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Netscape 1994 Time Capsule
jenkin sear writes "Netscape Time capsule site- original splash screens, and much of the original netscape site, including the release notes for version 0.9. Definitely a trip down memory lane....
I saw this link on scripting news" Warm fuzzies. Sure was simpler then. An interesting similiar and unrelated article also popped out recently, a
history of microsoft.com.
Look at this page in the MS timeline:
.com/misc/features/features_flshbk_hp2.htm
http://www.microsoft
It describes their "Collage" design from August of 1995. Take a look at one of the most prominent links on the graphic. Yes, your eyes don't deceive you; it does say "Microsoft Reacts to the DOJ". Like I said, some things never change.
For those of you that keep posting "The code is available already" Why don't you download the code that Malda puts out and see for yourselves whether that code is for real. That code is version 0.3 which is way outdated. For some reason slashdot won't cvs their code. Probably because Malda prefers security through obscurity over peer review.
:)
Anyways, both code bases are based on flawed licenses. (Assuming the writers wanted the code to be free)
Cheers.
Joseph Elwell.
When Mosaic Communications Corp (AKA Netscape) first went public, they outsourced their support to a company called Corporate Software (now known as "Stream" (as in "What end of the Stream are you one?").
There were six of us back then, supporting the PC, Mac and about 9 flavors of Unix. I lasted the longest, until the 2.0 betas. (In fact, I still have my Mosaic Communications t-shirt (with the angry Mozilla) and a brochure from the first few months.)
There were some good times and alot of bad. Since we were in Oregon and they were in California, they were willing to ignore us at times. It took a bit to get them to deal with the bugs we and our customers uncovered. (Leading to some very strange calls.)
And then there were the staffing issues. Because many of the original team left for other jobs, we were whittled down to TWO people at one point. (Doing 70 calls a day for a while.) When 1.2 was released to Egghead stores, we had FOUR people on the phones. (And the typos and bugs were bad enough that we got lots and lots of calls.) The staffing problems were not all Netscape's fault though. Corporate Software did not staff for the load that they expected out of a weird power play trying to keep Netscape current on their bills. (Which they were holding back on because Corporate Software was playing these games.)
There are a whole lot more stories I could tell. It was an interesting time in my life. Not certain if I would want to do it again...
And, yes, as far as I know, Stream is still doing support for Netscape. (At least since I talked to any Stream employees, but it has been a while.)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
http://scribers.midwest.net/dsmith42 /ns094.zip is where it is now -- mirrors are welcome. :)
Dragging myself manfully back on-topic, I loved the phrase in the announcement of Netscape 0.9 about it being "optimised for 14.4 modems". Those were the days.
Here is the oldest article from March 23 1999 (pre Chips and Dip stuff):m l
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http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000001.sht
And it was actually articles
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000005.sht
and
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000004.sht
that were funny.
First non Malda comment:
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000017.sht
First post by Hemos, Chips and Dips lives!:
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000018.sht
Mandrake says Xfree 4.0 out soon (this in Oct-1997!)
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000028.sht
Who new KDE and Gnome were so old (Oct-97 again)
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000048.sht
First flame war, things were pretty civilized then
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000054.sht
First fan?
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000072.sht
Not just XFree can fall behind schedule, NT5 Ship Date Delayed, probably won't ship until 1999.
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000114.sht
Wow it's a good thing these things tags aren't allowed in comments anymore
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000137.sht
Slashdot has been renamed to Slashdot, "5000 hits per day, and that isn't slowing down yet" it's unstoppable:
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00000150.sht
Last of the old posts, then the format changes to yy/mm/dd/millsec and becomes untrackable
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/00001079.sht
I seem to remember that at some point MS was using Xenix as its internet presence, but this article basically says that it began with NT (which I am sure in the greater sense they would have you believe). Am I totally off my rocker here or is that the way it really was?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Man those were heady days. I had been running linux at home for a few months, and had seen Mosaic at school in the lab a few months before. When I got Linux, X (of course) and Netscape finally running on my home machine, I swore I'dnever use Windows (or DOS, back then!) as my front end ever again!
:)
Truly those were the founding days that solidified the potential in my and many of my fellow students' minds of OSS software, and of Linux in particular as a competitor to Window.
Since netscape is really the only true big browser available for Linux, it history is very closely tied to Linux's. Netscape helped linux along back then and we should pay hommage to them!
I hope everyone's tried the new Mozilla milestones!
Math
"The predecessor to MSNBC, known then as MSN News, was first published prematurely when a member of the production team, sitting up on a desk to study a schematic, clicked a mouse button with his derriere. The team watched in horror as the content went live to a public server before it was ready."
"Mark Ingalls recalls how he mistakenly deleted the live default.htm file that served as the microsoft.com home page, in the days before staging servers. While home page visitors were receiving File Not Found errors, Ingalls rooted around in his browser cache - where the cache filenames did NOT map to their real names - to find and restore the page to active duty."
As much fun as it is to rip apart Microsoft, I found their history article a good thing. I honestly never thought I'd live to hear:
"[Engineers] were literally in front of the FTP and download servers for an entire day rebooting them to keep them up because there were too many users for what the boxes could handle."
come from a Microsoft spokesperson.
No, this isn't a new story to laugh at Microsoft with. Having them admit to being mortal is an important step in becoming less of the conceived monster that they appear to be.
In case you're missing the big deal: Microsoft admitted that something they made didn't work. Perhaps this is just a fluke, or this article didn't get cleared by their PR people, but maybe this is a sign that they're going to start being more forthright when it comes to bugs?
Or am I reading too much into this?
;)
I quote:
"Steve Heaney and Mark Ingalls were literally in front of the FTP and download servers for an entire day
rebooting them to keep them up because there were too many users for what the boxes could handle," said
Todd Weeks, now microsoft.com's systems operations manager. "Two weeks later, they hired a capacity
planner for the download program so we wouldn't have the same fiasco for Internet Explorer 4.0."
Another time capsule I very much like: go to ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/sim/ and download the PDP emulator from the sources/ subdirectory. Then download the files from the software/ directory: uv5swre.tar.Z is an image of a PDP-11 disk running Unix version 5. That's really something worth trying out. You can also download Unix versions 6 and 7, and some old version of RSTS/E, and a few other dusty programs of the kind. Including a copy of the Lisp interpreter (with source), by L. Peter Deutsch, for the PDP-1.
One thing I would also very much like is to be able to run ITS, the fabled hackers' operating system that ran on the PDP-10. I found the sources, but I don't have a PDP-10 emulator capable of running that thing.
While reading Microsoft's history of www.microsoft.com...
Did you notice that Microsoft's picture of the first Microsoft web server ever also shows the first pioneering implementation of Microsoft's proven PTKAMRFA remote administration tool, still the only remote administration option to ship with Windows NT to this day?
(PTKAMRFA: Put The Keyboard And Monitor Really Far Away (tm) (c) )
Some linux people seem to think that telnet or ssh is superior but they're just stupid longhairs.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
There is a superb documentary produced by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called 'The Archaeology of the Internet'. The show includes interviews with some of the Netscape crew as well as many others. The CBC has generously posted the show on thier site. (RealAudio). So hunker down with some popcorn for an hour and take a great trip down memory lane. It can be found at: http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/ideas/shows/internet/ internet.ram (running time 54 mins.) mitd
mitd -- Made in the Dark
"One good thing about spam... You don't gotta answer it"
When are we going to see a Slashdot time capsule?
Just want to point out that the Microsoft.com story is working fine. Now the question is posed: Can Microsoft.com really handle the Slashdot effect, or do people just not care about MS? :)
:)
Wait...don't answer that.
While we're all flashing back, here's another great flashback to what www.microsoft.com looked like back in 1993. Enjoy! www.microsofttimecapsule.com
To anyone I may have freaked out on: I apologize. I was beside myself trying to get things working again, as this server is sometimes used for Real Work, and was totally useless during the initial onslaught. I'm better now ... :-)
-- Dave