NULL mag Issue 09 07 covid19 script
i don't know how to tell this... i don't want someone to think that i try to insult anyone or have a secret agenda behind this... but after seeing the script that phehom released, about tracking the covid19 cases and deaths... i can't stop of thinking it and i have to take it out of my system.
first of all, personally i don't like scraping scripts for bbses... yes i know i even my self did some of them and yes it's cool to display various things in textmode, but still it's not something i like. if i could i would keep bbsing still in dialup mode and throw the whole telnet/internet connection thing, out of the window, cause i think that is destroying bbsing it self. but it's here, all bbses are connected via internet and we use it to enrich our bbses with various stuff from the net.
until now, scraping scripts were downloading web pages, did some magical scripting stuff and displayed the data collected, in text mode with some cool ansi grafx. the thing i noticed in that new phenom script was that, none of the above was happening. the script was written in python and was just downloading an ansi screen from another bbs. the code is about 8-10 lines and if you re-think it, you can just replace it with a "wget" command. no need to write a script.
again, i am not implying anything about anyone. it's just very strange to see this approach in the bbs scene and it's very "web-ish" for my style. for sure, i think we will see more "scripts" like this, as bbses are becoming more like an internet-textmode-server/website, than an autonomous server thing which was in the past.
UPDATE
ok... i found that the original script, is intended for legacy/x, which is a new bbs software. so i guess that, instead of re-writing the script for mystic bbs from start, they prefered to do it, this way? don't know. it's sad, cause the original script is very cool and you can navigate through several pages of info. hope to see a proper mystic version.
