Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

HTTP  and HTML are the reigning champs in terms of delivering content from the Web to your computer, typically though a Web browser. Content and data available over HTTP could generally be categorized to be mostly within the surface web. This, however, only constitutes a small portion of what content is available on the complete Web. Some protocols, such as FTP, are no longer supported by browsers and accessed by way of more specialized programs. Modern formats, such as IPFS , also exist but have limited adoption and often still require external software. While content available over these non-HTTP protocols is still "on the Net", the extent to which it is archived remains murky. A Trip Down Internet Lane Originally, I was inspired to write this blog post because I was exploring different representations of content on the web I remembered a gem from my younger days on the Internet. That gem was the ASCII Star Wars animation that you could watch over your terminal by ty...

Do you remember playing the Atari 400/800 game " Star Raiders "?  Probably not, but for me it pretty much defined my existence in middle school: the obvious Star Wars inspiration, the stereo sound, the (for the time) complex game play , the 3D(-ish) first-person orientation -- this was all ground-breaking stuff for 1979.  It, along with games like " Eastern Front (1941) ", inspired me at a young age to become a video game developer; an inspiration which did not survive my undergraduate graphics course .  I could encourage you to (re)experience the game by pointing you to the ROM image for the game, as well an appropriate emulator (I used " Atari800MacX "), but without the venerable Atari joystick (the same one used in the more famous 2600 system), it just doesn't feel the same to me.  And although the original instructions have been scanned, the game play is complex enough that unlike most games of the era, you can't immediately understa...