at the ZCOMM command line, hit the Enter key, and off it went. ZCOMM called the BBS and repeated everything - at far higher speed than I had done it manually. It went on-hook as planned when done.
Limitations —————- Auto-learn programs can create a script file that let you "drive the same route." For some applications this is enough. For others, it's just part of the way. You have to refine the script manually to get what you want.
Example:
If you call my bulletin board with an auto-learned script made
yesterday, chances are that everything works well. If you call
twice on the same day, however, you're in for a surprise. The
board greets you differently on your second visit. You will not
get the menu of available bulletins. It will take you directly
to the system's main menu. Your script must take this into
account.
On most online services, many things can happen at each "junction of your road." At one point in one of my scripts, up to twenty things may happen. Each event needs its own "routing." Twenty possible events are an extreme, but three to four possibilities at each system prompt is not unusual. All of them need to be handled by your script, if you want it to visit online services unattended while asleep. It is quicker and simpler to use other people's scripts and programs, although this might force you to use a different program for each service. Personally, I prefer offline readers on services where such are able to do the job. On other services, I usually depend on my own tailor-made scripts. Chapter 17: Gazing into the future ==================================
Thoughts about things to come.
Newspaper of the future —————————————- Some years ago, Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that today's newspapers are old-fashioned and soon to be replaced by electronic "ultra personal" newspapers. "If the purpose is to sell news," he said, then it must be completely wrong to sell newspapers. Personally, I think that it is a dreadful way of receiving the news." MIT's Media Laboratory had developed a new type of electronic newspaper. Daily, it delivered personalized news to each researcher. The newspaper was "written" by a computer that searched through the news services' cables and other news sources according to each person's interest profile. The system could present the stories on paper or on screen. It could convert them to speech, so that the "reader" could listen to the news in the car or the shower. In a tailor-made electronic newspaper, personal news makes big headlines. If you are off for San Francisco tomorrow, the weather forecasts for this city is front page news. Email from your son will also get a prominent place. "What counts in my newspaper is what I consider newsworthy," said Negroponte. He claimed that the personal newspaper is a way of getting a grip on the information explosion. "We cannot do it the old way anymore. We need other agents that can do prereading for us. In this case, the computer happens to be our agent."
The technology is already here. Anyone can design similar papers using powerful communication programs with extensive script features. I have tried. My test edition of The Saltrod Daily News did not convert news to sound. It did not look like a newspaper page on my screen. Not because it was impossible. I simply did not feel these 'extras' worth the effort. My personal interest profile was taken care of by my scripts. If I wanted news, the "news processor" went to work and "printed" a new edition. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, I got an "extended edition." This is a section from my first edition:
"Front page," Thursday, November 21.
Under the headline News From Tokyo, the following items:
TOSHIBA TO MARKET INEXPENSIVE PORTABLE WORD PROCESSOR TOHOKU UNIVERSITY CONSTRUCTING SEMICONDUCTOR RESEARCH LAB MEITEC, U.S. FIRM TO JOINTLY MARKET COMPUTER PRINTER INFO TOSHIBA TO SUPPLY OFFICE EQUIPMENT TO OLIVETTI NISSAN DEVELOPS PAINT INSPECTION ROBOT MADE-TO-ORDER POCKET COMPUTER FROM CASIO
These articles were captured from Kyoto News Service through
Down Jones/News Retrieval.