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The Internet At 35
Anonymous writes "CNN has a story on the 35th anniversary of the Internet, overviewing its past and the future. According to the article the history began on 'September 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers.' So, happy birthday, the Internet!"
Wow, the Slashdot editors must really have a grudge against the masses today. I figured this would be the best way to justify killing everybody's karma through redundant mods.
Also, who would even be surprised anymore if they didn't even see as much as an acknowledgement of the mistake being corrected, just a quick change from "25" to "35"?
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Initially, the internet was bits of meaningless data between two computers.
Today? Bits of meaningless data between millions of computers.
All joking aside though, I have no idea how people got anything done before the internet.
Need to fix something around the house? Check the 'net.
Need to figure out where the hell a business/friend is? Check the 'net.
Have some jackass who insists they're right about some obscure factoid, and want to make them admit they're full of crap now, before they can deny it ever happened? Good 'ol internet.
Between wireless, high-speed access, and laptops within an arm's reach, the average person now has access to information that used to be obscure and almost impossible to come by at a moments notice.
In 35 years, the internet has probably done more to change the way people live than any other invention. (at least in the last 100 years or so) That dude who discovered fire and the wheel did pretty well for humanity.
"Remember America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it back! Think about it."
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
No, Really.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Actually, the Internet is 21. That's when The Network was officially switched over to TCP/IP.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
To say nothing of weaknesses in ICMP, TCP, etc...
Ever hear of the TCP slow start attack?
Wonder why ping flooding is possible (hint ICMP goes directly over IP not via TCP which would prohibit this particular attack in its most common form)?
They shouldn't beat themselves up too hard, though; heck, even SSL v 1.0 was a total and complete mess (but nothing compared to some other modern-day-designed doozies) and that was designed much later than the initial Internet was... and hence with a much greater understanding of the adversarial nature of it.
All reporters should have a 3-day fact-checking period before they can print a story.
Meaningless? Meaningless?
Those bits weren't "meaningless" -- they meant something very clear and important:
Test successful.
-kgj
-kgj
So it started with technological innovation, and saw rapid development through the cooperation of governments and universities. It was refined and improved thanks to the effort of a bunch of awfully dedicated academics to the point where it could merge with mainstream technologies (talking PPP over analog phone modems). The new worldwide resource gave us the ability to communicate like never before.
Things were going so well, until the marketers came on board and started flooding people with ads and junk whatever way they could find. Spam was funny at first; now it's a serious waste of bandwidth and resources, with business people resorting to purely criminal activities in order to flood their advertising and harm benevolent volunteer organizations. Thanks to dirty business the Internet has become a battle ground. Spyware and even viruses are directly linked to immoral advertising/spam.
Now, I don't hate marketing people (I run a businses, and am a student in Management) but it's safe to say that immoral marketers are f*cking up the Internet.
No, that's not right. The moon landing, along with the rest of the Mercury and Apollo missions, had a profound and lasting impact on the world. Yes, we're not all flitting from one planet to the next in our own personal rocket ships, but we think about ourselves and our place in the universe differently now. If you think the moon landings have had no impact on your life, it's most likely that you've never lived in a world without space travel.
The Internet happened in a very different way. Its inception was, at the time, incomprehensible to everyone but a few smartypants researchers. And even those scientists really had no idea how the net would grow to encompass so much of our lives. Even fifteen years after its birth, very few people had any clue about the Internet. The Internet may have been technically born when the first two machines were plugged in, but it wasn't important until many years later, when it became a movement.
Except that to indicate problems with a TCP stream, you send an ICMP packet. See the problem? (One of the many problems with your suggestion.)
Really, you should learn a bit about the infrastructure before criticizing it.