1994: Are You Ready for The Internet?

A little nostalgic I guess?  I was on the internet by '94, as was a major percentage of the U.S. population, IIRC.  Definitely by '95, 'cuz that's around when I joined my first BB - NEWSMAX!  
The topic of the day, of course, was the upcoming prezzy election, Gingrich, etc., etc.  

Gads, was that ever lots of fun!  I can't believe how much I LEARNED from others.  Exciting times.

2cent wrote:A little nostalgic I guess?  I was on the internet by '94, as was a major percentage of the U.S. population, IIRC.  Definitely by '95, 'cuz that's around when I joined my first BB - NEWSMAX!  
The topic of the day, of course, was the upcoming prezzy election, Gingrich, etc., etc.  

Gads, was that ever lots of fun!  I can't believe how much I LEARNED from others.  Exciting times.

I think it was around two percent, at the time.

My brother had access - but only through his university, UC-Boulder, because he was a grad student there at the time. There simply WERE no other options back then. Yes, you had CompuServe, but that wasn't the whole Internet - it was a restricted UseNet access, overlaid with CompuServe's shell.

I first got online in 1999. EarthLink was then a popular server - and I read up on it. Seems that Sky Dayton, founder of the company, got annoyed trying to patch into one of the few Internet providers of the time, and decided to use computer power to weed through all the switching and setting protocols. As well, he/his people wrote a computer program to allow computers to access his network, easily.

Dayton liked to compare his service to America Online...noting that his was growing, while AOL was stagnant. He reasoned that people wearied of the Safety Net AOL put around everything...that people wanted an uncensored, un-moderated view of the world, in all its coarseness.

He was right, of course, but his view later became the minority. It's not ISPs censoring, now (they only snitch to Homeland Security) but websites. And we do not have an open discussion. It's not about bad words, now - the Left uses them, abundantly - but about IDEAS.

I saw this coming, long ago. But, first, innovators like Sky Dayton had to be removed. As they were.

I remember my friends studying COBOL and FORTRAN back in 82.

Interesting. I was using WordStar with DOS, in the Navy, for awhile.

The first version of Windows they bought was 3.0, and we didn't rate enough to get it. The ship's office did, but not the Personnel office.

We later got 3.1; but we only had one computer that could run it. Two of our computers were 286 processors; the newest was a 386.

Later we got Word Perfect, a million percent better than WordStar. We didn't use Word - Word Perfect was far better. Now it's abandonware.

All this was about 1991-92.

I didn't think personal computers would catch on.

Bottled water, either.

HawkTheSlayer wrote:I didn't think personal computers would catch on.

Bottled water, either.

Bottled water. Joe Sherlock, now deceased, ran a one-man blog for many years...The View Down The Road. He was an auto buff, but as he retired, and got older, he spent a lot of time on other issues that interested him.

Bottled water was one such. He didn't understand why people first, needed to be carrying bottled water or "sports bottles" everywhere. He remarked sarcastically that the city of Philadelphia, where he grew up in the 1950s, should have had a Hydration Department with large tankers to give the public the water they so-desperately needed, prior to Evian. That would also have stopped all the kids of that era from going over to people's outdoor water tap (often not their own home, often strangers' homes) and just drinking out of the garden hose. All those polymers! All that nasty taste!

I think I've bought less than a dozen bottles of bottled water my whole life - if you don't count the distilled water I use in my CPAP or the filtered water I use in my new Bunn coffeemaker. That, I HAVE to use filtered water in...the water here is overloaded with various chemicals that with time dry on faucets and shower heads. I don't want that in my $200 coffeemaker (which is almost worth it; excellent coffee).

I've come to the conclusion that people who buy and drink those bottles of tap-water from other cities' taps, are just showing off. They're not drinking water - they are, as Paul Fussell wrote decades ago...they are modeling a paradigm. They're demonstrating that they're consuming the Approved products as instructed by their betters. Fussell, in his book "Class," accused Madison Avenue of doing this. And in his time, the 1980s, he may have been right; but I lay the blame on the Oligarchs and their pawns and robots. Fussell commented on why Coca-Cola was so popular over mixed iced tea or generic sodas. We can extend that to why naivE, er, Evian, is more popular than Mountain Water Company bulk, out of my tap.

It's the same reason masks caught on so fast. A confused pseudo-middle-class, uncertain of its standing, looking for social signals...given by advertising, and now, politicians and various bureaucrats. Who of COURSE have our best interests at heart...witness the Cult of Jab.

Casey Jones wrote:

HawkTheSlayer wrote:I didn't think personal computers would catch on.

Bottled water, either.

Bottled water.  Joe Sherlock, now deceased, ran a one-man blog for many years...The View Down The Road.  He was an auto buff, but as he retired, and got older, he spent a lot of time on other issues that interested him.  

Bottled water was one such.  He didn't understand why people first, needed to be carrying bottled water or "sports bottles" everywhere.  He remarked sarcastically that the city of Philadelphia, where he grew up in the 1950s, should have had a Hydration Department with large tankers to give the public the water they so-desperately needed, prior to Evian.  That would also have stopped all the kids of that era from going over to people's outdoor water tap (often not their own home, often strangers' homes) and just drinking out of the garden hose.  All those polymers!  All that nasty taste!

I think I've bought less than a dozen bottles of bottled water my whole life - if you don't count the distilled water I use in my CPAP or the filtered water I use in my new Bunn coffeemaker.  That, I HAVE to use filtered water in...the water here is overloaded with various chemicals that with time dry on faucets and shower heads.  I don't want that in my $200 coffeemaker (which is almost worth it; excellent coffee).

I've come to the conclusion that people who buy and drink those bottles of tap-water from other cities' taps, are just showing off.  They're not drinking water - they are, as Paul Fussell wrote decades ago...they are modeling a paradigm.  They're demonstrating that they're consuming the Approved products as instructed by their betters.  Fussell, in his book "Class," accused Madison Avenue of doing this.  And in his time, the 1980s, he may have been right; but I lay the blame on the Oligarchs and their pawns and robots.  Fussell commented on why Coca-Cola was so popular over mixed iced tea or generic sodas.  We can extend that to why naivE, er, Evian, is more popular than Mountain Water Company bulk, out of my tap.

It's the same reason masks caught on so fast.  A confused pseudo-middle-class, uncertain of its standing, looking for social signals...given by advertising, and now, politicians and various bureaucrats.  Who of COURSE have our best interests at heart...witness the Cult of Jab.

""t's the same reason masks caught on so fast.  A confused pseudo-middle-class, uncertain of its standing,""

Surgeons use them whilst operating on you, would you classify them as stupid or gullible ?

HawkTheSlayer wrote:I didn't think personal computers would catch on.

Bottled water, either.

Bottled water is great, Beats drinking out of a puddle at the side of the road when you are out and about.