Technical
SlipKnot's rendering engine was written in C, and its user interface in Visual Basic. Because it had only a Unix commandline to communicate with, it "drove" the Unix host by sending characters to its commandline as if a person were typing them (as a "bot"). First, SlipKnot would request the retrieval of individual parts of a desired web page—the text, and then each picture—into files on the Unix host. This was done by executing the text-based web browser "lynx" on the Unix host with command-line arguments indicating which URL to retrieve, and the filename to create on the Unix host when the data was finally retrieved. This retrieval, from web page host to Unix host, was usually very fast, since these machines were connected by high speed communications lines. After the URL contents were moved to the Unix host, they had to be moved down to the PC. This was done by executing the communications program zmodem (sending the zmodem command to the Unix command-line) and then instantly placing the PC into receive mode.
Once the text (HTML) portion of a web page had been retrieved (it was always retrieved first), the page would be displayed by SlipKnot and could be read by the user, after which the pictures were retrieved in the background and eventually the page fixed up to display them.
Read more about this topic: SlipKnot (web Browser)
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“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
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“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, “the whole is greater than its part;” “reaction is equal to action;” “the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;” and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)