Slashdot Mirror
A Brief History of the Internet
Ant writes "'Many young people around the world use the internet every day, and yet they have no memory of the history that led to the creation of the global network. Many have no understanding of how or why the internet has developed. As part of out continuing efforts to combat ignorance around the world, The Lemon is proud to present this timeline...'"
But he was resposible for seeing that it got funding, and was pushed into the private sector. Credit where credit is due.
Once upon a time, there wan an Internet. Along cam Slashdot... phut - the internet got slashsdotted.
The rest, as they say, is history.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
... I met a shady character in a bar, and he told me that one day machines would rule us with twisted-pair whips.
It took me years to figure out what he meant.
Damn those corporate drones in middle management.
Please insert your Al Gore-isms here.
Thank you,
Dubya
On a related note, here is the history of Usenet. Unlike the story-linked-site, the Usenet site is a real history, and is in many ways funnier.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
That's a funny site :)
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I still don't get the "lemon" part though... all they talk about is apple, nothing sour in that ;)
Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
Al Gore....duh!
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
1981 - Bill Gates embarks on heroic and lifelong quest to piss off every person in America.
1992 - World-Wide Web released by CERN. Group suggests someone invent a web browser so people can use it.
Bill Gates gets a mention (although not a positive one) but Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web doesn't? How bad is that?
It amazes me that Berners-Lee isn't more widely acknowledged for his contribution to today's internet. Granted he's never been a man who's to court publicity, but he will go down in history as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.
Arguably, he's been as important to the information revolution as Gutenberg was to the printing one. I'm not saying that he created everything single-handedly, only that his work should be acknowledged.
Yes, I realise that the The Lemon timeline is meant to be jokey but shouldn't a guy who's made so much possible for so many - for geeks the world over to argue with each other over which edition of AD&D is the best, people who've never had a social life to order a bride without leaving their front rooms and teenagers everywhere to download more porn than their Dad's could ever have imagined - get at least a tip of the hat?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
And I thought the internet just evolved from multinode BBSes running WildCat and Discussion Board Sync software.
:)
Who knew?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
The Hobbes' Internet Timeline and the ISOC list of Internet Histories give much better coverage.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
is the creation of alt.sex
I'm not Seth.
Seth Finkelstein has collected lots of good links on the topic.
The young may have no memory of how the internet started, in fact i'm sure most of them using their aol messenger etc don't care, but what about the old, some don't know what it is/or how to use it, nevermind remembering the history. (Some can't remember what they ate for lunch!)
I always thought that the Internet was invented by Microsoft and shipped with Windows 95.
Summation 2
Is there any way to mod this entire story as (-1, Overrated)?
Seriously, this has to be one of the most useless and uninteresting items to appear on Slashdot in the recent past. A real history of the internet? Maybe that would be an interesting read. But this garbage from The Lemon is completely worthless, not even funny (it tries, yet fails miserably), and unworthy of even a mention on Fark.
Speaking of which, Today's StrongBad Email...
maybe we should remember ww2 instead of this shit
just a few examples:
... )
... by that time I stopped using Windos, but didn't 95 came out somewhere in the middle of 96 ?)
1977: email invented. most common message: "let me know when you are there so i can call you.
(Family archives show as #1: "did you get this [email]?" and "are you there ?")
1978: Spreadsheet, 10 years till anyone knows how to use them.
(Show me one person who has a usefull use for spreadsheets
1995: AOL, Compuserve, etc take off
(I canceled my CIS account in late 1995, after using it for quite a while.
Erm - shute, I wanted to, but I didn't....)
1995: Release of Windows'95
(Erm
1997: Internet Porn introduced to businesses. Worker productivity down 97%
('97? I could swear Admiral K. sold his stuff for websites long before that [ESCdd])
2001: Blogging invented.
(hey, my first lj-entry is Aug 29th, 2000 - and I joined the bandwaggon very late.)
ps:
semicolon-dash-closing bracket
On the other side of the screen it all looked so easy.
1969: x10 proposes a world wide computer network capable of poping up advertisements on users workstations. The DOD shows interest and tags the name ARPANET on it.
1981: Lary Flint and other Porn big shots support the effort.
1982: IBM turns down an offer to control the new born ARPANET, they're too busy licensing C:\>.
1986: Buttered popcorn beats out Gummy Bears by 20% in the first ever international email survey. Thus spam is invented.
1989: Playboy releases first ever Playmate gallery in ASCII on Gopher.
1991: Al Gore changes the name of the project by inventing the term "internet". Later NCSA releases the first browser, mosaic.
1993: The warez pups populate the Internet with copies of Doom and give users a reason to get online.
1994: The motion picture "Hackers" captures audiences with its amazing 3d representations of the internet, thus VRML is invented.
1995: Windows 95 hits store shelves hyping Plug and Play. ISA 28.8's fly off the shelves.
1998: Windows 98 is released with an integrated web browser, courtesy of Microsoft, and everyone forgets who Netscape is.
2000: Slashdot posts a story about about how cool slashdot is, and is instantly slashdotted as people reload the page.
2002: Grandma finally gets it when you tell her the internet isnt on the AOL cd she got in the mail.
2003: Linux becomes THE buzzword, instantly making it the #1 os to brag about and will inevitably dominate the desktop forever. Resistance is futile.
2004: Since AOL decides not to port AOL 8 to Linux the huge ISP fails and Time Warner starts talks with X10 about new and improved "Popup Commercials" for Cable TV.
Of course I missed a few minor things, like how WAP became the dominant authoring language, IRC put AT&T and MCI out of business, and how SCO ranted and raved about nonsense until they were beaten by a giant penguin.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Well, as you probably know, humor is a matter of taste. I found it funny. If you've been reading Slashdot long, you should know it's not much of serious news source.
Hahahah you spellede it INTRAWEB ebveryone knows it's teh INTARWEB! jeniuis!
timeline to history of internet... http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.sht ml
Well, if Tim Berners-Lee had only held on to his "world wide web" then we'd probably all be speaking his name now... but we all know what happened to his empire, don't we:
"Cats becomes sole proprietor of all your base. Every Zig moved."
It always amuses me when /. lags so far behind the times.
Slashdot should stick to news stories. Checking blogdex and daypop once a day gives me a far better grasp of what 'cool links' are makign their way around the internet.
My Journal
There're many competent librarians and well run libraries. There're other librarians for whom the internet is the alternative. At our Boston Public Library improvements have happened because of the technology. BPL organizational culture is relatively more open. There's a long way to go yet for our BPL. BPL has been a good example of a bad example of North American cities' public libraries resistance to citizen participation in long range public libraries planning.
o m
See also
http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.blog-city.c
So, is that like poor mans tneonion.com?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I think thats was pretty influencial as well. IT was pretty much the first chat thing. Thats where I got my first net porn when i was 15. I think it definately eserves a mention.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented his telephone.
Forgive me if this is off topic, but this is the first time I've seen "The Lemon" before... After seeing thier little "Desperate Personals" and trying to place where I have seen that same kind of thing before I began thinking: Am I correct in thinking that this is, in fact, a parody of a parody?
There was a time when I thought the internet could be no more ironic... I beleive I was wrong in that assumption.
2003 : in april, AMD releases the Opteron, which has Palladium Hardwired. The AMD Athlon64 and Intel Prescott will follow.
2004 : the mass market of hardware is mainly converted to Palladium.
2005 : M$ releases Windows Longhorn, thus activating Palladium.
Internet has no future.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
The guy must be a Farker.
Cheers man, you just got slashdotted!
Looks like one of those unfunny Onion wannabes who only make the superiority of The Onion painfully obvious. This is another one. (Tip: read Our Dumb Century to get an idea of how good those Onion guys actually are.)
JP
In 1992, I predicted :
Instant messaging
An auction site
Personal ads
Job hunting sites
and
MMORPGS
God spoke to me
The Internet was invented by SETI in an attempt to obtain free processing power.
It didnt become popular until later when Playboy registered their domain.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
If that something is a single event, then it must be fundamentaly different, and destroy the prior 'world': Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Marx' theory of class struggle (good and bad).
What did the Apollo moon landings destroy? Or climbing Mount Everest? Or the creation of the Olympic movement? Or Pasteur's work in medicine?
I'm sorry, but I don't see how something has to be destructive, even in the loosest sense of the word as you're applying it, to be either influential or historical.
Oh, and as for just who "invented" the television, well, that's a real can of worms you've opened there. Farnsworth? George Carey? W. E. Sawyer? Edwin Belin? Vladimir Kosma Zworykin? John Logie Baird? Denes von Mihaly? Take your pick.
Farnsworth's showed off his technology on September 7, 1927. Baird's first public demonstration (to the general public in a department store) was on March 25, 1925, and he had a working model a year earlier.
Of all the pioneers who can claim to have invented the television, Farnsworth's claim isn't the strongest. But, obviously, because he was American he's the one Americans credit.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
-IRC
-browser war
-opensource/unix/linux
-apache webserver
-wireless (802.11a/b/g)
anything else?
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
A: The internet was invented. It was all text.
B: The web was invented. It had pretty pictures. Some people thought they could make money from it. They failed.
C: Spam and pop-ups.
The end.
The Internet is generally stupid
http://lrc.csun.edu/~battias/454/sum97/hist.html
Big woo, it's the same with everything that's invented. I've never really gone back and appreciated the history of the toaster, but I use it every day.
I'm not sure when I did.
All I remember is that, at first I had email through a bbs-email gateway. I used this to download files with an email-ftp gateway. The bbs owner was not amused.
When I finally got on the net, it was via a dialup unix box. I remember that some months after this, the first version of Mosaic for Windows (and shortly after, for the Amiga) was released.
Those months, I dabbled in Gopher, but with the advent of Mosaic, I quickly gave it up.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
First piece of spam appears in USENET newsgroups and is quickly removed. "Well, that should be the last of that", say users.
If only, is there anything we could have done to prevent the worlwide spam epidemic ?
How come Fark gets a mention but not /. ?, haven't we killed enough servers ?.
What is this internet of which you speak? Does it have an AOL keyword?
No, he rode the wave. Saying something is happening does not mean you made it happen. A case of a post hoc ergo proper hoc argument, for you classicists out there.
I was picking up a new skiffy novel the other day and they had a stack of Computer Shopper's up by the register. I picked up this anemically thin thing and commented to my wife "I remember when CS was this thin the first time, about 20 years ago." The Geekboy behind the counter was actually awed. Kids these days ...
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Since its inception almost 30 years ago, the internet has been transformed from a primitive device for sharing thoughts and ideas, into a massive network where people pay to connect and read advertisements they don't want, while calling each other "asshats".
Sounds painfully like Fark.com to me.. and to a lesser extent, Slashdot.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
* In 1991 Linux, the first internet-virus basing on the GPL infected the network and endangered the satanic leadership of the M$-Corp. /. and google, Scientology buys the internet from inventor Al Gore.
* 2005. After years of law-suits against
* In the years between 1997 and 2037 a hacker-group calling themself slashdot attacked various internet-sites by send out millions of modem-armed soliders.
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
If you are really interested in the history of the :
Internet then try reading
"Where Wizards Stay Up Late"
It even discusses the "Terminal Imps/HoneyWell 516"
Mainframes that served as the first routers on the internet.
2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.
100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.
10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.
3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.
2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.
1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.
490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".
399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.
336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.
4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.
A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.
A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.
A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.
A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.
A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.
A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.
A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)
A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.
A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).
A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.
A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".
A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.
A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.
A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.
A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.
A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that many of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.
A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.
2005: the last sale of a cell-phone without internet connection; 2006: the last sale of a cell-phone without embedded PDA; 2007: first cell-phone (with PDA) implaneted to the brain for direct connections with voice, messages and IP; 2008: first beowulf cluster based on brain-implanted cell-PDAs; 2009: the last porn-site is closed, now it goes virtual on IRC; 2010: the last sale of a PC - people use only brain-implanted cell-PDAs; 2011: self-repairable servers; 2012: the last travelling to the work; 2013: the last social contact done at physical meeting; ??? 2020: Matrix? 2030: Matrix reloaded?
Less is more !
"A brief history of the future", J.Naughton, is a very good book on the origins of the Internet, with some even funny detail. Worth to be read (more than T.Berners-Lee book...)
The invention of internet is lost in the mists of time. Several ancient civilizations lay a claim to it. The Chinese say that they invented internet because "everything of note was invented by them." The Indians say that internet was invented by them and Rishi Vatsyayna (author of the treatise Kamasutra, "The art of making love") was the first to make sex-related posts.
However researchers say that the internet has its humble beginnings not in civilization, but in uncivilization, such as when an ape threw a rock at another and gave birth to the art of flaming. Such uncouth behaviour has now largely been eradicated from the internet discourse.
With the advent of smoke signals, communication enhanced. However, people started sending ads in the smoke signals - "buy my goat", "buy my bow and arrow", etc. As long as it was novelty, people didn't mind. But when organized business started buying world supplies of smoke producing material, the people quickly stepped in and put an end to it. They cut the throats of businesspeople.
In the modern era, Microsoft claims that they invented the internet. But the truth is that modern internet was invented in a secret location in Nevada. As a lowly researcher, I was a witness to it. The top scientists of my dept. started a computer saying it was on the internet and waited. And waited. When nothing happened, I politely suggested that they may need at least two computers to create an internet, you know.
There were sheepish smiles and the scientists did that. Since then this law has come to be known as the Fundamental Law of Minimum Number of Interconnections for an Internetworking System. It is named for yours truly.
Grinning, ducking, and running...
And then Al Gore said "Let there be internet"....
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
This documentary is out on DVD! It is a great way to see how computers got started. There was a sequel which talked about the Internet, but it wasn't as good. I forgot what the name is.
" But he was resposible for seeing that it got funding"
I'm sure that is some comfort.
Fact is, had Al not sponsored some legislation, 434 other reps would have. Al just got out in front of the wave. He showed no insight (if he had, he would have been sponsoring it 10 years prior). He showed no courage ("Internet good!" was never cotroversial). And for him to say he invented the internet is the same as Bush claiming that he figured out that Saddam was a bad guy.
Al was not reponsible for anything other than trying to pad his resume.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The email message wasn't "Let me know when you're there so I can call you".
The phone message was "Did you get my email".
When VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws have VPNs.
For a much more complete history of not just the internet, but of interactive computing in general, read The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop. This book centers around JCR Linklider and describes the efforts he and many other people made to invent networking, the mouse, the modern PC, and interactive computers in general.
From the Amazon review: "Waldrop interviewed dozens of contemporaries and examined reams of notes and primary sources to compose this massive biography of influence that stretches from MIT to the Pentagon to Xerox PARC and far beyond."
Many funny annecdotes are part of the story: Why is the mouse called "Mouse", the origin of "Requests for Comments", why is it called "Ethernet" and so on.
Strongly recommended!
Sadly we did find out that you cannot hold the world hostage with a computer, 300 baud modem, and a cool voice syntheziser!! But damnit if we did not try!!
In the actual CNN quote, Gore claims that he created the Internet when he got into Congress in the late 1970s.
The actual creation of the Internet took place in the late 1960s through 1973. His claim is false.
It is certainly not a "smear" to point out that he got on the scene after the Internet was created, and the best he can claim is influencing it after the fact. "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" is Gore's actual statement, and it is false.
Hint: Don't check Snopes. They left out the facts. Do some independent queries into Gore's actual statement, and actual years of Internet history.
"But he was resposible for seeing that it got funding, and was pushed into the private sector. Credit where credit is due."
He funded it long after it was created. He funded it along with many others.
Credit where credit is due? Any credit for its creatiog (which Gore claimed for himself) is not due to the man.
In the context of Gore's statement, invent means the same as create. He claimed to be the guy who first made the Internet. Whether you use the word create, or invent, it is all the same, and it is all not true at all.
Well, it was cute. But that tip off about Zombo.com, (warning: flash) was great. Anything is possible at Zombo.com!
Have you read my journal today?
"Real Audio released, allowing users to listen to halting bursts of static in real time."
I think this is the best part literature-wise...
VKh
Most people I encounter here in the United States have only a limited grasp of the history of even our own country. I don't know how it is elsewhere, but American society is so future-focused that we have only the most dim recollections of even recent history.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Before the Internet, computer users enjoyed frequent crashes, lockups, bizarre messages, infinite loops, and freezes that required the three-fingered salute.
Then along came the Internet, where everything was in HTML, which had none of these problems (the worst that could happen was a screen that looked bad).
But then along came Java and Java Script, and the Internet has "caught up", so now web pages are full of frequent crashes, lockups, bizarre messages, infinite loops. Once again computer users can enjoy when they were used to in the pre-Internet days. No longer are they in an environment free of the mistakes of bad programmers .
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The only other timeline I've enjoyed so much was PA's post-Columbine timeline, including the Columbine mod for Half-Life.
Funny stuff for those who can lighten up.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
--
Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Do not trust anyone who does not grasp this essential fact.
Luv your sig.
I could make something more detailed and accurate with my eyes closed.
You forgot to mention that nobody expected it! = )
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
Is that the right-wing spin of the day? That Gore just "rode the wave" and that 400+ other legislators would have done the same thing?
Check this out. You might learn something.
Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet"
As you'll see, Gore made his first proposal to fund a universal version of the internet in 1986. How many other politicians, people not usually known for being up to date with technology, were pushing the internet in 1986? Were you?
This article puts 1986 into perspective:
"That Gore wrote about a national "data highway" as far back as 1986 is extremely significant. It is important to make clear the context of the state of computing at that time. The IBM PC was only four years old. The Apple II computer was still in widespread use. The number of hosts on the Internet numbered, as counted by Mark Lottor's Internet Domain Survey, was 5,089. Entire universities (such as Michigan State University) made their initial connection to the Internet in 1986. In order for Gore to make this kind of speech in 1986, he had to have been conversant with the thinking of computer scientists and Internet pioneers. Such pioneers included such as Vint Cerf, Steven Wolf, and Larry Smarr - then director of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois (NCSA), where Mosaic would be born some seven years later."
Did you get that, bunky? Seven years before Mosaic. Is that what you call "riding the wave"?
Speaking of Vinton Cerf, who might be trusted to have an informed opinion on this, this is what he had to say about Gore:
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. 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.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.
As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies t
He was sponsoring it years before any other legislator had even heard of it. I'd lay even money that he was sponsoring it before you heard of it. You were probably still watching Sesame Street when Gore was sponsoring the internet.
"the first man to circumnavigate the world."
It was Sir Francis Drake, who circumcized the world with a 100 foot clipper.
You can find this and more amazing history facts at:
this guy's messy blog.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It has nothing to do with "right wingers". The most damning information comes from Gore's direct quote from CNN. He took credit for creating the Internet when he was in Congress.
He got into Congress in 1976. The Internet was created by 1973.
"Despite your +5 moderation, your right-wing spin, and your use of latin, I think I'll take Vint's word over yours."
Vint himself says that the Internet was created around 1973. The most telling quote is the one you ignore, and it is in your message: "Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s" [Vint Cerf]
All of your message was spin, to avoid the simple fact that Gore got involved with the Internet long after it was created, and no matter how much he helped it years later, he had nothing to do with its creation, and his claim is a lie.
No one can deny that he had an important rule in shaping the Internet after its creation.
However, I defy you to support Gore's claim that he created it while in Congress.
"He was sponsoring it years before any other legislator had even heard of it ....and he started sponsoring it years after it was created. This comes from CNN, not Rush. And this is relevant: Gore's wild claim was not that he sponsored it; it was that he created it.
D: Profit!!!
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
I hate it when slashdot carries factually incorrect spoofs of otherwise interesting topics. This isn't spoofdot.net and I have better things to do with my time than click into sites concieved and written by moron-childs. If its a slow news-day its a slow news-day.
If I wanted to read the quips of an idiot concerning historical matters that that idiot knows nothing about, I'd read the comments section from a slashdot story.
Just as Philo T. Farnsworth "invented" television
Ex-squeeze me? John Logie Baird demonstrated the first television at the Royal Institute several months before Farnsworth ever completed his.
mogorific carpentry experiments
God Dammit, people, get a fucking education.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Algore's blathering, disproves this:
During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
lol
He created the fishingnet.
Several years ago, people were saying that Vint Cerf was the "father of the Internet". I found Vint's email address somewhere and wrote to him. He said that it was true that Al Gore was an originator of the Internet; Al was the first government leader to support making the old DarpaNet and the old, largely proprietary Internet into a public utility. Vint was one of the technical fathers of the Internet, but Al Gore was the father of the public utility we know today.
It is difficult to imagine now, but those who were on the Internet before it became a public utility often did not want it to be public. That was in the days before spam email and pop-up ads.
Sadly, I have to agree with you.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
"He was the lead sponser to champion it's conversion from a private government network into a public one (Which was renamed the "Internet")."
Nope. It had the name "Internet" before he even got into Congress.
"And I dare say he did more to "create" the internet than any 5000 slashdot posters have!"
Howard Hughes did a lot in aviation, but he did not invent the airplane.
"He said that it was true that Al Gore was an originator of the Internet"
Are you a faking troll, or is Vint Cerf senile? All over the place he says that the Internet was created from the 1960s through 1973. How can he reconcile these contradictory statements?
Can he document that Gore worked on it during the 1960s so he is one of its originators?
"However, stating that he took a leadership role during the creation phase of the Internet project IN NO WAY translates to him claming to have invented the fukcing thing.
Your paraphrase of Gore is inaccurate, but even that paraphrase is not true. He did not take a leadership role in creation of the Internet: it was already created before he was ever on the scene.
What he did claim was that he invented it. The word he uses was "create". Look up the words and find it means the same thing.
"But in the only sense that matters for a politition, he did create the Internet"
You mean that like a typical politician, he lied about his work? It must be; he was involved in changing the Internet, but he certainly had nothing to do with creating it.
"Thus was born the backbone of the Internet"
The Internet had been around for years before Senator Gore got into office. It had a backbone, too.
"This documentary is out on DVD! It is a great way to see how computers got started. There was a sequel which talked about the Internet, but it wasn't as good. I forgot what the name is"
This book is "Al Gore's Greatest Invention", published by Doublespeak. Tom Clunky is the author. It is the sequel to the bestselling account of Gore's invention of air "Al Gore and the Stuff We Sneeze In" by J.K. Rollinginthedough.
I suggest you read "Love Story" after you read these two. It is about Gore and Tipper. He said so.
Ya gotta stop getting you news from Jay Leno & that boring Rush guy.
He claimed to have invented it on CNN. Elsewhere, he also did the following:
claimed to have heard as a child a union song that was not written until he grew up
claimed that "Love Story" was about him and Tipper
claimed to have "discovered" the Love Canal toxic waste problem.
I think it would be fair that Vint Cerf is so appreciative of the work Al Gore did on the Internet, that he is quite willing to overlook Gore's lie that he created it, even to the point of defending the lie even though his (Vint's) own explanations of Internet history (years given) prove Gore wrong.
According to the stories put out by Art Bell and the Red Chinese government, all the moon landings destroyed were some props in a Hollywood back lot.
...try opening on 3 to 7 different windows.
It creates a spooky yet fun echo-hypnotic effect that is hours of intertainment
The onion follows the following format for their articles:
1) Think of something funny.
2) Write a five paragraph article ramming that funny idea into the ground at breakneck speeds.
Most sites that imitate the onion seem to have trouble with step 1 but really nail step 2.
PS: Step 3) PROFIT is implied.
Haven't you read the messages? If you say anything to dispute the idea that Albert Gore Jr. invented/created/conjured/imagined the Internet, this means you are a ring-wing nutcase dittohead. You probably rigged the Florida election, shot JFK, and keep universal health care from the American masses too.
The Internet DID NOT EXIST in the 60s and 70s. That was DarpaNet. The Internet is a public utility; DarpaNet was used by DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, an organization of the U.S. government that studies the best way to kill people and destroy property.
Darpa's inter-net began to be used by universities and by people who had some connection with universities, such as people at Tektronix, a company that was manufacturing oscilloscopes for military use.
The big contribution of Al Gore was his championing the idea of making the inter-net the public utility now called the Internet. It seems obvious now, but back then it was not at all obvious that private computers needed to be connected. There was a LOT of opposition to making the inter-net public.
The old inter-net was extremely useful, but its uses were extremely limited compared to the Internet we have now.
"The Internet DID NOT EXIST in the 60s and 70s. That was DarpaNet"
Both Vint Cerf and the Internet History FAQ claim that the Internet DID exist in the 1960s and early 1970s. Vint Cerf should know what he is talking about (but for all I know the FAQ is written by Trekkies). Cerf, by the way, referred to the Internet not the "inter-net".
What makes you more of an authority than Vint Cerf?
Man, what a biased piece of crap. I tried to find the humor in this but I kept thinking "this is for kids to know the truth." The Facts, regardless how they are colored, are wrong. I know Protigy, Compuserve and AOL started much earlier. And didn't Windows 95 come out in 96 or 97? Maybe the author doesn't know what a spreadsheet is but the millions of accountants do because they wrote them out by hand. I could point out all the errors but I don't have the time. I am thoroughly disgusted by this lame joke - I was hoping for something intelligent.
... or the "integrated development tools" that let any creature with an opposable thumb (and presumably capable of moving a mouse) add "interactivity" to web pages ...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Everyone is just using the new word to describe the old service.
I'm not an authority. Everything I posted here was verified by Vint Cerf himself, in an answer to a private email message.
Can't forget Flash. Thanks to Flash, we have the phenomenon of "flashlocking", in which you can't even enter Web sites without either upgrading Flash, or waiting while a crude cartoon that would even embarass Hanna-Barbera draws itself for 15 minutes.
Using Flash on your site is like hanging a "do not disturb" sign on your doorknob.
Here is an excellent example of a flashlocked site:
http://www.globemusic.com
The people who run it apparently have no problem with turning away the vast majority of casual browsers. If you can get in (last time I knew), the Flash-designed page was very bad: just about everything black or very dark with tiny unreadable letters.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The Lemon lists in 1990:
First ISP created. Business is slow due to the fact that the Internet has no purpose, nobody knows about it, and more people own Betamax machines than computers.
Hobbe's lists:
1990:
The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access
UUnet started in 1987 and Netcom started in 1998.
The Internet wasn't offically cleared for commercial use until 1990 and I believe Software Tool & Die did some of the pushing and received some of the backlash for commercializing the Internet. But both UUNet and Netcom were around first weren't they? When ARPAnet officially became the commercial "Internet", I believe UUNet changed their name to "Alternet." Netcom kept the same name.
As I recall I got my first Netcom shell account in 1990. I used e-mail, usenet, fsp, and ftp (and archie). Around 1991 or 1992 I think I started using irc. I recall using dipd(?) and later slirp(I think this link is to the same program, just a newer version) to turn my shell account into a slip/ppp account, but I didn't really start doing that until the Web came out as there wasn't much point prior.
Netcom was bought out by ICG, then Mindspring bought it from ICG, then Earthlink bought out Mindspring.
I lost Netcom my shell account around 1994, but some people still have their original 1988 @netcom.com e-mail address still maintained by Earthlink.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
remember when 300 baud was fast, 110 baud was normal, and only rich people had 1200 baud modems ...
...
and
WE LIKED IT!
> --- All Of The Above --- >
at least they got something right : the internet was invented with porn in mind !!!
....
yeah, but we had to handcode the bits of the image files - I mean, it took about ten days just to create a simple graphic file
Do you remember when 'they' were publishing all known email addresses in a single paper book? I thought it was really cool when I saw it in a book store.
They had me listed five different times with addresses that pointed to different machines in the lab. 'dgarrett@alcor.engr.latech.edu', 'dgarrett@altar.engr.latech.edu', etc.
plus-good, double-plus-good
From: Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)
Subject: LINUX is obsolete
View this article only
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Date: 1992-01-29 05:23:33 PST
I was in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, so I haven't commented much on
LINUX (not that I would have said much had I been around), but for what
it is worth, I have a couple of comments now.
As most of you know, for me MINIX is a hobby, something that I do in the
evening when I get bored writing books and there are no major wars,
revolutions, or senate hearings being televised live on CNN. My real
job is a professor and researcher in the area of operating systems.
As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where operating
are going in the next decade or so. Two aspects stand out:
1. MICROKERNEL VS MONOLITHIC SYSTEM
Most older operating systems are monolithic, that is, the whole operating
system is a single a.out file that runs in 'kernel mode.' This binary
contains the process management, memory management, file system and the
rest. Examples of such systems are UNIX, MS-DOS, VMS, MVS, OS/360,
MULTICS, and many more.
The alternative is a microkernel-based system, in which most of the OS
runs as separate processes, mostly outside the kernel. They communicate
by message passing. The kernel's job is to handle the message passing,
interrupt handling, low-level process management, and possibly the I/O.
Examples of this design are the RC4000, Amoeba, Chorus, Mach, and the
not-yet-released Windows/NT.
While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the
two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design
operating systems, the debate is essentially over. Microkernels have won.
The only real argument for monolithic systems was performance, and there
is now enough evidence showing that microkernel systems can be just as
fast as monolithic systems (e.g., Rick Rashid has published papers comparing
Mach 3.0 to monolithic systems) that it is now all over but the shoutin`.
MINIX is a microkernel-based system. The file system and memory management
are separate processes, running outside the kernel. The I/O drivers are
also separate processes (in the kernel, but only because the brain-dead
nature of the Intel CPUs makes that difficult to do otherwise). LINUX is
a monolithic style system. This is a giant step back into the 1970s.
That is like taking an existing, working C program and rewriting it in
BASIC. To me, writing a monolithic system in 1991 is a truly poor idea.
2. PORTABILITY
Once upon a time there was the 4004 CPU. When it grew up it became an
8008. Then it underwent plastic surgery and became the 8080. It begat
the 8086, which begat the 8088, which begat the 80286, which begat the
80386, which begat the 80486, and so on unto the N-th generation. In
the meantime, RISC chips happened, and some of them are running at over
100 MIPS. Speeds of 200 MIPS and more are likely in the coming years.
These things are not going to suddenly vanish. What is going to happen
is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. They will
run old MS-DOS programs by interpreting the 80386 in software. (I even
wrote my own IBM PC simulator in C, which you can get by FTP from
ftp.cs.vu.nl = 192.31.231.42 in dir minix/simulator.) I think it is a
gross error to design an OS for any specific architecture, since that is
not going to be around all that long.
MINIX was designed to be reasonably portable, and has been ported from the
Intel line to the 680x0 (Atari, Amiga, Macintosh), SPARC, and NS32016.
LINUX is tied fairly closely to the 80x86. Not the way to go.
Don`t get me wrong, I am not unhappy with LINUX. It will get all the people
who want
and in 2003 the lemon made a page that is nearly unreadable in konqueror don't flame me because I use kde, I know you're using IE
This is my sig, there are many like it, but this one is mine...
From: Richard Stallman (RMS@MIT-OZ@mit-eddie.UUCP)
Free Unix!
Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete
Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and
give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time,
money, programs and equipment are greatly needed.
To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to
write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker,
assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text
formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of
other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that
normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including
on-line and hardcopy documentation.
GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical
to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based
on our experience with other operating systems. In particular,
we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof
file system, filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent
display support, and eventually a Lisp-based window system through
which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen.
Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages.
We will have network software based on MIT's chaosnet protocol,
far superior to UUCP. We may also have something compatible
with UUCP.
Who Am I?
I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS
editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. I have worked
extensively on compilers, editors, debuggers, command interpreters, the
Incompatible Timesharing System and the Lisp Machine operating system.
I pioneered terminal-independent display support in ITS. In addition I
have implemented one crashproof file system and two window systems for
Lisp machines.
Why I Must Write GNU
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good
conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license
agreement.
So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles,
I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that
I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.
How You Can Contribute
I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money.
I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and work.
One computer manufacturer has already offered to provide a machine. But
we could use more. One consequence you can expect if you donate
machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date. The machine had
better be able to operate in a residential area, and not require
sophisticated cooling or power.
Individual programmers can contribute by writing a compatible duplicate
of some Unix utility and giving it to me. For most projects, such
part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the
independently-written parts would not work together. But for the
particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. Most
interface specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each
contribution works with the rest of Unix, it will probably work
with the rest of GNU.
If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or
part time. The salary won't be high, but I'm looking for people for
whom knowing they are helping humanity is as important as money. I view
this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies to
working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another way.
On "tired" and on the notes at the end...
was started in 1989 - Software Tool & Die - now known as the world right here in my neighborhood - Brookline MA in the Peirce Building - a center of American Commerce in the 1800s. It was not started in 1990 as said on the map - Someone apologize to Barry!
"The word he uses is "initiative". It was, indeed, his initiative that the Senate passed that resulted in the creation of the Internet as we know it today. Before that, there was the Arpanet and a half-dozen alternatives."
His use of the word initiative implies that he is at the forefront of the Internet creators! His iniative was long after the Internet was created, it had nothing to do with creating it.
Using your spin, William Crapo Durant could claim to have created the automobile, since he shaped its direction years after its actual creation.
"Credit where credit's due. It's a shame that clumsy wording on his part"
It is not clumsy wording. It is pretty clear that he is claiming to have done something he had nothing to do with.
"and illiteracy amongst the US right, means that his comments have ended up being paraphrased, entirely bizarrely (why the hell would someone even think to claim such a thing?) as "I invented the internet"."
Because "create" and "invent" mean the same thing in this context. Yes, he did claim to have invented the Internet. Look up the meaning of both words.
I guess a final sign on this timeline should be "Zombo.com goes under in a wave of hits as a secondary slashdotting of this page". I wasn't familiar with them, went there, and got a "Bandwidth exceeded" error.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Stop being so fucking literal and grasp the meaning of his words. When people say "Internet" today, they mean the manifestation of the Internet AS IT IS NOW, not the Arpanet, or anything else. Al Gore was simply stating that he took initiative in helping the Internet become what it is today. He could have worded it better, no doubt, but the meaning is clear.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
"Stop being so fucking literal and grasp the meaning of his words. When people say "Internet" today, they mean the manifestation of the Internet AS IT IS NOW, not the Arpanet, or anything else"
So, it has nothing to do with what Vint Cerf says it is, and what the Internet History FAQ says it is?
If it matters what IT IS NOW, then even then Gore was wrong: the Internet as it is now was not even around yet when Gore was in congress.
"Al Gore was simply stating that he took initiative in helping the Internet become what it is today"
No, he was saying he created it. Not that he helped it. You are taking his erroneous statement and spinning it into something that looks better, but is not anything like what he said.
"He could have worded it better, no doubt, but the meaning is clear."
Yeah. The meaning is clear. He took credit for creating something that was around for years before he was on the scene.