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The Internet

The Internet At 35 321

Posted by timothy from the can-drive-drink-and-buy-porn dept.
Anonymous writes "CNN has a story on the 35th anniversary of the Internet, overviewing its past and the future. According to the article the history began on 'September 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers.' So, happy birthday, the Internet!"
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The Internet At 35 More

The Internet At 35

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  • editors? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ack154 ( 591432 ) * on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:00PM (#10105024)
    So which is it? 25? or 35? Come on... :p

  • Haha (Score:5, Funny)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:01PM (#10105031)
    35 Years Ago Today: Frist PSOT!!!1

  • Over the hill (Score:5, Funny)

    by cloudscout ( 104011 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:01PM (#10105037) Homepage
    "The Internet At 25"... but it started in 1969. I think this "Internet" is a lot like some 35 year old guys I've seen in various chatrooms trying to convince all of the co-eds that they're really 25.

  • I motion that... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EmperorKagato ( 689705 ) * <sakamura@gmail.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:02PM (#10105045) Homepage Journal
    the delay in final submission for articles should be moved from 10 minutes to 20 minutes. I submit the mistakes to the editor on duty, but unfortunately, I was too late. :(

  • Memories.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:02PM (#10105051)
    ...Ah yes, the internet. Putting porn and pipebomb instructions in the hands of 13-year olds since September 3rd, 1969...

    • Re:Memories.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:07PM (#10105084)
      Remember ten years ago when the porno used to load line by line? I remember being 13ish when my friend linked me to some surprise.jpg and it loaded line by line for like 5 minutes and then at the bottom the girl had a penis. What the fuck. I should really sue AOL for scarring me for life.

      • Re:Memories.... (Score:5, Funny)

        by emc ( 19333 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:14PM (#10105138)
        What the fuck. I should really sue AOL for scarring me for life.

        I have always thought that all non-AOL users should get to sue AOL for bringing all of these 'users' onto the Internet in the first place.

      • Re:Memories.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:41PM (#10105256) Homepage
        Yeah, that brings back memories. For us, the hard part was getting fake accounts on the local adult BBSes, when they all required validation calls. I figured out a social engineering solution to that problem - just put down a totally unpronounceable foreign name, and the sysops would never call to validate for fear of mispronouncing the user's name.

        Then it was just a matter of dialing up at 2400 baud and batch downloading everything we could find. Of course, this was using Telix in DOS, so to actually see anything in real-time we'd use a TSR program (ShowGIF?) that'd decode the image as it was written to disk. We'd stare at the image as it came across line by line, and try to figure out what body parts we were looking at.

        "Is that an elbow?" "No, I think it's a knee." "No, no, it's the back of someone's neck..." "No it's not, it's a... oh, God! Cancel!! Hit cancel!! My eyes!"

        Great fun, and really challenging when you've got four or more people in an unusual configuration in the picture.

        Of course, the 40 meg hard drive didn't leave much room for pr0n archives. We had to start offloading it to 200 meg QIC tapes at some point. Ah, the good old days.
      • " Remember ten years ago when the porno used to load line by line?"

        That was on a 14.4 with VGA graphics. But immediately before that I had a 2400 with EGA, so any pics that weren't ASCII art really just weren't worth the download.

        Dirty text files, on the other hand... :)
    • Yeah, but back then "porn" consisted of ASCII printouts of Snoopy getting whacked off by Peppermint Patty.

  • First Data Transmitted on the Internet (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:03PM (#10105054)
    1) 1 x 1 pixel of goatse.cx 2) Two sentence SPAM email trying to get investors into something called TCP/IP 3) The famous "Nixon" worm of '69. Crippled 3 machines.

  • I get the feeling... (Score:4, Funny)

    by msgregory@earthlink. ( 98641 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:03PM (#10105056)
    ...that the largest discussion of the difference between 25 and 35 in the history of the internet is about to ensue.

  • The Internet... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kjones692 ( 805101 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [rezinagrobyc.eht]> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:04PM (#10105059)
    Ah, the Internet. Designed so that even in the event of nuclear war, our military leaders would still be able to access pornography.

  • 35 years going on 25 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Aexia ( 517457 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:04PM (#10105060)
    Is the Internet going through a mid-life crisis or something? First it found it out that Al Gore wasn't his real father; it was actually adopted by the US government. Then everyone blamed it for the tanking economy.

    And now it's just bought a Porsche and is going in for botox treatments.

  • Silly Mainstream News... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FlipmodePlaya ( 719010 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:04PM (#10105063) Journal
    The focus of the article seems to be security issues of the Internet. Talk of virusses, spam and whatnot. They even qute a guy saying he wishes security had been a priority when it was first invented. Shouldn't it be noted these issues are in software, not the hardware infastructure or protocal of the Internet?

    • Re:Silly Mainstream News... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 3l1za ( 770108 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:09PM (#10105107)
      The hardware infrastructure != the protocol of the Internet. The protocol of the internet is very much implemented in software. And, yes, the ease in ability of spoofing an Internet Protocol address is a security issue with the protocol, not just with a particular software implementation of that protocol.

      Ditto there are issues with the various routing protocols, which are issues not just with any particular implementation of that protocol but with the protocol itself.
      • To say nothing of weaknesses in ICMP, TCP, etc...

        Ever hear of the TCP slow start attack?

        Wonder why ping flooding is possible (hint ICMP goes directly over IP not via TCP which would prohibit this particular attack in its most common form)?

        They shouldn't beat themselves up too hard, though; heck, even SSL v 1.0 was a total and complete mess (but nothing compared to some other modern-day-designed doozies) and that was designed much later than the initial Internet was... and hence with a much greater

  • If the internet was a girl. (Score:5, Funny)

    by eBayDoug ( 764290 ) <doug@pioutsource.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:05PM (#10105069) Homepage Journal
    It would forever be 29 years old.

  • Lighten up (Score:4, Funny)

    by outriding9800 ( 547724 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:06PM (#10105077)
    I think the editors are under enough stress. I mean they first have to make sure the article wasnt posted 3 times before and do a spell check. Now you all want them to check basic math. gessh give them a break

  • The ARPAnet, not quite the Internet (Score:5, Informative)

    by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:07PM (#10105085)
    Well, let's not let the title get too carried away on accuracy, even disregarding its subtraction error. In 1969, the prototype ARPAnet started up. It used NCP (TCP/IP came later). It didn't become the "Internet" until there were multiple interconnected networks, and that was not until the early 1980s, after the TCP/IP transition (which was completed in 1983). There were multiple networks once the more production-oriented MILNET split off of the more research-y ARPAnet. And after that came CSnet and all sorts of others.

    But yes, it was in many ways better in the early days (pre-1993), because there was no spam, or for that matter any other advertising. Although Google and the like do sort of make up for it.

    • Re:The ARPAnet, not quite the Internet (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:17PM (#10105433)
      I know I cant be the only one that misses dialing into a local BBS to check FidoNET, play some door games, chat with locals in the message boards. And whenever I had a problem I could actually ring the SysOp and actually break into chat with a real human. Those were the days. I used to pick up the local BBS newsletter for free at the supermarket. The coolest BBSs were multi node and you could "chat" with other users. It was like TTY on unix but with beautiful ANSI art. Some of the ASCII and ANSI art the came out of the BBS scene was truly beautiful. Its amazing what one can do with 255 characters and 16 colors.

      Then one day one of the bigger BBSs in town, a 10 node WildCat board got Lynx and things started to change.

      I remember getting "online" in '94, hitting lycos to see what the fuss was about and feeling totally alone, like a little kid in a huge subway terminal full of hundreds of people, yet no one talking. And by then USENET was already just a place to get binaries.

      Well, at least theres a community on slashdot, where else am I going to get my 1. Nat Portman 2. Hot Gritz 3. in Soviet Russia 4. BSD Dieing 5. Profit fix?

      My how its changed, I miss 120 pixel wide, 16 color animated gif DMCAless banners.

  • dunno about the Internet but (Score:3, Funny)

    by dsanfte ( 443781 ) * on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:07PM (#10105090) Journal
    Not sure about this Internet thing, but I heard about the IntarWeb from a friend and gave it a shot. It's great! There's free Britney pics, lots of this "pr0n" stuff at various sites starting with the word goat, and forums full of all kinds of wonderful religious fanatics, ready to convert me to their cult. I love it!

  • Karma killer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zorilla ( 791636 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:08PM (#10105093)
    Wow, the Slashdot editors must really have a grudge against the masses today. I figured this would be the best way to justify killing everybody's karma through redundant mods.

    Also, who would even be surprised anymore if they didn't even see as much as an acknowledgement of the mistake being corrected, just a quick change from "25" to "35"?

  • What progress (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alcimedes ( 398213 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:08PM (#10105095)
    Initially, the internet was bits of meaningless data between two computers.

    Today? Bits of meaningless data between millions of computers.

    All joking aside though, I have no idea how people got anything done before the internet.

    Need to fix something around the house? Check the 'net.

    Need to figure out where the hell a business/friend is? Check the 'net.

    Have some jackass who insists they're right about some obscure factoid, and want to make them admit they're full of crap now, before they can deny it ever happened? Good 'ol internet.

    Between wireless, high-speed access, and laptops within an arm's reach, the average person now has access to information that used to be obscure and almost impossible to come by at a moments notice.

    In 35 years, the internet has probably done more to change the way people live than any other invention. (at least in the last 100 years or so) That dude who discovered fire and the wheel did pretty well for humanity.

    • Re:What progress (Score:5, Informative)

      by Inthewire ( 521207 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:15PM (#10105141)
      Air conditioning.
      Polio vaccine.
      Traffic lights.
      Frozen food.
      Television.
      Large-scale farming.
      Credit cards.
      Flouride.

      There have been dozens if not hundreds of things invented in the past 100 years that have changed lifestyles more than the internet.

      • Re:What progress (Score:2, Insightful)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "There have been dozens if not hundreds of things invented in the past 100 years that have changed lifestyles more than the internet."

        Television is the only thing I see on that list that could qualify with your statement. Everything else, though significant, is not in the same league. There are a LOT of people on this planet that if you were to send them back 100 years in the past, the net would be the thing they most ache for. (Unless they had polio :P)

      • Re:What progress (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jericho4.0 ( 565125 )
        TV certainly has had a huge impact on our society, but the internet beats the rest, IMHO.
      • Maybe YOUR lifestyle. If so, hand over your geek license.
      • Air conditioning. -- Fans
        Polio vaccine. -- Dont have polio
        Traffic lights. -- round a bouts
        Frozen food. -- fresh food, canned food
        Television. -- radio, (internet)
        Large-scale farming. -- an invention? or just bigger small scale farming?
        Credit cards. -- cash, eftpos
        Flouride. -- soap?

        Well, basically what im saying is that stuff is hardly life changing, and barely affects me. Only TV comes close, and to be honest id trade TV for the Internet anyday - the only difference is the faster streaming of content

    • Re:What progress (Score:5, Funny)

      by nuclear305 ( 674185 ) * on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:16PM (#10105142)
      "All joking aside though, I have no idea how people got anything done before the internet."

      That was back when people still left their houses to find their friends, and read books to research those obscure factoids :)

    • Re:What progress (Score:5, Funny)

      by toxcspdrmn ( 471013 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:22PM (#10105165) Homepage
      That dude who discovered fire and the wheel did pretty well for humanity
      That was the same guy both times? Cool.
    • Have some jackass who insists they're right about some obscure factoid, and want to make them admit they're full of crap now, before they can deny it ever happened?

      This is how the Guinness Book of World Records began,... no really [wikipedia.org]


      ---Lane
    • Initially, the internet was bits of meaningless data between two computers.
      Today? Bits of meaningless data between millions of computers.

      Dude, data is always meaningless... meaning happens between the ears of fuzzy-headed monkeys.
    • All joking aside though, I have no idea how people got anything done before the internet.

      Need to fix something around the house? Check the 'net.

      Need to figure out where the hell a business/friend is? Check the 'net.

      Have some jackass who insists they're right about some obscure factoid, and want to make them admit they're full of crap now, before they can deny it ever happened? Good 'ol internet.

      Oh come on. The internet certainly makes these tasks more convenient, but haven't you ever heard of a LIBRARY

      • Re:What progress (Score:5, Insightful)

        by abborren ( 773413 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:22PM (#10105456) Journal

        Visiting the library once in a while is useful. It is quite a mistake to believe that the internet is a good source for all information you need. Sure, it can provide a lot of useful information but often in low quantities and very spread out (and what about peer-review?).

        Finding good and useful information in a library is way more efficient than searching the web, if you compare time spend vs. amount of found (and good) information, IMHO.

    • Initially, the internet was bits of meaningless data between two computers.
      Today? Bits of meaningless data between millions of computers.
      Waitaminnit, you're being unfair. Things haven't just stayed the same. Today, I get 2000 spams a week, and I can't stop them from coming. In 1969, I would have yelled across the room and said, "Hey, that's enough --- will you please shut off the meaningless data now?"
    • All joking aside though, I have no idea how people got anything done before the internet.

      Why don't you search Google and find out?

  • Internet Day - Sept 2 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ravensign ( 134410 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:13PM (#10105132)
    Sept 2 should be a national holiday.

    What are you getting for Internet Day?

    Why a new Cisco 7x00 series router!

    Thank you Linus Claus!
  • But I knew back in '73 when we got our IMP that no good would come of it.

  • First Spam (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheFairElf ( 669537 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:31PM (#10105215)
    "...as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers"

    So they first tested Internet with spam? With that kind of a start no wonder we're in the current mess!

  • Who would have guessed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dev32810 ( 748540 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:35PM (#10105226)
    that in the summer of 1969 the just completed moon landing would have almost no impact to our lives 35 years later, but these bits between two computers would change the face of the world. Weird...

    • Re:Who would have guessed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:44PM (#10105541)
      No, that's not right. The moon landing, along with the rest of the Mercury and Apollo missions, had a profound and lasting impact on the world. Yes, we're not all flitting from one planet to the next in our own personal rocket ships, but we think about ourselves and our place in the universe differently now. If you think the moon landings have had no impact on your life, it's most likely that you've never lived in a world without space travel.

      The Internet happened in a very different way. Its inception was, at the time, incomprehensible to everyone but a few smartypants researchers. And even those scientists really had no idea how the net would grow to encompass so much of our lives. Even fifteen years after its birth, very few people had any clue about the Internet. The Internet may have been technically born when the first two machines were plugged in, but it wasn't important until many years later, when it became a movement.

  • hahah (Score:2, Funny)

    by Vlion ( 653369 )
    ooo look!
    25 is isomorphic to 35- it changes randomly.
    First 25, now 35, looky 25 is coming back soon!

  • In the year 2014.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by monoqlith ( 610041 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:44PM (#10105273)
    The Internet suddenly has a mid-life crisis. Looking back on its life, it realizes its squandered its time on earth on porn, e-commerce, and petty IM conversations. . The Internet feels hollow and worthless. To console itself, it buys a Porsche from www.porsche.com, and takes it out on the road. Now feeling youthful and vibrant, the Internet uses the Porsche to woo a younger network. Soon enough, the Internet and the younger network are in the throes of a sultry affair. One night, the Internet's rubber breaks and he accidentally gets the younger network pregnant. Scared, the Internet runs away, and the younger network is left on its own to raise the Subnet. The Subnet grows into a full Class C and then into an Internet of its own.

  • And... (Score:5, Funny)

    by atomm1024 ( 570507 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:53PM (#10105310)
    The "meaningless test data," by the way, read thusly:
    g00b3r69: hey a/s/l?
    h0t_arpa_chik: 19/f/dc
    g00b3r69: kewl 20/m/dc wanna cyber?
    h0t_arpa_chik: k
    In other news, September 3 marks be the 35th anniversary of Goatse (and, additionally marking the birthday of leetspeak, we must remember that back then it was known only by its IP address -- 60.47.53.101).

  • language (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 10000000000000000000 ( 809085 )
    this type of thing always makes me wonder about all the other firsts out there.

    like the first word. What was the first word? it had to have happened somewhere at sometime, right?

    We are fortunate enough to actually know when the first bits flowed accross this leap in human communication we call the Internet (or internet for those that like to mux with things).

    But that first being on some ancient plain understanding the concept that she can convey an idea; that she has ideas, that she is something.

    Someon
    • Getting off-topic, but have you ever wondered how some of the more basic things were discovered?

      Who discovered smoking? What possessed them to rip plants up, set fire to them, and inhale the vapors?

      And how about sex? Falling in love might be a natural reaction, but how the hell did they figure that one out? What else went on?

  • ipv6 vs ipv4 inaccuracy in CNN article (Score:3, Informative)

    by stanwirth ( 621074 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @07:53PM (#10105319)
    Change doesn't come easily, however. For instance, the IPv6 numbering system was deemed an Internet standard about five years ago, but the vast majority of software and hardware today still runs on the older IPv4, which is rapidly running out of room.

    Ipv4 running out of room is a bit of a myth -- there's still plenty of companies and uninversities with huge blocks of ipv4 address space that they have for historical reasons.

    Most ipv4 stacks run on top of an ipv6 stack now and have for several years. I don't see what hardware has to do with it, unless they mean those old routers on the backbone. Most peoples' desktop's and server's NICs can already handle ipv6, and there's nothing stopping them from writing and using ipv6-based applications (client and server). Gettiing ipv6 packets through an ipv4-only backbone segment is just a matter of setting up a tunnel.

    PS I think they meant internet turns 23 -- in hex

    • Re:ipv6 vs ipv4 inaccuracy in CNN article (Score:5, Informative)

      by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:09PM (#10105391) Journal
      Ipv4 running out of room is a bit of a myth -- there's still plenty of companies and uninversities with huge blocks of ipv4 address space that they have for historical reasons.

      Rather than debunk the myth, you've proved it.

      The whole reason we're "running out of room" is that "old" companies have massive netblocks they're not even beginning to use.

      This is like saying, "There's still plenty of land left in the city. Big companies bought it all up to hold onto." There's plenty of unused IPs out there. The problem is that they'll probably never be assigned.

      I once wrote a script to do a whois on every Class A, and lump them into a text file. I was surprised to find that the United States Government owns something like 30 Class A's.

      It's not a lack of unused IPs. It's a lack of allocatable IPs.

      • Agreed!

        The article put down to technology a problem that should properly be lain at the feet of bureaucracy and politics.

        It's not the fault of the addressing protocol itself that its address space has been (in retrospect) misallocated.

        The historical reasons for the misallocation is a whole nother topic, and I suspect has less to do with greed than with institutional inertia.

    • you're right in that it's the core routers that needs to be upgraded. mostly in memory i'd think.

      imagine what going from ipv4 to ipv6 would do to the (already huge) routing tables (think BGP).-

      also the increased overhead put (yet again) a bit more load on the backbone links.

      off the top of my head of course. i'm sure there's more reasons

  • It's the Meaning, Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:05PM (#10105366) Homepage Journal
    ... bits of meaningless test data ...

    Meaningless? Meaningless?

    Those bits weren't "meaningless" -- they meant something very clear and important:

    Test successful.

    -kgj

  • BBN & IMP at McClellan (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chiph ( 523845 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:06PM (#10105371)
    In 1986 I was stationed at McClellan AFB, and got to watch some contractors install about 4 racks of beige equipment called an "Interface Message Processor" from a company called BBN. I had no clue at the time it was part of the internet. About ten years later I realized what it was, and thought "Wow, I got to see an IMP in person!"

    Sorry, I don't have a photo (and couldn't find one via Google) -- cameras weren't allowed in the area. The very first IMPs looked like this [ed-thelen.org], though.

    Chip H.

  • Was going so well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:09PM (#10105390)

    So it started with technological innovation, and saw rapid development through the cooperation of governments and universities. It was refined and improved thanks to the effort of a bunch of awfully dedicated academics [postel.org] to the point where it could merge with mainstream technologies (talking PPP over analog phone modems). The new worldwide resource gave us the ability to communicate like never before [rfc-editor.org].

    Things were going so well, until the marketers came on board and started flooding people with ads and junk whatever way they could find. Spam was funny at first; now it's a serious waste of bandwidth and resources, with business people resorting to purely criminal activities [securityfocus.com] in order to flood their advertising and harm benevolent volunteer organizations [google.com]. Thanks to dirty business the Internet has become a battle ground. Spyware and even viruses are directly linked [sysdesign.ca] to immoral advertising/spam.

    Now, I don't hate marketing people (I run a businses, and am a student in Management) but it's safe to say that immoral marketers are f*cking up the Internet.

  • OSQ (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aggrazel ( 13616 ) <aggrazel@gmail.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:18PM (#10105440) Journal
    They have the internet on computers now?

  • Already 35? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )
    Wow, is it already 35? I feel so old... I remember when back in the early 1970s I said to one of my friends that I don't know when, I don't know how, but I am sure that eventually one day someone will somehow use this new technology for pornography... In my sickest dreams I haven't imagined something on the scale of images.google.com, though. That having been said, happy birthday to Internet, the most important achievment of humanity since the printing press. It all began on "September 2, 1969, as bits of m
  • So the Internet is really 35 years old, or at least will be in September, which is before November...

    INTERNET FOR PRESIDENT!

  • Houston we have a problem... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dfj225 ( 587560 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:58PM (#10105585) Homepage Journal
    "Working with NASA, Cerf is also trying to extend the network into outer space to better communicate with spacecraft."
    Astronaut: Houston, we have a problem...one of the display screens is reading "j00 R pAwned".

  • 1969 Internet maps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oob ( 131174 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @09:01PM (#10105601)
    Here's a nice collection of Internet maps [cybergeography.org] from September 1969 onwards, showing the network build out from UCLA to include Stanford, UCSB, Utah and so on.

  • Older than 35 really... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hobadee ( 787558 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @09:26PM (#10105686) Homepage Journal
    If you define "Internet" as two or more computers communicating with each other, then it's been around for longer. Hackers at MIT way back when hooked together 2 computers (PDP-11 and PDP-7 I think) and told some professors they had created a chess program. They had one professor sit in one room at the terminal for one of the computers, and the other professor in the other room with the terminal for the other computer. The professors played each other for a while until one of them realized the responses were a bit slow, then saw/followed the wire into the next room where the other professor was sitting!

  • Not only is the Internet 35, but so is the WWW!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by skintigh2 ( 456496 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @10:47PM (#10106112)
    Just ask the "tech" "reporter" at AP "news."

    Web Turns 35, but Still Work in Progress
    http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st ory&cid=52 8&e=1&u=/ap/20040829/ap_on_hi_te/internet_s_birthd ay

  • Original IMP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @11:56PM (#10106391) Homepage
    I still remember seeing the original IMP at Case Tech, one of the first sixteen nodes. It was also the first to be removed. Case lost their R&D contract, which was to develop something like a VHDL compiler, decades too early. So DARPA took their IMP back.

    But nobody really cared at Case, because the emphasis there was on "high-capacity, fast-turnaround batch computing". They got really good at batch job processing. It was so cost-effective that Case stayed with it years after other schools went interactive.

  • technically, just the ArpaNet is 35 (Score:3, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Monday August 30, 2004 @11:16AM (#10108930)
    Until the mid-80s there were several national networks with various qualities of interconnectability-ArpaNet, MilNet, NSFNet, BitNet, etc. The "InterNet" agreed on standardized protocols and funded a trans-continental optical fiber backbone. AL Gore (really) is repsonsible for that legislation.

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