Re: OT - reminising
 

'86, or thereabouts. I first used it via a local Seattle BBS (Eskimo North) which had dozens of lines hooked up to one server, which was also on the net and offered email and newsGroups etc.

PvK

Re: OT - reminising
 

Ah Fran, you've got me reminising as well ...

I think it was in '90 or thereabouts, my Online service, Delphi, would let you connect to the internet.

I could browse the usenet, and there was tons of stuff -- whole adventures on rec.games.frd.dnd, and complete molecular biology protocols on bionet.molbio.mthds.reagents. I could do it for hours. Loads of fun, and I could learn something useful for work.

Delphi would connect you to the world wide web, but it was non-graphical. I would go to this special address in France, and click a download link. I had a 9600 bps modem, so in just 5-7 minutes a file would download to my hard disk. I would fire up CSHOW.exe, my trusty DOS image viewer (worked fine with Windows for WorkGroups or OS/2 Warp, whatever I had booted up at the time). And then, lo, rendered in lifelike 256 colors, a naked woman http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif , free of charge, one brand new one everyday. What a time to be alive.

Now whatta we got, a 'net clogged with the sort of hardcore porn that would make Larry Flynt cringe. Nobody shares free scientific information anymore, you have to pay. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

They say it was even better back before the 80's. Universitys were really sharing useful info, but I'd never even heard of the Internet when I was in college. Back then, when the Morris worm was released, I was just learning about PC's. The mainframe and it's dealings was too far away magical for me to begin to understand.

Re: OT - reminising
 

first, i remember the grand old network services, prodigy for home Users and compuserve to access all sorts of scientific databases. eventually they became portals to the internet, but originally they were collections of interconnected systems and databases that you could Subscribe to.

that trickled down to syndicated news Groups on BBS systems. I always wondered where they came from and how they were organized, since they seemed to be from loose coalitions rather than organized networks. I always thought they were of a considerably lower quality than the Groups and forums on our local Boards.

the same places that brought us those mysterious syndicated news Groups also brought new files that the sysops would upload. strange and interesting things from computer systems far, far away.

somehow it all turned into the internet and more and more people started accessing it, prodigy and compuserve had portals to it, and the relationships between providers on different tiers was a clearly understandable thing. these days, the only providers left are a handfull of tier-ones, and there are almost no middlemen. the MAE has almost entirely become an anachronism, and... and im talking too much.

I suppose my point is that my original perspective on what things were and how things transpired was fairly limited, but from it you can probably see the kinds of things that I was doing at the time.

Re: OT - reminising
 

I can't remember the year but I do remember my father asking me about it and I told him it was probably just a passing fad. I ignored it for quite while, (as I do with most medea hype). The first time I used it at home was when my step daughter, (in the 4th grade), anounced on a Sunday night that she needed an encylopedia to do a report. We didn't have one so I got out an AOL diskette and hooked us up to a 12 BAUD modem and in less than 2 hours she was all set.

[ February 17, 2004, 12:03: Message edited by: Gryphin ]