If anybody else was wondering what a .plan file is... it is part of the Finger P... | Hacker News

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jpadvo on Dec 18, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: John Carmack's .plan file

If anybody else was wondering what a .plan file is... it is part of the Finger Protocol[1], put together in 1977:

> The program would supply information such as whether a user is currently logged-on, e-mail address, full name etc. As well as standard user information, finger displays the contents of the .project and .plan files in the user's home directory. Often this file (maintained by the user) contains either useful information about the user's current activities, similar to micro-blogging, or alternatively all manner of humor.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol#Finger_user_inf...

chimeracoder on Dec 18, 2011 | [–]

I like to think of .plan files as Twitter for the 1990s.

irrelative on Dec 19, 2011 | | [–]

Only it scaled better.

dasil003 on Dec 18, 2011 | | | [–]

... and 80s ... and 70s.

mbowcock on Dec 18, 2011 | | [–]

As an aside I just saw this a couple of days ago and while activity seems to be slow to non-existent this looks like an interesting project.

Webfinger - http://code.google.com/p/

Basically finger 2.0 for the web

yahelc on Dec 18, 2011 | | [–]

http://code.google.com/p/webfinger/

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