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February 03, 2005

Notes from the Garden Journal: Have You Surfed Atari Today?

Curious ramblings from someone trying not to feed the horses his cheeseburger...

 

 

 

-Martin Kite-Powell

 

I’ve been trying some more creative user agent spoofs of late with my Firefox browser for use in hiding technical details of my identity (e.g. my operating system, type of browser and other information that could compromise security). Some of the spoofed identities I’ve had a little fun with. For example, Wes Roth at The Roth Report, Sarah K at Mountaineer Musings or Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities might see someone who used the latest version of the “Crunchy Poodle” browser when they check their visitor stats.

 

Lately I’ve been going about hither and yon with my belovedly unabashed Firefox browser running on the Atari 2600 (Whackamole OS 8.2a SR3 revision) platform, which has been a lot of fun because I’ve been able to play Canyon Bomber while surfing the web, which saves a lot of time as you might imagine.

 

What was no surprise when reviewing the stats of those who visit my site was that my own visits using "Atari" should be indexed along with the operating systems of the other visitors since after all, that's what I have the user agent of my browser telling everyone that it is.

 

 

What was truly shocking on the other hand was that this visitor log, which runs the AW Stats engine and displays icons next to each OS entry, along with showing the Microsoft banner, the Linux Pengo and BeOS logo, also displayed the Atari logo to the left of the corresponding OS listing.

 

Who surfs the web on an Atari computer?

 

 

The last computer Atari made was the Atari PC 5, which debuted around 1989/1990. And it could technically connect to the internet with its 300baud modem. With its choice of DOS 5.0, Windows 3.0 or OS2, it also had the option of a text browser, a text browser or a text browser (no GUI).

 

It might be safe to say this type of surfer doesn’t happen all that often. Still, someone at AW Stats went to a lot of trouble creating an Atari icon ready to pop up whenever someone surfing to my site using an Atari left his or her tracks for my curious indulgence.

 

I have a theory about it, and though I do admit that having a theory about such an insignificant thing could convince the reader I have time for trifles, I believe it's wholly right nonetheless. 

 

You see, I think the rationale behind AW including the Atari logo must be a cultural one: In geekland, being an Atari aficionado it seems, is nearly prerequisite to being a true hacker (and I mean hacker in the good as well as in all connotations). My guess is that in the holy church of computer nerdom, one will find these altars: to Linux, to FreeBSD to Star Trek and to the grand-patriarch Atari. That is why some fellow with ink stains on his pocket protector went to all of that work creating an icon for a computer that could never possibly have visited any of the sites metered by AW. Such examples as this show is that even though most programmers and web coders seem to keep to themselves, they are in reality very actively engaged social creatures and enjoy interacting in, if not discreetly, an actively rich culture.

 

I say, more power to their species.

 

 

 

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Posted by Martin at February 3, 2005 02:10 AM

Comments

Posted by: beautifulatrocities at February 3, 2005 07:42 PM

Posted by: Blogbat at February 3, 2005 07:45 PM