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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!"
So which is it? 25? or 35? Come on... :p
35 Years Ago Today: Frist PSOT!!!1
"The Internet At 25"... but it started in 1969. I think this "Internet" is a lot like some 35 year old guys I've seen in various chatrooms trying to convince all of the co-eds that they're really 25.
the delay in final submission for articles should be moved from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. I submit the mistakes to the editor on duty, but unfortunately, I was too late. :(
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
...Ah yes, the internet. Putting porn and pipebomb instructions in the hands of 13-year olds since September 3rd, 1969...
1) 1 x 1 pixel of goatse.cx 2) Two sentence SPAM email trying to get investors into something called TCP/IP 3) The famous "Nixon" worm of '69. Crippled 3 machines.
...that the largest discussion of the difference between 25 and 35 in the history of the internet is about to ensue.
Ah, the Internet. Designed so that even in the event of nuclear war, our military leaders would still be able to access pornography.
Love the Third Amendment?
Is the Internet going through a mid-life crisis or something? First it found it out that Al Gore wasn't his real father; it was actually adopted by the US government. Then everyone blamed it for the tanking economy.
And now it's just bought a Porsche and is going in for botox treatments.
The focus of the article seems to be security issues of the Internet. Talk of virusses, spam and whatnot. They even qute a guy saying he wishes security had been a priority when it was first invented. Shouldn't it be noted these issues are in software, not the hardware infastructure or protocal of the Internet?
It would forever be 29 years old.
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
I think the editors are under enough stress. I mean they first have to make sure the article wasnt posted 3 times before and do a spell check. Now you all want them to check basic math. gessh give them a break
Well, let's not let the title get too carried away on accuracy, even disregarding its subtraction error. In 1969, the prototype ARPAnet started up. It used NCP (TCP/IP came later). It didn't become the "Internet" until there were multiple interconnected networks, and that was not until the early 1980s, after the TCP/IP transition (which was completed in 1983). There were multiple networks once the more production-oriented MILNET split off of the more research-y ARPAnet. And after that came CSnet and all sorts of others.
But yes, it was in many ways better in the early days (pre-1993), because there was no spam, or for that matter any other advertising. Although Google and the like do sort of make up for it.
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.
I hope you don't live in the USA or you are in serious trouble for copyright infrigement on the "Happy Birthday" song!
"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
Sept 2 should be a national holiday.
What are you getting for Internet Day?
Why a new Cisco 7x00 series router!
Thank you Linus Claus!
"Sig free in '03!"
Now I understand why you paid $115 for your current user ID, dolo666.
i think i've heard of one of the cults that you're talking about...something like the cult of lienooks...
So they first tested Internet with spam? With that kind of a start no wonder we're in the current mess!
that in the summer of 1969 the just completed moon landing would have almost no impact to our lives 35 years later, but these bits between two computers would change the face of the world. Weird...
The Internet suddenly has a mid-life crisis. Looking back on its life, it realizes its squandered its time on earth on porn, e-commerce, and petty IM conversations. . The Internet feels hollow and worthless. To console itself, it buys a Porsche from www.porsche.com, and takes it out on the road. Now feeling youthful and vibrant, the Internet uses the Porsche to woo a younger network. Soon enough, the Internet and the younger network are in the throes of a sultry affair. One night, the Internet's rubber breaks and he accidentally gets the younger network pregnant. Scared, the Internet runs away, and the younger network is left on its own to raise the Subnet. The Subnet grows into a full Class C and then into an Internet of its own.
And another thing- if the Internet really is 25 (or 35, whatever)- how come she has so many web sites that say she just turned 18?
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Signature.
Meaningless? Meaningless?
Those bits weren't "meaningless" -- they meant something very clear and important:
Test successful.
-kgj
-kgj
In 1986 I was stationed at McClellan AFB, and got to watch some contractors install about 4 racks of beige equipment called an "Interface Message Processor" from a company called BBN. I had no clue at the time it was part of the internet. About ten years later I realized what it was, and thought "Wow, I got to see an IMP in person!"
Sorry, I don't have a photo (and couldn't find one via Google) -- cameras weren't allowed in the area. The very first IMPs looked like this, though.
Chip H.
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.
Ipv4 running out of room is a bit of a myth -- there's still plenty of companies and uninversities with huge blocks of ipv4 address space that they have for historical reasons.
Rather than debunk the myth, you've proved it.
The whole reason we're "running out of room" is that "old" companies have massive netblocks they're not even beginning to use.
This is like saying, "There's still plenty of land left in the city. Big companies bought it all up to hold onto." There's plenty of unused IPs out there. The problem is that they'll probably never be assigned.
I once wrote a script to do a whois on every Class A, and lump them into a text file. I was surprised to find that the United States Government owns something like 30 Class A's.
It's not a lack of unused IPs. It's a lack of allocatable IPs.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
They have the internet on computers now?
What I am looking forward to the day when we finally get beyond the meaningless test data phase...uh, anyway, I looked at /. for the day and am off to the email account to perform a spam harvest.
"Working with NASA, Cerf is also trying to extend the network into outer space to better communicate with spacecraft."
Astronaut: Houston, we have a problem...one of the display screens is reading "j00 R pAwned".
SIGFAULT
Here's a nice collection of Internet maps from September 1969 onwards, showing the network build out from UCLA to include Stanford, UCSB, Utah and so on.
If you define "Internet" as two or more computers communicating with each other, then it's been around for longer. Hackers at MIT way back when hooked together 2 computers (PDP-11 and PDP-7 I think) and told some professors they had created a chess program. They had one professor sit in one room at the terminal for one of the computers, and the other professor in the other room with the terminal for the other computer. The professors played each other for a while until one of them realized the responses were a bit slow, then saw/followed the wire into the next room where the other professor was sitting!
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
The birth of the Internet should count when the first porn picture was published. Seriously, until it was made to the masses with a non-scientific use did it matter to the public.