_techniques using diskettes_

The world of vagrant netizen venues is justifiably paranoid about
floppies. I've seen diskless workstations used as public terminals.
A less austere example: my own usual venue used to[?] use a bootkit
package that self-destructs the current power cycle upon detecting a
floppy that is "system," "unformatted," or "non-FAT." I assume there
are also unadvertised features, as I had `noticed' a high
`correlation' between crashes of the autoboot type at the library, and
presence in their floppy drives of floppies I had purchased
IBM-preformatted, never re-formatted, but floppies which had been
unfortunate enough to have taken a spin in the floppy drive on my
Linux box.

I have had a much easier time with floppies since they upgraded[?] to
Windows XP. Perhaps the library people view the more recent
Windows-supplied floppy hygiene (or DRM) methods to be more
serviceable than those of the other software $upplier, whose name
I don't quite remember. At any rate, for me it has been an
upgrade in the meaningful sense, and has literally multiplied the
effective amount of bandwidth I have been able to utilize. This is a
college library (which is {so far still} open to the public, in case
you were wondering) so I can only imagine that MCC's XP upgrade has
spawned a creative revolution in the north side suburbs.

The single most frustrating thing about floppies is their miniscule
(by today's standards) capacity. The public terminals here do have
USB-ports. I haven't brought any USB peripherals to the library to
see if they work. I probably won't any time soon, since even a $20
flash thingie is a little non-austere by my miserly standards. Also,
even if I did own a USB key (is that what they're called?) it might
not do the trick, as neither of the Linuces I'm running as of yet
offer USB support. I could download a kernel, but I would first have
to chop up a large file into floppy-sized subfiles and reconstitute
and somehow figure out how to compile and/or install later. This
approach is clearly within both my technical and (near term) economic
capabilities as a vagrant netizen, but I can't help but think there
must be a better way. This is a problem of the `bootstrap' type.
Maybe I'll break down and simply `buy' a Linux distro CD.

_the vagrant netizen and operating systems_

I have seen Mac-OS's in public libraries, but it's been a while. I
haven't yet seen any kind of Unix® or Linux, but have encountered
proof-of-concept in the form of a book of the `travel' genre I once
(very cursorily) browsed at one of those ginormous book$tores.
Apparently (at one time, anyway) in Amsterdam there were public access
sites where one could play with Linux and/or the Internet itself. I
was unclear from the context which sector (public, for profit,
nonprofit, akademic etc.) these computer labs were part of, which is
why I express some skepticism as to their continued existence.

In public access provisioning, as in most aspects of the computing field,
the dominant operating system is clearly Windows®.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Windows itself implements
many features of cardinal utility to a vagrant netizen, such as USB support.
Also, the sheer generosity of Bill and Melinda Gates to vagrant netizens
and vagrant non-netizens everywhere--and even the occasional nonvagrant netizens whose
cyberlives take them to the public library now and then--must not be underestimated.

_techniques using file compression_

My favourite file compression format is TGZ, or `tarball,' as it has
come to be known. A traveling vagrant netizen might be wise to use
ZIP by default or at least for some backups, as it seems to have more
universal acceptance and can be used, it seems, at a sizeable
majority, if not all, of the public access sites I know of.
I have decided to upload a zipfile to illustrate my own use of
file compression as a technique of netizenship and samizdat.

Try the address geocities.com/n8chz/scratch/current.zip
or perhaps geocities.com/n8chz/scratch/current.tgz

Usually my current archive contains whatever at the time
is the current installment of my ongoing `to do' list. The current
file in that series typically bears the name `webtodo.html,'
with archives namespaced as tdYYMMDD.html. An index
(which probably won't be -quite- up to date if you visit it)
is maintained at:

geocities.com/n8chz/lori.htm

The role of the tdYYMMDD.html files themselves in my
online technic is explained in some detail in the files themselves,
so I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say that the
primary `technology' is the `webbit,' an invention of Fravia:

www.searchlores.org/rabbits.htm

next...

Medium-term economic goals of a vagrant netizen...