Re: Using ftp:// vs http://

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• In-reply-to: Markus Stumpf: "Using ftp:// vs http://"

Date: Fri, 21 Jan 94 18:29:35 CST
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To: Markus Stumpf <stumpf@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>, www-talk@www0.cern.ch
From: jonm@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Jon E. Mittelhauser)
Subject: Re: Using  ftp:// vs http://
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I tried to resist!  Honestly... :^)   I'll be nice...

At 08:51 PM 1/21/94 +0100, Markus Stumpf wrote:

>Now my plea: Could we please use each protocol for what it was designed
>for? I.e. use http for "information" and ftp for "files". I know that
>the difference is rather fluent ...

The difference is non-existent in many cases and should _never_ be 
emphasized (IMHO).  The whole point of the Web is to make information
(often necessarily contained in files) transparently available to people.
This is especially true for novice users since you can surround the links
with useful text... 

Why don't use just use access authorization to only allow http 
accesses to the FTP data from the fully connected ("trusted" 2nd year student)
machines?  This would give you all the potential benefits without losing 
what you seem to consider a necessary restriction...

-Jon

---
Jon E. Mittelhauser (jonm@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Research Programmer, NCSA                          (NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows)
More info <a href="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/People/jonm/jonm.html">here</a>