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Internet History In Pictures
prostoalex writes "Tired of reading black-on-white text on Internet history and its celebrities? The Faces in front of the Monitors features the Internet history in pictures. See the legendary BBN IMP team, Linus naked and drinking beer, Bill Gates and Paul Allen and other luminaries."
You're wrong. Point your finger towards Palo Alto. Not Billy Boy "Why Invent When You Can Copy" Gates.
Charles Babbage designed a working mechanical computer.
Mechanical.
Computer.
Sheesh, what does it take to get your respect?
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
Sigh... try looking at this bit of HISTORY from a historical perspective. Consider the other names on the list. Some of them were relatively minor players in the grand scheme. Do you seriously believe the people who had a major hand in creating OS's which drive hundreds of millions of PCs should be ignored because you don't believe they "contributed"? It's history. It's evolution. It took MS a long time to create a usable, reliable (though not yet secure) desktop OS which has been deployed on millions of desktops with countless hardware combinations. Linux is inching toward the desktop. but it's not there yet. In the meantime, let's not re-write history.
Is this sig nificant?
Um...
So your logic here is that if Microsoft didn't exist, Apple wouldn't have succeeded in popularizing the GUI because Apple only has 1.8% market share?
Except that 95% of the market share currently belongs to Microsoft. So if Microsoft had never existed, who would have that 95% of the market share?
Microsoft has never created a technology of note. Microsoft has never even popularized a technology of note. All Microsoft knows how to do is take technologies that other people have already invented and popularized and make lots of money off of them. That's not something they really recieve any creativity points for.
Some names (and photos) seem to be missing.
Not only that, but some names and photos are extraneous and have no relevence to Internet history whatsoever.
To wit, what do Bill Gates and Paul Allen have to do with the history of the Internet? Absolutely nothing. Neither of them innovated a single thing with respect to the Internet, indeed, the Internet blindsided them while they were busy trying to setup a Microsoft version of CompuServe embedded in the windows desktop. Hell, they're still trying, by dumbing down the Internet to CompuServe-esque levels and embedding it into their desktop in the form of a pansy candy-assed butterfly by the name of MSN.
Unless Bill Gates is going down as the End of the History of Internet, killed by his desktop monopoly and wide deployment of DRM (events which have yet to happen, and arguably may never occur), his presence, while perhaps relevant to the history of personal computing, certainly isn't with repect to the history of the 'net.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The point isn't that Gore "created" the internet. That was a huge spin story. What he was trying to say was that he pushed legislation that helped teh internet become what it was. In the mid 80's (far before most public and virtually any politicians had any concept) he pushed such concepts as a "Data highway" ('86) and wrote for a national data network in '88. (89?) This is exactly the same as when politicians say they "lowered crime" or whatever. They weren't really out there cuffing the bad guys, they were fighting to get money put into their cause. One of Gore's causes evolved into the internet. Not entirely due to him of course but still, he backed the right horse and it took off.
... He really does deserve some credit for his early recognition of the importance of the Internet and the technology that makes it work. He was certainly among the first if not the first in Congress to realize how powerful the information revolution would be and both as Senator and Vice President he has been enormously helpful in supporting legislation and programs to help further develop the Internet - for example the Next Generation Internet program."
Even Vinton Cerf (created IP, IIRC) went on record w/ "I'd like to clear up one little item - about the Vice President (Gore)