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The Web Is 16 Today 235

Posted by kdawson from the raise-a-glass dept.
GuNgA-DiN writes, "Today marks the 16th anniversary of the World Wide Web. According to the timeline on the W3.org site: 'The first web page [was] http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. Unfortunately CERN no longer supports the historical site. Note from this era too, the least recently modified web page we know of, last changed Tue, 13 Nov 1990 15:17:00 GMT (though the URI changed.)' A lot has happened in 16 years and this little 'baby' has grown into quite the teenager."
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The Web Is 16 Today More

The Web Is 16 Today

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  • Confirmed? (Score:5, Funny)

    by aedan ( 196243 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:16PM (#16830936) Homepage
    Has Netcraft confirmed this?

  • Does this mean we get a John Water's movie? (Score:3, Funny)

    by feyhunde ( 700477 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:21PM (#16831012)
    And what state/country is the internet? Just wondering if she's legal.

  • Well, you can still see it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Umbrae ( 866097 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:22PM (#16831018)
    You can still see a version of TheProject.html at

    http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hyper text/WWW/TheProject.html [w3.org]

    although I'm not certain how outdated it is, the 1992-11-03 seems to be encouraging.
    • I guess there are limits for compatibility . . . some of the stuff in there looked pretty experimental.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by foobsr ( 693224 )
      For the real historian:

      http://groups.google.com/group/comp.archives/msg/a 77343f9175b24c3?output=gplain [google.com]

      There you have it all (and there is not much new yet :)

      bang "gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wis c.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu !math.lsa.umich.edu!emv " for the bucks ?)

      a public domain version of Lisp

      and, of course

      "Don't forget to send in your license form. Enjoy."

      CC.

    • Re:Well, you can still see it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @07:27PM (#16831790) Homepage
      OK, who was the last person to surf the entire Web? By this I mean visit every site manually. I did that sometime in November 1992. Took me about 8 hours. At the time there were about 100 sites that were linked to the CERN list of sites.

  • Meh ... it will never take off (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:22PM (#16831020)
    In 1993 on a University VAX my bet would of been Gopherspace. It had Archie and Veronica for godsake!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      There is no way putting Archie and Veronica together was going to result in anything that got anything done.
    • In 1993 on a University VAX my bet would of been Gopherspace

      Yep, my friends will never let me forget my initial assessment of the web in 1993: "that's stupid." :) I was also a big fan of gopher (being a university student at the time as well).


    • When you try to control use and charge for standards.

      WWW is a good example of what happens when you don't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bcat24 ( 914105 )
        They changed for Gopher?! I was a bit young back then, so I missed out on Gopherspace, but I've never heard that the spec cost money.

  • Thanks Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)

    by fit4130 ( 858077 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:29PM (#16831140) Homepage
    Thank you Al Gore. He's the most important man of the 21st century, hands down.
    • He is a 10th level Vice President, after all.
    • Al Gore invented the Internet, not the web. You'd have thought that on Slashdot people would know the difference...
    • No, no, Al Gore invented the _internet_, not the _web_. There's a huge difference!
  • You've just slashdotted the entire World Wide Web!

  • Teenager ? TEENAGER ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:31PM (#16831176) Homepage Journal
    GROWN ? Boy, if we are talking about the 'web', it is on the brink of ascending into supernatural dimensions, growth and 'lore' wise.

    It has become a connection that binds us who are all over the world, it has become a revealer of truth that uncovers the hiddens in the doings of wrongdoers, it has become a place that chinese and canadian and namesoever teenagers come play in, it has become a place where we can find anything in, it is reshaping politics, nations, lives, even inner thoughts of people.

    'It' is actually 'us'. We are the web.

    Welcome to utopia being realized

    • Re:Teenager ? TEENAGER ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grouchomarxist ( 127479 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @08:31PM (#16832438)
      I think you are correct in saying that "We are the web". It is true. The web is a reflection of humanity. In represents mankind, warts and all.

      However, because of that I wouldn't want to call the web a utopia. It is a communications mechanism, but it can't fix our flaws, it reveals them.

  • Remembering SGML (Score:5, Funny)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:32PM (#16831182) Homepage Journal
    Back in the early '90s, I was working at American Airlines. Then as now, they were largely mainframe-oriented, though access was via PC emulation. A suggestion came across that we should look at this thing called SGML -- a way of digitizing our voluminous documentation so that it would be accessible from any platform. Mainframe, PC, Mac... anything.

    I wasn't terribly impressed. Sure, it was cool to be able to add "hyper links" to other parts of the document, or to other documents, but the conversion process would be murder. And tables! What was all this TR TH TD mishmash, just to make a simple table?

    My recommendation: Why doesn't everyone just use Microsoft Word format? It's available to everyone, and it's not like the internal format is going to change or anything!

    Thank goodness I was working somewhere else by the time my first thoughts on SGML -- the precursor of HTML -- were proven to be utterly, completely Wrong.
    • My recommendation: Why doesn't everyone just use Microsoft Word format? It's available to everyone, and it's not like the internal format is going to change or anything!



      You're kidding, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Early nineties, Microsoft Word?

      More likely WordStar or at best WordPerfect 5.

      • WordStar was 1985 for me, and some versions to follow until late 80s. I wrote my M.A. in it from 85 to 86. There was another app coming around these days, with an ridiculous menu system but some strength in page layout and much better equipped to work with huge texts and laser printers, ms word. Got it in version 4 at the end of the 80s, did an 800p travelguide to China with it in 1991, probably version 5 then. This was all dos-land, of course. We installed Windows 3.0 in ~1992, winword 1 was laughable but
    • Why doesn't everyone just use Microsoft Word format? It's available to everyone, and it's not like the internal format is going to change or anything

      That wasn't true then, has never been true and never will be true.

  • Bah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by NinePenny ( 856053 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:35PM (#16831226)
    Back then, we used Gopher... And we liked it! These kids and their new fangled web thingy need to get off my lawn.

  • Informative! (Score:5, Funny)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:37PM (#16831262) Journal
    I thought the least recently modified web page was actually my personal home page still held on my old University programmer's society account. Thanks for the clarification.

  • Wow (Score:2, Informative)

    by hahafaha ( 844574 ) *
    Hey, Nov. 13 is my birthday! (Happy birthday to me...) The WWW and I were born on the same day! Well, this explains a lot!

  • I still get a kick out of searching for "my first home page" to find old snapshots of early internet splendor.
  • it was, appropriately enough for the web and its future as the pr0n superhighway, of scantily clad women [wikipedia.org]

  • My Super Sweet 16 (Score:4, Funny)

    by mattwarden ( 699984 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:54PM (#16831482)
    Time for a little party [mtv.com]? Who's up for mortgaging their house to fund it?

  • First web page (Score:5, Funny)

    by DaveM753 ( 844913 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @06:55PM (#16831494)
    I would have thought the first web page would have said "Under Construction".

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      I would have thought the first web page would have said "Under Construction".

      You're damn right!
      Including an animated gif!

  • Teenagers (Score:2, Funny)

    by g00z ( 81380 )
    A lot has happened in 16 years and this little 'baby' has grown into quite the teenager.

    And like most teenagers, it's preoccupied with pornography.
  • Try running the W3C Validator [w3.org] on that woozy.

    Sheesh. Some people have no respect for standards...
  • Commercializing the internet?

    How'd that ever work out anyway?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      Commercializing the internet?

      I do indeed. I remember working at a company which used the net for commercial purposes in about 1993. We formatted and transmitted journals to the IEEE, and used ftp to do it.

      The whole thing had to be kept pretty quiet on both sides, as it was a near certainty that if the net-powers-that-be discovered we were using the internet for sordid commerce then there would probably be hell to pay and access to lose.

      The web was something I seriously misjudged at first. I remembe
  • over the Internet? Perhaps more than any other medium before it...?

  • Oldest server still serving (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frisket ( 149522 ) <peter@sil[ ]il.ie ['mar' in gap]> on Monday November 13, 2006 @07:17PM (#16831696) Homepage
    The longest-serving web server (the search engine behind the current celt.ucc.ie) was the 9th web server in the world and it's still sitting there, still serving the project it was bought for. Something of a two-edged sword: kudos to Sun for making a machine that has never crashed and never dropped a bit, and to Tim Bray for the PAT search engine which runs on it; but a victim of its own success in that it's only now being scheduled for replacement as the project moves from SGML to XML.
    • The longest-serving web server (the search engine behind the current celt.ucc.ie) was the 9th web server in the world and it's still sitting there, still serving the project it was bought for. Something of a two-edged sword: kudos to Sun for making a machine that has never crashed and never dropped a bit, and to Tim Bray for the PAT search engine which runs on it; but a victim of its own success in that it's only now being scheduled for replacement as the project moves from SGML to XML.


      Posting to Slashdot a link to to a web-server hosted on ~15 years old hardware? PRICELESS

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chochos ( 700687 )
      OK but not all of it is old; it says it's running Apache 2.0.52 so at least the web server has been updated, although I suppose the most important part is all the SGML stuff that is going to be replaced with XML now.
  • Happy sweet 16th birthday to the World Wide Web!

    Now, who do we designate to take the obligatory birthday spanking?

  • I thought he brought it out in the '70s. Hmm!

    Learn something new every day...

  • 16, eh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by proxy318 ( 944196 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @08:02PM (#16832172)
    Two more years. I'd hit it.
  • Call me when she's 21.

    Then we'll have a par-tay, let me tell you!
  • Realizing that I am a good deal older than the internet, and that a fair percentage of the readers of this article probably aren't, make me feel old. Get off my lawn.com you damned kids!

  • So where's the web-controlled car?

  • DNF (Score:2, Funny)

    by xPhoenix ( 531848 )
    last changed Tue, 13 Nov 1990 15:17:00 GMT
    I can't seem to find the URL anywhere, but I could have sworn that the page announcing plans for Duke Nukem Forever was at least a few days older...
  • The system goes on-line November 13th, 1990. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. The Internet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th 2010. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

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