computer science

Textfiles.com

Textfiles.com is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Textfiles.com rather than just read about it. In short: textfiles.com is a website dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the bulletin board system (BBS) world and various subcultures, and thus providing "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them". The site categorizes and stores thousands of text files, primarily from th…

Key takeaways

Textfiles.com belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Textfiles.com to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Textfiles.com from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

textfiles.com is a website dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the bulletin board system (BBS) world and various subcultures, and thus providing "a glimpse into the history of writers and artists bound by the 128 characters that the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) allowed them". The site categorizes and stores thousands of text files, primarily from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and some that were created well into the 1990s. A broad range of topics is presented, including anarchy, art, carding, computers, drugs, ezines, freemasonry, computer games, hacking, phreaking, politics, computer piracy, sex, and UFOs. The site was created and is run by Jason Scott. The site went online in 1998, and as of 2005 had collected 58,227 files. As of 2017 the site was averaging 350,000–450,000 unique visitors per month. Most of the textfiles.com projects are "completionist" in outlook, attempting to gather as much information as possible within the decided scope. The site also houses a number of sub-projects with their own hostnames. artscene.textfiles.com has a repository of computer art including crack intros, ANSI and ASCII art and other related documents; audio.textfiles.com has an archive of audio files, including prank calls, recorded telephone conferences with BBS owners and hacker radio shows; cd.textfiles.com contains an archive of 1990s shareware discs; web.textfiles.com contains files created after the World Wide Web went into mainstream use, approximately 1995; bbslist.textfiles.com aims to be a comprehensive list of all historical BBSes; timeline.textfiles.com is meant to list all important events in the history of BBSes.

See also Archive Team Internet Archive Jason Scott Telehack

References

External links Official website Archive of Short Talk Bulletin

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Textfiles.com

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Textfiles.com claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Textfiles.com before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Textfiles.com ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Textfiles.com

In research: Textfiles.com appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Textfiles.com in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Textfiles.com is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American digital libraries, Bulletin board systems, Discipline-oriented digital libraries, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Textfiles.com outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Textfiles.com in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Textfiles.com means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Textfiles.com out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Textfiles.com in simple terms?

Why does Textfiles.com matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Textfiles.com?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Textfiles.com.