On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> Brian D Williams <talon57@well.com> wrote,
> >That's right, I was there
>
> >I've been on the Internet since administrators used
> >to ask you to keep off their systems during the day
>
> >remember spending alot
> >of time at the site at CERN and playing with an interesting text
> >based system the creator was calling the world wide web. I still
> >have the E-mail I got back from him thanking me for my comments and
> >telling me they were working on a GUI for it, and after that he
> >hoped it would really take off... Need I even bother mentioning his
> >name?
>
> Puh-lease....
>
> I had a top-secret clearance and was building Arpanet before you knew
> what a network was. I invented network technology and helped debug
> protocols before the Internet converted to TCP/IP. I debuged network
> links before we had a connection to Europe. I was an admin years
> before ISPs like yours (The Well) were allowed on the Internet. I
> was probably one of those admins who asked you users to stay out of
> my way.
> Your talk of the "early days" is about two decades too late to impress me.
Oh, yeah? Well, I had to *walk* every day to deliver *my* email, six
miles each way. Handforged each one and zero myself, because we were too
poor to afford a proper Babbage Machine. Raised my first Gopher site from
a pup...damn thing bite so bad once I needed eight stitches. Why, I
remember one traceroute that took me 34 days and 3 pairs of shoes.
You kids just have it too soft these days...
steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:38 MDT