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The Internet Turns 40, For a Second Time
sean_nestor writes with this excerpt from The Register: "Some date the dawn of the net to September 12, 1969, when a team of engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) connected the first two machines on the first node of ARPAnet, the US Department of Defense-funded network that eventually morphed into the modern interwebs. But others — including Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who led that engineering team — peg the birthday to October 29, when the first message was sent between the remote nodes. 'That's the day,' Kleinrock tells The Reg, 'the internet uttered its first words.' ...A 50kbps AT&T pipe connected the UCLA and SRI nodes, and the first message sent was the word 'log' — or at least that was the idea. UCLA would send the 'log' and SRI would respond with 'in.' But after UCLA typed the 'l' and the 'o,' the 'g' caused a memory overflow on the SRI IMP. ... 'So the first message was "Lo," as in "Lo and Behold,"' Kleinrock says. 'We couldn't have asked for a better message — and we didn't plan it.'"
Shut up, nigger.
How do you know he's an AOL user?
Assigning arbitrary dates to mark an amorphous event?
Why was this the "birthday" and not when two machines were first connected to eachother?
Why not when a printer was attached to a computer?
Why not when two people talked over the phone?
Shit - you know this was done over the phone.
"Okay, start typing!"
"L"
"Got it."
"O"
"GOT IT!"
"G"
"..."
"G?"
"FUCK! God dammit Bill you fucking moron FIX THIS SHIT."
It's nice to mark significant points and transitions, but with an amorphous, ill-defined thing like the internet, it's akin to saying your restaurant has the best burgers in town.
The end result, of course, is a non-news fluff story and my raging post, which will be modded as "Troll" even though I have completely valid points.