tuesday, april 13, 2004
browsing the collective unconscious
what kind of .txt files do people share on a p2p network? is there anything interesting to read? i imagined some secret bbs-like thing going on, people exchanging crazy files…or maybe just a bunch of readmes and software cracks.
i fired up my faithful accomplice and found out. i searched for “txt” a few times and i had a sample of 853 things. good enough.
this is what i found:
- ebooks. some stephen king, some robert heinlein. a bunch of h. p. lovecraft. a tom clancy or two. a cookbook from 1894. a bit of edgar allan poe.
- 111 readme files.
- song lyrics (rolling stones and korn).
- 13 cd keys/cracks.
- a few game cheats.
- a bunch of mysterious person@host.com.txt files.
- 32 files named desc.txt.
- an assortment of EULAs. 9, to be exact.
- xxx passwords.
- the gnu gpl.
- 26 license.txt files.
- 11 placeholder.txt files.
- 56 TXT.rtf files.
- 9 “whatsnew” files. 1 “whatsold” file.
- no ascii art.
and a whole lot of files with mysterious and weird names. i downloaded a couple dozen of the promising ones.
- 3x5.txt
- guitar tabs for some inane song i’ve never heard of.
- about crack.txt
- installing a crack for macvcd. i have no idea what macvcd is. i figured this was about the drug.
- alexthelooney@hotmail.com.txt
- a chat log, in french. who the hell shares their chat logs? poor alex.
- BarcodeFont.txt
- a readme in german and english for a donation-ware font. i wonder what the font looks like.
- Get every song you want here!.txt
- awww, it just advertises a midi site.
- heavy elephants.txt
- a spoiler for some game with Greek and Norse soldiers.
- hieracosphinx.txt
- a quote from Oedipus Rex.
- Kniting Text.txt
- exactly what it says. enthusiastic basic information on knitting.
- TXT.rtf
- information about itunes in what appears to be dutch.
- Wasabi_Overview.txt
- about the app skinner, not the food.
- YEAR2000.txt
- also exactly what it says. things to know about the year 2000.
i could start a whole weblog of weird text files found on acquisition. maybe i will.
comments (2)
you think that a crack for a program is a drug? poor idiot...
– dirtyrado on 4/19/2004 12:16:19
haha, you misread my post like i misread the file. unlike you, i realized my mistake before publishing it.
– britta on 4/19/2004 21:17:09
comments are off. for new comments, my email address is brittag@gmail.com.
