittorrent from the command line. The payoff is considerable. And I'm saying 
>> this as a recovering GUIholic.
> 
> Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. The above lines rankle just a
> bit. I used to run an 8 line BBS that allowed telnet and shell access to
> the local community running Linux. Way before that I started off with a
> 300 baud DC Hayes in 1980, got interviewed in Esquire for an unofficial
> record of transmitting a "liberated" bit of software from Houston to
> Honolulu... yoho, my 15 minutes of fame. Then used CP/M, and Irv Hoff's
> IMP. Later, on my first XT, used Procomm and have plenty of experience
> with x,y,z modem transfers on DOS, CP/M, CPM86, MP/M, etc. 
> 
> It is problamatic when today's web mavens decide to put their
> interesting video bits behind all sorts of scripts. So, I've upped the
> ante with a bunch of extensions, which festoon my desktop to detect the
> actual video source files to grab it anyway. Sure, I tried wget but the
> file could not be directly loaded by design. Ergo, why not just change
> the dnload manager itself, if at all possible? 
> 
> If I wanted to rough it, I'd find that old IMSAI I had and bust my
> fingers on the switches. Keyboards are for losers. Sorry, I've done my
> time, and much prefer to just click on what works. That's what computers
> are for, ya know. To reduce replicable tasks to something simple for the
> user of it so they can do even more useful stuff. I wouldn't go back to
> command line days if I had to be shot. But, if I have to, I know my way
> around. A "well designed" GUI beats the living hell out of a lot of
> typing any day of the week. I do not yearn to go back to loading tapes
> onto my old Unisys 5000/90 except as an excuse to lure a nerd grrl to my
> house to see the blinky lights and jerking tapes doing seeks. It did
> useful work for that, while it might not have been the original guiding
> principle of Unisys Corp to get Ric laid. So, given the choice between a
> mouse-click or typing a 40 char command line... sometimes twice to
> correct a typo, which would YOU chose? It's a no-brainer for me. Ric

I LIKED IMP!  Did you ever try OS9?  Nostalgia being what it is, I
remember command lines with fondness.  I wholeheartedly endorse the
point you make, but I find room in my world for both ways to get things
done.  Each has it's strengths and weaknesses.  I suspect that as long
as computers are designed by humans, that will be true.  If I play to
the strengths, I work faster.  (And can bill more.)  Sometimes that is
the command line.  I prefer when it is not.  (I am an unreformed KDE
lover.)  YMMV.

    -- Alma