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

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."

Comments

Poignant

[Gumug]

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.”

Re:Poignant

[Tom]

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.

How quaint

[cold fjord]

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.

Re:How quaint

[cold fjord]

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

In today's NSA Internet . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The Internet uses YOU!

World Wide Web..?

[twicepending]

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

Re:Netscape tonight

[GreyFish]

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.

Re:Misty watercolor memories

[Creepy]

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.