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Larry Roberts has died
- tlb 8y agoIt's easy to underestimate the importance of actually deploying those first long-distance internet links, at substantial expense. Links within a campus weren't compelling enough to invent things like email to make use of them, because you could just walk over to the other guy's office. But high-speed (for the time) links between campuses made people want to use them for real work.
- nostrademons 8y agoI wonder if they knew how powerful this infrastructure would be at the time they did it. This presentation [1] (by Larry Roberts, actually) indicates that basically nobody other than ARPA actually wanted this capability - the other big institutions at the time either didn't want to share their data (universities) or thought the whole technical approach was crazy and brain-dead (telcos). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkD4HVRnGJE#t=580 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkD4HVRnGJE#t=580
- kev009 8y agoLarge institutions had these capabilities since the 1960s. There were parallel universes like Tymnet and companies would set up first party networks using vendor protocols like IBM's SNA (which had a few precursors like QTAM). Users were concentrated onto large machines but machine to machine communication was equally important. This history and significance seems appallingly preserved. There were even parallel universe packet switched networks by phone companies like Bell and MCI in the US. The novelty of the ARPANet was that it allowed for the construction of a resilient open access network (Tymnet and various phone companies packet switchers were centrally administered walled gardens). Once the code was coupled to UNIX in the form TCP in BSD, it rode that wave and the sequel of "open systems" a few years later into ubiquity across all operating systems.
- ams6110 8y agoTymnet existed into the 1990s at least. I used it for dial-up access to servers at work for remote nighttime support of batch jobs. I don't miss those 2am calls.
- csours 8y agoThe auto assembly plant I worked in had SNA (active, but unused) in 2006.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoYes as a former member of TEC (Tymnet Engineering centre) the whole OSI networking tech is poorly documented. I remember running map reduce code on the largest(non black) UK PR1ME network in the 80's which was cool. OSI's problem was it was designed in a world where each country would usually have a single PTT - in the UK it also suffered from not billing as an all you can eat model.
- kuhhk 8y agoI highly recommend reading the book “Where Wizards Stay Up Late”, which covers much of the history that this article touches upon. Great book. https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674 https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832...
- teh_klev 8y agoIn addition I'd also recommend "Casting the Net" by Peter H Salus: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Casting-Net-ARPANET-INTERNET-Systems/dp/0201876744/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Casting-Net-ARPANET-INTERNET-System... I have both books (each now over 20 years old), but I think "Casting the Net" is a slightly more rigorous and somewhat less "journalisty" history with a better collection of diagrams and scribbles by the key figures involved.
- dangoldin 8y agoAnd don't forget "The Dream Machine" (https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Computing/dp/0670899763 https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Co...). It's not solely about the internet but does an awesome job covering the rise of the PC industry and the launch of the internet.
- m-app 8y agoI'm just about finishing the Stripe Press re-release. It's an amazing collection of stories in a beautiful book. Can highly recommend it.
- newnewpdro 8y agoThis book is mediocre at best, first time I had trouble getting past the first half of a book in ages.
- ghaff 8y agoIf you're going to be that critical of something, you should probably offer some reasons. Personally, I've read the book and remember it as being a decent history if not a particular page turner.
- pseudolus 8y agoInteresting. The Times interviewed him in May of this year for his own obituary. "He recalled that one of his youthful experiments produced a chlorine gas byproduct, 'which put me in the hospital under an oxygen tent because I sniffed it to see what was happening,' he said in an interview for this obituary in May."
- totoglazer 8y agoIt’s actually somewhat common. They have ~1000 obit drafts prewritten at any given time, including interviews with subjects when it’s possible.
- emmelaich 8y ago> It’s actually somewhat common ... Phew I thought you were referring to chlorine gas poisoning for a moment :-)
- kakarot 8y agoI hope it is because otherwise I'm a moron. I managed to chlorine-gas myself right before a date once because I threw a little bleach on the bathroom floor before I took a shower and it turns out there was a mostly dried puddle of piss in the same spot. Only thing worse than chlorine gas is chlorine gas that's been nebulized from steam...
- emmelaich 8y agoYowzer. My Dad was a high school principal and I got to play around with chemical kits as a young 'un. Never poisoned myself but must have come close.
- veddox 8y agoWe had a pretty crazy science teacher when I was in grade 8. If we'd been anywhere in the West he would have probably been suspended for gross negligence faster than anything, but we kids loved him :D One day we were covering chlorine in chemistry class, so he simply decided to make some. We didn't have a fume cupboard or anything (our lab at the time was still very rudimentary), so we simply set the equipment up on a desk and waited for things to happen. When green smoke started billowing forth, we hurriedly opened all the windows and evacuated the lab. All other science lessons that day had to take place in different classrooms... This was the same guy who showed us the thermite reaction - indoors - and with whom we used potassium+water to light a bunsen burner when we'd run out of matches. This year I was back at that school, now as a science teacher myself, and was there for the move into a fancy new lab building. But the old lab still had the burn marks on the ceiling, from some of his wilder experiments...
- nyrDESGRACIADO 8y agoBlack bar for Larry Roberts but nothing for Lil Peep?
- gist 8y agoIn college (on the arpanet) I teleneted to all the hosts on the internet (cross country) and back to where I was (a major ivy university). Just for fun. Just to see how long it took for my keystrokes to return. Back then no pw was needed to do that. To those who have never used a green terminal or teletype it was actually plenty of fun. The teletype was fun because of the noise and the tactile feeback you got and printing pounding out some output. The green terminal was fun because crt's are mesmerizing or at least they were to me. I still have one of the computer tapes that I had to buy to store the 'programs' that I wrote. (One of the TA's in the computer center was Eric Raymond..).
- yiyus 8y agoThat picture is not from "a conference in Spain". They received the Prince of Asturias Award. This is the most important award you can get in Spain. It is similar in spirit to Nobel prizes. Of course, it does not have the same prestige, but NYT should know better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_of_Asturias_Awards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_of_Asturias_Awards
- donarb 8y agoThat’s the caption of the photo from Getty Images which is an accurate depiction of what’s in the photograph, it does not depict the award ceremony itself. “Internet Pioneers Attend Media Conference OVIEDO, SPAIN - OCTOBER 24: (L-R) Internet pioneers Vinton Cerf, Lawrence Roberts, Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee attend a media conference the day before they receive the Prince of Asturias award for Science and Technology investigation October 24, 2002 in Oviedo, Spain. (Photo by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images)” https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/internet-pioneers-vinton-cerf-lawrence-roberts-robert-kahn-news-photo/1518552 https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/internet-pione...
- Lotus123 8y agoIndeed, another one of the legendary internet pioneers are now gone.
- wkearney99 8y agoAnd meanwhile his efforts help route around the loss.
- fibers 8y agoF
- default-kramer 8y ago> One thing you ought to watch out for is you can’t send out personal message stuff, that’s illegal. That’s against the postal laws and you’ll be in jail in no time. Is this true, that "postal laws" used to prohibit personal email?
- quickthrower2 8y agoIs it still illegal?
- ghaff 8y agoUnlikely as a practical matter. At least we never considered it as something in the 1970s. Commercial activity more broadly was a more significant issue but that was dealt with before it became a broad concern.
- seibelj 8y agoIf a few people are doing something illegal, it's a crime. If everyone is doing something illegal, it quickly stops being a crime, or there is widespread outrage when someone is prosecuted.
- TylerE 8y agoIf only. (Counterexamples: Drug laws, speeding laws, digital piracy...)
- tlb 8y agoI've heard that interpretation. The US post office has a government-granted monopoly on delivering mail. There was an exception in the original law for "extremely urgent material", which allowed Fedex to come into existence [0]. If Fedex hadn't been tough (and beloved by law firms who needed a lot of overnight delivery) they might well have been sued out of existence by the USPS. So early users of email tried to be careful to not too obviously use it a replacement for postal mail. [0] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-US-postal-service-considered-a-monopoly-if-they-have-competitors-such-a-Fedex-and-UPS https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-US-postal-service-considere...
- 8y ago
- anonytrary 8y agoDid the internet just learn of Roberts death today? He died 4 days ago. Is the black bar for Roberts? If so, why wasn't this up 4 days ago?
- Stratoscope 8y ago> ...why wasn't this up 4 days ago? Because the NYT obituary linked here was published today.
- dang 8y agoAs far as I can tell, this was the first posting of the news to HN. Surprising that it took 4 days to appear.
- anonytrary 8y agoYes, it was surprising is all, I meant no offense.
- ThomasBHickey 8y agoI knew Larry Roberts in the mid 1980's when he was on the Board of OCLC (a library network). At the time he was president of a company on the west coast of the US and another on the east coast. He claimed to visit both of them every week! He was excited about Group 3 fax that was going to rapidly change how libraries worked and tried to convince OCLC to replace our computers with a network of IBM AT's. Both ideas had just enough sense to be dangerous, but the software, networks and general infrastructure wasn't there yet and it was beyond our capability to build them.
- glafa 8y agohere is his website, doesn't seem very updated (latest stuff is from 2009). RIP http://packet.cc/ http://packet.cc/
- mudil 8y agohttps://outline.com/SrEhzh https://outline.com/SrEhzh
- wittedhaddock 8y agodeath fucking sucks
- vxNsr 8y ago@dang Recommendation: I saw the black bar but this post was already fairly far down the page, maybe make clicking on the bar take you to the post that precipitated it.
- dhimes 8y agoI have a second recommendation: Since Nancy Grace Roman has also died, it's not clear whom the bar is for. Possibly for both? It would be nice if there was a way to find out. Maybe something in the footer, or as you say, by making something clickable. I have this problem with flags at half-mast in my town, also. It's at half-mast quite often, but people seldom know why.
- willcodeforfoo 8y agoWow... it's a spacer gif: <tr><td bgcolor="#000000"><img src="s.gif" height="5" width="0"></td></tr>