4 ms·

I've been in the internet since the 80s. Man what a nice thing we've built. We have turned the internet into a network where people snitch on each other to ma

I've been in the internet since the 80s. Man what a nice thing we've built. We have turned the internet into a network where people snitch on each other to marketers for fractions of a penny.

pc86 8y ago
The 80s? Were you involved in ARPANet or something?
- robin_reala 8y ago
  I first went onto the internet in 1990 when my BBS got a connection. It was quite well developed by the end of the 80s.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    80s were still fairly early for Internet access. I was on the ARPANET as early as 1979 or so but just trading the occasional email in a lab. "Real" internet access, first at work and then through my BBS, was probably more like the early 1990s.
    - robin_reala 8y ago
      Oh yeah, I didn’t do anything on the Internet in 1990 apart from typing ‘go internet’ into CIX (my BBS at the time), sitting there wondering what you could do with it, then killing the connection when my dad pointed out that we paid by the minute for the phone line :) I don’t think I knew anyone online that wasn’t on CIX either.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        I used CIS for some things but as you say the charges were pretty high. I mostly used a private local BBS at the time. I’m guessing it was more like 1994 or thereabouts when I started FTPing files and getting into Usenet.
      - DanBC 8y ago
        People don't understand just how expensive early online access was. Here's a page from 1988 Whole Earth Catalogue "Signal - Communication tools for the Information Age" http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2janfrd&s=7#.WwcJwiAh200 http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2janfrd&s=7#.WwcJwiAh200 Compuserve, charging $11 per hour, had "more than 250,000 subscribers". The Source, charging $8 per hour, was popular for its conferencing system "parti". Delphi, charging $6 per hour had a loyal but small (less than 10,000 users) following. BIX, $9 per hour, grew from a magazine. I like the quote: "This is the computer industry as it used to be: people sharing ideas and solutions without the greed and grit with associated with today's corporate driven, litigation-laced, industry" (written 30 years ago). http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=1300 http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=1...
        robin_reala 8y ago
        CIX supplied Ameol (a most excellent offline reader) which could connect quickly and disconnect. In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local calls, so that was an added expense on top of that.
        ghaff 8y ago
        >In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local calls Although free local calls could be quite limited in area. Intrastate long distance (which could be as little as 15 or 20 miles away) could actually be more expensive than interstate long distance. I don't remember the details but I used a private BBS service in the nearest major city in the 80s. I had some sort of phone plan that optimized for this but I still used offline tools to minimize my online time. (i.e. Login, suck down content, logoff, read and reply offline) I used similar tools for Compuserve. As you say, it was extraordinarily expensive by today's standards. People complain about the pricing of a lot of things but telecoms and pretty much everything related to computing is incredibly cheap.
- pests 8y ago
  There are people here who invented ARPANet.
  - pc86 8y ago
    Perhaps that's why I asked if gerbilly was involved in ARPANet.
    - gerbilly 8y ago
      I was on the internet as an undergrad first at UofT in 1988, it was mostly FTP and usenet back then. Our machines didn't even use DNS yet IIRC there was a HOSTS.TXT file sent around that had to be updated as new sites were added to the network. It was fairly early, and I got to see the internet before the marketers started to take notice of it. I remember the internet worm[1] and the Canter and Siegel usenet spam a bit later[2]. I'm glad the internet was made public of course but I wish the standards from back then had better security built in. Of course encrypting everything back then would have been a significant drain on computational resources. We used to login 40 students at a time on TTYs to a Sun 3/280 (25mhz CPU!).[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-3
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

I've been in the internet since the 80s. Man what a nice thing we've built. We have turned the internet into a network where people snitch on each other to marketers for fractions of a penny.

pc86 8y ago

The 80s? Were you involved in ARPANet or something?

robin_reala 8y ago
I first went onto the internet in 1990 when my BBS got a connection. It was quite well developed by the end of the 80s.
- ghaff 8y ago
  80s were still fairly early for Internet access. I was on the ARPANET as early as 1979 or so but just trading the occasional email in a lab. "Real" internet access, first at work and then through my BBS, was probably more like the early 1990s.
  - robin_reala 8y ago
    Oh yeah, I didn’t do anything on the Internet in 1990 apart from typing ‘go internet’ into CIX (my BBS at the time), sitting there wondering what you could do with it, then killing the connection when my dad pointed out that we paid by the minute for the phone line :) I don’t think I knew anyone online that wasn’t on CIX either.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I used CIS for some things but as you say the charges were pretty high. I mostly used a private local BBS at the time. I’m guessing it was more like 1994 or thereabouts when I started FTPing files and getting into Usenet.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      People don't understand just how expensive early online access was. Here's a page from 1988 Whole Earth Catalogue "Signal - Communication tools for the Information Age" http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2janfrd&s=7#.WwcJwiAh200 http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2janfrd&s=7#.WwcJwiAh200 Compuserve, charging $11 per hour, had "more than 250,000 subscribers". The Source, charging $8 per hour, was popular for its conferencing system "parti". Delphi, charging $6 per hour had a loyal but small (less than 10,000 users) following. BIX, $9 per hour, grew from a magazine. I like the quote: "This is the computer industry as it used to be: people sharing ideas and solutions without the greed and grit with associated with today's corporate driven, litigation-laced, industry" (written 30 years ago). http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=1300 http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=1...
      - robin_reala 8y ago
        CIX supplied Ameol (a most excellent offline reader) which could connect quickly and disconnect. In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local calls, so that was an added expense on top of that.
        ghaff 8y ago
        >In the UK we didn’t have the luxury of the US’s free local calls Although free local calls could be quite limited in area. Intrastate long distance (which could be as little as 15 or 20 miles away) could actually be more expensive than interstate long distance. I don't remember the details but I used a private BBS service in the nearest major city in the 80s. I had some sort of phone plan that optimized for this but I still used offline tools to minimize my online time. (i.e. Login, suck down content, logoff, read and reply offline) I used similar tools for Compuserve. As you say, it was extraordinarily expensive by today's standards. People complain about the pricing of a lot of things but telecoms and pretty much everything related to computing is incredibly cheap.
pests 8y ago
There are people here who invented ARPANet.
- pc86 8y ago
  Perhaps that's why I asked if gerbilly was involved in ARPANet.
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    I was on the internet as an undergrad first at UofT in 1988, it was mostly FTP and usenet back then. Our machines didn't even use DNS yet IIRC there was a HOSTS.TXT file sent around that had to be updated as new sites were added to the network. It was fairly early, and I got to see the internet before the marketers started to take notice of it. I remember the internet worm[1] and the Canter and Siegel usenet spam a bit later[2]. I'm glad the internet was made public of course but I wish the standards from back then had better security built in. Of course encrypting everything back then would have been a significant drain on computational resources. We used to login 40 students at a time on TTYs to a Sun 3/280 (25mhz CPU!).[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-3

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]