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Web Turns Fifteen (again?)
Accommodate Students writes "The BBC is amongst those reporting that the World Wide web has turned fifteen. However, 6 August 1991 is not the only date claimed as the 'birthday of the internet'. So, is it time to fight this out to declare an official birthday? Or can the Web carry on like the Queen with (at least) two birthdays per year? The BBC also have a Flash Timeline of 15 years of the web."
If someone is claiming that, they're WAY off. Web != internet.
You know -- 10 seconds to the minute, 10 minutes to the hour and 10 hours to the day.
Nuts to the "Flash Timeline". The first article has a picture of the web - captioned: From its origins at the Cern lab the web has become a phenomenon
:-)
Now thats impressive
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I already sent Al Gore a birthday card and a nice fruit basket.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I wonder when we will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the "Web2.0" buzzword...
uh... oh... there is Linus on the red carpet... his watch is a Casio...
Even the article summary seems to confuse the World Wide Web with the Internet. And we are surprised there is confusion over the birthday? The article is pretty heavily focused on the WWW, so I think this is just a bad summary. Shocked, I am.
..and she lies about her age.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
It must be 15 in imperial years this time...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
It's a really simple debate. Just edit the wikipedia entry so this birthdate becomes part of wikiality. The facts are far more important than the truth.
Developers: We can use your help.
I'd forgotton about Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web.
"It must be 15 in imperial years this time..."
I think you have it figured out. Someone give the man a gallon of free bandwidth!
Where were you when the voynix came?
Wiki - "The first Web site built was at http://info.cern.ch/ [2] and was first put online on August 6, 1991. It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser and how to set up a Web server. It was also the world's first Web directory, since Berners-Lee maintained a list of other Web sites apart from his own."a yer/index.php?id=9f72b0fbe5bde711a0696cac5b339a5e/
http://www.thesecondchancemovie.com/_site/mediapl
New enclosure
Conroe in $1,500 Mac Pro
Woodcrest in $2,500 mid-range and $3,999 Quad
details@macrumors
Al Gore said he created the World Wide Web. Vint Cerf agrees that he did. He never said he invented it. There is a very big difference. Stop watching Fox News.
The BBC article is quite clear, August 6 was when the World Wide Web became possible due to the release of source code on Usenet. The summary indicates a poor understanding that WWW and Internet are not the same thing, whoever wrote the BBC article gets this, and has put together an interesting synopsis of events surrounding the birth of the web.
Without using the word "tubes".
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
Just think about what the web will be able to do when it finally turns 18--namely look at itself!
This guy's the limit!
Just for God's sake, keep poker chips away!
Erm... never mind :)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
It's being flogged to death with advertisements, virusses, spam and whatnot ...
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
LETTERSPACING0 KERNING0Tim BernersLee formally introduced his world wide web project to the world on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.
It always boggles my mind when content management software and the output to the web gets so confused. Don't people test these things? I almost envision a new entry to the Fifteen Years list on BBC.
August, 2006
Content Management Craze Hits the Web
IT Managers around the world decide they have to install content management systems in order to be more "modern". The Internet collapses briefly until valiant web designers revert to simple text editors to recreate the web.
Where's the first AOL "me too" post?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Then how come google "Groups" says that I have posts dated 1988?
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Let us know when the web becomes "barely legal."
Multiple dates have been claimed as the birthday for the internet - so let's settle this by checking Wikipedia.
According to Wikipedia - the gold standard for such important questions - the internet was conceived on October 12, 1492. (Also worth noting, Carl Friedrich Gauss was the first person to hold the title of "webmaster".)
Even the BBC understands the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web - but evidently, Slashdot editors don't.
Anybody know of a forum that's a bit like /. , but run by clueful editors?
If you want to browse the protoweb, go to archive.org and check pages from 1996. I remember doing my first web pages in 94 and winning the "Magellan 3 stars" award! How weird that sounds now!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Didn't the Web just turn 2.0?
I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
>> Anybody know of a forum that's a bit like /. , but run by clueful editors?
Yes, but they don't use the Internet.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Thanks for pointing out that the Internet != WorldWideWeb. The confusion seems to be in the submitter's mind...
Remember this moment, people: 80 past 2 on April 47th.
Badass Resumes
Do you celebrate your birthday
1. on the anniversary of your conception?
2. on the anniversary of your quickening?
3. on the date you became publicly available?
"The first TCP/IP wide area network was operational by 1 January 1983, when the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) constructed a university network backbone that would later become the NSFNet. (This date is held by some to be technically that of the birth of the Internet.) It was then followed by the opening of the network to commercial interests in 1985. Important separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged into the NSFNet include Usenet, Bitnet and the various commercial and educational X.25 Compuserve and JANET. Telenet (later called Sprintnet), was a large privately-funded national computer network with free dialup access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s."
Granted, this is from Wikepedia, a not-completely-reliable source, but the information and timeline about Telenet, Usenet, NSF, etc. is all pretty accurate, as it matches a lot of other sources I researched.
Also keep in mind that we're talking about the birth of the publicly-viewable WWW here, not the birth of inter- or intra-networking, which came far earlier. To me, the "internet" we know, defined, is the medium and ability of public access to information at a remote site or location. So, in this sense, Telenet and similar companies were the first to provide public internet access, albeit limited dial-up, starting in the 1970's, thus 'giving birth' the internet medium. The 'web', by all other research I have done, also seems to be a product of these companies a short time later - something not mentioned in the Wiki article, which instead points to the NSF creating a small WAN at a university campus.
Although there are a lot of facts and timestamps, the "birthday" of the web is really just speculation. I don't think it's something that can be officially celebrated on a specific date. One thing is definitely true - it dates back much more than 15 years. The only reason this date is used is because it marks when it was released to the mainstream public as a service.
Life freezes when the servers crash.
In the mid-80s there was the university and military arpanets, the university bitnet, among others. One important milestone was adoption of name servers and the domain convention. Otherwise every computer periodically downloaded an /etc/hosts IP address translation file. It was reaching an unwielding 10,000 lines just before the name servers came online.
Another milestone was national funding of the internet backbone- dedication optical lines running cross-country. The telcoms and business customers were reluctant to pay for these until jump-started by the feds (Gore's information superhighway law). The government continues to fund new experimental, costly backbones between universities and national labs (so the kiddies can download warez in seconds?).
Quite curious how the initials of the article turned out to be :)
ducks
Even TF summary mixes Internet with Web. Actually worse, it used lowercase internet, which is even more generic. How can you argue when the birthday is, when you can't even agree to talk about the same thing, or even know that you're talking about different things?
It's obsessed with sex.
Here is a view from Alan C. Kay (Xerox PARC fame, Smalltalk, overlapping windows, etc). I have transcribed a tiny fragment of an interview. It's in something silly called a proprietary data format from RealMedia.
This is just a small portion. I advice you to get the big picture from the aforementioned interview. This quote was taken from the clip "What we are doing wrong with new technology."
Why add public? Many early Internet resources (e-mail, usenet, some FTP) required an account to access, not really what I'd call public. Not like the majority of today's web sites being publicly accessible.
If you meant, escaped from its closed ARPA reseach community beginnings, then I'll go along.
For those unaware of it, the CERN is a European laboratory studying physics. It is known for his huge particle accelerators, apart from being the instigator of the Web (as dubious as this claim might be). The photo linked here is a rendering of a collision in the accelerator and, while in-topic with the CERN has clearly nothing to do with the Web.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Now quit peddling pr0n and go out and get a real job!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
All I know is I can't wait for the 21st birthday, then we can all go out buy the internet shots.
Going to bet it's going to lose a few packets the next day, if you know what I mean.
Jan 1, 1983 (date of ARPAnet shutting down NCP traffic) is as good a date as any. It's not the first date that IP packets were exchanged between networks with different prefixes (thus forming an "inter"-network), but it probably does approximate when this began to be done on a routine operational basis rather than an experimental basis. The ARPAnet certainly formed the original core of what became the Internet, and the switch to IP allowed ARPAnet sites to include other computers from their LANs beyond those directly connected to IMPs. So while it actually took several months before most ARPAnet sites had their IP code up and running to provide similar functionality to what they had before, the switch to IP was actually a big jump in capability and flexibility of the network.
from here.
1969 - The first Internet connection was created when network control protocol packets were sent from the data port of one IMP to another
No matter how hot a girl is - some guy somewhere is sick of her shit.
The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. That alone proves the 1991 date to be incorrect.
... fifteen years ago that Tim Berners-Lee was developing the fastest, quickest, biggest way for one computer to send p0rn directly to another.
... fifteen years ago that http would become the bane of the MPAA and RIAA since it's secondary use is to ship illegally "obtained" music and video files.
... fifteen years ago that all my e-mail would simply be yet another URL which is attempting to screw me with sales of dodgy p0rn, dogdy medication, dodgy lottery tickets and dodgy stock scams.
... fifteen years ago that we'd all be wasting so many hours reading this sort of crap on slashdot.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
an Imperial pint is MORE than 500ml and an American Pint is is LESS than 500ml
so english people feel like there getting ripped off in the rest of europe when they order a "pint" and get 500ml but us yanks order a pint and get MORE than we expected when we are places serving 500ml "pints"
As the "father of the internet" he ought to know when it was born....although to be completely accurate we'd have to find out who the mother was. It would be interesting to see if there is a paternity suit that could be brought against Al Gore....I'd be willing to bet he hasn't made any child support payments to the mother of the internet in the last 15 years.
My brain is overly lubricated
Hmm. So, accoring to google, 500ml is 16.9oz, and an imperial pint is 19.2oz. Most bars here in the city sell beer in 16oz glasses, and I've been to more than a few that serve them in 12! 3 more oz in a beer... hmmm maybe we were wrong to kick out the English...
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
tells me the web's birthdate is 1/1/1900.
Wouldn't that be more like the web's conception date and August 6, 1991 be the delivery date? That's some gestation period. Depending on your location, you either celebrate "birthdays" on the day of birth or the day of conception. As such, there is no way to obtain consensus here.
And to celebrate 15 years of WWW lets all drop the www subdomain by redirecting (see http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2004/04/12/rewritingurl sforgoogle.html ) to the version without www. I mean, why do I still hear double you double you double you dot example dot com in commercials?
Perl Programmer for hire
> However, 6 August 1991 is not the only date claimed as the 'birthday of the internet'.
. html
s creensnap2_24c.gif
This claim is very wrong. The Internet (notice the capitalization) was born on October 29, 1969 at 10:30 p.m. See http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/LK/Inet/1stmesg.html
As for the World Wide Web, here's a brief timeline.
1989 March
"Information Management: A Proposal" written by the great Tim Berners-Lee and circulated for comments at CERN.
http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
1990 September
Tim Berners-Lee begins work on a global hypertext system.
1990 October
Tim Berners-Lee starts writing a hypertext browser/editor for the NeXTStep operating system. He calls it "WorldWideWeb".
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb
Here are some screenshots of his browser. Although simple by today's standards, the browser is rendering what clearly would be recognized as a web page today.
http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/tims_editor
1991 March
Line mode browser (www) released to limited audience on "priam" vax, rs6000, sun4. This browser was a text-based browser, a major step backwards from "WorldWideWeb" that was meant to be so simple that any computer or terminal could run it.
1992 April-May
Other GUI web browsers are released for X-Windows.
1993 February
NCSA release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen's "Mosaic for X". Computing seminar at CERN. The University of Minnesota announced that they would begin to charge licensing fees for Gopher's use, which caused many volunteers and employees to stop using it and switch to WWW.
Well, there is no clear birthday for the WWW like there is for the Internet. However, the Web as we know it today would have been recognizable in April 1992. At that time there were about two dozen web servers world-wide.
Is the URL ftp://ftp.notreally.domain/pub/README something you would consider part of the "Web"?
Is it still the "Web" if you manually translate to the command line: ftp ftp.notreally.domain
How about if you don't use DNS, but some other name binding: ftp somehost
If so, then the original date is somewhere in early 1970.
Seems like we have a chicken and egg problem here, unless of course his directory included 0 other sites.
And she's the closest to a woman that anyone here will ever get...
I remember accessing GNU Info files via Sun OS 4.1 NFS in 1990. I'm sure there are other even earlier examples. Didn't need a bloated brower either just Emacs or xinfo. Berners Lee just did it later in dumbed down that gained traction with simple minded PC users.
an ill wind that blows no good
The article is somewhat confusing. Are they celebrating the invention of the Web (HTTP+HTML) or the invention of IP?
:-)
I go with the title and in that case they are right. So let us all write an email to Tim Berners-Lee and thank him for his cool idea. So he will regret it that he invented it in the first place
I think we can settle this all with a quick phone call to Al Gore. He invented the thing, right?
Remember what it looked like? This will
Give it a Try http://cognitivelabs.com/search_engine_memories.ht m
Hmm, let me think... December 25th sounds good.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant