Be Excellent To Each Other

Today.

http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html

Malc

I posted two new topics today, both about anniversaries. This one gets no posts, the other one (a joke about uranus sounding like your anus) gets 13.

How can no one care that the web is 20 years old?

20 years of this thing, that we're using right now!

I'm going to make a poll!

Malc

I started using the internet when I went to University, that was in 1992.

Malc

I'm not sure that it's that people don't care; it's just that the page you linked to was incredibly boring to read.

That document became the world wide web!

Malc

1995 here. On a 14.4k modem that I had on loan for the weekend.

6 months later I got my own US Robotics 28.8k modem and connected using Demon for a tenner a month.

First thing I ever downloaded was a CPC emulator via a URL in that months Amstrad Action! Scary to think that AA made it into the internet age and was publishing web URL's! Only just mind, think it closed the very month I first went online (must have been May or June 1995).

Also I don't care.

So what? I like burgers, but I don't go around celebrating the anniversary of the inventor or reading about the first burger ever made.

Mmmm, burgers. Now you've made me hungry, Malc!

1999.

So only ten years, but long enough to know that I don't need to be friends with the type of people who think the Internet is for txtspk.

The first thing I ever did was look up a page using Lycos about Darwin, to show my Dad hoe educational this could be. Then I probably downloaded ICQ, and started setting up a Freeserve website.

I think the WWW is a tad more important than burgers (as nice as they are) Which would you rather lose? The web or burgers?

Malc

The web can go hang. I want a burger.

I remember when it was considered polite to reply to emails from the bottom and also reply to specific points within an email by inserting text into it.

If I do that these days people moan at me. It was Outlook that started the stupid top posting thing and it still hacks me off to this day. But you have to do it or you get people moaning that you've not replied to their email.

We used to call them "top posters". Still hate it. That changeover marked the point where the internet stopped being special and fun, and just became something everyday that anyone could use.

heh, when I started most of the web was stuff that was on gopher that had been given a web front end.

I remember yahoo being on akebono and whatever, I remember IMDB being hosted in wales, I remember altavista being hosted at DEC. I remember when netscape came along and you could look at jpgs inline rather than as a helper app. I remember real audio coming along, and helped broadcast the first live stream of a brass band playing over the web. I remember B+W webcams, I remember life before mp3.

Bloody hell we've come a long way.

Malc

Heh, chinny has reminded me of the insane amount of time I used to spend on newsgroups
freeserve.webspace.authoring still throws up my old handle when I search for it embarrassingly.

Are we having some sort of nostalgia circle jerk or something? I've already emptied my balls, you see.

Bloody hell you're old!

I suppose being at Uni you had an advantage. I know for a fact that in our sixth form college I was the second person to have a modem. In those days Demon only had about 30,000 subscribers and they were the UK's largest ISP. But they were growing so fast there used to be huge capacity problems. Problems dialling in, and the whole news server problem where it would take an age to get a connection.

Then the poor old PC would have to file all the articles which would take an age. Faster processors eliminated that.

We had the internet in school from 1994, so that's when I got my Hotmail account (before MS had bought them out). I also spent quite a few lunch hours in the GeoCities chat rooms - that was definitely a more innocent age. We didn't get our own internet computer at home until 1996.

My mate Joel had a modem (my parents wouldn't let me as they thought I might hack into something and get sent to jail) and I'd been on some of the BBS on his Amiga. That would have been about 1990 I guess

I didn't have the Internet at home until I moved out in 1998. I did have the advantage of working in an Internet Cafe from 1995 - 1998.

Malc

Magazines such as Amstrad Computer User ran BBS features in the mid 80's, complete with modems with acoustic couplers (our younger readers won't know what one of those were).

YS was ahead of the game, as it ran a comms feature called "Dial Hard" in the final 6 months or so. Mainly BBS stuff from memory.

I remember last week I got a recipe for a cake off a website.

Well done dimmers.

Malc

Very similar story here. Although technically it was my dad who borrowed the modem (from his work office) and set up all the stuff, as I was younger than you were. The Amiga 1200 didn't make a good web-browsing machine, but it was a start.

Christmas 1995, my dad took his office PC home for a week and a bit, and I had the opportunity to use early Netscape, a proper web browser with images in colour and everything. Still with a 14.4 slow modem, though. Not long afterwards he bought a PC for home use, thankfully for me, as I'd grown a bit attached to web use.


Why am I not surprised?

Liar. The first thing you did was look up vadge, just like everyone else.

That first night with the internet at home, eh boys? I don't think my balls have ached more before or since.

1998 for me and I think the first thing I did was look up Calvin and Hobbes stuff... and wrestling news.

1995, in the merry walled garden of Compuserve. I can still recite my (dead) CIS number, as well as ICQ.



I still do this, and pipe everything through plain text at work. Makes me laugh when people write to me saying that they can't see my reply despite it being clearly positioned to answer their question.

I can't be sure exactly which year I started using it. It was probably around he late 90s/2000. I didn't have my own computer until I was 14 or so, so there was little opportunity to get online, and it wasn't until a friend gave me a modem and his IC24 details that I managed to get connected. I didn't have a clue what to do, mind; it's quite overwhelming at first with so much at your fingertips.

I started in 1994/95 Ish I think. First year of university for a friend. I didn't go myself as I'm fick. But I was able to use his login on the uni computers. A year or two later I got it at home with my amiga. First ISP I got was Demon then Redhotant. Then I think I was on AOL briefly with my first PC.

Me too. Defiantly old skool, I am.

I started in 1996, when I went to University.

I then sat around in the computer labs all day long, playing chess and chatting to people.

I have started writing "Hi [John], Please see below for answers." at the top of most messages.

@Dudley: everything in moderation. Those two words are fine, when not accompanied by 20 more.

Two fucking thousand. Both when we got it 'at home' and when I started 'uni'.

Joint biggest noob here, then.

So far. Where are the fucking teenagers when you need them?

Surely they're the first thing you found?

Indeed.

That said, while I got on the internet in 2000, my first naughty jpeg didn't actually finish loading til 2001.