Giving You the Finger!

[Pentad]

Back in the day, I loved the finger command when I was at university. You could finger fellow students/faculty/staff and get a host of information. With students you could get their class schedule, dorm room location and phone, as well and their 'plan'. Probably other stuff too I just don't remember.  It was incredibly useful if not a privacy nightmare by today's standards.

I was at Purdue but I seem to recall that IU's network was linked as well? I could log into Gold, Silver, or Nickel and finger my gf (as bad as that sounds) who was at IU from our network. My trusty Amiga 3000 w/AMIX had finger and I might have had finger on the AmigaOS side...I don't remember.

Anyway the web rose to prominence and finger was deprecated (for privacy issues too I'm sure). However, I still miss finger (and talk and elm and mail).

So, I was delighted to find that there is still a finger server with useful information out there! You can finger @graph.no for a plethora of news and weather information. Though, the news part seems to be broken right now.

The finger command still exists in Linux, macOS, and Windows (much to my surprise it worked in 10 Pro for me). It even works on my AMIX WINE WinUAE setup.

So try it out and enjoy the nostalgia!

-P


finger @graph.no

Usage:

 * finger @graph.no (world weather forecast, no spaces)
   Example: finger newyork@graph.no

 Advanced usage:

 * finger o:@graph.no (a one-line forecast)
   Example: finger o:newyork@graph.no

 * finger ^@graph.no (Imperial units)
   Example: finger ^newyork@graph.no

 * finger +5@graph.no (forecast from 5 hrs ahead in time (max:26))
   Example: finger northpole+5@graph.no

 * finger ~160@graph.no (set screen width)
   Example: finger southpole~160@graph.no

 * finger %2@graph.no (forecast for every second hour [Norway])
   Example: finger oslo%2@graph.no

 * finger @graph.no (norwegian weather forecast)
   Example: finger 0458@graph.no

 Other:

 * finger news@graph.no (latest headlines from NRK)
 * finger time@graph.no (server local time)
 * finger date@graph.no (server local date)
 * finger about@graph.no (contact information)

International names comes from http://fil.nrk.no/yr/viktigestader/verda.txt.


AMIX Finger Patch: http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/webmirrors/www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1993-04.html

[LoadWB]

Sadly many of us admins removed access to finger, or at least replaced the stock daemon with something which was more generalized.  finger has been considered a security and privacy risk for at least a decade.

Bummer.  And it looks like WHOIS is about to go the wayside, as well, as EU privacy laws turn to gaze upon it.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I worked at a university in 1994, remember using that command back then. I fingered my co-workers! :roflmao:

[Iggy]

I used to finger my instructors to see their most recent logins. I kind of miss mainframes for that kind of centralization. I'm not sure how well that command works in our more distributed world.

[kolla]

I have TSL/SSL enabled finger and talk clients on my to-do list (IPv6-only just for the heck of it). A finger daemon that only accept finger requests from clients that presents a certificate that the server endorses

[Pentad]

I have to admit that even back then I was surprised at how much information they put in the finger lookups. As I said above, they listed dorm, room number, phone number, and class schedule with times. You could really stalk someone or rob their room with all that information.

I forgot about fingering the professors to see if they had logged in and received your email.

I remember when Star Trek: Generations came out and they had a web page for it. It contained a QuickTime movie of the trailer that you could download which was a big deal at the time. For some reason we had trouble downloading it but I remember watching it in one of the Mac labs.

IRC was huge at the time too.

Good memories,
-P

[Karlos]

Fnaarrrr.

[gertsy]

?

[gertsy]

Fnaarrrr.

?

[jj]

Fnaarrrr.

Indeed fingering co workers mega lolz