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Telehack Re-Creates the Internet of 25 Years Ago

Posted by timothy on from the and-corn-dogs-cost-3-cents dept.

saccade.com writes "Telehack.com has meticulously re-created the Internet as it appeared to a command line user over a quarter century ago. Drawing on material from Jason Scott's TextFiles.com, the text-only world of the 1980s appears right in your browser. If you want to show somebody what the Arpanet looked like (you didn't call it the "Internet" until the late '80s) this is it. Using the 'finger' command and seeing familiar names from decades ago (some, sadly, ghosts now) sends a chill down your spine."

162 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. It is sad .... by craznar · · Score: 1

    ... that I felt right at home.

    --
    EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
    1. Re:It is sad .... by arkane1234 · · Score: 1

      I was thinking the same thing...
      I miss those days. :(

      --
      -- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
    2. Re:It is sad .... by Lanteran · · Score: 1

      "You can slice the whole sort of general mish mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home."- Mostly Harmless (Last hitchhiker's book).

      --
      "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
    3. Re:It is sad .... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Me too... but it was the most fun I've had all day!

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    4. Re:It is sad .... by torsmo · · Score: 1

      Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!fluke!dan

      From: dan@fluke.UUCP (Dan Everhart)

      Subject: bristly beards

      Date: Wed, 7-Sep-83 16:20:46 EDT

      Newsgroups: net.singles

      Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Everett, Wash

      I've been told that my beard can be bristly and irritating. I really

      can't grow it any longer without it looking shaggy. I don't want to cut

      it off, because I've been told that I look better with it. (Plus its so

      nice not to have to scrape the face every morning.)

      Has anyone else had this problem, and what did you do about it?

      Dan

      ... { decvax!microsof, uw-beaver, allegra, lbl-csam, ssc-vax } !fluke!dan

      =!=__XXEND__=!=

      Things haven't changed all that much. Craigslist is still around.

    5. Re:It is sad .... by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      But you see those days were actually nice and sweet, if a little slow and buggy. No what we need for future generations is a recreation of the nightmare from the depths of hell that was the true dark ages of the Internet. Yes my fellow greybeards I'm talking about the days of....dum dum dum...AOHell and Geocities! EEEK!

      Ah yes, the great suffering, where every damned website was infected with Comet Cursors that would turn your cursor into Bart Simpson's ass if you were lucky, if not you ended up with the CPU melting "pocketwatch of DOOM!" that would swing like a ball of snot while slamming your PC so hard even the mightiest CPUs cried like little bitches, where page after page was "OMG Ponies!" with pink letters on lime green or puke purple text, usually with glitter shit falling like rain and the blink tag caused epileptic fits , where the AOHelltards ran amok like mountains of crazed monkeys throwing shit, and where even the strongest willed repairman could be heard to scream "Not that God damned Bonzi Buddy fucking monkey again! STFU MONKEY!"

      No my friends, someone needs to create a record, a living monument to Internet horror if you will, so that those that come after us will NEVER forget. For as we have seen with the scourge that is flash, to forget one's history is to repeat it. NEVER AGAIN!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Nostalgia never made sense to me by The+Dawn+Of+Time · · Score: 1

    I guess there's something basically human about reliving the past, but I've never really been into it. Computing was super cool back in the day, but it's so much cooler now it's not even the same game anymore.

    1. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by tetrahedrassface · · Score: 2

      I think the point is, but may be wrong, is that now it is ubiquitous, whereas before it was something a person wanted or was drawn to do. Computing today is kinda lame really, because it isn't exclusive at all. It gets old, invasive, and yes all over the place. But has it solved any of the worlds problems? *looks around*... we still have plenty. *goes back into cave*

    2. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by Oshawapilot · · Score: 2

      Agreed. I was excited to find a BBS a few months ago that was still running the same software I used when I was a SysOp myself in the late 80's. After about 15 minutes online the nostalgia effect quickly gave way to the reality that, well...it just sucked. +++ATH0

    3. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 1

      Oh God, AT modem commands. I haven't given those any thought in probably over a decade. Wow, I remember having a particular command string that I liked for some particular reason (I think it gave me an extra 1200bps at the loss of some stability). Thanks for the nostalgia.

    4. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by Daneurysm · · Score: 1

      I remember having a modem directory where I had procomm, pcplus, telix, telemate and MTE.

      I remember that telemate was the best (protocol selection, external protocols, text/notepad windows, dos window, etc....but I used MTE 'cuz it gave me fake MNP-5, the data compression/error correction(MTE = MNP Terminal emulator)...at 1200 and 2400bps it made a difference....I forget which v.32/42 or "bis" protocol that is....my gut tells me v.32.

      I had two favorite initialization stings....one for my telecom program and one for my BBS....I remember ATX0DT being at the begining of everything for dialing... AT, attention, X0...I think that has something to do with the 'hook' setting....I think that made it keep from putting the speaker off hook until the handshake and connection were all finalized and you got your "CONNECT 2400" or whatever your string was....but I'm probably wrong. Been a while. As for my BBS initialization string, who effin' knows, I remember it being epic in length and detail.

      Good times, for certain. Seems like a couple lifetimes away by now, though.

    5. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by jamesh · · Score: 1

      Computing was super cool back in the day, but it's so much cooler now

      You don't use facebook or youtube much do you? The internet back then was more information and less opinion. There's a lot more information out there now which is great, but _everybody_ wants to share their opinion with _everyone_, and nobodies opinion except mine is worth listening to! ;p

    6. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by syousef · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think the point is, but may be wrong, is that now it is ubiquitous, whereas before it was something a person wanted or was drawn to do. Computing today is kinda lame really, because it isn't exclusive at all. It gets old, invasive, and yes all over the place. But has it solved any of the worlds problems? *looks around*... we still have plenty. *goes back into cave*

      Well all I know is that growing up I couldn't talk to people from around the world for free, and if I wanted information I was limited to my local library if and when I could get there. If I was sick I relied on the rubbish doctors in my neighborhood to diagnose and treat me. If I wanted to do real science I had to make it my career, where now I can run all manner of science and math apps. If I wanted music I had to go and physically purchase it. If I wanted to compare prices it would take hours. Nothing was searchable without great effort!

      We'll always have lots of problems, but computers sure have solved SOME of mine. Computing is only lame if you use it for lame things.

      As for it not being exclusive, that's only a problem if you're an elitist. And besides there are plenty of non-mainstream geeky computer endevours that are very exclusive. Have you hacked a LInux kernel?

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    7. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by chesapoodle · · Score: 1

      Sitting on a shelf behind me is Procomm, Qmodem, Compuserve and, golly, a book from BYTE. Oddly enough, I can still do the AT commands because I had them all memorized from back in the day when I was a telecom bit flipper. 8-) Man this is taking me back to XModem CRC and all that fun stuff. Good times ::leans back in rocking chair and drinks an adult beverage::

    8. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by syousef · · Score: 1

      Well, back in the early 80's, you could talk to people around the world for free. Fidonet was your friend.

      I was in primary school in Australia. I didn't know a thing about Fidonet, and if I did I couldn't afford it anyway.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    9. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by rolfwind · · Score: 1

      But has it solved any of the worlds problems? *looks around*... we still have plenty. *goes back into cave*

      Yes, the internet failed to solve all the problems of the world, therefore it's worthless.

    10. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by arth1 · · Score: 2

      You may find a BBS, but you won't find the people you talked to.
      It's not the technology that has changed the most, but the users.
      If you want nostalgia and nerd talk, go to /., before the designers ruin it with video and ajax, driving the old school nerds away.

    11. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by black6host · · Score: 1

      It was free for access, at least on my BBS. Granted it wasn't in Australia, and you had to have your own computer and modem. But you need your own computer now to be on the net so no difference. If I could correspond with someone in Russia I do believe Australia would have been accessible to me as well. And the rest of the world to you. However, I do recognize that you may not have been of an age where you had money to do that. And I may be a bit older than you, therefore having more say or money at the time. Now you do, as shown by the fact that you are here. My point was simply that it was available, and not just to those who had restricted/specialized access. Granted, it wasn't Darpanet but global communication was not restricted to just a chosen few.

      Scary thing is, we may be back there again if things keep going they way they are. I do not want the/any government having control over my access to communications. Fidonet, in some incarnation, may become more useful in the future. Leave the net for advertising, we can make our own thing and have it server OUR purposes rather than those who would wish to be our masters.

    12. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by syousef · · Score: 1

      In the 80s my parents were making overseas calls via operator. Certainly international video conferencing wasn't accessible.

      I hope you're wrong about things regressing to the Fidonet days. That would be a real shame. Microsoft buying Skype is a worry actually.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    13. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "If you want nostalgia and nerd talk, go to /. ..." ...and wait 45 seconds even on 8 core machines before your one line answer finally gets posted, just like in the olden days.

    14. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by The+Dawn+Of+Time · · Score: 1

      You're aware that is flood protection, right?

    15. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by inKubus · · Score: 1

      So what's next? We got to go out and keep going. We have nothing to lose because we don't have anything.

      --
      Cool! Amazing Toys.
    16. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 1

      I'm 90% certain I still can. Unless all of /. is actually sitting outside my window, and I'm actually shouting this instead of typing it.

    17. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by evildarkdeathclicheo · · Score: 1

      It used to be unique, and special, now it's just something that everyone does. Nerds don't like not being unique, even if some wish they could fit in. It's not so much nostalgia as it is loss of identity.

    18. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by Pathwalker · · Score: 1

      X0 was the shortest text output from the modem; I usually went for the opposite extreme with X4, so it would log everything while it was connecting.

      I remember that for a while my lines were in horrible shape, so I would use s7=255 to disable the dropout detection, and ride out the line noise.

    19. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by reiisi · · Score: 2

      The only thing the computer has done, the way we use it, is to make it quicker to come to the wrong conclusions.

      Some people use the computer to make it easier to back up and try a new path having once come to the wrong end-point. That's a real improvement.

      But it also makes it easier to just blindly try more wrong paths. Computers induce a lot of churn into our daily lives. I guess that's different. I'm still not convinced it's substantive. Too many of the important problems have too many paths to try, so many that you're probably going to die before you hit a right solution. And if you get used to the churn, I think you lose the ability to recognize a right path, so you often find yourself having backed off a real solution and started on a new wrong one, and by the time you can get back to what was a right path, well, you've changed, and the network has changed.

      I've noticed that my cell phone has more storage and more computing power than the Univac 1100 that we used at college. More even than the Sun workstations I used at the university. Shoot, I have a couple of AT&T 7100s or whatever those 68010-based Unix workstations were called stored in a basement somewhere in the States, half a meg of RAM and 20M of hard disk. The OS floppies are still there, I think.

      My cell phone has 64M or RAM, a full gig of flash RAM for persistent store. The display has a bit fewer pixels. Or does it? The keyboard, well, okay, that's a loss. Network connectivity? No ethernet, but it is connected to telephone network.

      And the OS is a derivative of Linux that Docomo (and NTT) refuse to acknowledge, much less live up to the license requirements of letting me access it, so I can't run dc (or bc) or vi on it.

      I want a portable Unix workstation the size of a pocket calculator. I know it could be done.

      Nostalgia makes sense to me.

      --
      Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
    20. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 2

      Nostalgia is about mortality. Those of us who remember those times also are aware that we were 20 years younger then. Technology may develop indefinitely, but we will pass on. Those technologies of the past bring us back, ultimately, to a time 20 years farther away from our own deaths.

    21. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by turing_m · · Score: 1

      We'll always have lots of problems, but computers sure have solved SOME of mine. Computing is only lame if you use it for lame things.

      I would give you mod points if I could. There are definitely some scary aspects to the current state of the world's technology, but there are also miraculous things. It is SO much easier for someone with a brain and a basic understanding of maths and science to do their own backyard R&D. The answers are literally at your fingertips. If you can think it, someone has probably tried it or done it. And if you are smart, you can often improve on what they have done. With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow. It applies to more than software.

      --
      If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
    22. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Hey, the constitution protects freedom of speech! Nobody said anything 'bout a right to be heard.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    23. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by bedouin · · Score: 1

      You may find a BBS, but you won't find the people you talked to.

      Not necessarily true. One of the boards I called 15 years ago still has telnet access and many of the old 'callers.'

    24. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by qubezz · · Score: 1

      What is this trying to emulate? A telnet BBS that had a few unix-like commands? I would at least hope for a shell account on some big old university iron running usenet and talk with the clocks set back to 1983 as the real experience. Remember that this era was pre-PC, with no access outside the uni or a connected company.

      BBS's, that's nostalgia. Making a phone call to a computer system in someone's basement that if you were lucky had more than one phone line or modem so you could interact with random user #2. Basically you would play a single player "door" game that might have stats for other players, or leave messages that someone else could log in and read. I knew two BBS ops, one ran PC in 1991 and the other C128 in 1989. Yawn.

      The real good times was services like Quantumlink (actual video of the service from 1989) and Compuserve, where you actually interacted with a larger community. A lot of time spent on something that was nothing of significance, but was something new. Kind of like Slashdot.

    25. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by blackpig · · Score: 1

      In the mid nineties ('93 as I remember) I had a dial-in-terminal account with APANA (Australian Public Access Network Association, I think they're still around). I used the Terminal programme in Windows 3.0 on a 286 and logged in via a 1200 baud modem to a BSD box. I could use Usenet, E-mail, Archie, WAIS, FTP and Lynx for that newfangled WWW stuff. Cost was $100/year for access so not too expensive. At least we had a rudimentary menu system rather than just a prompt.

    26. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by qubezz · · Score: 2

      Just watched the linked video to the end, it's awesome to see SMS and Internet chat shorthand like "brb", "LOL", and smileys being used in chat rooms 22 years ago. Take that you whippersnappers! ;)

    27. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by JacksonG · · Score: 1

      It has been. The Nokia N900 is basically that - although Nokia have now abandonded it to the wind it's still an immensely usable device.

      --
      I am not a Frog. I am a Free Womble!
    28. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by reiisi · · Score: 1

      Wish the N900 had been available in Japan.

      I guess there are Androids that are close, but I sure don't like the on-screen keyboard.

      I think I need to check Android out a bit better.

      --
      Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
    29. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by blackpig · · Score: 1

      I want a portable Unix workstation the size of a pocket calculator. I know it could be done.

      Nostalgia makes sense to me.

      Nokia N900!

    30. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      Accessing telehack with it right now B-)

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    31. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by bughunter · · Score: 1

      the past, [...] I've never really been into it

      Just wait.

      You are now being in what will have been in the future. And you'll miss it.

      Now, unless you are here to return my hair, get off my lawn.

      --
      I can see the fnords!
    32. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by hexagonc · · Score: 1

      I want a portable Unix workstation the size of a pocket calculator. I know it could be done.

      Don't know about Unix, but you can certainly have Linux on a laptop. That should be as close to a portable Unix workstation as you would need. If you truly need something pocketsized (for cargo pants), try an Android phone with a folding bluetooth keyboard. This arrangement works quite well with the EVO 4G.

    33. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by hexagonc · · Score: 1

      The only thing the computer has done, the way we use it, is to make it quicker to come to the wrong conclusions.

      Some people use the computer to make it easier to back up and try a new path having once come to the wrong end-point. That's a real improvement.

      But it also makes it easier to just blindly try more wrong paths. Computers induce a lot of churn into our daily lives. I guess that's different. I'm still not convinced it's substantive. Too many of the important problems have too many paths to try, so many that you're probably going to die before you hit a right solution. And if you get used to the churn, I think you lose the ability to recognize a right path, so you often find yourself having backed off a real solution and started on a new wrong one, and by the time you can get back to what was a right path, well, you've changed, and the network has changed.

      Interesting points. I think the bigger problem, though, isn't specific to computers at all. It's true, that computers make it easier to find wrong conclusions but that is simply because there are more wrong conclusions than right conclusions. I don't think that slowing things down will get us to correct solutions any faster. For any nontrivial system there will always be more ways to be wrong than right. Correct solutions will always be a small gem hidden in a forest of nonsense and bad ideas. On some fundamental level, I suspect this is the core principle behind the second law of thermodynamics. Any system, when left on its own, will act randomly within its natural degrees of freedom. In order to get the system to do something useful, i.e., to evolve toward a particular goal, you have to restrict some of its options so that it has no choice but to go in the direction that you want, toward order.

      I think your problem with the way most people use computers is that, although computers allow to you quickly find both bad and good paths, a side effect of this is that it also allows you to find REALLY bad paths before you're prepared to deal with them. This is a valid concern.

    34. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by stderr_dk · · Score: 1

      Fidonet was your friend.

      I still remember my old pointnumber, 2:235/314.62. I think, I got that address in '92 or '93.

      Later, around 1995, I got my own nodenumber, 2:235/362, and a couple of points of my own.

      But then "the Internet" started showing up and by 2000 my BBS were long gone...

      --
      alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" ; # https://pipedot.org/~stderr & http://soylentnews.org/~stderr
    35. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by syousef · · Score: 1

      The only thing the computer has done, the way we use it, is to make it quicker to come to the wrong conclusions.

      There's negativity for you. You lost me right there. I've done lots of very positive things with computers that did not involve incorrect conclusions. Take planetarium software for a night of amateur observing. I can tell where to look for something well ahead of time. Or take spreadsheets. Saved me countless hours of error prone BS with a calculator. If you choose to use the computer blindly like a monkey trying to type out Shakespeare the problem is behind the keyboard.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    36. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by syousef · · Score: 1

      If I was sick I relied on the rubbish doctors in my neighborhood

      And yet, sadly, you're still alive.

      Actually, I take back the "sadly" part. It is not my place to question the will of Allah (PBUH)

      You're a very strange little troll...and superstitious too.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    37. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by The+Dawn+Of+Time · · Score: 1

      What, do you think I'm a teenager or something? I've entering my fourth decade of programming.

    38. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by The+Dawn+Of+Time · · Score: 1

      Which comes off with a different tone than I intended, sorry. Drank a bit.

    39. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 1

      "If you want nostalgia and nerd talk, go to /. ..." ...and wait 45 seconds even on 8 core machines before your one line answer finally gets posted, just like in the olden days.

      Because you're waiting for nmap to portscan you for open proxy ports. Only when that's done will it let you post. That's also why it only takes forever once per day, because it only scans a given IP address once every 24 hours.

    40. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by reiisi · · Score: 1

      Okay, okay, for far too many people, the only thing the computer has done, etc.

      I also use computers in good ways from time to time. I'm not sure if slashdot is an overall positive or not. It consumes more time than I wish it did, but it also helps me keep my English up while I live and breath Japanese most of the rest of the day, and it keeps me in touch with more of what I think is important news. But I probably should be spending more time on slashdot.jp and reading Nikkei's tech news and such.

      Yeah, I was in a reactionary mood the other day. Even Microsoft's junk can be put to good use.

      But I do wish that more schools would teach the use of plain text before they teach word processors, and teach how to use an array in Python before they teach how to use spreadsheets.

      --
      Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
    41. Re:Nostalgia never made sense to me by reiisi · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you're thinking along a lot of the same lines i'm thinkin along, here.

      --
      Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
  3. ...my lawn...get off it...etc... by Daneurysm · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it is reminiscent of my first years on "the net." But it isn't terribly impressive, I had a similar faux OS matrix-login coded in Telegard/Renegade menu files.

    While it is geeky and kinda cool the appeal is limited. Anyone who isn't already familiar with this will not understand what is going on at all. Anyone who is already familiar won't be impressed.

    I hate to piss on parades as I appreciate and encourage anything like this...maybe I'm just getting old.

    1. Re:...my lawn...get off it...etc... by Iskender · · Score: 1

      While it is geeky and kinda cool the appeal is limited. Anyone who isn't already familiar with this will not understand what is going on at all. Anyone who is already familiar won't be impressed.

      I think you shouldn't be so quick to assume that others will be equally disinterested. I was born around the time things might have looked like this and I found it plenty interesting. It was interesting to see how much basic familiarity with the Ubuntu command line helped despite it being "bad Unix".

    2. Re:...my lawn...get off it...etc... by Daneurysm · · Score: 1

      Then you are in that narrow band of between and/or overlapping "famliliar" and "unfamiliar" that can really be intrigued by this....but again, maybe I'm just getting old. These days pessimism is my first sign that I am both alive and awake every day...

  4. Hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "operator: Slashdotted..367 users, holy shit"

    1. Re:Hilarious by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      367 users? OMFG, everyone on the arpanet is on my server!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Hopefully the real ARPANET was a bit more scalable by oravecz · · Score: 2

    operator: Slashdotted..367 users, holy shit

    And just like that, the Internet is dead

  6. Nicely done! by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 2

    Very nice reproduction, it's scary that I could actually get around on it. I just had to see if I could still write an old-fashioned BASIC program. Worked like a charm.

    In those days, it was just us nerds who used computers. We just HAD to show everybody our little secret, didn't we! Now EVERYBODY's on the Internet!

    1. Re:Nicely done! by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's pretty much the sad story I love to tell, and since you asked for it (or at least I'll pretend you did), so you now get to hear it.

      'twas the age when life was good for geeks. Universities built us a huge, world spanning network and we loved what we saw. We went and built ourselves a cute garden, where we made our claims and planted wonderful flowers and trees to enjoy, no need for fences or barbed wire because, hey, we WANTED to invite each other over to have a look at what we did with our little turf on the 'net. Come in, and if you enjoy my creation, here's a sapling for you to plant in your garden, no worries, it's free. Sure, there was that occasional bully, but in general we were pretty nifty and knowledgeable gardeners and knew how to beat them with our shovels and rakes. And the occasional gopher didn't bother us too much. Actually, it was a cute little critter! And of course, in some corners of our garden, we planted our special herbs and spices, complete with a camo net. Sure, everyone knew what's growing there but hey, nobody really cared. And if you needed some to relax, just go and take some, there's plenty.

      We looked at what we built and said that it's beautiful, too beautiful to be just for us, we wanted the world to participate and enjoy that beauty too! We decided it would be unfair to keep the others, who are no gardeners, out of it. After all, you don't need to be a gardener to enjoy the sight, sound and smell of our creations, these people, too, should enjoy our roses and relax in the shadows of our trees. We went and built paths through our garden, we cut bushes and made it pleasurable and non-intimidating even to those that were kinda wary of this "jungle". We created safe roads for them so they don't have to climb over bushes but so they could see all there is for them to see. We probably shouldn't have shown them the field with the camo net, but hey, they too wanted some weed, and it just wouldn't have been fair to keep it away from them. Yeah, they just took and didn't plant, but hey, there was plenty to go about. And those that were too stupid to stay on the path or too eager to be troublemakers were even easier to deal with than those gardeners that did the same, since these people were even more clueless.

      The whole mess started to fall down on us when two things happened. Once, some of those idiots had to brag about our camo patches and how they got some really good dope for free in here. That's when the real world started to muscle in and tell us that we can't do that. Ok, we rebuilt it, made the herb fields smaller and less obvious, but sadly we also made the mistake to tell everyone how to still get there. Talk about learning from a mistake, but that's the geek, if he builds something nice, he thinks that everyone should benefit from it. Sadly, that's not the way most people think.

      Especially not corporations, who first wondered where all their consumer sheeple went and, realizing that they went to our garden, decided that this cannot be. There is a place where sheeple flock to, run by technically and not legally inclined people? Their appetite for our nice little garden awoke. They came with big building machines, evicted some of us on the pretense that they now own our turf and build some amusement park on it, fenced off and only accepting those that paid their fee. We looked at it with contempt, since it violated everything we wanted from our garden. You couldn't even go there and take a sapling from their trees, they'd rather uproot and destroy it rather than giving it to you, anathema to the geek ideals. Worse, they took your saplings, grew them and then called the park cops, claiming that you stole your tree from them, not the other way 'round.

      More and more of them came, and less and less we could build our gardens the way we wanted to. Worse, often enough, we couldn't even build our gardens at all anymore. We were swindled out of our turfs, and better not even dream about building a camo patch, the park rangers are sniffing them out faster than you could grow them.

      I think it's time to move on and build a new garden. And this time, we should maybe not let anyone in but people we know.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Nicely done! by Reservoir+Penguin · · Score: 2

      I agree the stupid sheeple, drones and plankton have invaded our sacred space, anything from internet to Unix (Ubuntu) became infected with their stink.
      Just yesterday I was musing about the need to create new application protocol, possibly with a Lisp based text interface, with no Flash, JS, ads, ecommerce, sort of like hypertext vector Fidonet.

      --
      US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
    3. Re:Nicely done! by Grismar · · Score: 1

      I think it's time to move on and build a new garden. And this time, we should maybe not let anyone in but people we know.

      Please do, I get the feeling this will be your typical win-win situation. I for one will make sure I'll stay off your lawn.

    4. Re:Nicely done! by dotancohen · · Score: 1

      Very nice reproduction, it's scary that I could actually get around on it. I just had to see if I could still write an old-fashioned BASIC program. Worked like a charm.

      I was recently looking for a basic interpreter for Linux, they are not as easy to find as I had hoped. I found basic256 but that is more similar to VB than BASIC. Happily, this reproduction run BASIC very similar to what I had on the old Commodore.

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    5. Re:Nicely done! by DerekLyons · · Score: 2

      Universities built us a huge, world spanning network and we loved what we saw. We went and built ourselves a cute garden, where we made our claims and planted wonderful flowers and trees to enjoy, no need for fences or barbed wire because, hey, we WANTED to invite each other over to have a look at what we did with our little turf on the 'net.

      And that's where your fantasy diverges from reality - and you don't even realize it. They built that network for *their* purposes, not yours. You forgot that the ground you planted the gardens on wasn't yours in the first place.

    6. Re:Nicely done! by qubezz · · Score: 1

      FreeBASIC. It's a compiler though, not an interpreter, which is much better because you can distribute binaries. I've used it to whip up little internet applications that as an .exe are a lot easier for end users than a .pl or .php. If you want an IDE, try fbedit, which is of course written in FreeBASIC.

    7. Re:Nicely done! by dotancohen · · Score: 1

      Very cool, thanks!

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    8. Re:Nicely done! by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Sorry, but it just doesn't work out. First we build it, we invite people, corporations find out where their customers went and muscle in. Something with mass appeal will be taken over by business sooner or later.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    9. Re:Nicely done! by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      It wasn't the corporations' either. It was built by the government, so take a wild guess who funded it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    10. Re:Nicely done! by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Who funded it is utterly irrelevant to the matter. It's a symptom of your continuing delusion that you believe that it represents an adequate defense to "it wasn't yours in the first place".

  7. Even the ability to handle load is simulated! by dFaust · · Score: 1

    It seems to be getting Slashdotted, the site isn't consistently responding for me. Oh, and while paging through the finger results on my first connect I got this (for realsies):

    "operator: Slashdotted..367 users, holy shit"

  8. Slashdotted by BlueScreenO'Life · · Score: 1

    I was enjoying the green-text-on-black-screen nostalgia when suddenly this broadcast transported me back to 2011:

    operator: Slashdotted..367 users, holy shit

    1. Re:Slashdotted by ildon · · Score: 1

      All I see is "Session closed."

    2. Re:Slashdotted by ildon · · Score: 1

      Nevermind, reloading the page a few times fixed it.

    3. Re:Slashdotted by BertieBaggio · · Score: 2

      Is that how you normally fix a slashdotting?

      --
      If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
    4. Re:Slashdotted by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 1

      That, or how you normally make it worse.

    5. Re:Slashdotted by ildon · · Score: 1

      That, or how you normally make it worse.

      This.

  9. Found myself! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    If I could only get a message through to my past self....

    I think it would be:

    "Forget the Amiga and Commodore! Buy all Apple stock you can! Hold through the lows! Sell just before the Mayan calendar ends!"

  10. Re:If it doesn't have Gopher by hawguy · · Score: 1

    telnet, FTP, and Archie, then it isn't the real thing.

    I was fortunate enough to have a father who worked at BBN at this time, and so I was immersed in network technology as a teenager. I remember him excitedly showing me a copy of NCSA Mosaic (an early web browser) and I was like Text documents? What's the point?" Funny.

    The summary says Telehack is supposed to be from the 1980's... Gopher, Archie, and Mosaic didn't come out until the early 1990's.

  11. I miss Usenet the most. by taxman_10m · · Score: 2

    Please, someone recreate the golden days.

    1. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by bitMonster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Me, too. God, these web forums are awful. Including this one.

    2. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by joh · · Score: 2

      The Usenet is still there, nothing has changed. Just a lack of users, so get an account somewhere (news.eternal-september.org maybe) and help to get it back up...

    3. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Golden? It sort of works but it's a bag of shit. They actually took the interface from DejaNews and made it worse, which is quite an achievement.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    4. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by Nimey · · Score: 1

      Usenet is still there, but it's less decent-quality articles and more binaries and spam these days.

      You can still get the classic text-mode clients too, like slrn or tin or trn. I'm a slrn user myself, came to Usenet relatively late in the game in the late '90s. Initially used lynx on Usenet, which worked fairly well with a couple major limitations: no threading and the built-in editor didn't do line-wrapping.

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    5. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by bughunter · · Score: 1

      The Usenet is still there, nothing has changed. Just a lack of users

      Perhaps you're unaware that Usenet predates this thing called 'spam?'

      The GP is bemoaning the current sub-unity Signal to Noise Ratio. For every article worth reading, there are many spam adverts.

      Back in the day (pre-Endless September), there were no adverts. Spamming a newsgroup was posting the same (non-commercial) article repeatedly, and was very, very poorly received.

      Sometimes, i go into google's news archives and relive the glory days of the Usenet in the early nineties. It's like reading old newspapers and magazines...

      --
      I can see the fnords!
    6. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by devphaeton · · Score: 2

      I used to say that google's caching of Usenet was a great service to all of mankind.

      Now I really wish they hadn't. The ability to dig through the archives (from a historical standpoint) is amazing, but what "google groups" has been doing to Usenet in the present is... sad.

      --


      do() || do_not(); // try();
    7. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by devphaeton · · Score: 1

      Aside from the historical and entertainment value, I've actually found old Usenet posts useful... I've found specs and configuration info on old hardware, howtos on old software and other great insight on numerous occasions.

      Also, it's nice to remember when The Internet knew how to spell, use apostrophes and assemble sentences within some form of grammar.

      *sighs at those Gen Y kids*

      --


      do() || do_not(); // try();
    8. Re:I miss Usenet the most. by qubezz · · Score: 1

      Also, it's nice to remember when The Internet knew how to spell, use apostrophes and assemble sentences within some form of grammar.

      That's because getting on the Internet required a license: you had to be employable in high tech or pass college admissions.

  12. We didn't CALL it the Internet... by atari2600a · · Score: 1

    ...BECAUSE IT WAS NOT THE INTERNET. It was the MOTHERFUCKING ARPANET. One uses the INTERNET Protocol, one uses a CLUSTERFUCK OF OUTDATED ONES.

    1. Re:We didn't CALL it the Internet... by atari2600a · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry, it just pisses me off when people do stupid stuff like refer to the epoch of the internet to the first ever networking of 2 mainframes or something just as retarded (like this).

    2. Re:We didn't CALL it the Internet... by mauddib~ · · Score: 1

      You're not sorry. You'll do it again the next opportunity.

      It really pisses me off when people say they are sorry, while they actually aren't. It ruins the meaning of the word and makes people who are truly sorry left without words.

      --
      This is a replacement signature.
  13. Simpler by bragr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like the days of yore better. Computers were simpler then. The software, the hardware, the protocols, all of it.

    Back then it was possible to understand everything that was going on in your system, and there is something very beautiful about that. You could know how every command worked and how it did it, down the the binary data it was sending down the serial port if you wanted. Now, even though I know what seems like an encyclopedic amount of information about computers, there are large gaps in my knowledge where I either know nothing or I have only a general idea of whats going on.

    Then again I can now play Angry Birds on Chrome so that kinda sooths the nostalgia.

    1. Re:Simpler by hawguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And a bit farther back it was possible to fix a computer yourself (*really* fix it, not just swap out a CPU or motherboard) - I remember helping to troubleshoot an old DEC PDP-10 (still alive way after its time) with a voltmeter - much of the logic was on wirewrapped cards. You could see the bug fixes because they were in different colored wires. I even had to enter the bootloader on the front panel register switches (just enough to get it to read the rest of the code from the paper tape reader).

    2. Re:Simpler by thebra · · Score: 1

      I like the days of yore better. Computers were simpler then. The software, the hardware, the protocols, all of it.

      Back then it was possible to understand everything that was going on in your system, and there is something very beautiful about that. You could know how every command worked and how it did it, down the the binary data it was sending down the serial port if you wanted. Now, even though I know what seems like an encyclopedic amount of information about computers, there are large gaps in my knowledge where I either know nothing or I have only a general idea of whats going on.

      Then again I can now play Angry Birds on Chrome so that kinda sooths the nostalgia.

      Excuse me, just passing through, didn't mean to step on your lawn.

    3. Re:Simpler by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 1

      I miss those days too, in a way. But "simple" is a matter of perspective.

      Today, if I want to write a simple data entry form, I can throw it together in a few minutes, and in a few more minutes, it will even look nice. I for one don't want to go back to slaving for days over a single screen, not to mention figuring out how to store and retrieve the data, or worry about how multiple users can access it at the same time! Back then, you had to make your own nuts, bolts, and screws. Now we have some real power tools!

    4. Re:Simpler by scsirob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You are right, the tools have become a lot more powerful, and you do not have to dive into the nitty-gritty details anymore to get something done quickly.

      However, there's a few downsides as well. My kids (lawn, get off, yeah yeah..) are interested in computers but simply cannot appreciate what goes on under the hood. They have never heard of accumulators, shift registers and carry flags. These same kids will have to advance the technology in a few years time, when they are in R&D labs. I can't imagine they do a good job at making optimal use of the resources that they will have at their disposal by then, simply because they do not understand what goes on inside.

      The tools make it easy, but they cause lots of bloat. When I built my own CP/M computer, a buddy designed a graphics card for it and wrote some basic CAD software in the 32K RAM we had. I designed a mouse circuit for it and wrote a mouse driver in about 50 bytes or so. It truly disgusts me when today I buy a mouse and it comes with a 20 Megabyte driver set. That's more than the entire operating system 15 years ago. What is so bloody special about a mouse that it needs 20 million bytes of instructions to function? Left, right, up down, button 1,2,3 up and down. What else??

      No-one cares about this anymore. A waste of resources. What a shame.

      --
      To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
    5. Re:Simpler by svick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think what we had before was a waste of a much worse kind - waste of human resources. If all programming required rewiring hardware, we wouldn't have all the amazing things we have today, including Internet, the Linux community, iPad or C#. So, yeah, it's a waste, but I think it's much better to waste few cycles for garbage collection that to waste few hours debugging access violation problem.

    6. Re:Simpler by hawguy · · Score: 1

      I didn't say it was better overall, but being able to fix a CPU problem using nothing more than a voltmeter, soldering iron, and a few transistors definitely appeals to the geek in me. It was long out of DEC support, but it didn't matter since we had the full service manuals with schematics. That was probably the last time in my life when I actually cared about transistor bias voltages.

      Swapping out a motherboard just isn't the same - my mother could do that since all of the connectors are keyed differently (and for those that aren't (SATA, USB, etc), it doesn't really matter which order things are plugged in). And swapping out a motherboard doesn't even require tools most of the time.

    7. Re:Simpler by qubezz · · Score: 1

      I'm more annoyed because I can't hook up the registers to blinkenlights or input data a bit at a time with switches. 512 words is more than enough memory (a bit less than 1k bytes). 0x31 == 1 ?? What a waste of bits these modern systems are!

    8. Re:Simpler by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      You are on My Lawn. You can see the following exits: [Off]

  14. starwars by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

    type starwars and see ASCII movie..... lmao

  15. Re:If it doesn't have Gopher by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Gopher came along around '90. This would be around '86. FTP and telnet should be available, I agree. I don't remember but I seem to recall Archie coming along around the time Gopher did -- which lead to Jughead and the oh so sexy Veronica (merging the Archie indexing/search ideas on top of Gopher protocol). I remember the first version of Mosaic I saw it was so freakin' cool -- it could start rendering before the whole doc was pulled back (wink wink nudge nudge M$); might have been around 0.4 or so -- running on a Dec VaxStation -- much much cooler than MIDAS. How about those old bitnet addresses and how flaky some of the decnet-bitnet gateways were. Not to mention, the first time I'd ever heard of a worm passing down a network -- almost like catching a virus by shaking hands.

    I guess the amazing thing was that you could go from idea on a napkin to de-facto standard in a month or two. That, dear friends, is what makes me nostalgic; not the green screens and fixed fonts, not the limited options, not playing zork -- just the fact that a great idea could rule the world fast enough so that it didn't take forever to reach market.

  16. Session closed ... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

    I got "session closed", what did you get? ;-p

    Man, the Internet of 25 years ago ... I think I got my first modem ever in early '89 ... So that's 22 years at best ...

    Wow ... vt52, pascal, bangpath, TeX, alt.binaries, uudecode, multitasking, c, Linux, code monkey ... Ahhh, the memories of youth. :)

    Wow, the Internet that came before me ... What a mystical place ... I can't express the glee when I discovered FTP and free stuff.

    Now my mom has a e-reader she's trying to hook up to her wifi. Does anybody else find themselves watching their parents buying technology we could never have possibly explained to them less than a decade ago?

    The stuff my parents have as everyday devices didn't exist when I was a kid ... And when those devices were in their infancy, my parents had no idea of WTF what was.

    Crap, where was I ... in conclusion ... Get off my damned lawn while i go watch Knight Rider reruns.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  17. Slshdotted? by BertieBaggio · · Score: 1

    The site is only responding intermittently here:

    operator: Slashdotted..367 users, holy shit

    Anyway, as abuses of HTTP go, it's pretty cool :) If the site starts working again, do yourself a favour and have a go at lostpig. It's a fun, well-written award-winning little text adventure. Info and link to flash version here.

    --
    If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
  18. Telnet alternative by XSpud · · Score: 2

    I just got this message when logged in: "operator: direct telnet telehack.com will be faster than the web interface"

    1. Re:Telnet alternative by bitMonster · · Score: 1

      And it is.... slightly.

  19. Me too. It makes me realize by aussersterne · · Score: 2

    that I am no longer of the "current technological generation" but am in fact a couple generations back.

    Yes, I remember updating my office location, hours, and plan for finger-ers and actually miss that—somehow it all felt so much more personal to me than Facebook does today. That is, I suppose, how you know that time has passed you buy.

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
    1. Re:Me too. It makes me realize by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 1

      Nothing wrong with being nostalgic or enjoying an experience for the memories of good times it brings, this is why there is a market for classic cars, among other things. These days you have pretty much the same sorts of people doing pretty much the same sorts of things, just using a different interface, same as it ever was. I wouldn't say time has passed you by.

    2. Re:Me too. It makes me realize by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      About classic cars.. hopefully someone can give more details about this.. but on one of Adam Carolla's podcast episodes (like many things, he's probably repeated the same idea many times), he went off on one of his rants about how some was likely actually better in than old sports cars. The guest seemed dubious, but Adam seemed to know what he was talking about. I believe one of the cars he was comparing to was whatever sports car Magnum, P.I. drove.

      Sorry, I admit this is really vague, but it was interesting to hear someone who is a big car guy (he has a Lamborghini, probably among a lot of other cars) saying that current regular consumer cars were likely better even in some performance ways than old sports cars.

    3. Re:Me too. It makes me realize by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      My attempt at being vague was cut out due to me using angle brackets.

      I meant to say:
      one of his rants about how some [current minivan] was likely actually better in [some performance metric] than old sports cars..
      (I think it might have actually been 0 to 60 he mentioned.)

  20. ...sad... by YankDownUnder · · Score: 1

    It's sad that, regardless of what those of us did THEN, and all the BBS's we ran, the stuff we did, today, we're nothing - we're faded history, barely recognised, barely known - and money, time, effort, time that we put into it all, is nearly nothing. Only once in a while does someone touch upon all that we've done, and we're still basically snippets... In IRC, nearly regardless of again, what we've done and where we've been, we're just "someone else". That all said, I'd do it all again, and will not regret it. Now I want an Atari again...damn!

    --
    YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
    1. Re:...sad... by ZorinLynx · · Score: 1

      This is why people like Jason Scott are my heroes.

      They're preserving our history, the history that the rest of the world doesn't care about and would happily forget.

  21. Couldn't get on the net back then anyway by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Instead of google we had the science citation index on microfiche, found an article that could be useful, put in an interlibrary loan, then waited a couple of months for the journal with that article in it to arrive. That's actually when the internet existed! Because so few could access the thing it took so long to grow into what we have now. If I wanted anything from the internet back then I had to ask a postgradute computer science student to get it and put it on a floppy disk for me. After a while a BBS or two managed to get limited connectivity to the internet so I could sent email via the BBS and it would connect to a machine with access to the internet daily and do a send/receive of all it's users mail in one batch. Using ftpmail you could get files if you scripted in the right commands and knew exactly where the files were. The guy that everyone calls a dinosaur that doesn't understand the net - that evil old bastard Rupert Murdoch - had already bought an ISP in America before the general public in Australia had a way to connect directly to the internet.

  22. The only command you'll need :) by Fnagaton · · Score: 1

    zrun zork

    Ahhhh memories. :)

    --
    Martin Piper
    Owner - ReplicaNet and RNLobby
  23. What's it supposed to be? by Animats · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure what 80s system it's supposed to be emulating. It's not a BBS. It's not TOPS-20. It's not VMS. It's not SAIL. It's not ITS. It's not an ARPANET TAC. It's not Multics. It's not UNET on UNIX.

    1. Re:What's it supposed to be? by hey+hey+hey · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure what 80s system it's supposed to be emulating. .

      Seems kinda TOPS/10 to me.

    2. Re:What's it supposed to be? by ei4anb · · Score: 1

      I am familiar with TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 (I still have an account on a DEC-20) and it's not exactly either which makes me think it could be TENEX http://tenex.opost.com/tenex72.txt

    3. Re:What's it supposed to be? by korgitser · · Score: 1

      it's got zork!

      --
      FCKGW 09F9 42
    4. Re:What's it supposed to be? by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      looks like a tiny subset of 4.2 BSD to me

  24. Not Quite by hduff · · Score: 2

    I had an amber monitor . . .

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
    1. Re:Not Quite by blind+biker · · Score: 2

      Haha, yeah, our computer classrooms were all equipped with amber VT terminals. Some were actually white, but not one, as far as I can remember, was green phosphorus.

      And we had... hundreds of these terminals, all connected to some powerful (for the time) Sun server. I never had as much fun on the internet, as back then. It was all mesmerizing. And people were genuinely excited and glad to connect across the world. Now we are all so fucking jaded.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    2. Re:Not Quite by i.am.delf · · Score: 1

      Green phosphors while easy to construct and high brightness are a disaster for eye strain. After staring at a terminal for 4 hours straight you come to appreciate amber and paper-white terminals.

  25. prescient futurama jokes are awesome. by tempest69 · · Score: 1

    .joke
    He who loves a one-eyed-girl thinks that one eyed girls
    are beautiful.

  26. You had to be there by inKubus · · Score: 2

    I think you had to be there, before the time of Google and instant information, to truely appreciate the challenges and wonderful triumphs that were possible. And of course, being in a community with ONLY the top 1 or 2 million in intelligence was nice also. It was a magical time and now it's just noise. Sure there's some smart kids and I really like the whole "being nice is cool" thing, ala reddit, and etc. but I've seen it a million times: once everyone is doing it, it's not cool anymore. But I think this is a time when the roots of tech, the old timers, really need to step up and make sure this thing lasts in the true spirit of what we intended it to be. It truely is a new form of freedom, but it could easily be the makings of a new form of slavery as well. We need to remember that the net is about communitity, not a group of people or a city but this idea that everyone has something to contribute and that the easier it is to contribute, and the more that is contributed, be it good, bad, valuable or worthless, makes it more valuable. The fact that we are greater than the sum of our parts, really just bits of electricity in the world's largest circuit. Let's make sure that free flow is ALWAYS here.

    --
    Cool! Amazing Toys.
    1. Re:You had to be there by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      You know what was fun? Finger was mentioned, and it was still up in use until about oh 2004 or maybe 2006 with a lot of game dev's who used it as part of the .plan system. And for a lot of people interested in the industry it was a seriously kick ass way to get dev. input and help on your own projects. I dunno I guess while everything has become grand, great, and pretty kick ass. There's a lack of personalization these days on the whole.

      Damn it ... GET OFF MAH LAWN! *wave spike cane of doom menacingly*

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:You had to be there by MtViewGuy · · Score: 1

      While the old timers may love it, you suddenly realize that back then, because Internet access was pretty much command line _everything_, you had to be fairly literate in command-line UNIX just to be able to use it. Small wonder why Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, which eventually turned Internet access into one with a real graphical user interface (I still remember accessing the 'Net with Mosaic in early 1994--it was a huge breakthrough in terms of accessing the Internet).

       

  27. It looks like its the early 1990's, but it's not. by mark-t · · Score: 1

    I don't mean to sound narcissistic, but I was browsing through the newgroups circa 1991, and could not find some of the posts I had made in various groups at the time, although I can easily find them on google groups.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  28. I was using Datapac in 1986... by beaverdownunder · · Score: 1

    So I've been on here the whole time. God I feel old =/

  29. Re:the finger command by larry+bagina · · Score: 1

    Not true. Standards were a lot lower in the 70s, no AIDS, dick herpes was just a "cold sore", abortions were cheap and easy. I can easily imagine Stallman getting all kinds of incredibly hairy pussy back in the day.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  30. Cf: http://sdf.lonestar.org by ivi · · Score: 1

    Last time I checked, the Subj site & a few related ones STILL offered
    "command-prompt" (a,k,a. shell access) to the Internet, eg for students
    & others (eg, some disabled or on dial-up lines) with need or interest
    in accessing the 'Net in similar ways.

    Still, it was nice to be reminded of earlier times... :-)

  31. fingerd * 30 years == facebook by reiisi · · Score: 1

    Never used finger, either.

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
    1. Re:fingerd * 30 years == facebook by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1

      I too rarely used finger, largely because it didn't take very long for sysadmins (or BOFHs) to disable the capability on their servers, so it was a waste of time.

      But I always have to resist the urge to chuckle when some youngster mentions playing around with Xmodem or kermit as evidence that they were there at the cutting edge "back in the day". My first experience with computers was being thrown in at the deep end on a 1970s Burroughs B3700 system similar to this except that the master console was a teletype machine, and our machine room looked a lot grungier than the ad shows.

      Back in those days, hacking directly on binaries was common, macroassemblers were for wimps, and all data communications were carried out on mag tapes carried via sneakernet, which was usually faster than our suitcase-sized 300-baud modem.

    2. Re:fingerd * 30 years == facebook by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Back in those days, hacking directly on binaries was common, macroassemblers were for wimps, and all data communications were carried out on mag tapes carried via sneakernet, which was usually faster than our suitcase-sized 300-baud modem.

      Yeah, I remember those days. You could sit at your supposed 300 baud modem, start typing and wait for the server to catch up, and you weren't even a very good typist.

      I also remember having "talk", the precursor to IM and a companion to finger. After all, you fingered the person before you'd talk to them... just to be sure they were there.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    3. Re:fingerd * 30 years == facebook by strat · · Score: 1

      Zephyr was and still quite likely is, the right thing.

  32. Best viewed in full-screen mode. by scottbomb · · Score: 1

    This looks like some interesting reading. We had a Commodore 64 back in the 80s. Very few people had modems and I had never heard of ARPANET (I was a teenager at the time) but CompuServe was just taking off.

  33. Mod parent +1 informative! by reiisi · · Score: 1

    telnetting in works!

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
  34. No time like the present by laslo2 · · Score: 1

    It's fun to remember those days. I loved my Commodore 64, and later my PCjr (shush). Telehack is pretty cool.

    Today I have a SSH app on my iPhone (green on black, of course). I have a dual-monitor Fedora 14 box on my desk, and next to that I have a HP DL380 dual Xeon server (both machines were retired as surplus). I also have a MacBook with OS X. I have DSL at home, and an orgasmically fast network available on campus which I can reach through a VPN. (I'm not counting the Arduino stuff, or the HP-16C calculator.)

    I've never added it all up, but I've probably got more computing power in my backpack and pockets on a given day, than many ARPANET *sites* had back then.

    Yes, I'm still pretty 0ld 5k00l- but damn, we have such nice toys now. I think I'll stay here. (Although I will confess to having wanted to click a 'Like' button on this article, I'm so used to Facebook. I'll hang my head in shame and report to the dungeon for my flogging.)

    --
    Karma only matters to me now and zen.
  35. Mist, Dikumud and Cheeseplant's House next please by mccalli · · Score: 1

    25 places it at 1986, which is just slightly before I started using it (1989 for me).

    Text only, kermit transfers, cursing as once again you realised you forgot to put FTP into image mode before you downloaded that shareware from funet.fi...all of it.

    Do wish there was still a way to play MIST though, and the associated Cheeseplant's House. We would hang out in Cheeseplant's House waiting for a slot on MIST. Interesting (well to me at least) that they describe it as the second talker - must admit I thought it was the first.

    All good fun. I don't wish away what currently exists, but it would be nice if the older stuff had made it through too.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  36. Vuja De by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    My God, it's Craigslist with Night Mode on.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  37. Copyright Infringement? by VincenzoRomano · · Score: 1

    Has anyone typed "starwars"? It's ... astounding!

    --
    Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
    For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
    1. Re:Copyright Infringement? by NoobixCube · · Score: 1

      This is the evidence we need! As internet dwellers we can claim it is ingrained in our culture to infringe on copyrights!

      --
      Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
    2. Re:Copyright Infringement? by mat+catastrophe · · Score: 1

      You really didn't know about this?

      --
      sig not found
  38. Re:If it doesn't have Gopher by pmontra · · Score: 1

    I remember Archie. It was a search engine for ftp servers at the beginning of the '90. I had a Unix workstation in 1990 and I used telnet, usenet, ftp and email directly on my box. That was the Internet for me. This Telehack is only a BBS service, something I could have connected to with telnet but not of much value. Nevertheless it was a very good thing for people using modems from home. For the few (most?) of us with no direct experience of those times: there were no commercial ISPs so people had to dial a modem on a service like Telehack and use some Internet services through an interface like that. AOL built a little empire based on that model.

  39. Re:the finger command by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    So THAT's it, and I thought it's a beard.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  40. Re:TIA The internet adapter by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    You mean the days when people could do links properly?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  41. Sucks! by DerPflanz · · Score: 1

    I do not like that Arpanet thingy. It doesn't run on my iPad ...

    --
    -- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
  42. Go read Nutworks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    For those who remember BITNET, go read Nutworks: http://www.netogram.com/nutworks.htm

    It also has a lot of general lame 80s computer nerd humor.

  43. TTL ? by edthebedhead · · Score: 1

    I didn't think TTL was yet running in 1980, but when I pinged someone, it said ttl 56. I thought the early packets lacked TTL, and as such - are still floating around.

    1. Re:TTL ? by qubezz · · Score: 1

      It sure was like a game of packet hot potato there for a while... Fortunately they cleaned off the old packets on Internet cleaning day.

  44. Re:It looks like its the early 1990's, but it's no by mark-t · · Score: 1

    Can you find any posts on the usenet groups that you can positively identify as having been there in that time, however?

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  45. Re:I think you had to be there by tirnacopu · · Score: 1

    once everyone is doing it, it's not cool anymore

    Why would that be? If everyone had a garden, would you dislike flowers? If most people around you were playing music, would you not enjoy dancing anymore? All the instruments available playing at the same time, or all the perfumes combined will quickly lead to saturation or even become hurtful, but with careful orchestration from capable/creative people you will get countless enjoyable moments.
    As with anything else, the Internet experience needs a bit of guidance and restraint, but as a concept I find it nothing short of amazing.

  46. It was the "Internet" before 1985 by ODBOL · · Score: 1

    > If you want to show somebody what the Arpanet looked like (you didn't call it the "Internet" until the late '80s)

    In 1985, I had already been calling it the "Internet" for some time.

    --
    Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
    1. Re:It was the "Internet" before 1985 by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      The term was from 1974, but ARPANET or NSFNET (expansion of arpanet to universities) would have been term widely used or recognized in 1985 by users. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc675

  47. Now EVERYBODY's on the Internet! by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    Ya, and its ruined. ( no, that wasn't sarcasm )

    PS, real men coded in 8bit assembler, but ill give you a pass on it since your heart is in the right place at least.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  48. methinks thou dost think too highly of thyself by Son+of+Byrne · · Score: 1

    Just because it is a command line interface does not necessarily elevate it to the heights that I see in these comments. I may not have that small UID to back up these claims, but I participated in that community as well. I recall some of the same types of motivations back then that I still have today (not all honorable).

    If we're honest about it, then I think we'd agree that while it was a smaller, more elite group of nerds that ran the digital world back then, it wasn't necessarily better. We just remember it that way...

    --
    I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
  49. Can i download a VM by nurb432 · · Score: 2

    Considering the minimal resources required to reproduce this, any chance this is running on a VM or something that we could 'take home' as our very own? ( for when this fades into the abyss of time and memory )

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  50. Can be done by Pf0tzenpfritz · · Score: 1

    at least the Geocities part: http://wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/content.php?theme=2&music=2&url=tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/14/0235237/Telehack-Re-Creates-the-Internet-of-25-Years-Ago

    --
    Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
    1. Re:Can be done by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Bah! You call that a simulation Pf0tzenpfritz? A TRUE simulation would have all those GIFs causing the whole PC to spit and sputter, with all the GIFs spinng out of time in a herky jerky motion that made you want to puke! And that text is way to readable to show the true horror! No all text must be pink or light green or baby blue on a similar light background WITH a stupid pic recreated about a bazillion times in the background AND glitter shit and blink tags torturing you!

      And they forgot the most insanely suffering part, besides the comet cursors of course...the true bringer of the pain...I'm of course talkin about the cheesy MUSIC! Because nothing screams Geocities like some lousy piece of 8 bit music turned to 100 with an endless loop of the same three bars, with a stutter no less!

      No Pf0tzenpfritz, to show the true heart of darkness one must plan and plot from the darkest places of their souls. They must code a CPU SloMo into the page to cause it to stutter and sputter, stick in comet cursors of Dilbert or Bart Simpson or the pocketwatch torture, it must play two bars of cheesy 8 bit music, with lots of stuttering, and finally it must have blink tags and spinning crap and glitter everywhere! Only then will it be a true lesson, which could then be used to break those damned flash "designers" by showing them what the path they have chosen leads to!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  51. wrong, sometimes term used by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    The term "internet" to describe global network using tcp/ip as protocol was coined in very famous RFC done in 1974. I suggest shooting yourself in the butt with a valium dart, it would be uncommon but not unheard of to speak of the ARPANET.

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc675

  52. Re:if there is no web browser or gopher by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    you are very confused, the World Wide Web is not the Internet, though it is related. You must have been road kill on the Information Superhighway, I was an 18 Wheeler.

  53. NSFNET started in 1985 as a project, not a network by ODBOL · · Score: 1

    > ARPANET or NSFNET (expansion of arpanet to universities) would have been term widely used or recognized in 1985 by users

    I'm not sure what source you have for your "would have been." I am reporting my personal experience. I called it "Internet" in 1985, as did all of the other users I knew at Johns Hopkins, Purdue, and a number of other universities. At Hopkins, I was never connected through NSFNET (a program that started in 1985 according to theWikipedia article). The EECS department had an early connection through the Cypress service of CSNet, and then a peered connection through MILNET at the Ballistics Research Lab of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. There was another peered connection arranged by the university, but it was overloaded and I can't remember how it was negotiated.

    In all of my discussions in the early 80s, we understood CSNet to be a project extending the Internet, and in the late 80s we understood NSFNET in the same way.

    --
    Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
  54. Re:I love the command line by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    Do what I do, get a used HP thin client or similar on eBay for $25 or so. Put a 40 or 60 GB usb mini- hard disk on it and install a BSD on it (OpenBSD, DragonFly, NetBSD, or FreeBSD) Use dynamic dns if you don't have a static address. Put sshd and also webshell under Apache on it so you can get to command line via https from anywhere that you can't use ssh (like airport internet kiosk, for example). Install w3m or lynx for web browsing. mutt or pine can be your email reader, and even if someone sends you a picture or pdf you can save it to a web-served directory for viewing. Put a smtp server on there like postfix or qmail or whatever you like. Add "screen" so you can run multiple programs without worrying if connection drops. Maybe put in an irc client to chat with friends (epic4 for me) Now you have a very low power-consuming server (mine pulls 16.5 watts most of the time) you can leave on to be your command line home away from home,and with the big hard drive you can even put important files there to be grabbed.

  55. Great Stuff by kwishot · · Score: 1

    My favorite part about the internet at this time was the high level of reliabNO CARRIER

  56. Why not use finger now for living people? by pergamon · · Score: 1

    $ finger slashdot@twitter@any.io

  57. Missing file by alleycat0 · · Score: 1

    So when will ADVENT.bas be added? I remember dialing up to a DECsystem 20 using an ASR33 teletype and 300 baud acoustic modem, and would *love* to experience playing this again!

    --
    I am not a number - I am a free man!
    1. Re:Missing file by strat · · Score: 1

      It's in there now. I just fired it up.

  58. I have linux on a laptop! (Pain in the back.) by reiisi · · Score: 1

    Or, I did have Fedora 12 on an iBook, until the iBook's video chip started acting up. (Cold solder or a hair-line crack or something, fixed it once, but a few months after, it went intermittant.

    I like Sharp's NetWalker, but it's a little expensive at JPY 40,000+. I'm thinking they could be selling ten times what they sell of those if they dropped the price to 10,000, and I'm wondering whether it couldn't be sold at 5,000.

    Nokia 900 was mentioned elsewhere, but it was expensive and not available here, and, yeah, I'll probably end up getting an Android phone when my wife's docomo dies and we give their family plan the boot. (Don't like Docomo's Androids.) And a small keyboard of some sort.

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.