Jim Matthews, the chief programmer at Dartmouth College’s Peter Kiewit Computing Services, and author of the popular Fetch FTP client for the Mac, cleaned up on ABC-TV game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" last night. Jim, didn't win a $million, but he came close, never using a lifeline until the a thousand dollar question, and still having one left going into the million-dollar question, which unfortunately, neither he nor the audience were confident about.

The stumper question turned out to be which popular network news anchor got his start in television by hosting a kids' TV show at age 9. The answer, for trivia buffs, is my fellow Canadian and ABC's own Peter Jennings. However, Jim Matthews wisely walked away with the half $million.

Matthews was a study in cool during the whole show, his segment lasting for most of the hour. His relaxed composure contrasted with that of his two sons and his NYU law student cousin who was occupying the guest seat, and even of host Regis Philbin. Jim breezed through all the questions up to the $125,000 mark, applying a winning combination of broad general knowledge and astute deduction. He also had some luck going for him with a couple of computer and Internet oriented questions, like font names, and the legendary reason why the founder of eBay by originally started the online auction site (to help his wife collect PEZ dispensers). We now know that Jim uses Helvetica as his default screen font.

Matthews, who says he’s been calling the show’s contestant qualifying phone number for about a year, taped last night's show on November16. "The odds of getting a call back are pretty low," says Matthews, who passed the initial qualifying test "40 or 50 times" before getting his call to appear on the show. "It was pretty much out of the blue," he says.

"Millionaire," hosted by Regis Philbin, has been wildly popular with viewers since it premiered last year. So far, the program has awarded nearly $38 million to contestants, including six $1 million winners.

Matthews admits that while he enjoys trivia games, he didn’t catch on to the "Millionaire" phenomenon for a while, until a friend told him about the program. "I was a little slow to catch up on it."

Once he got his chance, though, Matthews turned to some local expertise: Norwich, Vt., resident Dan DeMars won $250,000 on the program, and gave Matthews "lots of useful information. He even volunteered to be one of my lifelines."

The recently upgraded Fetch 3.0.3, which is free for educational or charitable non-profit organization users, is a user-friendly Macintosh FTP client; it allows point-and-click, drag and drop file transfers to and from any machine with an FTP server, over aTCP/IP network. Fetch 3.0.2 includes many bug fixes, and is the first Mac FTP client to support resuming downloads, including BinHex downloads.

A public beta of Fetch 4.0 is also now available for testing by users of the Mac OS X Public Beta. Fetch 4.0 has a number of new features, including mirroring, remote editing, and server-to-server transfers, along with a clearer, updated user interface. Fetch 4.0 for Mac OS X takes advantage of the Aqua user interface, and runs as a native Carbon application on Mac OS X. Fetch 4.0 will be made available for Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 at a future date. To download Fetch 4.0b2 for Mac OS X, visit http://www.dartmouth.edu/pages/softdev/fetch.html. Please send feedback to Fetch@dartmouth.edu.

Fetch has the following notable features.
• Multiple Connections
• Fetch allows multiple outstanding connections, and automatically reconnects sessions that have been disconnected.
• Drag and Drop
- Fetch features extensive support for drag and drop (which requires System 7.5, or else the Macintosh Drag and Drop extension and Finder 7.1.3 or later). Files and directories can be dragged to and from remote sites. URLs can be dragged to bookmark list windows and text editors. Even some preferences can be set via drag and drop.
• Open Transport
- Fetch is one of the first applications to ship with Open Transport code, for better performance on PCI Macintoshes and soon non-PCI models as well.
• Apple Events
- Fetch is the only Mac FTP client with Apple Event Object Model support, for easier and more powerful scripting with languages such as AppleScript, Frontier, and others. Fetch is also "recordable," so writing a simple script can be as simple as hitting the "Record" button in your script editor.
• Bookmark Lists
- Fetch supports multiple bookmark lists, with easy drag and drop editing and reordering.
• Resume Download
- Fetch is the only Mac FTP client that can restart interrupted transfers, making it unnecessary to re-download data that has already been transfered.
• Firewalls
- Fetch supports simple proxy servers, SOCKS gateways, passive mode transfers, and a user-selected port-number range, all to make Fetch's operation behind firewalls more convenient. In addition, Fetch supports the One-Time Password and S/Key systems for protecting the privacy of passwords.
• Searching
- Fetch supports the "SITE INDEX" command for searching FTP archives by file name ("SITE INDEX" is not supported by all servers).
• Permissions
- Fetch allows simple point-and-click management of remote file permissions via the "SITE CHMOD" and "SITE UMASK" commands (not supported by all servers).
• File Format Conversion.
- Fetch supports up and downloading files in AppleSingle, BinHex, and MacBinary II format, as well as the common Text and Raw Data formats.
• Directory Trees.
- Fetch can upload, download, or delete entire directory trees (i.e. directories containing files and/or sub-directories) with a single command.
• Suffix Mapping.
- Fetch comes with a list of suffix mappings which relate file name extensions (such as ".gz") to Macintosh file types (such as MacGzip). Users can modify the default mappings and add their own as well. Fetch can also use Internet Config's mappings.
• Post-Processing.
- Fetch's Post Processing feature makes it possible to have downloaded files automatically passed to designated helper applications, depending on their type. Fetch can use Internet Config's post-processing settings or its own.
• URL support.
- Fetch can access files or directories based on their Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and can generate URLs for displayed files.
• Text Display.
- Fetch can display text files, directory listings, and server messages in its own windows, without requiring a separate viewing program.
• Online Manual.
- Fetch features an online users manual, with a tutorial and reference topics. Click here to browse the WWW version of the manual.
• Custom Commands.
- Fetch allows users to type in arbitrary FTP commands, to navigate firewalls and access server-specific commands.

Fetch 1.0 was written in the summer of 1989, in order to provide a file transfer solution for Macs talking to Dartmouth's various host operating systems, and in order to take advantage of Dartmouth's newly acquired Internet connection. Version 1.0 was a Macintosh desk accessory, and communicated with TCP/IP machines via an AppleTalk stream protocol (the Kiewit Stream Protocol) and Philip D. L. Koch's KSP<->TCP gateway. Version 1.1 incorporated CStream, a network class library, which provided support for MacTCP. Version 2.0 added the ability to transfer directory trees, suffix mapping, StuffIt! decoding, and AppleSingle support. A bug fix release, 2.0.6, was the first version of Fetch available for downloading on the Internet. Version 2.1 included the Post Processing feature, and enhanced file list, and text viewing. Version 2.1.1 added minor features, and 2.1.2 included URL support and Power Mac native code. Version 3.0 was a major upgrade, with support for multiple connections, drag and drop, Internet Config, firewalls, AppleScript, and other features. Versions 3.0.1, 3.0.2 and 3.0.3 fixed bugs, improved performance, and added support for resuming downloads.

Fetch was and is written by Jim Matthews.

For more information, visit:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/pages/softdev/fetch.html
or
http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=1126

Charles W. Moore

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