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Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station 356

Posted by michael from the i-don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.
An Ominous Cow Erred writes "Spacedaily.com reports on the use of the fantastic Kermit "program" being used to communicate with devices on the international space station. While the article's author doesn't seem to have a quite perfect grasp on what Kermit is (and effuses about how Kermit is being used to help war-torn Bosnia and advance AIDS research) it brought a smile to my face to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days (which was scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind."
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Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station More

Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station

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  • sheeesssh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:19PM (#7684305) Homepage Journal

    Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station

    This place is starting to sound like the Weekly World News [weeklyworldnews.com].
    "Archie disappears, Veronica suspect! Gopher dug the hole far aWAIS!"
    • I don't know whether to be saddened or amused by a /. reader having the WWN bookmarked.
      • Don't knock it, man... there are tabloids, and then there is the Weekly World News. You can get a paper copy for under $2 and for entertainment purposes, it's worth every penny. I do it from time to time and always laugh my ass off! There is no way that any of this is meant to be taken seriously, and where else are you going to find a column from America's Sexiest Psychic? (Actual topic grabbed from WWN's site... "Satan Won't Stop Dialing My Cell Phone!")

        Ah, sweet entertainment. Pick one up sometime, you'l

  • Anyone else here (Score:3, Funny)

    by IANAL(BIAILS) ( 726712 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:19PM (#7684308) Homepage Journal
    Immediatly have the image of a large green frog floating around in the weightlessness?

  • transfer protocols comma that suck (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pheared ( 446683 ) <`kevin' `at' `pheared.net'> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:20PM (#7684323) Homepage
    (which was scorned in favor of Zmodem)

    With good reason. :)

    IceZmodem rocked.

  • da-da, da-da-da-da... bwaaah (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:21PM (#7684328)
    hi-ho, kermit thee frog here, and welcome to thee ISS.

  • wait huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by buddha42 ( 539539 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:21PM (#7684334)
    it brought a smile to my face to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days ... being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind."

    Weren't you using it to download porn back then too?

  • Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Pingular ( 670773 )
    the greatest technological achievement of humankind
    I think 'debateably' should be added to that.
    • Average lifespan doubling due to medicine and sanitation or big metal thing in space.

      Hmmmm....

      Can't help agree with the parent. "Debateably" should definately be added.

      TW
    • or perhaps 'debatably'?

      Dear God I'm anal today. Apologies.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:21PM (#7684341)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Zmodem rules. (Score:5, Funny)

      by plover ( 150551 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:34PM (#7684493) Homepage Journal
      Jeebuz, man, give it a rest.

      Kermit is dead. Zmodem is dead. The argument died ten years ago! Get over it!

      It's not pinin', it's passed on! This protocol is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of value, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the Space Station it'd be pushing up the daisies! Its CPU usage is now zero! It's off the box! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!

      THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!

      Sheesh, if you want an argument to die around here, you've got to complain 'til you're blue in the face.

    • Re:Zmodem rules. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Krellan ( 107440 ) <krellan@@@krellan...com> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:36PM (#7684509) Homepage Journal
      That's true. The purpose of ZMODEM is to transfer data as fast as possible, on a fairly modern system with clean phone lines, plentiful memory for buffering, and fast I/O that doesn't block. On a modern system, ZMODEM is the best character-based protocol out there (there were a few that were more advanced or had special purposes, like BiModem, but they are irrelevant now that everything now uses packet-based data and TCP/IP).

      The purpose of Kermit is to be 100% compatible with pretty much every piece of technology, going all the way back to the earliest mainframe computers!

      Different character set (ASCII, EBCDIC, UTF-8, etc.)? Kermit will translate the data as it is transferred.

      Strange record length requirement (data must be transferred in units of 80 bytes or so, and can't be addressed as individual characters)? This was common on mainframes. Kermit will pad data as required to make this work.

      Limited I/O that can't use the comm port and storage device at the same time? This was common on old DOS PC comm programs that could not multitask. Kermit will delay as needed in order to let data be stored before continuing with the communications, and synchronize this with the other side so that data is not lost.

      Noisy phone line? Kermit will do complete error correction, without stalling or aborting the transfer (as ZMODEM was known to do).

      Low memory for buffering? Kermit will do handshaking to ensure that the other side doesn't send data until the current data has been fully processed, minimizing the need for memory to buffer data.

      Alien directory structure (VAX, etc.)? Kermit includes a mini-OS that can be used interactively to browse directories and initiate file transfers, and it abstracts the local storage conventions of the system's OS into a simple hierarchy that is the lowest common denominator. As an example of what this means, have you ever done a "ftp" into an old DOS system, and found yourself unable to change drive letters, because FTP (being a UNIX-based program) has no concept of drive letters? Kermit to the rescue here.

      Now that computers and protocols are beginning to become standardized, thanks in part to the popularity of the Internet, the need for Kermit is fading. Still, it's good to read about interesting uses of Kermit such as this. Kermit joins the old DOS shareware program "Compushow" as having The Right Stuff.... :)
    • Get yer flamewar bits right here [google.com].

      I had no problems getting 0.95 line bandwidth out of Kermit, but then protocols 'r us. Note also the ancient Telebit references, now lost to the mists of time.



  • Talk about flash back. .... remembering the days of logging on to my colleges VAX with my old 2400 baud modem and using kermit to download files. then I also remember swtching to Zmodem which was alot better. no more of that ASCII crap.
    • Talk about flash back

      I still use Kermit almost daily. I intereact with my casino's slot system with a VT100 terminal emulator. If I want to download reports to use in another application, I have to use Kermit to get them.
    • Still use it to talk with my HP48gx, since it only supports that and xmodem.

      I remember back in the BBS days, always hated having to use x/ymodem since it required supplying the filename, where zModem defaulted to automagically grabbing it, not to mention how much faster it was/is. Kermit shared that feature, but by the time I was using BBSs alot zModem was already the norm. zModem is Dead! long live zModem!

      tm

  • The line of Kermits (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shura57 ( 727404 ) * on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:21PM (#7684344) Homepage

    After Kermit 95, there probably will be Kermit 98, followed by Kermit NT, Kermit ME, Kermit 2000, and finally Kermit XP.

    But somehow, I can't imagine Kermit Longhorn as a species... :-)

    Seriously, it definitely was (is?) a great program, especially when communicating between less common platforms. It saved my day more than once when I needed to transfer files between the VAX and Amiga, both quite ancient, and without ethernet hardware on Amiga. Many thanks to the creators!

    Alex

  • ...outlined here [columbia.edu].
    Quantity Discount Unit Price
    100-249 84.38% 10.00
    250-499 86.72% 8.50
    500-999 88.75% 7.20
    1000-2499 90.63% 6.00
    2500-4999 92.19% 5.00
    5000-9999 93.75% 4.00
    10000-19999 94.84% 3.30
    20000-39999 95.23% 3.05
    I wonder how many bulk orders they get these days...

  • Scorned because it was slow... (Score:3, Informative)

    by zjbs14 ( 549864 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:23PM (#7684364) Homepage
    And sometimes a resource hog. I was told by the admins of the public Sun boxes at UT (circa late 80's)not to use it any more since it kept using all of the CPU. Fun stuff.

  • What is Kermit? .. from the official website. (Score:5, Informative)

    by junkymailbox ( 731309 ) * on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:23PM (#7684367)

    Kermit [columbia.edu] is an extensible file transfer protocol first developed at Columbia University in New York City in 1981 for transferring text and binary files without errors between diverse types of computers over potentially hostile communication links, and it is a suite of communications software programs from the Kermit Project at Columbia University. The Kermit protocol and software are named after Kermit the Frog, star of the television series, The Muppet Show; the name Kermit is used by permission of Henson Associates, Inc.

    Over the years, the Kermit Project has grown into a worldwide cooperative nonprofit software development effort, headquartered at and coordinated from Columbia University [slashdot.org]. The Kermit Project is dedicated to production of cross-platform, long-lasting, standards-conformant, interoperable communications software, and is actively engaged in the standards process [slashdot.org].

    Since its inception in 1981, the Kermit protocol has developed into a sophisticated and powerful transport-independent tool for file transfer and management, incorporating, among other things:

    KERMIT PROTOCOL

    The feature that distinguishes Kermit protocol from most others is its wide range of settings to allow adaptation to any kind of connection between any two kinds of computers. Most other protocols are designed to work only on certain kinds or qualities of connections, and/or between certain kinds of computers, and therefore work poorly (or not at all) elsewhere and offer few if any methods to adapt to unplanned-for situations. Kermit, on the other hand, allows you to achieve successful file transfer and the highest possible performance on any given connection.

    Unlike FTP or X-, Y-, and ZMODEM (the other protocols with which Kermit is most often compared) Kermit protocol does not assume or require:

    • a connection that is transparent to control characters;
    • an 8-bit connection;
    • a clean connection;
    • big buffers all along the communication path;
    • physical-link-layer flow control.

    (although Kermit does not require any of these conditions, it can take advantage of them when they are available). A feature article on Kermit protocol by Tim Kientzle in the February 1996 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal [ddj.com] noted that "Kermit's windowing approach is faster than protocols such as XModem and YModem . . . What many people don't realize is that under less-than-ideal conditions, Kermit's windowing approach is significantly faster than ZModem, a protocol with a well-deserved reputation for fast transfers over good-quality lines."

    Thus Kermit transfers work "out of the box" almost every time.

    • Thanks for explaining why Kermit is still relevant -- I was going to flame on about how choosing kermit over zmodem was about as dumb as choosing 'compress' over 'bzip2' ;)

  • Frogs in Spaaaace (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cosmik ( 730707 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:23PM (#7684369) Homepage
    In space, no-one can hear you croak.
  • PIIIIIIIIIIGGGSSS IIIINNN SPAAAaaaccccceeeeee.....

    Come on, did *no-one* else think of that muppets sketch ?

    Simon

  • Kermit (Score:3, Funny)

    by tds67 ( 670584 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:26PM (#7684390)
    While the article's author doesn't seem to have a quite perfect grasp on what Kermit is...

    It can be hard when grasping Kermit...just ask Miss Piggy.

  • Article text (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Posted anonymously, like saltwater taffy.

    International Space Station Incorporates Columbia's Kermit Software Program

    slap on a kermit and save the day
    by Michael Larkin
    New York - Dec 09, 2003
    Created almost 25 years ago by Columbia's academic computing center to help manage the high demand on the University's mainframes, a software program known as Kermit has leapt all the way to the International Space Station where it is being used in a scientific experiment.
    Designed to allow two different computer systems

  • Kermit is a program! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Furry Ice ( 136126 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:27PM (#7684403)
    The author of the article has a very nice grasp of what Kermit is. It's not just a protocol, but a program complete with scripting capabilities, modem dialing, transfers using several protocols (including Kermit of course). It can even do TCP transfers now. It's a great program, but it's a little hard to use and mostly surpassed by simpler tools now. Still, I needed to use it a few years ago to automate modem uploads to a mainframe.

    • It's a program, it's a protocol (Score:5, Funny)

      by Theatetus ( 521747 ) * on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:31PM (#7684451) Journal

      Man:It's a flyswatter!

      Woman:It's a spatula!

      Man:It's a flyswatter!

      Woman:It's a spatula!

      Man:It's a flyswatter!

      Woman:It's a spatula!

      Announcer:Wait! You're both right!

    • It's simple in it's complexity. Few terminal packages these days will get out of your way and let you have control over the connection. Kermit can assist you as much or as little as you'd like, which is great when you have an odd physical connection to deal with for some reason, or (horrors) don't have a modem attached to your serial port, or the other end can't tolerate a BREAK, etc...

      It's the only program out there where you can tell it what you want to do, and will know for a fact that it will do no mor

  • kermit v zmodem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sir_cello ( 634395 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:27PM (#7684416)

    You need to understand the differences.

    zmodem is high performance single streaming large packet size negative-acknowledgement only protocol - it fails badly in noisy or lossy style of environments.

    kermit is far more robust, can interoperate with various different systems of different character encoding, had adaptive retransmission, and can perform just as well as kermit under the right circumstances.

    The BBS implementations of kermit were not as sophisticated as the protocol could be, and most BBS environments didn't need the kind of features that kermit had. kermit is also of the emacs style: it's not just a protocol by an entire interactive terminal in itself: scripts, command line, etc.
    • that's what I remmeber too - kermit with for use with high-noise environments, and zmodem was when you wanted to just get stuff fast over relatively clear lines.

      I vaguely remember that most kermit window sizes were set to ridiculously small values because they were defaults.

      Then there was sliding window kermit, which was a sort of lame attempt to match zmodem's speed.

      Ah, those 300 baud days of old!
    • "kermit is far more robust, can interoperate with various different systems of different character encoding, had adaptive retransmission, and can perform just as well as kermit under the right circumstances."

      I would be pretty concerned if it didn't perform as well as itself...
      • I'm an engineer and that's gives me two things:

        (a) an above average quota for dyslexic spelling mistakes and grammatical errors;
        (b) the experience of strange and non-deterministic software that doesn't always perform as well as itself.

        (in fact, I did mean to say "as well as zmodem")

        Next time I'll ask my imaginary friend to proof read my work. Honestly, my code is less buggy than my writing.
  • ...which was scorned in favor of Zmodem

    The pompously smug and self-important among us preferred Ymodem-G when on an error-corrected link. And now we are relics.

    • I was more of a self-importantly smug type, but I did that YModem-G stuff too -- great with the ol' error corrected connection from my USR Courier 14.4.

      Of course, that was really faster than anyone needs. 300 baud Modem7 [clipx.net] and CP/M should be good enough for anyone, right? You can't read or type faster than that anyway.

      And that started me on a nostalgia trip that lead to this [nehybka.cz] page. Notice that copyright issues on source were already a problem [nehybka.cz], although in a different way.

      • And, of course, I forgot that I once implemented XModem in interpretted Microsoft BASIC v5.2 (or so) on an Osborne 1. 4MHz Z80A processor and 64k of RAM. Yeesh, I would have rather gotten laid.

  • Hold on, let me download the article. (Score:5, Funny)

    by karmaflux ( 148909 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:28PM (#7684425)
    rz\r


    rz\r

    rz\r

    man screw this

    ^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z

    dsgkh$#@^%@26 3421lj __ 34 NO CARRIER
  • I still use Kermit 0.9(40) to transfer things to and from my HP-48GX. I never did get it working on any new PPC Mac. Thus it is currently relegated to a Powerbook 190cs that I use for the retro applications that only run on a 68k Macintosh.

  • Aaah yes... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Treacle Treatment ( 681828 )
    ...the communications protocol that wants to be an operating system. Somebody (Frank) has too much time on his hands. Reminds me of EMACS. These programs are definitely not in the spirit of UNIX.
  • ..which was scorned in favor of Zmodem

    My reaction as I read the first few lines of the post was "zmodem is better". I'm glad the author added that comment, it gave me a good laugh at my own reaction.

    The ease of use of zmodem automatically accepting the download and setting the file name did seem like a revolutionary idea to me back then.

    Jason
    ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]

    • Re:zmodem (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Watts Martin ( 3616 )

      The somewhat ironic thing is that Kermit did all of the things we associate with ZModem, too--it's just that except for the original Kermit program itself, most implementations of the protocol were based on the original spec, not the revisions concurrent with ZModem.

      Kermit never matched ZModem's speed on good links. But I remember one time when I had to get files off a Unix machine which I could only connect to by dialing into an IBM mainframe which connected to a VAX on a remote campus, and telnetting fr

  • LeechZmodem, icezmodem, superzmodem, etc (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:30PM (#7684444)
    Never forget the ultimate in thieving scum protocols.
    LeechZmodem.
    It was a mutation of the Zmodem transfer protocol that never sent an acknowledgment packet at the end of a transfer, allowing you to download an entire file, yet signal to the bulletin board system that you'd never received the complete file. End result: your file credits don't change.
    I doubt NASA cares, though.

    • you could also get easy fake upload credits too. i had a 2400 bps modem that had built in compression, so i'd always pkzip my uploads with no compression. that way, the modem could do the work and then when the bbs got it, they'd give me the credits on the zip file size which was pretty big. also helped to include a rather large text file of all 0's in the zip file too. ah, the good ol' days.

    • Re:LeechZmodem, icezmodem, superzmodem, etc (Score:5, Funny)

      by kyletinsley ( 575229 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @07:04PM (#7685265) Homepage
      LeechZmodem.
      It was a mutation of the Zmodem transfer protocol that never sent an acknowledgment packet at the end of a transfer, allowing you to download an entire file, yet signal to the bulletin board system that you'd never received the complete file. End result: your file credits don't change.
      I doubt NASA cares, though.

      "Yeah, ISS, this is Houston. We're not letting you download any more course correction data until you upload some more space porn! You keep forgetting that you have a 5:1 ratio to maintain..."

      "And if you try that 'uploading of duplicate files' crap again, we'll revoke all of your existing credits!"

  • Takes you right back (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info@nOSPaM.devinmoore.com> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:31PM (#7684458) Homepage Journal
    Boy, it takes me back to read the word "Kermit" when not related to a frog... I actually used to use that... but there was no Slashdot then to talk about it on.
    • I actually used to use that... but there was no Slashdot then to talk about it on.

      For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure SlashDot bumped packets with a fair amount of Kermit traffic in its early years. I was a sysadmin at Hope College back when CmdrTaco was an underclassman there in the mid-90's, and we used Kermit for DOS (I created a KERMIT.ICO to use for it with Windows) as our standard tool for transfering files between Vaxen and PCs, across the campus ethernet. Heck, young Rob probably used it himsel

  • ah the memories (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KDN ( 3283 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:31PM (#7684462)
    Kermit, it wasn't fast, but I swear that protocol could almost talk through mud. I used it through terminal servers, over X.25, over DECNET, over a freaking IBM 7171 converter (anyone else remember these monsters?). I even used it to stress test a Sun to DECNET comm program (keep signing on back and forth between a and b back to a back to b back to a), and then doing a kermit file transfer. Easy way to simulate 40 people using the system simultanously. But a friend of mine has me beat, IP over kermit over a satellite bounce from the south poll.

    • Aha! (Score:2)

      by oGMo ( 379 )
      But a friend of mine has me beat, IP over kermit over a satellite bounce from the south poll.

      Now we know the truth behind the Florida electoral problems!

    • Re:ah the memories (Score:4, Interesting)

      by vidarh ( 309115 ) <vidar@hokstad.com> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @06:25PM (#7684968) Homepage Journal
      It's trivial to make a protocol reliable. You just increase the overhead A LOT by one or more of mechanisms such as ack's, checksums/hashes to verify integrity, resends, small packet sizes etc. The reason X/Y/Z modem got popular was exactly because they threw a lot of the overhead out, increased packet sizes etc. because for almost all uses it won't buy you anything.

      But getting that level of reliability is dead simple - I wrote a custom protocol implementation for data transfer between two GSM handsets many years ago that had to cope with nastyness such as frequently dropped calls (due to one of the handsets being on a ship that was continuously circling over an autonomous submersible, and the other handset being on another ship, both of them well off shore :) ), and small packet sizes and predictive resends (packages would be resent automatically if it didn't get an ack or nack within a reasonable amount of time was all that was needed to make it "rock stable" (except for the delay caused by the GSM phones reconnecting).

      Serial protocols aren't exactly hard to do unless you "need" to squeeze every last byte out of the theoretical maximum transfer speed available.

  • It's Official (Score:3, Funny)

    by DogIsMyCoprocessor ( 642655 ) <[dogismycoprocessor] [at] [yahoo.com]> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:32PM (#7684467) Homepage
    Spacecraft confirms it. The Kermit protocol is dying ...

  • Kermit is Dying (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <mark.seventhcycle@net> on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:34PM (#7684490) Homepage

    Fact: Kermit is dying

    It is common knowledge that Kermit is dying. Everyone knows that ever hapless Kermit is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which Kermit is the worst off of an admittedly suffering Kermit community. The numbers continue to decline for Windows but Kermit may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for Kermit continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    All major marketing surveys show that Kermit has steadily declined in market share. Kermit is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Kermit is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes Kermit is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: Kermit is dying

    (Inspired by a Win98 / FreeBSD Troll)

  • Greatest technological acheivement (Score:4, Funny)

    by demachina ( 71715 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:38PM (#7684531)
    ... being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind.

    You mean they are running it on Linux??? No, that couldn't be it. You couldn't possibly be referring to the ISS could you? If so exactly what about the ISS is a great achievement other than they managing to spend staggering sums to accomplish nothing. The ISS is in a close race with the war in Iraq in that category.

  • Ah Kermit... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xchino ( 591175 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @05:39PM (#7684555)
    I found my introduction to the BBS community when I was 8 or so and going through everything that came with our new computer. While playing with lotus 1-2-3 I came across a bunch of options I didn't understand, but one said Kermit, like the frog, so I checked that out. This brought me to the (horrible) built in terminal and gave me some options for dialing numbers. That's what gave me a clue as to what that one weird shaped port was on the back of the computer, so I hooked up the phoneline and dialed PKWare's BBS, which was the first BBS I ever connected to. After hours of long distance charges all over the country, much to my parents displeasure, I had a good terminal program (Terminate FYI :) and a decent list of local BBS.

    So I guess kermit played a crucial role in my life, as now I'm a network engineer :) Of course I ditched kermit for Zmodem, and a few other nutty protocols. Anybody remember the ones that would let you play tetris and such? Those were great back in the days of 2400 baud and single tasking operating systems.

    And since I'm feeling nostalgic I'll just throw these in at random.

    -Annoying people by creating insanely large and annoying ANSI sigs.
    -Fidonet
    -KINGCOTT
    -ANSI Bombs
    -Legend of the Red Dragon
    -TradeWars 2002
    -Horrible misconfigured MajorBBS sites.
    -Wardialing (ToneLoc!)
    -Can I have Co-Sys?

    If you understand anything in that list, you're probably a geek. If you understand everything in the list, you were probably as annoying of a punkass as I was :)
  • Kermit is much more than a file transfer protocol.

    Besides Serial communication, it can handle many network protocols: FTP, Telnet, HTTP, SSH to name a few. It can use the telnet comm control, to handle network attached modems. It has a macro/programming language. For those jobs where one needs to recognize success or failure of a transfer, this is a boon.

    And in the Windows version it has a large number of terminal emulations.

    Just a satisfied customer.
  • being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind

    Now, am I the only one who thinks the space station is not the greatest technological achievement of humankind? To me, the greatest invention is obvious: the Thermos cup. It keeps hot stuff hot, and it keeps cold stuff cold. But how does it know the difference??
  • ...to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days...
    Good! The cylons can't hack that old technology. It's just the new stuff you got to worry about!
  • FYI, up until very recently, the kermit protocol was still being shipped with Red Hat Linux, via the gkermit application. It looks like a fairly recent implementation, too. It doesn't look like it exists in Red Hat 9, though.
  • i didn't know kermit was scriptable [columbia.edu]. I like scriptable [columbia.edu] (Kermit scripting language is a programming language similar to Perl, but with different syntax ... predates perl [perl.com]) things.

  • Ahh, yes... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OneFix at Work ( 684397 )
    Kermit...I used that as a download protocol over our campus network back in college...it was an old system, only active for a couple of semesters while I was there...but the network was "8-bit unclean" and would garble characters and such over anything but kermit...then kermit decided it wouldn't work, so I had to use UUEncode...even devised a little script to resend only the packets I needed...but then again, that was back when I had my Amiga and 14.4Kbps was something great...

  • Right! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tenchiken ( 22661 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @06:00PM (#7684762)
    it brought a smile to my face to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days (which was scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind."


    You have got to be kidding me. Maybe maybe the moon race qualifies as the "greatest technological achievement of humankind" I have yet to hear of a single usefull discover onboard that (expensive) piece of low flying equipment.

  • Kermit and Kermit 95 have been invaluable tools to improve our computing efficiency


    holy crap someone used these two words in the same sentence world coming to end STOP

    --dan

  • why? it works (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ftide ( 454731 )
    Kermit always sends, receives data, always did with my Tandy and 300 kbps modem and later 1200 baud US Robotics. Do you think a competent NASA engineer or contractor would let a server running NT with MS TCP, RADIUS, etc. loose in space? Seriously, now. Lives are at stake.

  • GPL/ OS licence bashing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pete0t2 ( 149030 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @08:49PM (#7686030)
    I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the site's long rant [columbia.edu] against open source licensing.

    eg. "The very foundation of the free software movement no longer exists."

  • wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by aminorex ( 141494 ) on Wednesday December 10, 2003 @11:13PM (#7686911) Homepage Journal
    > the old protocol from my BBS days (which was
    > scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on
    > the greatest technological achievement of
    > humankind."

    Cool. Kermit is being used to distribute
    The Return of the King? Who woulda thunk it!

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