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Downport.com not maintained?

Blue Ghost

SOC-14 5K
Knight
It seems like most of the links at Downport.com don't work for whatever reason. Is anyone maintaining that site?
 
Thanks for the info. I used surfring for years, then they went away, their forums for complaints became filled with spam.

My 1e ad&d site has a ring, but its hosted by Dragonsfoot.org, not one of the ring sites.
 
Well, I'm kind of curious as to why webrings went away. Did high speed net change it or something?

Why did AltaVista or GeoCities go away? Dead or compromised links. Something called Google and social networking was more reliable. Plus 20 years of new Internets. Webring pointed to too many sites with animated HR bars and tiled thumbnail backgrounds. Old news. See archive.org. Google finds old Traveller sites better than Webring does, if that is what you are after. Chrome tells you if a site is not safe.
 
Why did AltaVista or GeoCities go away? Dead or compromised links. Something called Google and social networking was more reliable. Plus 20 years of new Internets. Webring pointed to too many sites with animated HR bars and tiled thumbnail backgrounds. Old news. See archive.org. Google finds old Traveller sites better than Webring does, if that is what you are after. Chrome tells you if a site is not safe.

Chrome only tells you if it has HTTPS or not - HTTPS <> safe site necessarily.

And soon it will only indicate that it does NOT have HTTPS - they are changing that icon again. At least according to the last roadmap I looked at.
 
Well, I'm kind of curious as to why webrings went away. Did high speed net change it or something?

I saw lots of links on surf ring, that led to sites either no longer maintained, or they had the required pages, then changed what was there.

It was a good idea, it was just tough policing the links to sites in the ring. Also, people decided it was 'old' when it was still very new.
 
Chrome only tells you if it has HTTPS or not - HTTPS <> safe site necessarily.

And soon it will only indicate that it does NOT have HTTPS - they are changing that icon again. At least according to the last roadmap I looked at.

There is an option for warning of unsafe sites, based upon a lookup that chrome can do via google. It's not the same feature as the warning for HTTP: vs HTTPS:

Chrome://settings - Advanced Options said:
Privacy and security
Google Chrome may use web services to improve your browsing experience. You may optionally disable these services. Learn more

  • Use a web service to help resolve navigation errors
  • Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar
  • Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly
  • Automatically send some system information and page content to Google to help detect dangerous apps and sites
  • Protect you and your device from dangerous sites
  • Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google
  • Send a "Do Not Track" request with your browsing traffic
  • Use a web service to help resolve spelling errors
  • Smarter spell-checking by sending what you type in the browser to Google
  • Manage certificates
  • Manage HTTPS/SSL certificates and settings
  • Content settings
  • Control what information websites can use and what content they can show you
  • Clear browsing data
  • Clear history, cookies, cache, and more
(Bullets added for clarity, bolding to highlight the relevant features)
 
There is an option for warning of unsafe sites, based upon a lookup that chrome can do via google. It's not the same feature as the warning for HTTP: vs HTTPS:

(Bullets added for clarity, bolding to highlight the relevant features)

Good to know - I had no idea.
 
Why did AltaVista or GeoCities go away? Dead or compromised links. Something called Google and social networking was more reliable. Plus 20 years of new Internets. Webring pointed to too many sites with animated HR bars and tiled thumbnail backgrounds. Old news. See archive.org. Google finds old Traveller sites better than Webring does, if that is what you are after. Chrome tells you if a site is not safe.

That's interesting because I actually quit FB and other so-called "social media" for security issues. With all the hacked or otherwise compromised dead links for a variety of dead link sites, I'm surprised there hasn't been an effort to migrate them to things like myspace, facebook, what have you.

I feel like I should have more to say, but don't. I'm sorry the links are all dead or redirected to bought domains. Occasionally I still find game files from an old site stashed away on the domain, even though it's been bought out.

Interesting. Thanks.
 
Apparently myspace is gone to the dumps as well. I saw a mention of it last year, asked some other computer techs and they suggested I don't bother.
 
Why did AltaVista or GeoCities go away? Dead or compromised links. Something called Google and social networking was more reliable. Plus 20 years of new Internets. Webring pointed to too many sites with animated HR bars and tiled thumbnail backgrounds. Old news. See archive.org. Google finds old Traveller sites better than Webring does, if that is what you are after. Chrome tells you if a site is not safe.

From what I read a few years ago, AltaVista was bought up, and then went away not long afterwards.

GeoCities decided they wanted to go from free to paid, and people left in droves. Then the owners shut it down.

Since I didn't have accounts there, my info may or may not be accurate.

My first non-university web host was another free host, but rising costs, they had to go paid. I'm still there.
 
The dot com crash ended a lot of "cool sites" back in the day. The Internet was magical at first. Then people found out that links don't actually last forever, and having a home page does not guaranty your company making millions. Clouds do help with keeping some stuff on the Internet "forever", since they're in the business to collect data. I don't use Facebook or Twitter anymore.
 
Well, a quick trip to myspace shows all kinds of ads for films, TV shows and "celebrity news". I tried punching in Traveller RPG in the search field, and I got absolutely zero RPG fan pages. Oh well.

I guess what I wanted to say earlier is that hobbies seem to vacillate on the web. A group becomes popular, then fades because people get bored and move on. I've seen it happen with model trains, D&D, various computer games, and so forth. Oh well.
 
Interesting about the model trains. I get RFDTV via satellite. Forthose that may not know, its Rural Free Delivery teevee. Mostly farming and other such shows.

However, they have steam locomotive and model train shows. Lionel puts on a convention every year. And RFDTV has a few times a month a show, 30 or 60 minutes the 60 minute ones are rare, about some group's model train layout. Most are clubs with at least 10 trains and sets.

Most recent one I saw had Lionel trains from the 1950s.

As for d&d, I post also over on https://www.dragonsfoot.org/ with d&d, 1e ad&d, 2e ad&d, and other games, including 16-bit computer games. I think they talk about 8-bit computer games to.

So if you are looking for peopel talking about old versions of d&d and other games, stop on by. 1e/2e ad&d is the main course.
 
I guess what I wanted to say earlier is that hobbies seem to vacillate on the web. A group becomes popular, then fades because people get bored and move on. I've seen it happen with model trains, D&D, various computer games, and so forth. Oh well.

Just like in real life.
 
Just like in real life.

Pretty much. I played a lot in college, then nothing for 5 years, then a spurt for a year, then a 20 year drop-off, and now for the last few years creeping back in.

The web, as pointed out earlier in this thread, is nothing like it was when it first started. Things were more decentralized - everyone hosted. Now there are silos: Google, MS, Amazon. One of those goes down a LOT of people are screwed. And you could right-click on a site, see how they coded it, and make your own cool sites. Now the near-infinite number of frameworks make things 1000x more complicated and I am pretty sure we're not getting 1000x the usability (speaking as a grumpy old developer). You can still do old-school web sites (*cough* Marc's older site) and they are fast: no megabytes of javascript and CSS to download just to show something.

There is always the Wayback machine site that stores older sites - you may be able to find what you want there. Also, again previously mentioned, your search engine of choice can find all kinds of interesting goodies, so there is no need for web rings and lists of sites anymore. Heck - I rarely bookmark things because the browser remembers where I've been anyway - start typing in the URL/search bar and it shows up pretty quickly most of the time.
 
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