The 20th Anniversary of the Internet

Ross Finlayson writes "In a message posted to the IETF general mailing list, Bob Braden reminds us that, on January 1st, 2003, 20 years will have passed since "the most logical date of origin of the Internet [...] when the ARPANET officially switched from the NCP protocol to TCP/IP". And the rest is history..."

Comments

Al Gore is celebrating

[very]

as the inventor of the internet, Al Gore is celebrating by not running for President.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[bsharitt]

Yes, we owe a great deal of thanks to Mr. Gore for his invention.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

After all this time one would think that this ridiculous, ignorant, petty Republican FUD would have been laughed out of existence. For the nth time, read it and this time please try to understand:

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nett im e-bold-0009/msg00161.html

Couple of significant quotes from Bob Kahn and Vint Cert:

"VC> Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant credit for
VC> his early recognition of the importance of what has become the Internet."

"...But as the two people
>who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
>Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
>Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
>our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of
>time."

So yes, Al Gore did take a position of leadership in the creation of the Internet. He helped keep penny-pinching nearsighted legislators from killing it, because he was one of the few people in power who "got it". /rant

Happy new year everyone!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

of course! because it's based on al-gore-ithms, al gore must've invented the internet!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

in old Soviet Russia, Internet invents Al Gore!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like a liberal to support the further demise of the global society with an incredibly addictive technology. After all, the Internet is nothing more than deviant lawbreakers who share P0RN, MP3's, and Pipebomb making instructions.

Way to go Al!!!!

You want to know the real reason Al didn't run?

Answer: 'Four" rhymes with 'Gore', and the chant would have been, "No more Gore in 2004!" :)

Ok, back to the New Years party... Pass me the wine!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[laserjet]

Uhh... it was a joke dude. Now whether it was funny or not is debateable (I don't think it is funny, and never did). But you don't need to go pull your proverbial 36" dildo and ram it up his ass just for making a cheap joke.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

And Bob Kahn and Vint Cert wouldn't have any other agenda that would make them want to promote Al Gore? Famous people use tools all the time to promote themselves. He probably gave them an autograph and one of his stupid ass books and those two nerds were more than happy to oblige him. /rant

Fuck You!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

It is good that you know nothing about what you speak of. He literally said "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. " Whether you take this out of context or not, you're being misleading.

CNN transcript with this:
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999 /03/09/ president.2000/transcript.gore/

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[markov_chain]

It's good to be suspicious of authority and all, but I would prefer a thousand Al Gores and nerds that suck up to him than one policitician paid off by the media cartel striving to destroy the freedoms that our general-purpose computing and networking technology provides us today.

--
Become a Vampire today!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't know who Al Gore is. A thousand of them would certainly lead to the outlawing of the combustion engine. Not to mention his wife has been against free speech in music (AC/DC and others) and other more adult entertainment expression since the 80s.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[operagost]

I'll stop making that joke if you leftist radicals will stop saying Bush "stole" the election.

By the way, if you want to see why people started making this joke, you have to give his exact quote:

During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

CREATING CREATING CREATING CREATING!

Whatever, he MEANT to say, the numbskull said CREATING, and he sure as hell didn't have anything to do with turning it on- he showed up after it was CREATED and gave it a push. Maybe it was just a slip ... but it's out there for all you authoritarian fanboys!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[John Hasler]

I think we should give him credit for creating Network Solutions instead. I wonder how much Verisign stock he ended up with?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[/dev/trash]

Awwwww.
Can no one have a joke, these days with out it being all the evil mean republicans fault?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, Bush didn't steal it -- it was gifted to him. Whether the "gift" was stolen is another question.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

...so is the fact that Bush stole the 2000 election. Deal with it.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

we all know you're not at a party...

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Stonent1]

petty Republican FUD would have been laughed out of existence

You have misused the term "FUD". Everyone who doesn't know what it means you should read up on it. The link below explains the meaning.

What is FUD?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Tony-A]

Creating.
You sit at a keyboard and create a program. Right?
You did not make the keyboard.
You did not design the layout of the keys.
You did not design the conventions of which pulses mean which character.
Most everything involved in the creation of that program you did not create.
However, you are responsible for the creative whatever that makes the difference between whether the program comes into existence or not.
Without Al Gore's initiative you would not have the internet. You *might* have a few unused pieces gathering dust in a few university labs.
Would you say that Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway system? Seems reasonable even if he never poured any concrete.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[fussman]

Excuse me, but as one of many who have common sense, I know that Al Gore didn't invent the internet. You see, you wouldn't get credit for something you "recognized the importance of." Al Gore has also tried to take credit for many other things that have contributed to the buildup (and downfall) of society. Of course, anybody who isn't trying to troll on /. knows that.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

of course, anybody not trolling or spreading a baldface lie knows Gore never attempted to take credit for inventing the internet

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

BECAUSE HE'S TALKING ABOUT WHAT HE DID AS A CONGRESSMAN. Repeat that 10,000 times to yourself until it sinks in.

And as far as "stealing" the election goes: Gore won the election, remember? By half a million votes. Its only due to an 18th century relic, the Electoral College, that we now have a deushbag for president.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[AvantLegion]

> Creating.
> You sit at a keyboard and create a program. Right?
> You did not make the keyboard.
> You did not design the layout of the keys.
> You did not design the conventions of which pulses > mean which character.
> Most everything involved in the creation of that > program you did not create.

Your logic fails to hold. Your hypothetical person did not claim to invent the computer.

There are the tools by which something is created, and there is the content which is processed through those tools.

Al Gore created neither the tools nor the content.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[m0ta]

thank you Scudsucker, for reminding everyone...

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[jnana]

Perhaps if the evil mean republicans -- as you refer to them -- were not totally destroying the country and systematically undoing two hundred years of progress in expanding the scope of civil liberties and making equality for all more than just a pipe dream, then, perhaps, it would just be a joke. Or if perhaps you suffer under the illusion that the systematic erosion of our most basic civil liberties is just something to be joked about at a cocktail party, then, too, indeed it is a joke.

If you think I'm over-reacting, then I can only say that we are as Germany was in 1936. Sure, it could, possibly, turn out okay, but things are likely to get incredibly ugly from here on out. Pretend otherwise at your own peril....

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you had ANY clue about about statistics the electoral college works just fine. Also, If you had half a brain you would know that the president was NEVER meant to be elected by the genereal population. Get out of the mind-numbed publik skool and read some history.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

And if you had ANY clue about about statistics the electoral college works just fine.

Okay then, explain why it makes sense that you can lose the vote but win the election?

Also, If you had half a brain you would know that the president was NEVER meant to be elected by the genereal population. Get out of the mind-numbed publik skool and read some history.

And if you weren't an AC with your head up your butt you'd know that the system was put in place because the writers of the constitution didn't trust the population to directly elect the president. That is a retarded system (but would explain why you like it) where someone can lose the vote but still get the office. If they can change the constitution so we directly elect Senators to Congress, they can do the same thing for the most important office in the country.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[GoSpeedRacerGo]

The problem are the states that have laws that say all their electoral votes must go to the winner of the popular election in the state. Even if he won at 51% to 49%.

Some states will devide the electoral votes and some follow the above method.

That is the flaw in the system, if you ask me.

(Guess which method Flordia uses. :-)

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[XO]

The electoral vote system wasnt used until (i don't have an exact date) I believe the late 1800's or early 1900's, when voters became disenfranchised with politics, and for the most part stopped turning out to vote.

The electoral system is not part of the constitution, and was definitely not put in place by the authors of said constitution.

George Washington was appointed President.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[ch-chuck]

If we took every touchdown scored by a team during the year and added them up, then compared them to all the other teams, what would that prove? If a strong team played a weak team and scored very high, and that total was added in, it would give that team an unfair advantage at the end. If two strong teams played each other and the score was really low, those teams would suffer because their total scores would be low. Does that mean the higher scoring team, in this instance, is better, and the lower scoring teams are has-beens? I don't see it that way.

The series, World, NFL, whatever series, is won or lost not on the total number of touchdowns, or runs, or goals, but on the number of games won or lost. The President, under the Electoral College, wins or loses not based on the total number of votes, but on the number of states he or she wins. Counting the people voting for that person in each state would be like counting the number of runs scored by each team in the whole world series, and would not result in a winner, except on paper. What if the Giants and the Sox played a world series? And the Giants were ill from traveling all the way to, say, Japan, and on their first game they lost by, say, 21 to 1. Then they got their act together and the rest of the games resulted in scores of 2-1, 3-1 and 3-2, with the giants winning all 3. Now they are ahead three games to one, but they are way behind in total runs scored. The sox have 25 runs and the Giants have only 9. To win the series they would have to beat the Sox by a score of more than 16 to 0. We have seen from the last three games that the teams are evenly matched and what are the chances that the true heroes will be recognized? What are the chances that they can score 16 runs against this team which is, after all, almost as good as they are overall?

So, in a Presidential race, over a country as vast and diverse as ours, the founding fathers wisely told us that we should not count the number of runs scored, but rather how many games are won or lost by each side. Now, do you still want to abolish the Electoral College? Whether you do or not, how about an opinion?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, you get rammed up the proverbial 36" dildo!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

Mod this parent up. "Creating" is a synonym for "inventing". Even snopes.com has this "urban legend" down as false, based on the word "create" vs. "invent".

In effect, even though he may be misquoted as saying "inventing" vs. "creating", it really makes no difference to the meaning of the sentence. It may not have been his intention to say what he said, but he still said it!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

Repeat this to *yourself*: the Internet would most likely be here in the same form, with or without Gore. He might have helped clear some paths, but it's pretty clear that there were folks thinking about this long before him...he and his apologists are giving him way too much credit. Good work gets done in SPITE of government meddling, not because of it.

http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

...And the popular vote means nothing. Get over it already.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

It evolved over time but yes it was in Article 2, Section 1. We should pass another amendment disbanding the College or, as someone else pointed out, mandate that the electoral votes be split according to the popular vote, rather than the winner-take-all system.

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_elec.html

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[/dev/trash]

Hold on, I have to put on my tin-foil hat.

If they are so bad, how do they get elected? Really, how?

The thing that ruined this country was the New Deal. It created the whole welfare state. Now we have to live with it.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

I suppose if you were completely retarded you could see it that way. "Creating" and "inventing" are two totally seperate things.

I can say I created a light bulb and it could be a true statement, if I made one. If I said I invented the lightbulb, I would either be smoking way to much pot or be a bald face liar.

When Gore was talking about the Internet, he was talking the initiative as a government official in making the Internet what it is today, a single entity where you can get to millions of servers from your box at home from around the world. He did not say he invented the concept of the internet, which is any group of connected networks.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

Wow, I'm amazed you managed to stop watching ESPN long enough to type that. Maybe you should look into intervention? A presidential election is not a sports game. There is no season.

If you have the right to vote would you not say you should have that vote be counted? Not thrown away because you are a liberal in Georgia or a conservative in Massachuses.

We should either abolish the College outright, or at least force votes to be tallied proportionally rather than in a winner-take-all system.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Zeinfeld]

I'll stop making that joke if you leftist radicals will stop saying Bush "stole" the election.

OK Bush didn't steal the election. Renquist, Scalia, Thomas and the other traitors on the Supreme Court stole the election for him.

Regardless of which we now know that Bush told repeated lies for the sole purpose of getting elected. He clearly never meant to keep his repeated environment pledges. He clearly never intended to keep his repeated pledges to balance the budget. He has even continued lying after the election, remember the 'trifecta' claim?

Al Qaeda murdered 3,000 people in New York and are still at large. North Koreat has torn up the agreed framework and is building nuclear weapons. so of course we are going to start a war with Iraq even though the UN arms inspectors have found nothing.

Using the Presidency to persue a personal family vendetta when there are far more serious threats to national security is beneath contempt, it is certainly not 'leadership'.

Of course because of the Internet I can say things like that and reach a very large audience. More importantly you, me and everyone else in this thread can come to our own assesment fo the merits of the failure in the Whitehouse, we don't have to simply sit back and accept the views fed us by the mainstream media and its Republican echo chamber.

During the first gulf war people were using the Internet to find out the news that the mainstream media was not telling. That cut both ways, people in Europe and the US could see the stuff that CNN and ABC didn't broadcast, but equally people in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq were findign out information their news services were not reporting. It will be interesting to see how the US media reports stories of the inevitable attrocities that result from war this time around. Will Bush's popularity rating survive bombing a couple of schools and hospitals when the pictures of the injured and dead children being carried out are circulating the Internet?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

Well, I know how to use a thesaurus:

http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=create

If you say you "created A lightbulb", yes, there is a difference vs. saying you "invented THE lightbulb". But that's not what we're comparing, are we? You can't move the goalposts like that. What we are comparing is this:

"I invented THE lightbulb"
vs.
"I created THE lightbulb"

They have the same meaning. There may be slightly different connotations in some contexts, but not in this one.

I will concede that the remark WAS taken out of context, but by itself, it's the same thing as if he said "invented".

And even if he took the "initiative" I have serious doubts as to how much influence he really had. It's my understanding that when he referred to the "Infomation Superhighway" (later), he was talking about something related to TV. Did he write a bill that got passed? What was it? When these people say he "encouraged" this or "took the initiative" on that, what does that mean, in hard terms?

I still think the Internet was much larger than any one person, much less a politician, could take a large amount of credit for. Some key elements came about in UK or Europe...how did any politician here influence that?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Zeinfeld]

Repeat this to *yourself*: the Internet would most likely be here in the same form, with or without Gore

I was there, you are wrong, we could have ended up with something that is much less.

The Internet was very different in structure to the 'information highway' plans laid by the international telcos and the cable companies. Under their model the cable companies and big business would be the content providers. You me and everyone else would be mere 'consumers'.

The 'Interactive TV' pushed by these interests consisted of nothing more than a huge projection TV where the interactivity consisted of the ability to buy stuff while watching the screen. There was no keyboard, no slashdot, no google and definitely no personal web pages.

As soon as the Gore folk like Tom Kalil and Jock Gill saw the Web they helped put a spike into the mouldering OSI plans and went full bore promoting the Internet as the future. Gore himself led the charge to get the US federal govt. up online and the Whitehouse. The Whitehouse site was actually one of the very first to be created, however Gore decided that the Whitehouse should not go online until every other agency had, thus forcing even the NSA to have a Web site.

OK folk were thinking about the Internet long before Gore and Gingrich. However they both deserve a considerable amount of credit for the contribution they made. The 'Gore invents internet' media moment was creatd for the sole purpose of denying Gore a campaign theme on which he could speak with considerable authority, it was a deliberate calculated smear.

At the same time that Gore was helping us create the Internet the failure in the Whitehouse was pleading no contest to a DUI charge. Which would you pick?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

True, that would fix the worst of the problems.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Zeinfeld]

It evolved over time but yes it was in Article 2, Section 1. We should pass another amendment disbanding the College or, as someone else pointed out, mandate that the electoral votes be split according to the popular vote, rather than the winner-take-all system.

Ok waaaay offtopic but yet to see much ontopic.

The electoral college system does have one redeeming feature. It means that in general it is very difficult for electoral fraud in an isolated part of the country to affect the outcome.

So the police stop and searches used to prevent black voters going to the polls in the Florida panhandle, North Carolina etc would only affect the vote if they took place in a swing state. Since the Dixicrat states where this type of thing goes on tend to be sold Republican it has less effect. If there was an absolute majority system then states like North Carolina could stuff the ballot and affect the national count.

The counter argument is that states would have a much greater incentive to ensure people voted if there was a simple majority system. It would end attempts to disenfranchise voters by taking away voting rights from convicted criminals and as happened in Florida under Katherine Harris, disenfranchising voters who happened to have the same name as someone who was convicted of a crime - Jeb would have had a much harder time getting reelected if Florida had not waited till after the mid term elections to reinstate voters whose voting rights had been stolen.

In the wake of Lott's racist gaffe more people realise that Klan sympathies are still present in souther politics and that Nixon's 'Southern strategy' was largely an appeal for racist votes through coded support for symbols of seggregation such as the confederate flag and Bob Jones University. Before the election however I watched a group of washington reporters on TV laughing at a report of a GOP dirty trick used to keep black voters from the polls, a notice saying that the vote was on a different day.

The Florida mess and the GOP desperation to stop the votes being counted was not an abberation, it was simply a demonstration of the contempt they hold for the ideals of democracy and the US constitution, the same contempt that they show on as Bill Clinon put it 'the back roads of the south' at every election.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[XO]

Unfortunatly, that probably won't happen in our lifetimes - the system has been fixed up to work for whomever has the most money backing them, basically.

The funny thing is, in many places, there's no law requiring the people casting the electorals to even vote for anyone that the popular vote voted for. Potentially, an entire state could vote for Candidate A, and the electorals could be cast for Candidates B and C.

Though I think at least one state that that could happen in has laws that say although the electoral caster (castor?) could vote against the popular vote, they then get some jail time after it or something.

I could be wrong, I'm just spouting things out of a broken memory.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

Go back and re-read the last half of my post. There are many many many lightbulbs. There is one Internet. If there was a huge frikkin lightbulb somewhere on earth, and when anyone refered to The Lightbulb they were talking about That One Big Frikkin Lightbulb, would it be inappropriate for a person to say they had a hand in creating it?

And yes, the Internet as we have it today was the result of the work of many, many people across several decades. What Gore was talking about was what he did AS A CONGRESSMAN, not as a scientest, not as a businessman setting up isp's. AS A CONGRESSMAN.

And creating is still not inventing, even if you lop off the first part of his quote and you lose the context, as they are two different completely different processes. Inventing is comming up with the idea in the first place. Creating is making that idea a reality. I can come up with plans for a zero emission car that runs on cigarette butts. If you actually build it, you can say you created it. Gore didn't build the Internet, but he didn't say that he did, since he was talking about what he did AS A CONGRESSMAN. And in that context it is perfectly appropriate for him to do so, since no politician has cared as much about it, except maybe for those passing the communications decency act, but thats hardly in the same league.

Lastly: while you're nitpicking a comment Gore made in an interview, what do you have to say about Bush TAKING CREDIT FOR SOMETHING HE VETOED. In one of the 2000 debates, Bush said "you know the state of Texas is the first to allow patients to sue their HMO's." Bush VETOED that bill as govenor, and he only let it become law without his signarture when the state legislature had enough votes to override his veto. The fact that so many people have made so much hay over lies that Gore never made, but will let a shitsack like Bush sit there and take credit for something he fought against tooth and nail, does not fill me with hope for the future of humanity.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

The problem with the current system is that just a little fudging in one state is enough to through off the election. I think it was easier for them the fudge a few thousand votes where it counted, rather than trying to cheat their way past 500,000 votes to catch up to Gore nationally.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

I was there, you are wrong, we could have ended up with something that is much less.

You were *where*? The period of time you seem to be referring to is when the Web came about. I'm confused...the Internet != Web, and the Internet already existed at that time. So how did Gore create the Internet that *already existed* at that juncture? Other people say it's "what he did as a congressman". I'm asking when and what bill did he pen or pass that represented this "initiative"?

It's like some politician coming along after the combustible engine and the assembly line had been created and saying he created the culture of cars (in America) just because they "took an initiative" on something.

I'm asking for a concrete bit of legislation that was passed that took the initiative to create the Internet.

I'd say the single biggest thing any government entity did to further the growth of the Internet was to move to allow commercialization - up until early 90's, commercial interests were not permissible. But that's hardly "creating" (synonym of "inventing") anything.

At the same time that Gore was helping us create the Internet the failure in the Whitehouse was pleading no contest to a DUI charge. Which would you pick?

Well, I don't know. Before 9/11 - Gore was always painted as "brilliant" by left-wingers, but the guy didn't recognize the founding fathers at Monticello - he said, "who are these guys?"

And post 9/11, I'd pick Bush hands down over Gore. And I'm a Libertarian. Gore would be down at ground zero doing an environmental impact study instead of taking decisive action. Even Democrats seemed relieved that Gore lost.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

Can no one have a joke, these days with out it being all the evil mean republicans fault?

Get with it, comrade. Don't you know there's no humor section in the liberal library?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

If you are comparing Bush to Hitler, give me a break...only someone with a muddled sense of history could think that Republicans have anything in common with Hitler or fascism.

1. Hitler's party was called the National Socialist Party.
2. Germany was a long way down the path of collectivization to begin with, and the Nazis "inherited" that fine tradition...they also got some of their "best" ideas from Stalin.
3. Industries were nationalized.
4. The Nazis passed gun control laws as soon as they got into power.
5. Nazis engaged in class warfare.

If these sound familiar, it's because these are things the Democrats support.

Tell me: which plank of the conservative platform supports any of the Nazi's planks? I'd love to hear it. In what way are Republicans "destroying the country"? Concrete examples, please.

It sounds to me like you get your "news" from The Nation. I wonder if you apologize for Stalin and Chairman Mao, too, even though Stalin's murder alone far outstripped Hitler's?

Lastly, about equal rights: Clinton was heralded for having a diverse administration, but notice the Bush has two very competent black people in very high positions (Rice and Powell) not just some token positions. Anyone who thinks Republicans are racists is seriously deluding themselves.

BTW: I suggest you read _The Road to Serfdom_. It might broaden your mind a bit.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[scrytch]

If you think I'm over-reacting, then I can only say that we are as Germany was in 1936.

You lose.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

Go back and re-read the last half of my post. There are many many many lightbulbs. There is one Internet. If there was a huge frikkin lightbulb somewhere on earth, and when anyone refered to The Lightbulb they were talking about That One Big Frikkin Lightbulb, would it be inappropriate for a person to say they had a hand in creating it?

You got derailed in your debating points here, and in fact, you made my point that there is not difference in this example between "invent" and "create". Let's compare the Internet to something more apt: the telephone network. There is only one "telephone network" - a network of networks, true, but there is one, just like the Internet. If I say I "created the telephone network", explain to me how that is different than "invented the telephone network". It didn't exist before (well, part of the infrastructure did for both Internet and phone network, but that's moot), so create and invent mean the same thing in this context.

And yes, the Internet as we have it today was the result of the work of many, many people across several decades. What Gore was talking about was what he did AS A CONGRESSMAN, not as a scientest, not as a businessman setting up isp's. AS A CONGRESSMAN.

And I'm asking what concrete legislation did he pen or get passed for him to claim *any* credit whatsoever? I'm not saying that he claimed he wrote the TCP/IP stack, or defined the protocol. I just want to know what he did, even as a politician, to actually further the work and research already being done.

Lastly: while you're nitpicking a comment Gore made in an interview, what do you have to say about Bush TAKING CREDIT FOR SOMETHING HE VETOED. In one of the 2000 debates, Bush said "you know the state of Texas is the first to allow patients to sue their HMO's." Bush VETOED that bill as govenor, and he only let it become law without his signarture when the state legislature had enough votes to override his veto. The fact that so many people have made so much hay over lies that Gore never made, but will let a shitsack like Bush sit there and take credit for something he fought against tooth and nail, does not fill me with hope for the future of humanity.

Again, your debating style really needs work. Attacking Bush when we are talking about *Gore* is using the EDI (Everbody Does It) defense. Try to stay focused. I'm not talking about Bush, nor am I defending him. We are talking about what Gore said, and how to interpret both his statement OUT of context, as well as the deeper question of the meaning behind his statement IN context.

And namecalling like "shitsack" only hinders your case.

I'm waiting for you to evoke Hitler's name or "fascist" next.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[autopr0n]

And post 9/11, I'd pick Bush hands down over Gore. And I'm a Libertarian. Gore would be down at ground zero doing an environmental impact study instead of taking decisive action. Even Democrats seemed relieved that Gore lost.

Decisive action? What decisive action? Shaking his dick at Iraq? Pissing on the constitution? Gore would have the same thing with Afghanistan, almost anyone would have (maybe not Nader...) to say otherwise is idiotic.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spoons67]

Please don't use North Carolina as an example as a typical southern racist state, it isn't. Unless of course you typed that comment with the knowledge that North Carolina has elected a Democrat governer for the past twenty years, and that no voter fraud or disenfranchising took place in the last electon.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[packnet]

Whatever!

Al Gore is still - even now - a patronizing fruitcake who takes credit for a lot of things he had little to do with (i.e., the economy, the cold war, etc.).

Go take your tax cut and buy yourself a nice tree to huh, ok?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

Decisive action? What decisive action? Shaking his dick at Iraq? Pissing on the constitution? Gore would have the same thing with Afghanistan, almost anyone would have (maybe not Nader...) to say otherwise is idiotic.

Assuming you're not joking, let's see...

Bush formed a coalition of countries (that naysayers said would never happen) and dismantled the Taliban. Bush made his Axis of Evil speech...which was *incredibly* decisive. I know liberals *hate* this sort of thing, but it's necessary. Reagan said the same thing of the Soviet Union, and we all saw the results.

Gore most certainly would NOT have done the same thing. Ask yourself: what did the Clinton/*GORE* administration do about the first WTC bombing, besides treat it as a "crime"? What about the bombing of the USS Cole?

And where is this "pissing on the Constitution"?

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Anonymous Coward]

not many normal people apparently believe in these "facts". deal with that.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Zeinfeld]

Bush formed a coalition of countries (that naysayers said would never happen) and dismantled the Taliban. Bush made his Axis of Evil speech...which was *incredibly* decisive. I know liberals *hate* this sort of thing, but it's necessary. Reagan said the same thing of the Soviet Union, and we all saw the results.

Bush has managed to alienate every US ally with the exception of the UK and Israel. The axis of evil speach was devisive, not decisive.

The North Koreans appear to be making the only logical response to Bush's stupid phrase, they are building a nuclear weapon. The only logical interpretation of Bush's stupid phrase is that after launching its attack on Iraq they will attack North Korea and Iran, so those countries had better make sure they get the bomb before Bush has finished in Iraq.

Before his inadequacy made his stupid speech the modernisers in Iran were doing pretty well. In the aftermath of September 11th the unelected hardline theocrats were on the defensive and the democratically elected modernisers were gaining real power. Bush's idiotic phrase completely cut the legs from under the pro-US groups and allowed the hardliners to reassert the power that they had lost post 9/11.

So as a result of his stupid posturing we now have two problems, North Korea and Iran that are measurably worse than would have been the case had he kept his big ignorant mouth closed.

No, Al Gore would not have done what Bush has done. He would probably would not have spent 9/11 flying arround on his private jet and we would not have had William Safire telling fantasy tales about threats of nuclear attack to cover up the presidents cowardice. We certainly would not have had to wait almost a week before a credible speech to the nation.

We certainly would have invaded Afghanistan, if you have any doubts on that score you are a complete fool. The one major difference that might have happed would have been co-opting Iran as an aly instead of or in addition to Pakistan whose military dictator had been the principal backer of the Taleban. Musharaf deposed the democratic government in Pakistan after the legitimate government sacked him for refusing to stop support for Islamic terrorism in Kashmir which had almost lead to a war with India.

We certainly would not be looking to start a war with Iraq at this point. The US military would still be focused on eliminating Al Qaeda and the Taleban. It would still have the support of Europe, Russia and China.

So no, Gore would not have handled the crisis in the stupid and incompetent manner of Bush. He would not have created unnecessary crises and he would be focused on the real enemy, Al Qaeda.

One other thing, if Gore was pushing for a war with Iraq because of an alleged attempt to build a bomb it would be possible to believe Gore. The problem with Bush is that he has zero credibility, he has proven time and time again that he will make any lie to justify his agenda.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

We'll see...everyone called Reagan stupid and ignorant and heaped invective on him for his Evil Empire comments - they claimed it provoked the Soviet Union, and they wanted appeasement of the Communists. But Reagan said that Communism would end up on the ash heap of history.

It took a number of years, but Reagan was shown to be right. You have to put what he did in the context of the times - he did this when there was the serious possibility that the Soviets would dominate the world. Since the fall, there were high-ranking Soviet officials who blamed the fall on those comments. Not to mention that once the Soviets knew we were going to go ahead with SDI, it broke their spirit.

This isn't to say that we are meeting the same problem here - but pundits are already judging the "war on terrorism" barely a year into it, and that's hardly an accurate assessment. Just remember what people said about Reagan at the time of his comments. Even the State Department would strike out his comments like "Evil Empire" and "tear down this wall". But he was right, and more than any other single person, he brought about the end of that Evil Empire due to his straight talking and weapons buildup and negotiating style.

Also, about your comments about "alleged" bomb building - do you know that according to one of Saddam's own bomb builders (he wrote a book, and I can't find the name right now. He worked for Saddam for 20yrs.), when we invaded Iraq the first time, they were *months* away from having a nuke?

So let history be the judge. Just about everything liberals (and most conservative elites, too) predicted about Reagan was wrong.

All I can say is that I was very, very, very glad that Gore lost and Bush won when those cowardly Islamic nutballs murdered thousands of Americans. Before that, I was pretty ambivalent...but when it comes to foreign policy, sorry, Dems lose every time, and they have been wrong on every major issue over the past 20-30 years.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Zeinfeld]

We'll see...everyone called Reagan stupid and ignorant and heaped invective on him for his Evil Empire comments -

And we later discovered he had been suffering from Altzheimers.

Bush's feeble attempts to ape Reagan don't count because they are just that, an attempt to gain credibility for his hollow schemes on the basis of a rhetorical appeal to the past.

The Soviet union fell apart because the system had died under Krushchev and just took 20 years more to finally fall apart. You have the mechanism partly right, the US spent the USSR into the ground, only the war was won by Kennedy, not Reagan. There is nothing that the rest of the world could do however that would match the problems the communists created for themselves.

Also, about your comments about "alleged" bomb building

I didn't comment on alleged bomb building. We know that North Korea is building a bomb, have done sisnce last July. We have yet to see evidence that Iraq is building a bomb and the state department is busy telling people that they don't expect the inspectors to find anything.

The GOP has been on the wrong side of history time and time again. They installed murderous dictators such as Pinochet and coddled dictators like Suharto and yes Saddam. The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply the legacy of failed Republican imperialism of the past.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[HedRat]

>And as far as "stealing" the election goes: Gore >won the election, remember?

Not surprising since there were Democratic Poll Volunteers found driving around with Voting Machines and blank Ballots in their cars!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[spanky555]

The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply the legacy of failed Republican imperialism of the past.

...well, there goes any credibility you might have had. There isn't *any* "imperialism" in either party's foreign policy.

If there was, Japan would be the 51st state, we would have annexed Germany, and Iraq and Afghanistan would be at least partly ours, to name a few.

Whenever I see "imperialism" used to describe American foreign policy, my BS detector goes off. That's all the further I'm going with this discussion; followups will be ignored...it's clearly a waste of my time talking to someone who actually believes Americans have "imperialist" policies.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Zeinfeld]

well, there goes any credibility you might have had. There isn't *any* "imperialism" in either party's foreign policy.

You don't know what imperialism is.

The British Empire worked in two parts, the formal and the informal empire. The formal empire, the parts of the map colored red were under the direct administration of Britain. That was not the preferred solutions.

Far better was informal empire, the country concerned accepted the protection of the British navy and opened its markets to british trade. In other words Britain received all the material benefits it was after without having to go to the bother of occupation which was costly and inefficient.

Bush's adventurism in Iraq is about cheap oil, control of the gulf and national prestige. It is classic imperialist adventuring justified in classical fashion. We've got the men, we've got the arms, we've got the money too.

It is most likely to come apart for the same reason the Vietnam adventure did. The US people don't support imperialism and they will rapidly withdraw support for a war if they even suspect it may be be being fought for the wrong reasons.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[SirTreveyan]

Only a DOUCHE BAG would think that the Electorial College is an 18th Century "relic". It did exactly what it was suppose to do...prevent a few large cities from running rough shod over the rural areas of the country. Perhaps you did not see a county by county election breakdown, so check out the following link, http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm. This country is made up of more that just the big cities.

You liberal cum stains forget that the good ole US of A is a REPUBLIC...not a Democracy. The founders of this country feared a democracy as being mob rule, and rightly so. The Electoral college ensures that city mobs do not have the ability to gain an unbreakable grip in deciding the presidency. Congress is divided in to two houses for the same reasons, to prevent large population centers (i.e. CITIES) from locking rural areas out of the governing process.

Now turning to the accusation that the Supreme Court stole the election for Bush, please recall that there were 2 decisions passed down by the High Court. The first decision the court found, in a 7-2 majority, that the method of recounting were un Constitiutional based upon the equal protection clauses. In English this meant the Supreme Court decided that recounting only in certain counties was improper. This decision however indicated that a STATEWIDE recount would satisify the equal protection clause. In the second decision, concerning whether Florida had time to enact a remedy, the court was split 5-4. Basically this decision was about allowing Florida to go beyond the December 12th deadline for reporting final tallys, as REQUIRED BY FLORIDA LAW. Again, Democrats like to IGNORE LAW WHEN IT SUITS THEIR AGENDA. The Democrats have a habit of using courts to skirt laws...need I remind you of the Torrecelli bullshit in NJ.

And if anyone was trying to "steal the election" it was Al Gore...after all, it was his goons who decended upon Florida in an attempt to repress the absentee vote of our service men and women. For that AL GORE and the DEMOCRATIC PARTY SHOULD BE DEEPLY ASHAMED. Democrats tried accusing the Republicans of disenfranchising certain groups the right to vote, allegations, which to this day remains unproven. However, when the Democrats find voter disenfranchising in their interest...that is the first thing they resort to http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/military.htm .

I see the Democratic party as the single greatest threat to the social, economic, and general well being of this country, a far greater threat than even al-Queda. http://www.boortz.com/demsecrets.htm

PS Do some research and get your facts straight. LOGIC RULES! OH SHIT!! I forgot you are a liberal. Facts mean nothing to fools like you.

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

Gotta do something to make up for all those eligible voters "scrubbed" from the lists by a company hired by Republican officials, and letting Republican workers take home invalid Republican absentee balots so they could be completed and counted!

Re:Al Gore is celebrating

[Scudsucker]

You got derailed in your debating points here

No I didn't.

and in fact, you made my point that there is not difference in this example between "invent" and "create".

I made a point on how creating is different from inventing, you just chose to ignore it. Inventing is creating but creating isn't necessarily inventing. But since you found that "creating" and "inventing" can be synonyms for eachother, Gore must be a liar and shall burn in hell!!!

And I'm asking what concrete legislation did he pen or get passed for him to claim *any* credit whatsoever? I'm not saying that he claimed he wrote the TCP/IP stack, or defined the protocol. I just want to know what he did, even as a politician, to actually further the work and research already being done.

"In 1991, Vice President Al Gore, then a U.S. senator, proposed widening the architecture of NSFNET to include more K-12 schools, community colleges, and 2-year colleges. The resulting legislation expanded NSFNET and renamed it NREN (National Research and Educational Network). This bill also allowed businesses to purchase part of the network for commercial uses. The mass commercialization of today's Internet is the direct result of this legislation."

And namecalling like "shitsack" only hinders your case.

Ha! I doubt it would make any difference anyway. You seem determined to continue using an electron microscope to split hairs about wether Gore's statments hold water, then use non sequiters and ad hominums to avoid answering a simple, direct, question.

Attacking Bush when we are talking about *Gore* is using the EDI (Everbody Does It) defense. Try to stay focused.

Bull. Its enirely relevant; it happened during the same time frame, by two canidates in the same race. Why does one canidate get a free pass to lie and lay came to legislation he fought against tooth and nail, and the other is attacked for for statements he either never made, are completely factual, or taken totally out of context?

At a campaign rally before members of a union, Gore said his mother sang "Look for the union label" to him a child. The press rushed to throw this into the "fib bin", pointing out that the song wasn't written until Gore was 27. Except that it was obvious that he was speaking to a UNION and it was a JOKE.

U.S News and other reports nail Gore for "boasting" that he was the basis for one of the charachters in the book "Love Story" by Erich Segal. Except Gore was merely noting that some other reporter was claining that, and furthermore the charachter was based on him and his roomate Tommy Lee Jones.

Gore makes an annecdote (btw I hate annecdotes and cringed whenever he would use one) about a girl who had to stand in her classroom because there weren't enough desks for all the students. The press again slammed Gore for being a liar when they found out that on a later day the girl was able to sat down. But only because someone else had to stand, because there weren't enough desks in the room for all the students.

Meanwhile, during a debate, Bush says "you know the state of Texas is the first to allow patients to sue their HMO's". He does not mention that he vetoed that bill, and let it pass into law without his signature. This event is a footnote in a few papers a week later, and nobody cared.

memories

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, I remember it well...I first logged on at the ripe age of 8 months old, and it's been downhill ever since

and...

[w1r3sp33d]

it just keeps going slower and slower!

13th Post!

[kmweber]

Woo-hoo!

Re:13th Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

how the hell does "13th Post" get a +2 insightful ? :p

Re:13th Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

fuckoff dick licker... need to slap you with a trout, then hit you with a hammer.

Re:13th Post!

[kmweber]

That's what surprises me, too. This is too funny to keep to myself, that's for sure.

(yeah, I'm the OP).

WOO HOO!!

[_ph1ux_]

First 20th Anniversary Post!!

Sorry.

20 years...

[jazir1979]

...and now we have spam, pr0n sites, amazon-patented content-personalization... ...slashdot, a geographically distributed community of open source developers, p2p networks, sharing of knowledge...

yay internet! who'd have thunk it?

happy new year all, tho it's 13hrs too late for me and i'm kinda over it.

Next /. Poll!!!!

[ZephyrQ]

Where were you when the Internet started?

--My Daddy says I wasn't even a twinkle yet...

--Suckling at the teat of TV (yea Sesame Street!)

--Programming in assembly on an Apple IIe!

--Punching out cards for my latest programming project in college!

--I was sending messages via ARPnet, you fool!

--Wishing I would meet a dream geek like Cowboy Neal!!!!!

Re:Next /. Poll!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Drunk and depressed having just been thrown out of school. I wish I was kidding.

Mike

Re:Next /. Poll!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

--Punching out cards for my latest programming project in college!

--I was sending messages via ARPnet, you fool!

that's me.

I remember thinking 300 baud and a "glass TTY" (ADM-3a) was really flying, compared to the 110 baud we were previously doing on an ASR-33 teletype.

I still have the punch cards. my mom still uses the compuserve account from that era. in fact, my mom got me started programming, in Pascal, on a CDC-6600, in 1975. my dad had unix at LRL (UC Berkeley) before Bill Joy wrote vi. those were the days!!!

Help from the UK?

[BlackSnowUK]

Didn't the UK contribute something towards inventing the Internet?

Re:Help from the UK?

[I Am The Owl]

No.

Re:Help from the UK?

[Alan Partridge]

Tim Berners lee is credited with inventing the www - and as most people seem to believe that the web IS the internet, confusion COULD arise...

Re:Help from the UK?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, if can call PRESTEL a contribution...

my dad had a PRESTEL box in his home office!! Wave of the future or what? I spent my time playing with a C=64 instead, mostly.

Re:Help from the UK?

[Anonymous Coward]

Packet Switching was independently developed by a researcher in the old Post Office. In act, that is where the term "Packet Switching" comes from.

We didn't have anything to do with the first ARPANET nodes, though.

Some of that history

[Nonillion]

To check out some of that history go here...

Doug Engelbarts 1968 demo

Engelbarts Unfinished Revolution

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[kurtras]

No, actually this NCP stood for Network Control Protocol, and had nothing to do with Netware's NCP or IPX/SPX.

Also: 20th Anniversary of the Bitch-Slap...

[Shuh]

After 2 Decades, We're Still Going Strong!

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[meshko]

Troll?
Just in case it's not (or someone doesn't realize it is): this NCP has absolutely nothing to do with Netware. It stands for Network Control Protocol and was invented long before NetWare came up with their NCP (I don't even know if NetWare existed at the time, most likely not).
I don't know much about NCP, but I think it was a HOST-to-HOST only protocol, so unlike TCP it did not know about different networks.

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[w1r3sp33d]

you see, this is what makes the internet soooo very wonderful. Happy anniversary to you also. Happy new years! Best regards, WORTHLESS.

Oh let me get my popcorn!

[reaper20]

Too bad that the last five years have seen the decline of the original intent of the internet to degrade to a cesspool of spam, RIAA/MPAA crap, popups, overmarketization, the ZD "stupidity factor" and other pure bullshit that we put up with every day.

Anyone else harking for the days of gopher and html 3.2? Sure, the "market capitilization" was horrible, but you know what, NNTP was actually useful back then. No google? Some industrous person on would point you to the right place, as a common courtesy. Sharing of knowledge. Ahhhh ... the good old days.

Now we're deluged with a flash-crippled web with no regards to any kind of standards, where any moron can masquerade as a "developer" and make a ton of money for being an idiot. yeah, I may sound stupid in today's context, but someone like Alan Ralsky was impossible back in the day.

Bring back the meritocracy of the internet - you remember? The place where you were entitled to an opinion if you were intelligent enough to actually learn and connect.

Discriminatory? Hell yes, mod me down. Being more intelligent than the average Joe never hurt anyone....

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[Magus311X]

Ah...

The days of using a 2400 baud modem on my 486 to dial in to the local high school. You had shell on a VAX, you used lynx and kermit.

All for $10 a year! This was when ISPs where still hourly!

Ah... I remember upgrading to 9600 baud, and 14400 (PPP!). Those were the days...
-----

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[plugger]

Forums, irc channels and newsgroups still exist where knowledge is shared and people learn. Yes, in general there is a lot of noise, but there are still places where the majority are intelligent and courteous.

An interesting thing I noticed was that when I started using Linux, setting up web bookmarks for FAQs, HOWTOs, etc, the web seems less and less commercial. I guess it looks like whatever you are looking for (if that makes any sense).

btw, it's the early hours of New Year's day, so no apologies for rambling on :)

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[Anonymous Coward]

NNTP was actually useful back then.

Are you saying its not useful now? If thats the case, where is all this porno I'm looking at coming from?

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[miu]

Anyone else harking for the days of gopher and html 3.2? Sure, the "market capitilization" was horrible, but you know what, NNTP was actually useful back then. No google? Some industrous person on would point you to the right place, as a common courtesy. Sharing of knowledge. Ahhhh ... the good old days.

And you could talk to very cool people on Usenet or though email: Vinge, Effinger, Abrash, and Hawking.

Microsoft had never even thought about the Internet, Spamford and his ilk were not yet at work, AOL was in it's own little ghetto, no javascript, no P2P, and no one was around to interupt our own little elitist world. I do miss some of the things about the weird old days.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[evilviper]

Now we're deluged with a flash-crippled web with no regards to any kind of standards

I'm not! If I come across a 'crippled' web-site, I won't use it, nor will I go there again.

YOU make the web. So, next time you feel like complaining about how terrible flash is, uninstall it from your computer instead. Next time you get annoyed by a pop-up, (of if you, like myself, have the slightest concern for privacy and security) disable javascript and be done with it.

If you don't like distracting animations, disable GIF animations, and you won't be bothered again.

For all your complaining, you haven't accomplished anything. I was annoyed like you by many MANY things on the web... but instead of complaining on slashdot, I installed Privoxy (before it was even under that name) and wrote up a few regex filters that eliminate almost every annoyance I've ever come across. CmdrTaco (and most other webmasters) may not be smart enough to dump the white backgrounds (in favor of any other color that you can look at without feeling like your eyes are being crushed) but that doesn't mean I have to be forced to look look at it that way.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[tech81]

I couldn't agree more. I've been so nostalgic of late about everything, especially computers and the Internet. I actually miss 386 processors! (I'm sure my previous statement automatically labels me as flame-bait. =D ). I really wish the world would wake up and realize that they've screwed a good thing up before it gets any more worse than it is.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[JaredOfEuropa]

"Anyone else harking for the days of gopher and html?"

The Internet of those days to me is more or less the same as today's Internet: a means of data transport. For what it's worth, that transport now reaches much more people than it did way back when, and at greater speeds also. Don't fall into that delusion that many ISP's suffer from: that they somehow have to offer content as well as transport.

"Bring back the meritocracy of the internet - you remember? The place where you were entitled to an opinion if you were intelligent enough to actually learn and connect."

The great achievement of the Internet is that it has given a voice (or medium or whatever) to whomever needs one. Sure, that includes the crackpots, spammers, lousy web designers, Flash users, and so on and so forth. Internet is no longer the plaything of the elite at universities and defense organisations, as it was 10 years ago. As a result, there is more worthwhile stuff on the Internet than ever there was in the past, but there is a corresponding increase in crap, which one has to sort through to get to the meat. But the crap goes hand in hand with the good stuff... culling the crap would probably mean curtailing essential freedoms that leads to the good stuff.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[dev11]

The days of using a 2400 baud modem on my 486 to dial in to the local high school. You had shell on a VAX, you used lynx and kermit.

Hell, in my day, all we had was a tin can and string, and we were happy to have it! These young whippersnappers today don't know how good they have it!

Seriously though, I first got on the net about 1989 in college. Being a poor student, I couldn't afford a PC, so I spent many hours in the computer labs exploring the Net, such as it was, when I didn't have programming assignments. I finally got a hand me down 286 with a 1200 bps modem, and then bought a blazing 9600 for $100 or so. The Internet was mostly email, USENET, archie, ftp, and IRC. ISP's were pretty much non existant, I dialed into the university VAXes and transferred files with kermit. It was primitive by today's standards, but there was also no spam, so email and USENET were actually useful. You didn't have to hide your email address. To get on the Internet, you actually had to have a clue. But it did take like 15 minutes to download, uudecode and view a single pr0n image. :) Those days were still pretty cool, though.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[mocular]

Yea, I liked those days when my professor gave me his username and password so I could surf gopher space on my 1200 baud modem...when the web consisted of a couple of hundred pages of esoteric text put up by quantum mechanics reaserchers.

The net has changed and mostly for the better. Sure there's plenty of crapola on the net these days but there's also lots of interesting, educational, and enlightening pages out there for everyone.

Its better now than it was and the good stuff will still increase with the caca. Its more democratic, its widely available. The simple minded user is not stuck on prodigy, he's mixing it up with the uber webbies (via AOL) and that cant be all bad.

Happy b-day to the net....it's survived through infancy and is becoming an adult (hence all the p*o*r*n spam?).

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[m00nun1t]

Gopher? Luxury!! Aye, when I was a lad we used to dream of the day we'd 'ave gopher. I'd 'ave to get oop at 4am, stick an ethernet cable oop me nose and sniff in binary just to get me email.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[richie2000]

You had Ethernet cables? Luxury! We had damp strings between the phones! We didn't have modems, we had to make the noise ourselves! A terrible racket it was, but we were happy with it!

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[Peter Greenwood]

Damp string? We had to get up at 2am to cycle back and forth to the POP and fetch the bits by hand, one at a time.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[richie2000]

Cycle? We didn't have no stinken' cycles! We had to walk - by hand, carrying the bits in our mouths. And if there was even a little bit of slobber on the bits, we would get a good thrashing, that's for sure. Aye, you young whippersnappers had it too easy, lemme tell ya. Once every three weeks we'd get a lump of cold poison to chew on. Getting up at 2 am my foot, we could've got up at 2 am on our days off, except we didn't have any friggin' days off! We worked all days from sunrise to sunrise and God help us if we ever let one of the Suns go down! Those were the good old days - 28 hour workdays, paying the manager tuppence a week for the privilege of working and when we got home our father would kill us, dance on our graves and sing hallelujah!

When you try to tell that to the young poeple of today, they won't believe you!

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[Frater 219]

Anyone else harking for the days of gopher and html 3.2?

Let me tell you about two services which no longer exist: DEC ftpmail, and anon.penet.fi.

I got on the Net when it was about half its current age, by this measure. Well, I wasn't on the Internet -- "the Net" meant Usenet much of the time then, and I had a dial-up shell account on a hobbyist system which had a UUCP news and mail feed from an Internet host. Mail and news came in once a day. The site I was on moved from bang paths to domainist email addressing that year.

(Bang paths were a style of email address which didn't rely on Internet DNS and MX records. You specified the path from machine to machine that the mail should take -- yes, those were open relays! -- separated by a ! character, like so: bigvax!smallhost!mybox!myname, where bigvax was a machine that "everyone" knew how to reach. Addressing got more complicated still if you wanted to email someone on BITNET, FidoNet, CompuServe, or another email network that gatewayed to the Internet somewhere.)

Since we didn't have a "real" Internet feed, and the sysop didn't let ordinary users request files by UUCP, we used a public service run by DEC. (Yes, they'd started calling themselves d|i|g|i|t|a|l, but nobody listened.) This was called "ftpmail", and the way it worked was that you sent email to a daemon on decwrl.dec.com, with the name of an FTP site to connect to, and a sequence of commands to issue. If you sent an ls, you'd get back a file listing ... and if you sent a get, the daemon would email you back the file, chunked up and uuencoded.

There are very few ftpmail services still in existence. Gee, I wonder why.

Soon after I got on the Net, I discovered that it wasn't always a great idea to post things to Usenet in one's own name. Some people had better reason for anonymity than I, of course -- people posting about their experiences surviving sexual abuse, or how to grow marijuana, or things their employers might not want traced back to the office VAX. So someone invented the anonymous remailer.

The first anonymous remailer was anon.penet.fi, run by Julf Helsingius. It was a rather clever system, really -- send email to alt.sex@anon.penet.fi and your message would be posted to alt.sex under an obvious pseudonym -- an12345@anon.penet.fi or some such. But the server retained a hash that allowed it to process responses -- if someone replied by mail to your post, it would come back to your real address, anonymized as well, and with Reply-to: set properly.

Once the spammers and the Scientologists got hold of it, the service was not long for this world. Even the next two generations of remailers -- the Cypherpunk "Type I" remailer and the Mixmaster -- seem to have vanished, under the profligacy of email accounts that people maintain these days, and the threat of spamming.

Sigh.

Re:Oh let me get my popcorn!

[scrytch]

> Anyone else harking for the days of gopher and html 3.2?

You. Feel free to use them. Anyone who cares will join you. You don't need to ask anyone's permission, and the protocols are quite well documented with RFC's. When/if IPv6 becomes the standard, you can go tunnel IP4.

HTML 3.2 was the "good old days", eh? They sure get their grey hairs early, this crowd.

BTW, if I had mod points, I would mod you down just for whining about maybe being modded. Put your point out there or don't.

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[Anonymous Coward]

IN SOVIET RUSSIA....you're not a dick.

No...wait...wait I got it.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA bitchy comments make YOU

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[Russ Steffen]

Ummm, no.

While NCP can also mean Netware Core Protcol, in this case it means "Network Control Protocol", a much older protocol that dates back to the beginning of the ARPAnet circa 1970, and has squat to do with Netware.

NCP is documented in RFCs 55, 60, 215 and several others.

Standard of new Era?

[troff]

Would this mean (in an extension of the way 1 January 1970 is the beginning of the Epoch) that maybe someday kinda hopefully, this could be used as an origin date for a global (and beyond), cross-cultural, cross-creed/faith, cross-national, cross-whatever new Dating system?

Not that it would probably take off; heck, Swatch never got anywhere with the Beat.

But what with people arguing over the fact that Jesus Christ was probably born in 4 B.C. rather than the actually defined date... not to mention that I'm pretty sure all the Buddhists, Moslems, [insert your own religion here]s, Humanists / Atheists and the rest might get a fairer look-in this way. As Australian journalist Phillip Adams once said, "so it looks like the afterlife will be emphatically monocultural" (The Weekend Australian, June 23/24, 2001 - sorry, no online version I'm aware of).

I picked up a copy of Greg Egan's latest, "Schild's Ladder" two days ago. I keep thinking with books like that, "Diaspora" and all of his post-trans-humanist books, surely those societies would adopt a new dating system that wasn't related to a single obscure cultural event that (some people debate never really even) happened on a planet most of their society had never even heard of...

We can define standard units through physics - speeds in terms of fractions of c, distances and times in terms of (if you wanted to get REALLY precise) Planck Lengths and derivatives... except those units aren't really manageable for day-to-day social stuff. Dates for everyday common social usage probably have to come from a social event.

What do we use dates for? To record history, to synchronise communication and society. Can you imagine what daily life would be like without clocks? Without any mechanism for measuring periods at all? Not even a frickin' hourglass?

What better standard to use than the day the world became "officially connected"?

And now back from the pie-in-the-sky, I remind myself that the Beat never took off and Swatch have got a bucketload more money and influence than I have.

But then again, it worked - in a way - for the Epoch...

Re:Standard of new Era?

[operagost]

Great idea. While we're at it, why don't we get rid of those pagan names for months and days of the week. Those are pretty offensive. I propose Oneday, Twoday, etc.; and Oneuary, Twouary, etc.

Re:Standard of new Era?

[thogard]

There were usenet and notes and email systems using uucp before then. BITnet might have been in full swing. There were other networks that were on live and 24x7 before tcp. This is just when the last of the old sites were forced to remove the old protocol. Other sites had been runing tpc/ip v 4 for many months before this. So exactly what time should one pick?

Re:Standard of new Era?

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

If you've ever read "A Deepness In The Sky" by Vernor Vinge, he has a spacefaring human society many thousands of years in the future, and their computers still count time from 1970.

Tim

Re:Standard of new Era?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, that's Anglo-centric. We have to use Esperanto names.

Didn't CERN create the internet?

[SenorMooCow]

I am relatively sure that the internet was first created by CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) to exchange scientific data between different organizations. Proof here. Damn I proved myself wrong under closer inspection but I will post for the sake of spreading information. They invented the Web not the internet.

Re:Didn't CERN create the internet?

[jroysdon]

WWW != TCP/IP or 'the internet', even if it's all people see or know about the internet beyond email (which now all the webtv/msn folks access via web interfaces, at least that's what my inlaws all seem to use). It's just tcp/80, or tcp/443 if you're shoping/banking... 65533 more ports out there, and that's just tcp.

Filk inspiration!

[KC7GR]

I just can't resist. Remember what you all need to sing at midnight in your respective time zone...

Should older packets become dumped
and never brought online,
Let newer packets take their place
on all our T-1 lines!

(I wonder if my older karma will be forgotten?)

Re:Filk inspiration!

[biobogonics]

Should older packets become dumped
and never brought online,
Let newer packets take their place
on all our T-1 lines!

To the tune of "Mr. Ed":

a host is a host from coast to coast
and no one will talk to a host that's close
unless the host that isn't close
is busy, hung or dead

Oh, come ON mods!

[SupaYoda]

This was insightful?

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[blackgasmask]

sergei tarkovske notes that the prized (and much sought after) large potato is 108 years old TODAY!!

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

...The party has you.

Isn't that what /. is for?

[DaveOnNet]

Hey, I'm only here because I asked a friend of mine about an idea I had for enlisting the masses in ranking input from several people. He said "Oh - check out slashdot!" So here I am.

I'd like to see less editor input and more member input. I'd like to alter slashcode to create a meritocratic system of sorts that would be used to solve problems like "paper or plastic" and the problem of the 2000 presidential race. Suppose we talk about doing that in 2003?

Dave.

And the next day...

[SupaYoda]

...Bernie Shiffman began contemplating a new way to get his resumee "out there".

This is oldschool

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wolf.cyberstreet.net/index.php?ref=327369

yeah pimp

And Goodbye Privacy

[smagruder]

We will look back at the birth of the Internet as the beginnings of the death of privacy, for better or worse. My friends, we have entered the Transparent Age.

We are quickly headed toward a time where economic advantage will be directly proportional to how much privacy is given up. Those who will work the hardest to keep everything in their lives private will become the new underclass.

Re:And Goodbye Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

On the bright side, I've always wanted to show the world what my penis looks like.

Re:And Goodbye Privacy

[thogard]

Its not the death of privacy, it jsut shifts the people "in the know" from the local town gossip to the people who know how to use the net.

Re:And Goodbye Privacy

[ch-chuck]

we have entered the Transparent Age.

only if you keep your privates online.

I go into a store, give them cash, take a product, no record of transaction - well, ok they got my mug on the survailence cam.

Speaking of which, check out this Keystroke Catcher doodad - you sneak into you sons room one day, slip it inbetween the keyboard and mobo connector - then let him do his online skulduggery. Next day retrieve the device and find text like "Dude - lets skip school tomorrow. Brians parents are out of town and we can hang out at his place all day" (actual ad copy).

and yet I long for door games.

[notque]

The internet may be 20 years old, but I miss the BBS.

Sure, it wasn't graphically intense, and yes... I had to wait 3 seconds a charcters, but Violet was the first love of my life.

She may have gotten around, but Seth would sing his stories, and you'd slowly work your way with Violet.

I miss dialing for 3 hours to connect. :(

Re:and yet I long for door games.

[Anonymous Coward]

LORD
OWNS
EVERYTHING!

Re:and yet I long for door games.

[Anonymous Coward]

It may not be the same, but you can telnet over to quite a few BBSes now of days.

http://www.dmine.com/telnet/

Even if you just need to quench that sudden urge to play Lord or TradeWars again..

Re:and yet I long for door games.

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I remember how we made fun of people like you.

Yay, happy birthday Internet!

[wackybrit]

Rather conveniently, only those geeky enough to celebrate this anniversary get to learn this news, since everyone else is out on the biggest party night of the year.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNET!!

Re:Yay, happy birthday Internet!

[dentar]

You know.. I got invited to four parties and decided to stay home. The WX is nasty and damn I just don't feel like mingling. Geeky? Yeah. Do I give a rat's? Naah.

Oh well.

Re:Yay, happy birthday Internet!

[Anonymous Coward]

WX?? Hahahahahahahaha. No wonder you don't dare go out.

Re:Yay, happy birthday Internet!

[dentar]

Damn straight! Hams are the shit mofo!

January 2nd

[E-Rock-23]

The day after the Internet was born is also a red letter date in the online world. It brought with it the following historical firsts:

The First Blog.
The First Troll
The Basic Concept of goatse.cx was allowed to begin forming.
A Synapse in Rob Malda's head fired, marking the beginnings of what would become Slashdot.
The First Pirate dipped his toe into brave new waters.
The First Internet Download Queen, Billie Jean King, was crowned.
The Fires of Mount St. Helens rumbled in faraway Washington, signaling the rise of the Dark Lord Gates and the writing of the One OS
Al Gore said that the second day of his greatest invention was going very well.
The birth of the first newsgroup, alt.news.cultureclub (hey, it was the 80's!)
The First "Stephen King, Dead at 35" Post
One year later, George Orwell, You Do The Math

Happy New Year, everyone. May your night be moderated +1(Kickass)

Re:January 2nd

[ZenJabba1]

And on the 3rd day he rested because he looked into the future and decided the whole thing was a waste of energy and would wipe out all his followers. This he considered a bad thing and didn't take this evolution any further sending us all back to the middle ages.

Re:January 2nd

[John Hasler]

> The birth of the first newsgroup,
> alt.news.cultureclub (hey, it was the 80's!)

Usenet was well established in 1983. It can and did operate independently of the Internet.

Re:January 2nd

[Anonymous Coward]

A Synapse in Rob Malda's head fired, marking the beginnings of what would become Slashdot.

Jan 1, 2003: The second synpapse in Rob Malda's head fired, resulting in a duplicate article.

Re:January 2nd

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

I've read stories that once a week, they would ship all of Usenet to Australia on tapes and pick up some tapes with all of Australia's posts.

Tim

Re:January 2nd

[Scudsucker]

funny, so long as you know the "invented the interner" line is a lie, as in he never said that.

I'm older than the Internet!

[Anonymous Coward]

but not by much. I smell better than the Internet too.

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[AtrN]

Others got NCP luckily and the "T" in "TCP" doesn't stand for "transfer". See,

RFC: 793

TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROTOCOL

some people value fact over humour

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Especially when the facts are true and the humour isn't funny.

Come on, it's not like he ruined a comedy classic there.

Re:some people value fact over humour

[kraksmoka]

i'm a dem sympathizer (i would sooner admit being a miami dolphins fan too), and have voted more dems than backwards racists party.

agnostic reply below

al did do alot on the legislative side. just like (this gets little recognition) Dan Quayle was the legislative sponsor (and fought hard for i'll add) the Patriot missile as a senator. he does deserve credit for seeing the future way back then . . . .

even tho i voted Gore in y2k, i still think the humor (and a better spelling too i might add) is really funny! didn't you people see SNL couple weeks back?? i'm sure even Al likes it at this point.

what are all you Lusers doing debating this old issue on /. on New Years EVE fur gosh sakes??????

t - 01:07 remaining in year.

i'm smokin sum good stuff and going out. laters everyone, have fun

NCP eh

[evilviper]

So, the internet left NCP 20 years ago... How long until Novell figures it out?

Repeat after me... It's a Joke, It's a Joke, It's a Joke. And when you tell me about factual inaccuracies, guess what I'm going to tell you?

Re:NCP eh

[Anonymous Coward]

And when no one laughs at your lame jokes, who will you talk to then?

IETF info

[ScubaS]

Bob is a great member for the IETF's mailing list. It is not everyday that people are actually watching out for special occassions such as the 20th aniversary of the Internet using the TCP/IP protocol. The NCP protocol is so old that it is basically unheard of today. I know that there will be more than one New Years Eve for us this week! Nobody can predict what the internet would be like if ARPANET was still using the NCP protocol for internet communications. All I can say about that is, maybe it is time for the Internet's Rebirth and phase out TCP/IP for something that is easier on the internet's precious bandwidth and high latency.

The next 20 years

[buttahead]

So who can guess where we will be 20 years from now? Wide scale broadband using IPv6? Small scale super broadband using an IP replacement?

What's going on with the Internet v2.0? Will it also be spun into a commercial media frenzy?

Anyone care to venture some guesses? Now taking bets; I'm sure you will be able to track me down 2 decades from now.

Re:The next 20 years

[ch-chuck]

Microsoft will have completed the purchase of the last independent ISP. All business transactions, from payroll to banking to consumer purchasing will have to be done online, as mandated by Federal Law, using terminals leased from MSFT for an affordable $99 / month. Attempting to connect an unauthorized terminal risks detection and prosecution. At that point, it will largely resemble the ATT voice line switched network of the 70's. After two decades of consumer dissatisfaction with discarded transactions and unrefunded money, a decade long 'break up' lawsuit will gain political momentum. etc etc etc.

Re:The next 20 years

[smithmc]

So who can guess where we will be 20 years from now? Wide scale broadband using IPv6? Small scale super broadband using an IP replacement?

I don't know exactly what technologies will be in use, but I'll bet someone figures how to do 3D interactive porn over the 'Net by then.

Funny.

[mindstrm]

If you mean the web.. fine.

Nowadays though..
you can route your PBX through a VOIP provider and get really cool phone service, and rates, from anywhere you can get bandwidth.
We trade entire movies online like it ain't no big thing.
Same for music.

Videoconferencing. You may not have seen high quality video conferencing via the internet.. but I sure have.. and it is indeed impressive.

Education. It's easier than ever to look up any kind of information now than ever before.. increased advertising yes.. but also increased information. Howstuffworks.com and it's type are awesome learning tools, for all ages.

Open forums, debates, person info like blogs, are huge now. Don't care? Maybe not.. but it's fairly easy to see what othe rpeople really think. Go back to reading magazines if you want... think some guy who failed highschool, has an iq of 40.. you don't want his opinion on something? Don't want to know what he thinks? You should, because he votes.

Etc.

Re:Funny.

[Arandir]

route your PBX through a VOIP provider and get really cool phone service... We trade entire movies online like it ain't no big thing... You may not have seen high quality video conferencing via the internet

Somehow I'm guessing you're not using a dialup like the majority of users still are. Heck, you're not even using DSL or cable.

Re:Funny.

[jandrese]

While videoconferencing isn't so easy on Cablemodem/DSL because of the upload cap (damn you Comcast and your 16 KB/s upload cap!) trading movies online is extremely feasable these days. Just look at the usenet. It's time for you to dump that old crappy modem and upgrade to something with real bandwidth.

Re:Funny.

[WasterDave]

think some guy who failed highschool, has an iq of 40.. you don't want his opinion on something? Don't want to know what he thinks? You should, because he votes.

And buys things.

Dave

Re:Funny.

[Arandir]

As long as it takes more more than two hours to download a two hour movie, it's not worth it to me.

In addition, until the pipes become fatter instead of faster, bandwidth intensive media will never catch on in the mainstream.

Re:Funny.

[mindstrm]

So you are one of those lowest common denominator people? The internet IS changing a great many things; they just aren't ALL for people at home.

And VOIP works fine over dialup.

Re:Funny.

[Arandir]

No I'm not. I have a 1.5mbps connection. But it still isn't fast enough to deliver real time video.

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[evilviper]

You know something, ships had ports for hundreds of years before electricity was even discovered.

Electrical devices had ports decades before computers were invented.

Computers had ports lone before TCP was invented.

And don't even get me started on 'dongles'.

And please allow me to point out the irony that you, yourself, are one of those people who are NOT "in the know".

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[David Walker]

You all hate me anyways, you stupid asswhipes, so you can all go fuck yourselves!

Especially you "In Soviet Russia" spammers. you are worse then fucking amobeas. YOU ARE WORTHLESS!

Fucking whores.

Hold on, what the hell do you have against amoebas!?

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehmm... scroll a few lines. There; there's the link you need.

Evolution rather than revolution

[wiggys]

The last major net revolution was probably in the mid nineties. By then we had animated .gifs, jpegs, database-driven web pages, Flash, Java and Javascript.

Has there really been anything new since then? I mean, since the WWW was born, the internet hasn't really advanced much. Sure, we've seen gradual improvements in bandwidth, HTML, CSS, scripting languages and so on, but there hasn't really been anything NEW.

Re:Evolution rather than revolution

[Unregistered]

Broadband. It changed the web. All of a suddon band was cheap and sites used it. This also led to higher band charges for sites as the primary cost of a site changed from storage to bandwidth. Bring on th pop-ups, pop-unders and flash ads.

Re:Evolution rather than revolution

[xombo]

This is only the beginning of the technological and internet revolution, there is still much more to come. The internet will be perfected when contact lenses act as monitors, connect to the net, with voice recognition, and are disposable.

Re:Evolution rather than revolution

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

P2P and, with increasing bandwidth, the increased development of the whole pirate information (mp3, warez, books, movies, porn) underground.

Tim

Re:Evolution rather than revolution

[Alien Being]

What we need now is good multicast support.

A speaker/writer/performer ought to be able to pay for just enough bandwidth to deliver one copy of his msg up to the backbone and have the rest of the distribution costs payed by the individuals who choose to receive it.

Re:OMFG!!! TERRORIST ATTACK IN NYC!

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU!

What a loser.

Re:OMFG!!! TERRORIST ATTACK IN NYC!

[HeyYou82]

this is not funny. in fact, i read that, and my heart dropped. i wish i had some mod points. get a friggin life.

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[DarkKnightRadick]

THey hate me, too! Fucker! Go screw yourself!

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[DarkKnightRadick]

You are the worthless one, biatch! Go fucking jump off a cliff and DIE!

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[DarkKnightRadick]

And you, you trolling motherfucker. Why don't you reveal who you are so I can fucking hack your account and fuck up your piece of shit computer! WHORE!

And fuck you Malda, you bitch. I have EVERY ad from you're fucking sites BLOCKED!

Long live Mozilla and ad-blocking software!

The Internet was up well before 1983

[Animats]

The Internet was up well before 1 JAN 1983. That was just the date that the old ARPANET NCP people had to switch over. I had machines on the Internet more than 20 years ago, and so did others.

Here's an Internet host list from 1981:

• Date: 5 Oct 1981 1358-PDT
• 
  From: POSTEL at USC-ISIF
  To: mike.bmd70 at BRL
  

  27-May-81 16:52 JBP

  GATEWAYS

  • DCEC-EDN/ARPA
  • MIT-LCS/ARPA
  • BBN-RCC/ARPA
  • BBN-SAT/ARPA
  • NDRE-SAT/ARPA
  • COMSAT-SAT/COMSAT
  • UCL-SAT/UCL
  • UCL-SAT/NULL
  • UCL-UCL/RSRE
  • RSRE-NULL/PPSN
  • RSRE-NULL/PPSN
  • SRI-PR1/ARPA
  • SRI-PR2/ARPA
  • BBN-BBNPR/ARPA
  • Bragg-BraggPR/ARPA

  COMPUTERS

  • ALTA-COMA
  • BBN-UNIX
  • BBN-VAX
  • BBNA
  • BBNB
  • BBNC
  • BBND
  • BBNE
  • BBNF
  • BBNG
  • EDN-HOST1
  • EDN-HOST3
  • EDN-UNIX
  • ISIB
  • ISIC
  • ISID
  • ISIE
  • ISIF
  • MIT-DevMultics
  • MIT-Multics
  • UCLA-CCN 3033

Re:The Internet was up well before 1983

[Anonymous Coward]

# BBNA
# BBNB
# BBNC
# BBND
Boy! Do those bring back some fond memories of my
mis-spent youth.

Re:NCP and TCP/IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's New Year's and I sighted a three-digit ID slashdot user! Looks like it's going to be a good year.

fa!

[Anonymous Coward]

20 years is pretty good for a protocol. I imagine tcp might last longer than 40. Not so for IP4 though.

sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[smartfart]

Dunno why I'm replying, cuz it won't do any good anyway...

i'm a dem sympathizer (i would sooner admit being a miami dolphins fan too), and have voted more dems than backwards racists party.

For the record (dig out your history books if you doubt me), the dixiecrats, segregationists all, split from the democratic party, not the republicans. George Wallace (Boo! Boo! Boo!) was a democrat, too. Lincoln, the guy who set the black man free, was a republican.

Lott? His racist years were spent as a democrat, and he dropped his views when he joined up with the republicans.

Ok, class, repeat after me... democrats are the rasicts, republicans never were.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[LtOcelot]

A fair comment for the first half but goes downhill into its own troll from there. No one just "drops his views" when changing political parties, and the Republican party of today is not the Party of Lincoln any more than the Democratic party is the Party of Jefferson. These days, it's the Republican party that tends to offer the racists a more favorable climate.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[smartfart]

This article states otherwise: "[r]epublicans made Southern Democrats drop the race nonsense when they entered the Republican Party".

As far as your last point goes, do you have any data that backs this up?

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[rela]

Bah, both parties suck. Sitting and arguing about which party is or isn't satan's tool in the modern world makes it pretty clear to me that all you parent posters have missed the little bit about them all being corrupt and completely self-serving.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[kraksmoka]

well, i'm replying after one hellofa party. i'm trashed, but lucid none the less, which is bad news for you pal.

i know my history (my second degree) and i can tell u that yes, the Southern Dems were racists after 1900 thru Mr. Strom "ageless wonder" Thurmond. He left the party because it turns out, the GOP suited his affiliation better than the dems who shunned his racist rhetoric.

lincoln was the last GOP president who did anything for blacks, and if you'll recall, he was also one of the earliest Repubs (actually, there before the term GOP). i think W isn't a racist (hate him otherwise), has a mixed cabinet, etc. but, last time i checked, David Duke was out there stealing republican votes from rebuplican voters. wake up, smell the roses, the GOP has been anti-immigration for years, and if you think it was just an economic stupidity, you're wrong.

screen's lookin a little fuzzy right now

itunes screen saver, don't fail me now.

sh>cd happy
sh>ls new year

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[Scudsucker]

Riiiiight. I just love it when conservatives make hay out of the fact that Democrats were racist 50 years ago, CONVIENIENTLY FORGETTING THAT THOSE RACISTS ALL JOINED THE GOP. Lott? GOP. Thurmond? GOP. Then there's all the Republicans who didn't start out as Democrats, but are Confederate flag wavers who visit Bob Jones University and give interviews to racist publications.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[spanky555]

Lucid, my ass.

It was the Republicans who set up the NAACP.

It was Al Gore's *FATHER* who tried to filibuster the Equal Rights Act.

It is Senator Byrd, a *Democrat* who was the former Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, and who only last *year* used the word "nigger" twice on national television. Do you really think that he has changed his views when he is using that word on national television. The press and the left mao-mao'ed Lott out of his position, but do we hear the tiniest peep about Byrd, when he said it? Where was Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on Byrd?

It is the *Democrats* who oppose school vouchers, despite what inner-city blacks might want.

It is the *programs* that Democrats support that have helped create the inner city slums.

Anyone who thinks Republicans are the "racist" party is spending too much time listening to rhetoric from the left.

I would contend that much of the LEFT is racist - what else could a handout or special treatment based on skin color mean? When you give someone a boost solely on skin color, you are in effect saying, "Gosh, you're too stupid or lazy to do this yourself, here you go."

MLK's dream is dead, at least if we expect liberals to be the ones to realize that dream.

And neither party is "anti-immigration". There are some in both parties who are anti ILLEGAL immigration, but most support it for various reasons DESPITE what the population of Americans wants - Repubs support it so companies can get cheap labor, and Dems support it so they can get a larger base of voters.

Only Tom Tancredo has the balls to call it as it really is, and as most Americans want illegal immigration to be dealt with...and of course, he gets called "xenophobic" for it. That's nonsense. There isn't a country on Earth that doesn't try to control immigration, and we should be no different. If people want to come here, they HAVE TO DO IT LEGALLY, and even then, only as much as the population wants, not want companies or Democrats want.

Coming to America to work and live is not a RIGHT, it's a PRIVILEGE.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[autopr0n]

Lott? His racist years were spent as a democrat, and he dropped his views when he joined up with the republicans

HA!

Not only is the assertion ridiculous on it's face, but if he dropped his views, then why the hell did he make those statements a few weeks ago?

Some republicans are racist today, and some (Condi rice..) are obviously not.

It's no secret that republicans pander to southern segregationists and other racists, it's called Nixon's 'southern strategy', to sweep up southern racists disillusioned by the democrats switch from being racist to being pro-civil-rights.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[spanky555]

What about Senator Byrd? What about Al Gore's dad? What about Hillary Clinton? ...but are Confederate flag wavers...

The Confederate flag only became an "issue" because some folks in the civil rights industry decided to make it one. This is just ridiculous, but it's the same sort of thinking behind folks saying "the American flag stands for a racist, imperialist, homophobic, sexist country". That is, the thinking is utter nonsense.

You want to know what I saw just a few days after 9/11? I pulled up to a light, and I saw a black gentleman in the car to my right, and he had a bandana on - made out of the Confederate flag. When he pulled away, I saw he a Confederate flag on his car, too. I suppose you'll tell me he's an "Uncle Tom", or worse, a "house nigger" as some of the more sensitive Black Caucus members have been wont to use against opponents.

Re:sigh... someone's gotta troll...

[Scudsucker]

Good for him. Not all confederate flag wavers are racists, but the most of the racists are confederate flag wavers.

Reminising

[peterdaly]

My first collection of bookmarks was scrawled on paper, and titled "Servers", since none of us had heard of "Bookmarks" yet.

Anyone have an old copy of the Internet Yellowpages sitting in their shelf? (Or in their basement...)

I remember how cool we though it was to download gif images of weather maps from University of Michigan. We didn't have to wait for the news to see an up to date weather map! Think of how commonplace that is today.

-Pete

Re:Reminising

[zaren]

My first collection of bookmarks was scrawled on paper, and titled "Servers", since none of us had heard of "Bookmarks" yet.

My collection was scrawled on the labels of various 1.4 meg floppies. This was back when archie was still popular, and my primary method of Internet access was dialing into my college's Prime mainframe (before most people knew they could get Internet access through their Fortran programming account) with a 2400 bps modem. I still like the sound of a 2400 connecting the best :)

Re:Reminising

[Anonymous Coward]

scott yanoff's list, baby, that's where it all was!

Re:Reminising

[rorya]

I think the sound of x2 modem handshaking is definitely the coolest sounding. It sounds like a sub ping in some ways. Really cool. v90's is close, but not as unique.

-rory

*toasts*

[kien]

Here's to free-thinkers...may they continue to retain the right to question things.

Here's to academics...may they continue their research.

Here's to the hacker ethic which played a large part in the creation of the Net.

And here's to all of you /. people, whether friend, foe, or freak; you make me think.

Happy New Year!

--K.

Re:*toasts*

[Anonymous Coward]

may as well toast al-qaida as well while you're praising unamericanism.

Re:*toasts*

[Anonymous Coward]

I really, really hate the term "free-thinker", what's wrong with "atheist"??? Sounds like some retarded marketing catch-phrase... *grrr*

Re:*toasts*

[ylikone]

Are you calling Americans uneducated, fundamentalist, paranoid slaves to corporations? .... oh, I guess you are correct then.

FPFPFP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

FIRST NEW YEAR'S POST!

And then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two days later, the birth of advertising & spam....

Whoa...

[qat]

Isn't it ironic that it was claimed to be created on the First day of a new year? I think that was done because people are lazy and it's easier to remember. Stupid people...

Re:Whoa...

[Anonymous Coward]

...unless it was just a coincidence to which you attach superstitious import... stupid people.

Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[kfg]

and thinking, " You know, someday this will be in color, and text will be WYSIWYG and the screen will look like *paper*, with black text."

I was a visionary in my 30's. And I was right. We got it, and it was good, in fact it was awsome.

I was also a naive twit in my 30's. Nowadays I've "devolved" into reading mail in text mode using mutt. Dark background, white 80 column text you can read from halfway across a thirty foot room, and it's good. In fact, it's awsome.

A CRT isn't paper. Different rules apply. Your eyes, and the eyes of your readers, will thank you for realizing this.

Ah well, at least it's better than those websites that print black text on a textured navy blue background.

KFG

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[evilviper]

Dark background, white 80 column text you can read from halfway across a thirty foot room, and it's good. In fact, it's awsome.

I `inherited' an old qvt-109 terminal (new, in box)... It's been so long, I didn't remember how much nicer amber was on the eyes. It's a damn shame modern monitors (anything with more than 16 colors) don't have the good ol' monochrome button in the back. If something like that was released today, it would be considered a revolution in ergonomics.

But still, nobody figures it out.

A CRT isn't paper. Different rules apply. Your eyes, and the eyes of your readers, will thank you for realizing this.

I always explain to people that reading black text from a white page on a computer screen is like reading the label of a flourscent lightbulb. In fact, the only difference between the two is the refresh rate.

The difference between paper and screen is quite simple... Books aren't backlit, so the light you see when reading, is polarized.

I'm leading up to something here

What that means, is that we need monitors that are NOT backlit. I've heard that the color gameboy screens do exactly this, and are very low-power to boot. So, I can't help but wonder why no one has come forward with a `front-lit' monitor, and sold each for several times what they are worth. That, in fact, is the only barrier left to the paperless office/home. Hey, if everyone's eyes weren't getting burned by looking at a computer screen, they just might read an e-book, rather than printing everything out, just so they can read it once and throw it away.

Meanwhile, millions is spent on ergonomics, electronic paper, tablets, etc. Just manufacture one new monitor, and you too can change the world.

Hey, at this point, I'd be happy with a 10 inch, Black & White, LCD display. It's ironic that the high-end handheld do away with the much easier to read greyscale LCDs.

Ah well, at least it's better than those websites that print black text on a textured navy blue background.

Actually, I don't mind that very much. Hit CTRL+A and all the text will be highlighted, giving the text the contrast it needs.

Dark pictures on dark backgrouds are another story.

But... White backgrounds are everywhere... I don't run into any other terrible design decisions even 1/10o0th as much.

And yet, nobody ever learns. I still don't know why. It's a monkey-see-monkey-do mentality, I suppose.

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

my zaurus is front-lit. sharp has been doing front-lit for a while, in fact, they have a faq somewhere that says why they chose front-lighting, and you can even turn the lighting all the way off and stuff, it's really nice for low-power situation.

And no, I'm not a sharp troll, just think the zaurus is awesome, and sharp's got good monitors.

Seth
seth.tautology.org

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're using Mac OS X:

System Preferences -> Universal Access -> "Switch to White on Black"

There you go :-)

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[Zontar The Mindless]

I remember when HTML email first came out, I was thrilled... for about two weeks. Now I use Moz in text-only/images-disabled mode and bitch at friends who insist on sending me anything but ASCII.

My first contact with the Net (or anything like) came in 1980 or '81 when I had an account on the DELPHI sytem. Then I did other stuff for about 15 years, and by the time I came back to computing, the WWW was there.

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[evilviper]

That's all fine and good, but how long until real monitors fuction that way?

I'm not going to do everything on a Zarus, as I do on my desktop/notebook.

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[Phil Wilkins]

I've heard that the color gameboy screens do exactly this, and are very low-power to boot. So, I can't help but wonder why no one has come forward with a `front-lit' monitor, and sold each for several times what they are worth.

If you'd used one, you'd know why.

Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . .

[evilviper]

Well nothing would stop them from including a front-light. Don't judge the idea based on one bad implimentation. I only mention the gameboy as it shows the possiblity.

Just 1 more year...

[ThresholdRPG]

... until you're old enough to drink, Internet!

Until then, I guess you have to stick to what you're best at: porn and gambling.

Happy Birthday Internet!

Re:Just 1 more year...

[xombo]

Maybe when the internet turns 21, google will advertise for alcohol. It is 18, so pr0n is ok.

Re:Just 1 more year...

[OzPixel]

Except for the bits in Australia, which were allowed to drink 2 years ago (age 18).

(yeah, Aussies mature more quickly, that'd be it ... )

David.

Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

And my appearance on this world was 17 days too late to be there... I'd like one of those "I Survived the TCP/IP Transition" shirts, though.

Happy new year.

Well, I hate to say it, but. . .

[kfg]

that's generally a sign of maturation of any technology. It happens. There's only so much "new" to go around, and then you've used it up.

You can see signs of it throughtout the entire computer industry too. They're starting to sell chrome like it's a technological feature. They only have to do that when they've run out of *actual* new technological features to sell. "Buy our OS, it's got prettier widgets and shit."

There was that "smell-O-vision" thingy that someone said they were working on a while ago. Man, just wait to you get hit with a "popup" perfume ad with that sucker. Maybe nothing new is a Good Thing?

KFG

Gore did something, but not what he said

[Brian_Ellenberger]

From: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

The problem I have with his statement was that he said he "created" the Internet. Not sponsored legistation. Not funded scientists. Not *helped* but *created*.

His statement just came off as way too arrogant to the point of being silly. Which is why everyone makes fun of it. No one person or organization created the Internet. Heck, no one politician was responsible for its funding. Ronny was president January 1, 1983 and I believe LBJ was president during the initial ARPA funding. His statement gave no credit to anyone else whatsoever. Heck the Internet would be nothing without the WWW and that came out of Europe's CERN. His statement sounds like he sat in a back room with a computer and cooked up the Internet all by himself.

The worst part is that this speech was obviously written and wasn't some off the cuff remark. It was deliberate and is a great example of why polticians suck. I'm reminded of the King in Dragonslayer who comes up to the remains of the dragon, sticks his sword in, and takes the credit for everything.

Brian Ellenberger

Re:Gore did something, but not what he said

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have with his statement was that he said he "created" the Internet. Not sponsored legistation. Not funded scientists. Not *helped* but *created*.

No he didn't, Captain Fucknut. Go back and read the full quote: "During my service in the United States Congress..." he's talking about what HE DID AS AN ELECTED OFFICIAL to help the internet (any group of connected networks) into *the* Internet (over a terabyte of traffic every day). I mean, duh. If the Democrat-loving Newt Frikkin Gengrich gives props to Gore for his work on the Internet, you can just shut your god damn mouth. jesus.

finally, at 22, i'm older

[Anonymous Coward]

than something of importance

huzzah!

Re:OMFG!!! TERRORIST ATTACK IN NYC!

[Anonymous Coward]

that's about as funny as non-treatable lymphoma, you stupid fuck.

Relax..

[Anonymous Coward]

All the morons will go away when internet v5.0 hits the streets. The advertisers & zd will be right on their tail.
What you need to be lying awake and wringing your hands over is what happens when the average joe uses linux, imagine downloading the 10th sourceforge project in a row that you've got to dig through the code & remove the ads, *then*, compile n run - and it turns out to be software that doesn't have love & was just written to get ppl to it's site.
And when they start using google, the cloud of shit sdvertising of theirs that wants a dollar a month from all the idiots will start getting clicks.
Then we will be in hell.

Re:and...Bunny Batteries Burned Out.

[Anonymous Coward]

" it just keeps going slower and slower!"

The Energizer Bunny turns senior citizen.

It seems like just yesterday...

[mtec]

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and there was no Spam.
And the Spirit of God moved slowly through modems.
And God said, Let there be speed: and there was speed.
And God saw the speed, that it was good: and God divided the slow from the fast.
And God called the speed true Broadband Internet, and the slow he called AOL.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.

(apologies)

He called it FUD

[toneathome]

And you proved him correct.

Re:He called it FUD

[Stonent1]

And where is the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in how republicans are acting. Maybe I missed it.. But the way I understood it is that he was using the common mistake of associating FUD with "BS" rather than the defined meaning which in it self may be BS but not necessarily.

Re: I'm with you.

[King_TJ]

For my first message post of the year, I'll have to say I'm in agreement with you. Despite all the nostalgia for the days of Veronica, Gopher, etc. - those were the tools used because they made the most of the commonly available hardware of the day.

When graphics cards and processor speeds started making multimedia viable - it just made sense things would evolve beyond plain text-based tools.

"A picture's worth a thousand words." has much truth to it. By extension, a well-done animation/movie has the power of 1,000 still pictures.

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, what's up with him and his pissed off attitude?

thank you Al buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

I love your internet thing. I'm so glad it's on computers now! (homer)

Terrance Davis
www.genedavis.com

learn English

[DABANSHEE]

I took the initiative in creating the Internet

That has 2 interprestations:

1/ I took the initiative by creating the internet

2/ The initiative I took led to the creation of the internet.

Obviously he ment interpretation 2, as, if he meant interpretation 1 he would have just said it. The fact is the difference between in & by means alot, even though those definitions overlap.

.arpa

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw once in the IRCnet a guy with .arpa domain address. Needless to say, I drooled. I would sell my soul and give a substantial amount of money for one of those. I have tried to "bribe" people with thousands of dollars. No effect.

Doesn't anyone see the business opportunity here? A niche market, only for really selected customers. All you need is couple cheap servers and you can sell the domain names for the cost of one server.

Clean Up Day

[Anonymous Coward]

So will we be having an Internet Clean Up day to celebrate?

My, How Times Have Changed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Twenty years ago, MJ's "Thriller" was the shit.

Re:FUCK YOU ALL

[DarkKnightRadick]

Like you really fucking care, you Anonymous Coward. You chicken motherfucker. Why don't you reveal your ugly self? I'll tell you why, because you're a yellow fucking coward!

1/1/83 ncp/imp-ip cutover

[Anonymous Coward]

also
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

several past discussions:

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#4 what makes a cpu fast
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#16 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#35 Processor Modes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#48 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#54 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#5 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#87 A new forum is up! Q: what means nntp
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#32 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#5 3 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.htm l#58 ibm vnet : Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.htm l#19 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#30 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#35 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#40 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#71 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#5 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#1 1 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#48 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#79 Al Gore and the Internet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#6 4 vm marketing (cross post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#19 Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.ht ml#48 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#17 PLX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#4 Vector display systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#35 HASP:

Freethinker vs Atheist

[Cybrr]

Freethinkers are skeptics whereas Atheists are unbelievers.

And

[Anonymous Coward]

More lamers to follow

Vint Cerf is a spineless worm.

[autopr0n]

a political hack who sold out the internet to the Icann cronies. I wouldn't listen to a word he says.

Gore's bills helped the internet, true. but if you actualy read them it's pretty clear he had no idea what the internet actualy was when he wrote them. If you looked at the bills, they were mostly about building a network for trasfering data between supercomputers for scientific research, not the person-to-person, PC network that the internet became.

No...

[autopr0n]

Withotu al gore's initiatives, the internet would still be here, dumbass. Gore didn't even know what the internet was when he wrote those bills. They only provided a little funding to the network. The network didn't need actual laws passed to get all of its funding, just some of it.

Wired did an overview of his bills right after his comments, and they hardly constitute 'creation' of the internet. Indeed, they have very little to do with what we think of when we think of the 'internet'.

Ok, now you're smoking crack.

[autopr0n]

You mean AL GORE'S information superhighway? Back during the early clinton admin Gore was championing the "information superhighway" idea. If gore really did have his way, we'd all be sitting in front of cable boxes watching PPV movies, not running our own servers on great internet.

Gore's bills when he was in congress had nothing to do with what we think of as the internet. None of what he did does. Gore provided some funding for building a 'super-computer network'... i.e. for hooking up supercomputers so they could share computational data. Not a network for sending email and surfing the web.

No, that's totaly wrong.

[autopr0n]

Al gore said he created the internet, not A internet.

If I said "I created a lightbuilb" it would not mean that I thought I invented it. If I said "I created the lightbulb." it would. Gore said he took the initative in creating the internet.

And he did not.

what gore did.

[autopr0n]

Gore did fund some internet stuff, but what his bills spesificaly talked about where for connecting super-computers together, not building a network for email and gofer.

Gore had a big hard on for the whole "Information Superhighway" idea during the early years of the Clinton admin, and that meant interactive TV and the like, which we know never got off the ground.

How can you call other people's history distorted?

[autopr0n]

. Hitler's party was called the National Socialist Party.

That's true, but there is a huge diffrence between national socialism, of facism, and socialism. If you don't know the diffrence, you really shouldn't be talking.

Germany was a long way down the path of collectivization to begin with, and the Nazis "inherited" that fine tradition...they also got some of their "best" ideas from Stalin.

that's why they persicuted communists with the same zeal they did with jews an gypsies?

Nazis engaged in class warfare.

This just isn't true at all, and I have no idea where you got that idea. Do you have a any refrences at all?

Industries were nationalized.

Again, no they were not. You don't seem to know anything about the Nazi platform at all.

If these sound familiar, it's because these are things the Democrats support.

The democrats do engage in a little class rivaly, but the nazis did not. The democrats do not want to nationalize much, but neither did the nazis. the democrats certanly don't want colectivisation, but then neither did the nazis.

You don't seem to have any undrestanding of either the Nazi platform or the Democrat platform. It's just really sad that an idiot such as yourself can vote in this country...

you're totally splitting hairs

[Scudsucker]

He never said that *he*, as Al Gore by himself, created the internet. Go back and look at the quote. The process by which an experimental network of networks became the Internet was the product of many many individuals. Scientists, researches, government officials. An no other elected official "got" the Internet like Gore did.

So yes me most certainaly *did*. He makes it very plain that he was talking about what he did when he was in Congress.

And let me as you this: while you are splitting hairs and thumping your chest at Gore, how about Bush trying to take credit for a bill he vetoed? And before you complain that it's irrelevant, it happened during the same time frame, the 2000 election, when the media was spewing the Gore "fib factor" BS.

ann coulter?

[autopr0n]

Well, I can write random crap on the internet and link to it too. An unrefrenced asertion by Ann Coulter is worth less then nothing.

left, right, whatever

[autopr0n]

I think people who incesently bitch about "the left", claim anything that they disagree with as 'leftist' are idiots. In case It's not clear to you, I think you are an idiot.

That said, unlike Lott, Byrd was not the senate majority leader or whatever. What the point in democrats bitching about him? It's up to the people in his state to get rid of him, unlike Lott who the actual leader of the senate.

Also, wanting to end legal immigration is both hypocritical and xenophobic, regardless of how many people want to do it.

Re:left, right, whatever

[spanky555]

Well, thanks for the ad hominem attack. I'm not incessently bitching about the left, I'm pointing out the hypocrisy. When a conservative does something idiotic, I jump on them, too, because I'm a Libertarian. HOWEVER, since most of the media is left-leaning, they do a fine job of doing that already, so most of what I'd have to add would be superfluous.

In any case, Byrd may not be majority leader or minority leader, but he is called the "conscience of the Senate" by his fawning supporters.

It doesn't really *matter* what position they are in, someone who is a Democrat with a past will have legions of people covering and spinning for him, including his own party members. What does that say about what the left will sink to?

When a conservative does something stupid like Lott, even conservatives call him out...

Who wants to end LEGAL immigration? Even Pat Buchanan doesn't want this. I don't know who you are talking about.

Some PDAs have screens like this.

[autopr0n]

Front-lit with a special kind of light built into the side, rather then from behind. It looks very cool, but isn't as 'true' as a backlit screen.

Anyway, all you really need to do to make a back-lit, or self-lit (like a CRT, or LED) screen look good is ajust the brightness. it would be cool if monitors had an 'auto' setting and a light sensor. But most do provide you with handy buttons to change the brightness.

Re:Some PDAs have screens like this.

[evilviper]

all you really need to do to make a back-lit, or self-lit (like a CRT, or LED) screen look good is ajust the brightness.

If you drop the brightness, you get no picture. You can try to maintain a balance, but it still doesn't come close. Saying you just need to turn down the brightness is like saying ``If the bulb is too bright, just shut if off." It does not accomplish what you are actually trying to do.

Re:Some PDAs have screens like this.

[autopr0n]

Um, have you ever tried it?

Re:Some PDAs have screens like this.

[evilviper]

Yes. Several CRTs, and a couple LCDs. You probably don't understand the conversation if you think it would or should work.

Racism exists where it is convenient

[packnet]

Robert Byrd is not excluded from his (past) racist beliefs simply because he was never Senate Majority leader. That's the stupidest reasoning I've ever heard.

Both parties - and in particular generations prior to the baby boomers - have a legacy of racism at some point.

What changed the perception is the illusion that civil rights and the Great Society were somehow related. The perception - pushed by the Johnson Democrats - that support of Welfare was support for African Americans. Disapproval of welfare is against African-Americans? The Democratic party is such a disgrace that they really believe this, and somehow have managed to successfully sell it.

I find this to be incredibly insulting to African Americans, because it continues to push a status quo of "poor African Americans", when we know damned good and well that African-Americans CAN succeed in America.

Why do the Democrats fear School Choice? It just might fix the problem of piss-poor inner-city schools that have failed for almost 40 years no matter how much funding is thrown at it. IT'S STILL BROKE, IT STILL SUCKS, AND THE DEMOCRATS CAN'T FIX IT. THEY ARE TOTAL FAILURES.

Why do the Democrats fear Faith-based initiatives? Because it is a private method to assist the poor, and unmasks the lies of the 2-year election cycle that somehow African-Americans must come to the polls for the Democrats, so that THEY can throw them a bone to keep them happy for another 2 years. Successful African-Americans are the worst nightmare for the Democratic Party.

Why do the Democrats push Affirmative Action? Because once it is proved that African-Americans can and will achieve success in a an open, unregulated, free-market society, what the Hell do we need Democrats for anymore?

Racism is Harry Belefonte, who believes that you're not black if you don't think a certain way; if you have an opinion outside that of the herd you must be an Uncle Tom. THAT is racism.

Trent Lott? He's just an idiot for not choosing his words as carefully as a statesman should. But he never wore a sheet, like the Senator from West Virginia. He wasn't up there with Al Gore's Dad, a man known to be fond of the "N" word, trying to block the civil rights bill.

FACT: More Republicans in #s and percentages voted FOR the Civil Rights bill than did Democrats.

FACT: Affirmative Action was signed into law by - RICHARD NIXON.

The future of the GOP lies in GenX. I'm too young to be a racist, I just plain know better. I've had black friends and I've differed in opinion with them the same as my white friends. Never did we think such a disagreement was due to underlying racist feelings. THAT'S THE ONLY THING THAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAN HOPE FOR, HOWEVER.

This racism BULLSHIT is just that - BULLSHIT. The Democrats need this, they are getting their asses whipped in the polls, they have no message, they lack positive solutions for America, and can't figure out who they are even among themselves (Nancy Peloci, or Joe Lieberman?).

This post is way off topic, I know, but I am SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF BEING CALLED A RACIST SIMPLY BECAUSE I THINK I PAY TOO GODDAMNED MUCH IN TAXES, SUPPORT A STRONG MILITARY, AND PUT MY FAITH IN THE FREE MARKET BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT.

Any Liberal out there who wants to take me on with issues, fine. Disagreement is good. Stop pulling this damned race bullshit before it blows up in your face, like Hillary's comments about "Goddamned Jews".

Have a nice day!

Re:How can you call other people's history distort

[spanky555]

For someone who can barely spell, you sure do have a high opinion of yourself. And again, the ad hominem attack. You are making this too easy.

No, I don't have references handy, but I'm sure you can dig them up yourself. A visit to your local library may help you.

Stalin threw communists into concentration camps; just because the Nazis did proves little.

I could use some humor - why don't you tell me what you think the Nazis stood for? And how they *didn't* have a centrally administered economy? Or how using the Jew as a scapegoat *isn't* class warfare?

I know *exactly* what today's liberal Democrats stand for - I used to be one of them. I was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, so believe me when I say this.

In any case, my original intent was to show that of today's two major parties, Democrats are the ones who are closer to the Nazis. I'm not saying Democrats are two steps away from building concentration camps, but it's certain that Republicans are nowhere near the Nazis.

P.S.: Have you read The Road to Serfdom?

Re:How can you call other people's history distort

[spanky555]

That's true, but there is a huge diffrence between national socialism, of facism, and socialism. If you don't know the diffrence, you really shouldn't be talking.

This post has some references that you might be interested in.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Hitler+ties+to++ marxism&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=jo hannp-1905961046210001%40news.aimnet.com&rnum= 2

Maybe it's *you* who should not be doing the talking.

This made the national news!

[BlindSpot]

The CBC actually ran a TV report about this on the national news tonight! It included numerous mentions of TCP/IP and a quick "dummy's overview" of what it was, plus some reflections on what the modern Internet has meant for society.

The online article is here along with a link to a radio report. Hopefully they'll put the TV version on there too.

It was obviously a slow news day, but it was still nice to see such a geeky topic hit mainstream media.

1973 was my 'net birthday

[petersherwood]

The fall of 2003 will mark my 30th 'net b-day.

I have no delusions of grandeur in regard to this event as I was only born into this medium cuz of many 'net predecessors.

I directly owe my 'net b-day to John Cox, my geometry teacher, who had the where-with-all to acquire one of those computer teletypes with the 110 BAUD modem, paper-tape printout, sticky keys, etc. ... and had it connected to the UCSD mainframe.

No one really realizes significance when it happens. It generally takes years to get that perspective.

When I finally located John Cox and wrote to tell him a year or two ago to confirm my vague recollection (which he confirmed) he was quite surprised that it was so significant to me personally. [PS: take the time to say "thank you"]

I was 'net born-again in 1983 when Lindsay Cleveland of AT&T Atlanta continually added my plethora of UUCP-connected XENIX and/or UNIX computers to his extremely well connected 'net systems from 1983 until 1985.
I was a computer consultant and took the time to show my clients how to get connected to the 'net.

Perspective: The 'net is the 'net cuz of all of us doing our small part to make it so.
And if you didn't have the good fortune to have your 'net b-day or your 'net growth days back in the early years (1960's, 1970's or 1980's) you will not have the experience and insights as to why some of us old-timers long for the good ol' days and say "thank you" so much and try to give where credit is due (or where we think it is due). Please don't (virtually: - ) slap us though.

Some of us may be the very reason some of you are where you are today much as we old timers have a gratitude for those who trod the path before us.

I noticed some here are pointing to people like Vint, Gore and a few others as the reason why the 'net is the internet today. Most of them are quick to state it was a group effort and they were only part of what we know and (variably) love about our 'net today.

Those who do, have perspective!

Thanks for your contribution. I appreciate it.

Pete

no he didn't

[autopr0n]

Do you have any proof that he 'got' the internet back then? Show spesific legislation, or STFU.

Re:no he didn't

[Scudsucker]

"In 1991, Vice President Al Gore, then a U.S. senator, proposed widening the architecture of NSFNET to include more K-12 schools, community colleges, and 2-year colleges. The resulting legislation expanded NSFNET and renamed it NREN (National Research and Educational Network). This bill also allowed businesses to purchase part of the network for commercial uses. The mass commercialization of today's Internet is the direct result of this legislation."

Eat that, bitch. He was also the driving force in getting government agencies on the web. So, how bout you answer the question: why was it so popluar to disect Gore's statements for inaccuracies when Bush flat out takes credit for something he hated, and vetoed, on nation television and no one cares?

Really.

[mindstrm]

Tell that to the boardrooms full of people doing realtime, high quality video conferencing over 384kbps between Vancouver & Toronto.

blah blah blah bullshit

[Scudsucker]

You know you are just rationalizing a big pile of shit. Any system that lets the less popular canidate lose by millions of votes but win the race is a perversion of democracy. Go back to gobbling some nice fat cock, or better yet do the world a favor and look into a shotgun lobotomy and take yourself out of the genepool.

Re:OMFG!!! TERRORIST ATTACK IN NYC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funniest thing I read all day!

Troll on girl, troll on!

Last Post!

[alpg]

I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
-- Lucinda Childs "Einstein On The Beach"

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