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Everskyward

Everskyward

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Everskyward
While reading the "virtual newspaper" this morning I came upon this article, Mountain rescue plays out on the Web, which I thought was interesting on a number of levels. Something seemed weirdly familiar about it all. Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen to any one of us here but I can imagine a similar reaction, albeit on a smaller scale.
 
I heard a statistic the other day that brought me up short, that freshmen in 2009 will have never known a world without the internet. I'm old enough that I remember the development of the internet very clearly (let's just say I had been out of graduate school and working for several years before I even had an email account, and my PhD thesis--all 600 pages of it--was written on a typewriter). The development of this medium has been a wonder to behold. It's a completely new type of community, and I know I don't even use it to its full capacity (no Facebook or Myspace accounts). Personally, I love it, depsite my advanced age. I travel a lot. It's nice to know that practically wherever I go, I know someone with whom I can share not just my work interests but my passion.

Judy
 
"Community" is correct- each develops its own persona, its people care for their peers.

I have already seen, in great measure, what the people here do for their extended family of flying friends, acts of kindness and consideration which vastly outstrip the mere sharing of a common interest.

Reading the account in the OP-linked article was a poignant thing- I do not know these people, but I understand their loss.
 
judypilot said:
I heard a statistic the other day that brought me up short, that freshmen in 2009 will have never known a world without the internet.
Click to expand...

Weeellllll...

The web didn't come about until 1991, and it wasn't until the introduction of NCSA Mosaic in 1993 that it really started to grow. I remember in the '93-'94 school year (I was a freshman at UWM) that if you wanted information, you were still using WAIS or Gopher, not HTTP.

I also started keeping an e-mail list of Madison Scouts members and alumni that year, and the vast majority of people on that list were .edu addresses. The few .com addresses were with companies that did a lot of research.

As I recall, the Internet (mostly e-mail and www) really got to be the "big thing" in 1995. So, those college freshmen of 2009 would have been about 4. :eek:
 
I've pretty much never known life without the internet. I was 7 or 8 when I first started playing with it.
 
Things have definitely changed, that's for sure.

When I was in college no one had a cell phone, there was no internet, I did my papers on an electric typewriter, research was actually done in a library, if you needed a phone number you looked in a phone book and if you needed to get a message to professor you taped a note to his office door.

I connected to the net in late '96. Went downhill from there ;)

I can only say that though I am not as computer savvy as some on here who work in the information and computer industries I've been able to at least keep my head above water. And as for online communities...what a weird phenomenon, but I'm definitely part of them.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Weeellllll...

The web didn't come about until 1991, and it wasn't until the introduction of NCSA Mosaic in 1993 that it really started to grow. I remember in the '93-'94 school year (I was a freshman at UWM) that if you wanted information, you were still using WAIS or Gopher, not HTTP.

I also started keeping an e-mail list of Madison Scouts members and alumni that year, and the vast majority of people on that list were .edu addresses. The few .com addresses were with companies that did a lot of research.

As I recall, the Internet (mostly e-mail and www) really got to be the "big thing" in 1995. So, those college freshmen of 2009 would have been about 4. :eek:
Click to expand...

I was just old enough to see the progression from services like Prodigy Internet (at 2400 baud) that my father used solely for looking up weather information for Dallas when he went for training out there to the early incarnations of Compuserve and AOL, to the wonderful web and Earthlink (via UUNet).
Enjoying Netscape Navigator and the 19.2kbps modem we had on Windows 3.1 and surfing HTMLGoodies.com (And setup my first website, complete with frames AND a MIDI!) and chatting on the various ichat servers before I got addicted to IRC and DALnet.
I learned of the infamous WinNuke program and +++ATH0 bug for WinModems. I searched for people infected by NetBus and SubSeven and tried to help them get it removed. One of the people I helped got me introduced to a program called ActiveWorlds, which I spent a good bit of time on.
In the late 90s, RoadRunner had a beta test of their cable internet service. I dropped a friend's name and got setup. With my newfound bandwidth, I started chatting on various webcam services (CUSeeMe, NetMeeting, and other various webcam offerings). Through the end of the 90s and 2000/2001 I ended up signing up for almost every IM program I could find.
I started streaming music through a Winamp shoutcast server and through Realplayer. I was ticked off when Napster went under, but I already had about 80GB of MP3s from my friend in Maryland who ripped all his CDs, and WinMX already took Napster's spot.
I started my first blog. Chat sites I used to frequent started to go away. Websites would be replaced by a parked page made by someone who snatched up the domain. DoS attacks became more prevalent. Spam became worse and more frequent. I got to college and received my first virus just for plugging into the network. The last few years have just been the same old same old. More spam, more RIAA lawsuits, more piracy.

Looking back a lot of it seems like a blur, but sure enough, from the public web's infancy, I've been there most of the way. It's been fairly fun too :D
 
SCCutler said:
Reading the account in the OP-linked article was a poignant thing- I do not know these people, but I understand their loss.
Click to expand...
I thought so too, which is why I posted it. I could also draw a lot of parallels between mountain climbing and flying. Flying is obviously more regulated and less of a free-wheeling activity, especially these days, but they are both adventure sports and probably attract similar personalities.

As far as on-line communities go, I'm not sure age has a whole lot to do with it. I have dragged a number of my flying buddies around to meet people from POA. Except for one guy who is older than me, the rest of them have been in the 10-or-more years younger than me range. None of them have 'internet friends' so the whole thing required some explanation. They were all good sports though, and had a good time, or maybe they were just humoring the old lady... :dunno:
 
wbarnhill said:
I learned of the infamous WinNuke program and +++ATH0 bug for WinModems. I searched for people infected by NetBus and SubSeven and tried to help them get it removed.
Click to expand...

I remember those days. If you had an ip address you could basically bluescreen anyones computer. Very annoying.

Plus all those script kiddies thinking they were badasses with their Netbus and Subseven...
 
jesse said:
I remember those days. If you had an ip address you could basically bluescreen anyones computer. Very annoying.

Plus all those script kiddies thinking they were badasses with their Netbus and Subseven...
Click to expand...

I will admit I played around with netbus, more for pranking my friends and laughing at their reactions, and I used +++ATH0 because it made the lusers on IRC give up eventually.

But I grew out of that stage ;)
 
wbarnhill said:
I will admit I played around with netbus, more for pranking my friends and laughing at their reactions, and I used +++ATH0 because it made the lusers on IRC give up eventually.

But I grew out of that stage ;)
Click to expand...

I never said I wasn't a script kiddie thinking I was a badass with my NetBus... Although I never did anything harmful.
 
jesse said:
I never said I wasn't a script kiddie thinking I was a badass with my NetBus... Although I never did anything harmful.
Click to expand...

It was definitely an interesting program... a precursor to Remote Desktop? :D

And I recall that torch icon (for patch.exe) being on a LOT of attachments in junk emails I got.
 
Speaking of online communities...

online_communities.png
 
wbarnhill said:
I was just old enough to see the progression from services like Prodigy Internet (at 2400 baud) that my father used solely for looking up weather information for Dallas when he went for training out there to the early incarnations of Compuserve and AOL, to the wonderful web and Earthlink (via UUNet).
Click to expand...

Young 'un.

I actually did connect to something (can't remember what now) from a friend's house using an acoustic coupler modem, speed unknown. :yes:

When I finally got my own, it was one of the newfangled 1200 baud modems. I connected to several local BBS'es and got on AOL back before there was an aol.com so the big argument was whether it should be called AOL or just AO!

Now it's Chuck's turn to call me a young 'un. ;)
 
Wow. You have just made me feel so out of it. I knew I was a pioneer, but NONE of the stuff we worked on is on your map at all.

At least, nearly all the names on your map are recognizable. And I've actually used some.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Young 'un.

I actually did connect to something (can't remember what now) from a friend's house using an acoustic coupler modem, speed unknown. :yes:
Click to expand...


Your acoustic modem ran at 300 baud.
Prodigy began at 1200 bps and introduced the world to 2400 bps with a cheap modem. (I forgot the price, but we were practically giving them away.)
 
AuntPeggy said:
Your acoustic modem ran at 300 baud.
Prodigy began at 1200 bps and introduced the world to 2400 bps with a cheap modem. (I forgot the price, but we were practically giving them away.)
Click to expand...

There were 150 baud acoustic couplers too, weren't there?

And I remember hating Prodigy, I just can't remember why... :dunno:
 
Had e-mail within the company at Tandem Computers when I joined them in October 1983. And it wasn't new then. We had a feature that I would love to have on current systems - three classes of e-mail. 1st class was for limited distribution, company business. 2nd class was for wider distribution, company business. 3rd class was the company bulletin board. Club meetings, items for sale, you name it. Three separate inboxes on your account. Really worked well. Intel would hate it. :D
 
flyingcheesehead said:
There were 150 baud acoustic couplers too, weren't there?

And I remember hating Prodigy, I just can't remember why... :dunno:
Click to expand...
Yes, though for some reason I remember it as a 120 baud. And that was actual "baud", not the "bps" that you got when you went to 2400 and above.

I remember, back in the mid-80's, doing e-mail and having to know the network path from well-known machines like ucbvax. Also, needing to find gateways to get over to milnet.

Heck, my email was given as [FONT=Courier, Monospaced] "!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!pre1"[/FONT]
 
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