Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Internet Technology

Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet 78

Posted by timothy from the let's-cut-them-some-slack-on-the-nomenclature dept.
katrina writes "Covering the infamous MafiaBoy bank hack, the launch of the first ever online newspaper — MIT's 'The Tech' — and Brewster Kahle developing the Internet Archive back in 1996, five decades of the most significant Internet developments, hacks, legal battles and innovations have been documented in a massive historical article on Cnet UK."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet More

Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet

Comments Filter:
  • I thought Al Gore was only in his 50's.... How old was he when he invented this stuff anyway? This is getting hard to believe now....

    • The article is woefully inadequate.

      - Where's the discussion about email's invention?
      - Or Usenet?
      - Or Fidonet (similar to usenet)?
      - And he completely ignored Electronic Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) which were the precursor to modern web forums. From 1980 to circa 1995, the BBS was how people communicated online.
      - Another important facet is the gradually increasing speeds from 0.3k up to 56k modems, without which we'd still be using just pure text scrolling on screen at a snail's pace.

      This article is not a

      • Ooops. Excuse me while I extricate my foot from my mouth. They discuss email and usenet on pages 5 and 6. My bad! :-(

        Still, they did neglect BBSes and Modems in my opinion. Hobbyist BBSes created most of the standards upon which the web is built, and how successful would the internet be if we all still used 0.3k modems?

  • Worst Slashdot Editing EVAR (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) * <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday September 28, 2008 @12:22AM (#25182411) Homepage Journal

    The title of the article is "The 50 most significant moments of Internet history", the title of the Slashdot story? "Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet" .. whatever, the fuck, that means.

    Disgrace.

    • Some people mistaking think the World Wide Web is "the internet". Therefore anything pre-WWW is "leading up to" the the internet's birth (in their view).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pjt33 ( 739471 )
        Sure, but 1958 is pre-packet switching. Teletype machines could be viewed as leading up to the Internet, but you would struggle to recognise anything pre-60s as an actual computer network.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Eil ( 82413 )

      Agreed. If you have an hour to waste by clicking on Next Page links to read a poorly-researched and graphics-heavy "article," then it's hard to go wrong here.

      If you indeed are curious about the history of the net, this isn't a bad start [wikipedia.org].

      Been waiting 10 years for a system to moderate Slashdot submissions and "editors" instead of just comments, guess I'll wait a while longer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by syousef ( 465911 )

      "Remembering 50 Years of (and Leading Up To) the Internet" .. whatever, the fuck, that means.

      It means I walked barefoot in the snow to go to school and fight in WWII when I was a little boy and the dinosuars roamed the earth. Now get off my lawn. You don't know how easy you have it!

  • It's actually about 50 events spanning on 40 years (Score:5, Informative)

    by NixieBunny ( 859050 ) on Sunday September 28, 2008 @12:23AM (#25182421) Homepage
    ...as the Internet (and even ARPANET) didn't exist in 1958, as you may have guessed.

  • Forget the Problematic Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by Apple Acolyte ( 517892 ) on Sunday September 28, 2008 @12:30AM (#25182443)
    Read the article instead - it appears to be concise, well-written and nicely formatted. It looks like a job well done by cnet UK.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 ) *

      What's with the "next photo" shit?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Apple Acolyte ( 517892 )
        Yeah, I saw that after I posted - that's a little confusing. It would have also been nice to have a chronological listing in addition to their category listing. Still worth reading through (although those damn Flash ads were taking gobs of CPU time).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        The article sucked. As others have pointed out, it was

        a
        little
        bit
        of
        content
        spread
        out
        over
        many
        many
        slow
        to
        load
        pages.

        Two mentions of Digg? Not one of Slashdot, even in the top 100 (though goatse, sigh, was mentioned)?

        Not a single mention of Unix, Linux or Open Source software or the GPL?

        Add this article to its own category EPIC FAIL.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dingen ( 958134 )

      Read the article instead - it appears to be concise, well-written and nicely formatted. It looks like a job well done by cnet UK.

      How can you say this about an article that mixes up basic terms like "the internet" and "the web"?

  • And the reporting the The Tech sucks as much as it ever has. Oh how the times have changed (and haven't)

  • While digg makes the list ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by raxhonp ( 136733 ) on Sunday September 28, 2008 @01:27AM (#25182641)

    .. Slashdot doesn't, not even in the 100 most significant moments. I don't get it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Hymer ( 856453 )
      /. is developed/driven by nerds... oh, wait... so was (and is) the Internet.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1.Slashdot is editor-driven(mostly,and for largest chunk of time).
      2.Its not that big.Slashdot-effect doesn't work on modern hardware.
      3.Slashdot stories are second-hand information,and most value is in user comments.Not particularly important since there are better designed forums which deal with variety of topics daily,that slashdot briefly comments on for a few days.
      Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        3.Slashdot stories are second-hand information,and most value is in user comments.

        Duh.

        But come on, two entries for Digg when sites like Slashdot and FreeRepublic.com were there first (and are better done)?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by edmazur ( 958154 )

      .. Slashdot doesn't, not even in the 100 most significant moments. I don't get it.

      Well, as much as I prefer Slashdot over Digg (I am here after all), Digg does get almost 25 times more unique visitors than Slashdot according to here [compete.com].

  • ...but it seems the internet is about to lose it's future. It's sad how they want to tear down one of the better tools humanity has come up with in the recent years.

    • Approaching it from the rear end, sir. Quit your whining and try to avoid this future, 'cause the worst-case scenario is indeed a very scary thought. Personally I'm really really happy with the WWW Foundation and hoping they can get something going.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SL Baur ( 19540 )

        Approaching it from the rear end, sir.

        Considering that goatse made the list, that's an oddly appropriate, though still disturbing, comment.

  • Java (Score:1, Insightful)

    by ProzacPatient ( 915544 )
    This list seems incomplete, it makes no mention of Java, not even in the honorable mentions! No, not JavaScript, but the Java Virtual Machine. I remember all kinds of websites back in the day using Java applets and there was that whole fight between Microsoft and Sun Systems. I think Java is a significant part of internet history, but others might differ on that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SL Baur ( 19540 )

      This list seems incomplete, it makes no mention of Java, not even in the honorable mentions!

      Nor any mention of FORTRAN[1], Perl[2], MySQL, PostgreSQL, any Unix[3], etc.

      Sigh.

      [1] The successful proof of concept that proved once and for all that hand crafted assembly language was a lose.

      [2] Perl came before Java and is significant in the fact that it was the first large-scale community developed language. Arguably, Perl has a larger contribution to the web than Java.

      [3] BSD Unix was the Reference Implementation for the Arpanet.

  • Didn't Apple have their own version of the net sometime in the early 90's? I think they went belly up in 95 or 96.

  • Original HTTP deamon developed by NCSA... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28, 2008 @02:49AM (#25182831)

    The article says that Apache "succeeded the HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool in the 70s".

    Surely they mean the 90s, when the HTTP protocol was invented?

    (The statement is backed by a reference to The Telecommunications Illustrated Dictionary which also says he developed it in the 1970s...)

     

  • No way am I going to click through 10 pages of ads to read 2-3 pages of content.

    Greatest of condolences to our new CBS Overlords.
  • Youtube is here for only 3 years? I'm honestly shocked, it feels like it's been here forever.

  • Neglected huge items for the recent "hot" things.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rec9140 ( 732463 ) on Sunday September 28, 2008 @09:15AM (#25184221) Homepage
    itunes? ? ? digg????? Puhlease! These have about as as much to do with the internet and its history and development as I do to creating the universe. Under notable/honorable mentions... you've got a ton of stuff that if it didn't exist would mean alot of things would not be around today.....lets seee.. WithOUT FidoNet and BBS' period much of the concept of "netmail" and etc. would be non existant. FidoNet and the BBS community are responsible for alot more than just an "notable mention." SMTP???? HMMMMMM Do you think this might be important????? Naaahhh Its just the PROTOCOL THAT MOVES EMAIL FROM SERVER TO SERVER! Thats not important. SMTP IS A HUGE DEVELOPMENT! Hayes modems??? Ummm HELLO.... With out the ubiquitous Hayes modems and its clones most people would never have been able to connect to an ISP and the Internet......You also totally blew off Compuserve and QLink remember them....they started as serving Commodore users and became A O L ! ! ! Cisco???? Ummm, nope, they certainly are not more worthy than a notable mention......Lets see the fact that they probably make 80-90% of the equipment that makes the internet work couldn't make them important to the development of the internet.....nope..... digg???? Your kidding right?????? digg wouldn't be around if it were not for SLASHDOT! /. /. /. Feel the slashdot effect!?? Ever hear of it????? Around long for digg and its wannabe siblings. You totally blew them off, not even a notable mention..... JenniCam on notable mention???? You start off with a piece about porn and sex on the internet....well JenniCam was the first and you can not place it on a notable mention list when it started a genre of sites to follow. Considering some of the other items on the "notable" list... its clear that the writer has not been around the development of internet technologies and is a recent adopter.....the clues??? digg, twitter, itunes! These have ZERO, no LESS THAN ZERO value to the development of the internet except to the mindless sheeple using them. If you don't know what uucp is and how it was a factor in the expansion and development of the internet then you have no business writing the article. The fact that you put Cisco on a notable mention list shows how little the author understands the development and status quo of the internet.

    • You are right, 100 percent, about everything.

      Making a story up, however, that appealed to the geeks and told the truth wouldn't sell advertising. As proof, look above, and see all the tech geeks bitching about not clicking through 10 pages of ads for the article itself.

      The people that WILL click through those ads are the ones that won't believe the truth or who honestly don't know what the hell the internet was 10 years ago. Hell, before the sub 1K dollar PC, the internet was a geek refuge. Before online

    • Want something significant to ignore? Tymnet - the world's largest commercial network - in 1976.

      Actually, I don't expect much else from an article written by some 20-somethings.

  • To see exactly where the World Wide Web is going, what progress now looks like, try to save a flattened copy of that entire article to a local file, either as HTML or perhaps as an OO or DOC file; you'll have to use a doo-dad like the AntiPagination or RePagination extensions for Firefox, unless you want to drive yourself nuts trying to successively cut and paste each of the twelve pages.

    What you initially get when you're done is mostly not even the article at all: it's all "secondary" page content. When t

    • When I was your age, we had to flip through printed pages full of ads to follow news stories that were continued on page 42. And then someone had torn out that one because the crossword puzzle was on the back.

      And the ink smudged and got all over everything as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by macraig ( 621737 )

        Point of your rapier wit taken. I remember those good old days, too; it's why I quit reading magazines eventually. We needed something a bit more idealistic there and then, too, I think. Maybe this means I'll "quit the Web" eventually, too... but not today. At least for now I can tweak, edit, and censor the Web in ways that I couldn't edit those magazines, when the only editorial tool I had was a pair of scissors.

  • This article is mostly fluff from past 5 years. No mention of the Morris Worm [mit.edu]. Article definately written by a poseur [wikipedia.org].. .

Slashdot Top Deals

Decaffeinated coffee? Just Say No.

Close