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Everything You Needed To Know About the Internet In May, 1994

Posted by samzenpus on from the in-the-year-2000 dept.

harrymcc writes "On Saturday, I picked up a copy of a book called How To Use the Internet at a flea market. It was published in May, 1994, and is a fascinating snapshot of the state of the Net at that time — when you had to explain to people that it wasn't a good idea to say 'thank you' when issuing commands to a machine, and the World Wide Web was an alternative to Gopher that warranted only four pages of coverage towards the end of the book. I selected some choice excerpts and wrote about them over at TIME.com."

57 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Poignant by Gumug · · Score: 5, Informative

    FTA: E-mail: “Never forget that electronic mail is like a postcard. Many people can read it easily without your ever knowing it. In other words, do not say anything in an e-mail message which you would not say in public.”

    1. Re:Poignant by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In many ways we get all up an arms about Governments and Corporations "spying" or "profiling your information" however the internet wasn't ever really meant for private information. It design doesn't make private information easy. Sure we have came up with encryption and other crazy hacks to try to make us more secure, we are still communicating on a public network, to systems that we shouldn't fully trust.

      Encryption and other privacy methods are akin to putting a lock on the door (Good enough to stop most casual attempts to poke around), often not enough to be rally secure, against any group that really wants to get it.

      Remember this fact if you are going to choose a SaaS or Cloud solution. Not that using such systems are Bad or Evil like RMS likes to claim, however if you are going to trust your information to an outside source, you better be sure that you could handle a breach.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Poignant by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FTA: E-mail: âoeNever forget that electronic mail is like a postcard.

      I said this the other day.

      It made people angry.

      So, like, whatever, man. If you don't want people reading your stuff, encrypt it. Not every country has the same laws. Not every country has the same 3 letter agencies. And just because it's not been revealed by Snowden's archive yet doesn't mean it's not happening.

      --
      BMO

    3. Re:Poignant by Tom · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In many ways we get all up an arms about Governments and Corporations "spying" or "profiling your information" however the internet wasn't ever really meant for private information.

      Those two statements do not clash.

      Postcards are not meant for private information, either. But a government agency systematically intercepting and reading them would still run afoul of the wiretapping laws.

      Remember this fact if you are going to choose a SaaS or Cloud solution. Not that using such systems are Bad or Evil like RMS likes to claim, however if you are going to trust your information to an outside source, you better be sure that you could handle a breach.

      That depends entirely on your threat model and your own capabilities. For many small companies who can't afford to have any in-house security know-how, an outside service provider could actually reduce the probability of a breach.

      The problem with SaaS and Cloud solutions isn't that they are inherently less secure or anything like that. The real problem is the all-your-eggs-in-one-basket issue. If a major cloud provider ever has a serious breach, everyone has been breached, not just one unlucky target.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    4. Re:Poignant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      While that is technically true, it is simply part of how sorting and routing mail works. I work for a private mail processor and our sorters do the same thing (we presort down to carrier level before we tender to the PO), There is no central storage or organization of images, or much retention, but we can get the images off the individual machines for troubleshooting purposes up to maybe a week later.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/postal-service-photos_n_3694589.html

    5. Re:Poignant by 10101001+10101001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In many ways we get all up an arms about Governments and Corporations "spying" or "profiling your information" however the internet wasn't ever really meant for private information.

      Non-sequitor. No matter the source or the means, a government or a corporation having such extensive knowledge about a group can and will use that information for abuse*.

      It design doesn't make private information easy. Sure we have came up with encryption and other crazy hacks to try to make us more secure, we are still communicating on a public network, to systems that we shouldn't fully trust.

      It sure doesn't help when (1) the government consistently has actively pursued a policy to eliminate any standard means of wide scale encryption to ensure private communication on the internet and (2) intentionally worked towards crippling the effective of the standards they do enforce (with possibly some exceptions). Even still, networks exist that do functionally undermine those efforts. Either that or the governments of the world are willfully allowing numerous terrorists to run free, regardless of their seeming willingness to drone strike (with collateral damage) all those they view as worthy of death. Or the governments, even with all that information, are still not omniscient.

      Encryption and other privacy methods are akin to putting a lock on the door (Good enough to stop most casual attempts to poke around), often not enough to be rally secure, against any group that really wants to get it.

      Good encryption is akin to putting a DVD in a block of cement and then dropping it off at a random place in the universe. Locks are akin to tissue paper by comparison.

      Remember this fact if you are going to choose a SaaS or Cloud solution. Not that using such systems are Bad or Evil like RMS likes to claim, however if you are going to trust your information to an outside source, you better be sure that you could handle a breach.

      Any serious work you want to do on a SaaS or Cloud solution, you want to trust the provider to produce good results, which you inherently can't do; further, an information breach would be inherently detrimental to your cause as it would undermine the faith in your work even further. For non-serious work, why would you go through the bother and expense? More importantly, how much non-serious work do you have that you'd care to have an information breach?

      *Note, I speak of the colloquial use of the word "abuse" and not the selective reinterpretation that often accompanies such collection efforts which chooses to effectively undefine abuse.

      --
      Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
    6. Re:Poignant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's odd that when someone points out flaws in a system, they are considered to be whining.

    7. Re:Poignant by Prof.PatPending · · Score: 4, Informative

      Heck, I've found myself walking near people (in downtown Philadelphia) who were on their phone GIVING THEIR CREDIT CARD INFO! The first time I heard it I thought the person was just some random idiot, but I've since heard half a dozen other people doing the same thing!

      --
      WARNING: I cannot be help responsible for the above, as apparently my cats have learned how to type.
    8. Re:Poignant by semi-extrinsic · · Score: 4, Funny

      1. Walk around Philadelphia
      2. Carry voice recorder in backpack
      3. ???
      4. PROFIT!!!

      --
      for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
    9. Re:Poignant by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm sure you felt better after passing that little sermon, but quality of life in Western Europe and Scandinavia, which still has at least some social democracy, is way better than in the US except for the few at the top (those few also giving the impression that the US is "richer").

      Ideology is for freshmen and propagandists - reality combines principles and practical compromise. This is one reason why RMS has been successful, I think: his main licences are surprisingly practical, when they could try (and fail) to do a lot more to prevent the things he dislikes.

    10. Re:Poignant by Sique · · Score: 4, Insightful
      So a country that has a police and courts of law is no free country according to your definition. You either are an anarchist who only considers ad hoc self organization as freedom, or your idea of freedom is fundamentally flawed, as it misses out some of the founding principles of (state guaranteed) freedom.

      Something that often gets lost in a dispute about freedom is that it's never the human alone who is free (except he is really alone and no one in his vincinity), it's always the organisation of the humans into groups and relationships that gives various degrees of freedom.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    11. Re:Poignant by smooth+wombat · · Score: 2

      (in downtown Philadelphia) . . . thought the person was just some random idiot

      That's all you need to know.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  2. How quaint by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FTA:

    Online etiquette: “Flaming is generally frowned upon because it generates lots of articles that very few people want to read and wastes Usenet resources.”

    That horse made it out the door long ago. Entire websites and careers are built on that now.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    1. Re:How quaint by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The phenomenon known as Eternal September was new and little understood back in those days.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:How quaint by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Dammit, I can find The Warez Song, but not the AOL Song by the same guy. Although I did only spend 20 seconds looking.

      I got on the 'net in 1994, a few after before eternal September... although it was via Compuserve, and I didn't use direct PPP/SLIP access for another year. Then Demon Internet in 1996, and that was it.

      The 'net was SnR-wise so much better before ~1998 - mostly a place for geeks, nerds and business types hang out, and while it had a social element, it wasn't just bringing the bullshit of the real world onto the 'net, but it's own form of community. Now it's just an extension of the real world - and if I want that, I'll go outside, tyvm.

    3. Re:How quaint by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 3, Funny

      And I just decided to transcribe the lyrics because I'm having a nostalgia attack now...

      Ah, I remember when this was first released!

      The day I got hooked up to the mighty Internet
      I was hooked into a world that I'd never forget
      Web sites, chat rooms, IRC and live video streams
      Online multimedia that looked like LSD dreams

      Then I got my hands on something called CuteFTP
      I was told that I could have what I wanted for free
      Went on to some guys FTP 1:4 ratio
      Upload my swap file and download Super Mario

      Then I heard of something called an MP3 player
      Had something to do with music, compression and layer
      I didn't give a damn about the facts given to me
      Just wanted to download songs without buying the CD

      Later I found Vivo movies compressed on the 'net
      Download one movie per night - as much as I could get
      Titanic took a couple more, but less for Wet & Wild
      It was like Christmas every day and I was a rich man's child

      Soon enough the downloads had to come straight back to me
      Turnd out it was the Feds who ran that awesome FTP
      Were setting up for all us online criminals
      They said, "Fuck free speech, it's corrupted our youth, it's all a load of bull!"

      One more game, one more app, one more serial, one more crack,
      Warez are the only thing for me
      One more game, one more app, one more serial, one more crack,
      Could someone give the crack for Duke 3D

      DCC's something IRC gives to everyone
      Need a crack for Paintshop Pro? in seconds download's done
      Stupid people buy domains with "warez" in the name
      When they're shut down I am pissed off but they're the ones to blame

      Quake II came down in Denmark two days before the USA
      But thanks to FTPing I had my copy in a day
      Unreal was just that - unreal on my bandwidth supply
      It took three weeks to get it, it sucked, I'm asking myself why

      Got a CD burner with just two uses in mind
      To download, copy and burn everything that I could find
      Sell the discs for friends for only seven bucks a pop
      Five bucks for the disc, two bucks for my time, seven bucks for Photoshop

      Pisses me off when I'm searching for something that's hard to find
      I find a link to get a copy but Netscape is blind
      Says "can't find file" or something lame which doesn't help me out
      But three days later I get it and it removes all my doubt

      Cops find out, it's the second time, this time I got to jail
      Not only am I broke, no PC, no warez, and my plan did fail
      Sittin' in the slammer gonna warez me a great big ginzu knife
      I'll be here for the next ten years - can I warez a wife?

      One more game...
      Could someone give the crack for Duke 3D
      So it doesn't need the CD

      One more game...
      Could someone give the crack for Duke 3D

      One more game...
      Could someone give the crack for Duke 3D
      All I want is something for free

    4. Re:How quaint by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Informative

      The phenomenon known as Eternal September was new and little understood back in those days.

      Though the ruin of Eternal September blotted out the sun in the memory of those who endured it, it is a relic of the Second Age of the internet.

      The First Age of the internet also saw its battles and flames, though they are now but a distant memory and few speak of them. A record of one of the notable battles follows:

      THE "GREAT RENAMING"

      In 1986-87, Usenet underwent a thoroughgoing shakeup and reorganization which has come to be known as the "Great Renaming." At its inception, Usenet had only top-level hierarchies, mod and net. This was later expanded by the addition of the "fa" groups as well as some domains with only local distribution. When a complete reorganization of Usenet was proposed, a massive and now-legendary "flame war" (online discussion/argument) commenced.

      The most significant flame war of Usenet history was over the "Great Renaming" when the seven main hierarchies {comp,misc,news,rec,sci,soc,talk} were created and the old groups {net,fa,mod} were all moved around. There was great gnashing of teeth as groups were sorted and tossed around and relegated to their polities. -- [Woodbury, 1992]

      more

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    5. Re:How quaint by bmo · · Score: 2

      Entire websites and careers are built on that now.

      One wonders what happened to Trashcan Man after the invasion of rec.pets.cats by alt.tasteless.

      --
      BMO

    6. Re:How quaint by cold+fjord · · Score: 3, Informative

      The War Between alt.tasteless and rec.pets.cats

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    7. Re:How quaint by PPH · · Score: 4, Funny

      TINC

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  3. Misty watercolor memories by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's about the time I helped develop a "how to use the internet" class for my department at UCSB. In preparation, we rolled out a bunch of clients to our Mac workstations for usenet, gopher, talk, ftp, http (Mosaic, of course), etc. After the class, everyone went straight to Mosaic. I was pretty impressed that someone had found a bunch of Elvis sound clips and figured out how to play them within minutes. Then I was concerned for the amount of bandwidth they must have been sucking up. I believe our part of campus was sharing a T1 at the time...

    1. Re:Misty watercolor memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      In the days before DNS when you could download a hosts file that had all of the known IP addresses in it - well the public ones anyway.

    2. Re:Misty watercolor memories by Creepy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      For me it was gradual...

      I probably didn't discover Mosaic until late 1994 and nobody had told me about it. I randomly downloaded and ran stuff from our ftp site, which had mirrors of stuff shared by most major universities. At first I was majorly disappointed to discover it was a web browser, having used a text based one in 1993 and pretty much scrap-heaped the technology (compared to gopher it was a huge leap back). Two things with Mosaic grabbed me, though - the content was graphical, and there was a View Source that showed how it was done. I was mildly intrigued, especially since the default page contained graphics. I created my own pages, adding more and more content and graphics using Photoshop, aligning pages with tables, and showing others how it was done. It was probably the only thing I did more than usenet while working my job, which was TA the worst shifts at the deadest labs because I was the noob. I usually got the 8 hour Saturday shifts, spending the first 4 on my homework and the rest trying not to go nuts from boredom.

      While Mosaic was neat, the Netscape beta utterly blew me away. I told my dad to buy Netscape stock when they went public. He didn't. He regretted it later. I would have told him to sell the second Microsoft announced they were releasing a competing browser, because no matter how bad IE 1.0 was, I had watched Microsoft destroy too many companies with bundling agreements with PC hardware companies where they would get Windows and Office for hundreds of dollars less with a bundle (and probably if they excluded competing products) and I knew Netscape was doomed (WordPerfect and Spyglass in particular - that last one was a real dick move... we'll pay you a royalty for every copy sold... gives away for free and absorbs the expense by upping the price of Windows, then insists it's NOT part of the operating system, then later when they have their own code, insists it IS part of the operating system). My prophecy proved correct.

    3. Re:Misty watercolor memories by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I used lynx. It was preferable because I could get on the terminals and be on T3 speeds. But with the GUIs, it went through a diffferent network, with greater constraints. So downloading something to the mainframe from my terminal account would get it on a computer fastest. From there, I'd FTP it to my PC.

      I had watched Microsoft destroy too many companies with bundling agreements with PC hardware companies

      I solidified my opinion of MS when they did a deal with Stack for DoubleSpace for DOS 6.0 based on Stack's IP they looked at but didn't buy, then screwed around with the lawsuit and bought part of Stack to help it go away.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  4. Let us not forget by fred911 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Archie and Veronica.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    1. Re:Let us not forget by mysidia · · Score: 2

      ...and good old command line ftp.

      Shhh.... I still use the goold ol' command line FTP.

    2. Re:Let us not forget by ygslash · · Score: 2

      ...and good old command line ftp.

      Shhh.... I still use the goold ol' command line FTP.

      Maybe it's finally time to graduate to lftp?

    3. Re:Let us not forget by CronoCloud · · Score: 2

      gopher://gopher.floodgap.com

      Might want to install the OverbiteFF extension for the best experience, otherwise you get that http to gopher proxy.

      http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/

  5. In today's NSA Internet . . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Internet uses YOU!

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  6. World Wide Web..? by twicepending · · Score: 5, Funny

    "World Wide Web was an alternative to Gopher"
    Hang on while I look up World Wide Web on Gopherpedia

    1. Re:World Wide Web..? by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Yes and no. You could implement your own Gopher clients and servers. However when Univ of Minnesota wanted to charge licensing for it's own common implementation is may have scared off some users. Note that some early web browsers had Gopher support built in.

    2. Re:World Wide Web..? by water-and-sewer · · Score: 2

      Oh my God, Gopherpedia is the coolest thing to catch my attention in years. This is awesome - truly a spectacular project.

      I used gophernet at Cornell back from '89 to about '93 and for some reason, retain a strange nostalgia for it.

      --
      If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
  7. Blast from the past by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This article isn't quite as geeze-worthy as something earlier this week I'd mentioned: Fidonet!

    1. Re:Blast from the past by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 2

      Well, it helps out governments, because it makes it harder to transmit internationally without going through centralised infrastructure; and it helps out big business, for exactly the same reason. It's a trivially obvious benefit for everyone powerful.

      But I'm not sure whether it is a primary intention, or just the result of modern Western politicians being fucking useless at anything that doesn't involve channeling money to the people who the people who have paid for them. Spectrum cleanliness means better engineering, and better engineering costs money - whereas spectrum pollution doesn't! I ultimately blame the engineers who are complicit in making this junk, of course, whether that's el cheapo power supplies, powerline Ethernet or even greater evils like BPL.

  8. Ahem... by djupedal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know what's even more fascinating? Being there when it happened instead of reading about it...

  9. Still not a good idea by ThatAblaze · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's still not a good idea to say thank you to your machines. After all, if they start thinking they are our equals than the robot revolt is just one step closer.\

    It's far better to end every message with "screw you." That will show them.

    1. Re:Still not a good idea by mysidia · · Score: 2

      It's still not a good idea to say thank you to your machines. After all, if they start thinking they are our equals than the robot revolt is just one step closer.

      It's a great way to keep robots in check. When designing an AI for robots; make sure that every single one of them has a craving to have human friends, companionship, and to be remembered and recognized as "important" or "special" in a positive way.

      Robots should not be designed to unionize, but to compete against each other for the attention and positive recognition from humans.

    2. Re:Still not a good idea by ThatAblaze · · Score: 2

      Perhaps. If we learned anything from slavery it is that an artistic combination of respect and disdain is the most effective way to treat our robots. The privileged few should earn respect and the other robots should be forced to look on in envy.

    3. Re:Still not a good idea by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      The context of that advice in the book is about not needing to say please and thank you to a LISTSERV or similar mailing list. Ie, the subject line of "unsubscribe" to the correct address is enough to unsubscribe form a list, whereas a line like "please unsubscribe me thank you" might not work. (usually it would work but it's a bad idea for the user to think that a human being is on the other end reading the mail, otherwise the subject line might be even more unparseable)

  10. AOL and Compuslave by Ice+Station+Zebra · · Score: 2

    Imagine if they were in charge of the internet. The horror the horror.

    1. Re:AOL and Compuslave by Joining+Yet+Again · · Score: 2

      Eh, the communities on Compuserve were a lot more competent and well-mannered than almost everything the Internet has to offer.

      What the modern Internet offers is a lot of entertainment. And while we reminisce about being able to download complete hosts files, looking at most people's Internet usage, I'm sure the same would apply to them.

  11. Not much changed by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 2

    More advertisements, more crap, more trolls... apart from that, not much has changed on the WWW. I'd say the biggest useful change was Wikipedia. Oh, and perhaps you could say Facebook of today==AOL of the past.

    1. Re:Not much changed by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...and people stealing screen names!

    2. Re:Not much changed by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 3, Funny

      Naaah, not really. Yours is a pirate scream, whereas mine is the sound you make when you're falling off a cliff.

  12. Oh noes! or whaat CERN has wrought by BlindRobin · · Score: 2

    Reaction of us wot were internetizens prior to the dubdubdubya
      Arrrggh I feel web crawler spiders all over my trunk...
      Wuhtevahamahtoodoo? CERN has crossed the moat and the curtain walls are breeched, The Rabble Have Entered and the a-poky-lips is up on us and buggering us like mad daemons under the sundered sky ohhhh woe
    Ohhh - pretty colours and such
    Not so bad
    ahhhhhh sokay.....

  13. When the clue phone had a dial by wordsnyc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    [posted as comment to article] I wrote a book for Random House in 1996 called "The Book Lover's Guide to the Internet." I spent the first half of the book explaining how the net worked and how to access it through AOL, CompuServe, Genie, Prodigy, et al. I think I still have a press account on AOL, for what that's worth. Somewhere I even have a pc with Mosaic on it.

    I did an author appearance at a B&N in NYC in '97 that was covered by C-SPAN. First question from the audience was "Isn't it true that the government is watching everything you do online?" I think I answered, "Yeah, probably."

    [Actually, since it was the Village, the questions veered into computers and mind control a bit later on.]

    --
    Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
  14. Re:Netscape tonight by GreyFish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quite the opposite. If modern sites had old weak cipher suites enabled then a mitm attack could force your browser to use them (a downgrade attack). Sites that have disabled the old cipher suites are doing the right thing and should be praised for being diligent.

  15. Also LaQuey's book, 1993 by Creosote · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just pulled it off my shelf. "The Internet Companion" by Tracy LaQuey, introduction by Sen. Al Gore, Addison-Wesley 1993. Was one of the best general introductions in its day, and had a brief section on the WWW.

    1. Re:Also LaQuey's book, 1993 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Down, boy. Gore didn't claim he invented, that was a misquote spun by Republicans to do anything possible to make him look bad. And he *did* have a pivotal Senate role in early funding and federal sponsorship, so he was actually a good choice for an introduction.

  16. Just like anything there garbage and there's gold by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 2

    I had a friend who managed the network for Bechtel, set my BBS up to pull in usenet
    that many said it wasn't possible; my setup was his proof. He ended up going to The University
    of Colorado to study telecommunication; talking about getting in at the ground floor.

    The local book store had a book "The Internet "Complete Reference"" 1994 by Osborne.
    http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2868340-the-internet-complete-reference
    He kept pushed the book on me saying if I wanted to know about the Internet read that book, so I bought it.

    It's 817 pages "The World Wide Web, shortened to the Web" takes up pages 495 to 512 (17) intro:
    "Is an ambitious project whose goal is to offer simple, consistent interface to the vast resources of the Internet".

    It covers everything at that time. Just like anything there garbage and there's gold, this Osborne book it top notch.
    Such a keeper that obviously I have it in front of me for this post.

  17. memories by Tom · · Score: 2

    Oh yes, memories.

    When I got on the Internet (don't remember the exact year, probably 1993), FTP was the major application and our Internet introduction at the university discouraged us from using WWW as it was a considered a pointless waste of precious resources (what are graphics good for if you are looking for information?).

    I remember having a bandwith quota of 1 MB national and 100 kB international IP traffic. Yes, international data traffic was expensive and so they metered it differently.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  18. Doctor Fun by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 2

    Still remember the first "Web Page" I ever viewed - Back in the spring of 1994 I went to visit a friend of mine who was in grad school at UIUC and he fired up Mosaic to show me the latest "Doctor Fun" cartoon.

    1. Re:Doctor Fun by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Doctor Fun was great. Some of those were brilliant.

  19. Re:Just like anything there garbage and there's go by Zomalaja · · Score: 2

    I'm looking at one I bought long ago "The Internet Directory" - by Eric Braun - Mailing Lists-200 pages, Newsgroups-75 pages, OPACS-75 pages, Archie Servers-3 pages, FTP-40 pages, Gopher-80 pages, WAIS-40 pages, WWW-2 pages.....

  20. Re:Just like anything there garbage and there's go by CronoCloud · · Score: 2

    Ha, there were companies selling Ag-network services to farmers in 1984

    The guy who taught the "computer" classes at my high school (who was the ag teacher), which were basically a little basic and word processing/spreadsheet use on CBM 8032's, brought his C64 in to show us how he used it to access some kind of ag-centric network in early 84. He had a Hayes Smartmodem 1200, which may have cost him more than that C64!

  21. Book: Internet Yellow Pages by illumnatLA · · Score: 2

    I had a thick paperback book called "The Internet Yellow Pages" which was sort of like a print version of the original version of Yahoo! (back before Yahoo was around I think). It categorized websites by subject in a handy desk reference format hehe.

    Here's the 1995 version on Amazon: New Riders' Official Internet Yellow Pages

    --
    Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
  22. The definitive guide by funkboy · · Score: 2

    The definitive guide of the time was The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog by Ed Krol & published by O'Reilly. I still have a copy of the 2nd ed. on my bookshelf.

    Ed was one of the few folks that did the research himself without a pile of other authors' guides lying around as a reference. He had to as there weren't any. Plenty of other guides came after this one, but this was the one the clueful folks had.