Some More Complaints about JSTOR; The NWE
The new interface is too busy, and the page images are too small on the screen. I also don’t appreciate having to click through a pop-up each time I want to download a PDF.
I looked briefly to see if there was a way of using the superior older interface, and it doesn’t seem like it. The “see first match” option also seems to be broken.
In other news, I’ve heard that the Networked Writing Environment at UF, where I taught many classes as a TA, has been dismantled. The NWE was a Unix- (first AIX,* of all things, then Sun) based system, novel in itself and especially inviting to a young nerd. The first class I taught there was in technical writing, and I remember walking up shortly after distributing passwords and noticing that a youngish hacker had reconfigured his X display and had several shells open to what looked like NORAD servers within a space of minutes. I saw him on local TV later that summer being jailed on suspicion of computer misadventure; I suspect that he probably now lives in opulence trying to keep past selves off the lawn, so to speak.
*I’m sure at least one UF alum considers the fact that I got Nethack to compile on AIX to be my greatest scholarly accomplishment in graduate school.