Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The 20th Anniversary of the Internet

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-who's-counting dept.

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..."

10 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh let me get my popcorn! by plugger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 :)

  2. IETF info by ScubaS · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  3. Evolution rather than revolution by wiggys · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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.

    --

    Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.

  4. Re:Al Gore is celebrating by operagost · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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!

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  5. The Internet was up well before 1983 by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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
  6. Reminising by peterdaly · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    --
    Soccer Goal Plans
    1. Re:Reminising by zaren · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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 :)

      --
      Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
  7. Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . . by kfg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Ah, I remember getting my first CRT. . . by evilviper · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  8. Re:Oh let me get my popcorn! by mocular · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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?).