Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:53:23 -0500 To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Combined reply Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> At 11:28 PM 3/28/05 -0500, Keith F. Lynch wrote: >"Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> wrote: >> ... the Web was created in '93... > >Nitpick: 1991. Though it didn't really catch on until 1992. >The net was already over twenty years old at the time. Nitpick to your nitpick. Apparently we're both wrong...it was 1989 according to: http://www.zeltser.com/web-history/ and some other sites. Of course, at that time it was pretty much an in-house project at CERN, limited to those associated with them. This link: http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap2.htm#From%20Internet%20to%20Wo rld%20Wide%20Web Confirms the 1989 date, but also mentions that 1991 is when it was opened to the "public", so if that's how you want to define it, you are correct. 1993 is when Mosaic was released, and there was actual 24 hour customer support for a graphical browser. That's when commercial use started. If that's how you define it, I'm right. In 1992 there were only 50 web sites in the world...and at the end of 1993 there were still only about 150. In 1994 there were 3000. A year later it was 25,000. By '97 there were 1.2 million web sites. The 2001 figure is at least 30 million. The W3C web site (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/) says the web was created in 1989, and the W3C in 1994. Lots of dates to choose from, depending on how you want to define "origin of the world wide web". 1989 for first creation, 1991 for public release, 1993 for commercialization or 1994 for the creation of a standards body to define how it should work all make sense. I suppose you could even go back to the creation of the idea of hyperlinks if you want...that would move it back decades... >> Prior to that it was mostly universities, the government and >> government contractors and generally used Unix, ... > >Actually, it was mostly TOPS-20, though there were plenty of Unix, >MVS, MULTICS, ITS, and other systems. The whole point of the net >was to enable incompatible systems to communicate. Are you talking about the net here, or the web? The first Mosaic was done on a NeXT machine (unix...Mach kernel I believe). The net predates TOPS-20 I think. TOPS-20 was first shipped in 1976 (http://www.opost.com/dlm/tenex/hbook.html), while the internet was started prior to that. The first WAN was in 1965 (http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap2.htm#The%20Creation%20of%20AR PANET again), and the first ARPAnet setup was in October 1969 between UCLA and Stanford. ARPAnet went "public" in 1972. TCP/IP came in 1974. Unix was the primary OS for universities, which were a large part of the early net. From: http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap2.htm#The%20Creation%20of%20ARP ANET ----- Meanwhile computer networking developed apace. In 1974 Stanford opened up Telenet, the first openly accessible public 'packet data service' (a commercial version of ARPANET). In the 1970s the US Department of Energy established MFENet for researchers into Magnetic Fusion Energy, which spawned HEPNet devoted to High Energy Physics. This inspired NASA physicists to establish SPAN for space physicists. In 1976 a Unix-to-Unix protocol was developed by AT&T Bell laboratories and was freely distributed to all Unix computer users (since Unix was the main operating system employed by universities, this opened up networking to the broader academic community). In 1979 Usenet was established, an open system focusing on e-mail communication and devoted to 'newsgroups' is opened, and still thriving today. In 1981 Bitnet (Because it's Time..) was developed City University New York to link university scientists using IBM computers, regardless of discipline, in the Eastern US. CSNet, funded by the US national Science Foundation was established to facilitate communication for Computer Scientists in universities, industry and government. In 1982 a European version of the Unix network, Eunet, was established, linking networks in the UK, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, followed in 1984 by a European version of Bitnet, known as EARN (European Academic and Research Network). Throughout this period, the world is still fairly chaotic, with a plethora of competing techniques and protocols. ARPANET is still the backbone to the entire system. When, in 1982 it finally adopts the TCP/IP the Internet is born... a connected set of networks using the TCP/IP standard. ------ TOPS-20 was certainly involved in the 70s. The FTP protocol has a special transfer mode just to support TOPS-20 for instance, but I doubt that TOPS-20 systems were the primary systems on the net even in the 70s. >to send email or files around via obscure and convoluted paths. Email >addresses were often bizarrely punctuated with a hodgepodge of at >signs, percent signs, hyphens, and exclamation points -- as much a >routing map as a true address. Yep. That was replaced by the DNS system and various routing protocols so that systems could get packets to a given IP address without knowing where it really was. DNS lets you translate a host name to the IP address, and the routers take it from there. The routers use ARP, GATED, etc. to keep track of how to get a message to a given IP address. >Well, I know an "athiest" is someone who doesn't believe in a "diety". Or, more precisely, believes that there is no such thing. Lack of belief is different from belief of lack. A simple lack of belief without the belief in a lack is referred to as "agnosticism"...though there are always people who will argue endlessly about this (I'm not one of them...). >> I've never seen a honing pigeon, ... > >If you ever see one, try to catch it with some duck tape. Actually, one maker of duct tape (which is not really very good for use on ductwork...aluminum tape is far superior and more commonly used) does call their product "duck tape". Going with the flow I guess. http://www.duckproducts.com/ >> or maybe the guy is just planning to sharpen his wit before getting >> to it? > >Or to wet his appetite. On a wet stone? There's a hole in the bucket... ;-) >> ... usually back-quote marks, ... > >But those *are* part of standard ASCII. Character 96, right between >underscore and lowercase "a". (I used to "type" using a manual hole >punch on paper tape.) Sorry, I meant "double quote". ASCII only has one kind of those. >> Back when it was just ASCII and EBCDIC it was pretty simple... > >Not really, since there were several incompatible versions of EBCDIC, >several incompatible eight-bit extensions of ASCII, Don't know about EBCDIC much...never was an IBM guy. ASCII was a 7-bit code. There were lots of ways different folks found to use the 8th bit once they stopped using it for parity...on home PCs it was usually for a graphical character set, and yes, they were all different. >other unrelated codes of various bit lengths from 5 to 12, including >Correspondence, 026 Hollerith, 029 Hollerith, Baudot, and Murray. Baudot is older than ASCII I believe. It was a 5 bit code used with teletypes. No need for case there... -- Mike B. -- I cna ytpe 300 wrods pre mniuet!!!