Main
Main
Artwork
Artwork
Books
Books
Donate
Donate
Licenses
Licenses
Shorts
Shorts
Software
Software
Source
Source

The Software of Insanely Witty Stupidity

Software developed for Insanely Witty Stupidity is similar to software maintained for free software projects (for example: GNU, Apache, and the X Window System). It's assumed that people downloading software from this website have basic knowledge about stdin/stdout systems (a "command prompt"), environment variables, kernels and userspaces, computer systems and circuits, and scripting. If this seems strange to you, you're probably looking for software with a graphical interface that is basically useless and can hardly be called "software" (what unknowledgeable developers sometimes refer to as "GUI software"). And, it's doubtful that Insanely Witty Stupidity will ever host software you feel comfortable using. If it makes you feel better, you are free to educate yourself. And (of course), insanelywittystupidity.com encourages *everyone* to do this (visit http://www.gnu.org to learn more about GNU/Linux and the free software movement).

Precompiled projects developed for Insanely Witty Stupidity are compiled for 32 bit x86 systems (except those compiled for Java virtual machines). They are distributed as archives that contain precompiled binaries and source code. If you'd like to see the source code for a web page (like the web page you're reading for example), you can view the source code downloaded by your browser by right clicking the page and clicking "view source." However, most of the pages of insanelywittystupidity.com contain PHP these days. There's even additional code imported from external files.

On GNU (and other Unix like systems), there is normally a "cat" command. cat will write the contents of a file to an stdout handle (meaning a user can view the contents of a file by typing things like "cat file.txt"). insanelywittystupidity.com has its own cat command: http://insanelywittystupidity.com/pub/php/cat.php. You can use it like this (for example):

http://insanelywittystupidity.com/pub/php/cat.php?/iws/html/Software.html

This allows a user to view code of a web page stored on Insanely Witty Stupidity in its original form (before Insanely Witty Stupidity's Apache daemon filters the file with a PHP binary, most likely modifying the web page and removing the PHP code). You can (of course) use cat.php to view the code for cat.php if you're curious how it works. It literally runs the cat command on Insanely Witty Stupidity's server. There is also an ls.php file in the same folder (to help users find other files on the website). Read about the commands "cat" and "ls" if you're not familiar with them (rtfm).

Both scripts are designed without some of the other functionality of GNU and Unix like systems (for example, using semi colons to run additional commands or using cat to write multiple files to stdout). The scripts are also sandboxed-- meaning they won't work on paths above the root of the website (/iws on this server). So, feel free to try things like reading the contents of Insanely Witty Stupidity's password hash or creating new files on the server (because, you won't be able to do those things). For more information about Insanely Witty Stupidity's cat.php and ls.php scripts, visit Insanely Witty Stupidity's manual archive.

Home C++ Java Javascript PHP Slackware

______________________________________________

Random Fact: Slackware (a GNU/Linux system maintained under an emphasis of function over form) is the official operating system used to host Insanely Witty Stupidity. Many packages are compiled using various Slackware systems for the purpose of developing the site. And, Insanely Witty Stupidity happily shares those precompiled packages with its users (because-- people may find them useful).

html revised 2024-03-08 by Michael Atkins.

The maintainer of insanelywittystupidity.com does not care if people duplicate this page or any part of it-- as long as this notice remains intact.