Re: OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere

Joel Koltner wrote:
"Joerg" <notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:fc%mk.7523$cn7.2407@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Only problem is, long _before_ his baby "High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991" I already used the web extensively.

Yeah, you and many other people... the problem is that it's impossible to define some exact point in time when "The Internet" began, given that it was an amalgamation of many other networks that existed at the time (including the biggie, ARPANET) with the only significant characteristic being the protocol was TCP/IP and UDP at the lower layers and DNS, SMTP, FTP, and (eventually) HTTP at the higher levels.


The only difference other than speed I remember from back then was that we were all metered. IIRC I had 20h/mo "free" included in the fee and beyond that they'd charge something like $3/hr. Later that dropped a lot. Mozilla was the most reliable browser I every had and I jumped for joy when it showed up. But best of all was that most web sites were text based. It took me just a few minutes on Sabre to pick a flight, call it in and two days later I had the tickets. Blew my travel agent away and actually made them quite concerned that this would catch on. I reassured them that this stuff would eventually become over-sophisticated with graphics and less useful. Which promptly happened.


I think it's a correct statement that the roots of the Internet had a lot more to do with internal government programs and various commercial developments than anything relating to an enlightened set of politicians thinking that the average person needed e-mail and web surfing in their living rooms. The one place where you did see something of this enlightened thinking might have actually been in France, with their old 1200 baud Minitel terminals, having recognized that providing everyone with a terminal for electronic look-up of information made a lot more sense than handing them a big chunk of a dead tree every year.


Yep, Minitels were a smart move. But that's about the only data transfer technology I remember where it wasn't completely driven by private enterprise. In France the government is rather deeply intertwined with business. Not quite my cuppa tea. IIRC Minitel isn't compatible with Internet and thus an island solution.

--
Regards, Joerg

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