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Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?

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Jay Maynard

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Sep 3, 2000, 9:56:25 AM9/3/00
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On 02 Sep 2000 21:29:34 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
> "During my service in the United States Congress,
> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
>One way of looking at that is he is claiming to have created the
>Internet, and another way is that of all the people who helped
>create it, he is the Congress person who took the initiative
>required. The former is clearly not true, and the later clearly
>is true.

You should go to work as a political spin doctor. You're a natural.

Only a tortured reading of Gore's words can be assigned the latter meaning.
A plain English reading can only honestly be assigned the former. The
former meaning is laughable to those who understand just what it took to
create the Internet.

Mike Meredith at home

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Sep 3, 2000, 8:06:02 PM9/3/00
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In article <773408232...@kruskcontrol.ru>,
ho...@underice.ru (Hook) writes:
> * The Internet does not need fat lazy dudes in orange vests
> standing around near it leaning on shovels shoving donuts in
> their faces while they are supposed to be pretending they
> are turning potholes into bumps.

Really ? Every time work's Internet connection gets
upgraded/repaired, we have a bunch of guys that sound
suspiciously like the above. Funnily enough the guys who break
work's Internet connection from time to time look very similar
...

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 3, 2000, 1:09:37 PM9/3/00
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"Sjoerd Langkemper" <s.lang...@chello.nl> wrote:
>"Floyd Davidson" <fl...@ptialaska.net>:
>> diony...@hotmail.com (dionysus) wrote:
>> >>
>> >Being a foreigner, please excuse my ignorance, but what exactly did Al
>> >Gore do for the internet's reputation apart from coin a rather silly
>> >phrase?
>>
>> Money.
>>
>> He was basically responsible for introducing key legislation and
>> guiding Internet projects through the US Congress. He did that
>> at a time when most Congress critters had *no* idea what the
>> significance was. He did that at a time when virtually the
>> entire telecommunications industry had *no* idea what the
>> Internet was. Well actually, he did that at a time when hardly
>> *anyone* had any idea what it was! (Al Gore's legislation is
>> what changed the ARPANET to the NFSnet and caused it to become
>> known as The Internet too.)
><cut>
>
>Tell me if I'm wrong but to me it looks stupid to spend money to something
>where nobody ever heard off.

In this instance at least, you are clearly wrong. Give it some
thought, and be glad that money is spent on R&D every day,
exploring things that "nobody ever heard of".

--
Floyd L. Davidson fl...@barrow.com
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Gore_In_Conte...@no-spam.com

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Sep 3, 2000, 1:50:06 PM9/3/00
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On Sun, 03 Sep 2000 13:12:29 GMT, gr...@apple2.com.invalid wrote:

>In article <39b7e258...@news.sonic.net>,
>Gore_In...@tripod.com wrote:
>
>> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,talk.politics.misc,alt.os.linux
>
>Ah, another lesson in why folklore and politics don't mix?
>
>> To say that an 'interent' existed before Gore expanded it, is a
>> stretch. Almost everythign we call the internet was produced as a
>> result of his bills.
>
>And this is a good thing? I for one would be happy to go back to an
>Internet pre-Veep Gore.

Pre-1992? How about pre-Congressman Gore? Before Gore's 1986 "Supercomputer Network
Study Act" or whatever it was called.


> Back to the days when every new user was both
>willing and able to learn, and peer pressure exerted by experienced
>users upon newbies actually worked. Back when the most serious net
>abuse one could expect was an e-mail bomb.

Before Gore took the initiative among Congressmen of his term, there WERE no users
outside military, iirc. Maybe a very few on mainframes at MIT.

See http://Gore_In_Context.internet.html

Diogenes


*************************************************

http://Gore_In_Context.tripod.com -- my new site

Pew/PEJ report: media coverage favors Bush:
http://www.journalism.org/publ_research/character1.html

Re campaign finance see
http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/col/cona/2000/06/07/china/index.html
At my site see link direct to "Temple in a Teapot", a very well-written
article at americanlawyer.com debunking Gore campaign
finance charges.

Other good sites debunking anti-Clinton/Gore stories:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/
http://www.americandispatches.com/index.html
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
http://www.prospect.org/

Vote out the Impeachers! moveon.org & pfaw.org
*************************************************

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 3, 2000, 1:14:04 PM9/3/00
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Jay you are a well known distortionist. :-) But you have always been
far too crude to work as a "spin doctor". It might sell to boneheads,
but not to anyone else.

In plain English, including the context of the statement, there is
little doubt that in NO WAY did he mean the former.

Ian Stirling

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Sep 3, 2000, 2:05:37 PM9/3/00
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Hook <ho...@underice.ru> wrote:
>> His [ Al Gore's ] "Information Superhighway" metaphor is brilliant

>The Super Highway metaphor is severely flawed:
<snip>


>* The Internet does not need fat lazy dudes in orange vests
> standing around near it leaning on shovels shoving donuts in
> their faces while they are supposed to be pretending they
> are turning potholes into bumps.

Depending on your ISP, they may well be there though.
(Not to mention the numerous cases of chopped data cables.)

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings." - Austrian Emperor, Ferdinand I.

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 3, 2000, 1:32:47 PM9/3/00
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jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) wrote:
>On 03 Sep 2000 01:08:48 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>Apparently the truth escapes some. Al Gore is just about as
>>much the creator of The Internet as any other individual.
>
>That's the point, though: No one person created the Internet. I'd go so far
>as to say that no hundred people created the Internet.
>
>Failing to realize that is what makes Gore's claim so thoroughly laughable.

Jay, get real.

"During my service in the United States Congress,
I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

He did not say he invented the Internet. He said that he is the
one in Congress who took the inititative. That is absolutely a
true statement. No other Congressperson shared that initiative
either.

You and I (and many others who read and/or post to
alt.folklore.computers were using the Internet before Gore made
it a household word, but what percentage of those reading this
in talk.politics.misc had even heard of TCP/IP until Gore ran
for VP? How many of them, even then, had access until after
1995? Perhaps 90% of what the Internet is today, is because of
Al Gore. That is true even if you are not part of that 90%.

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 3, 2000, 1:24:10 PM9/3/00
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lwi...@bbs.cpcn.com (lwin) wrote:
>> Reality check. Gore is a lawyer by trade, and a politician by chioce
>> -- so, like what do you think! Granted his SuperComputer Network Act
>> of 1986 suggested that a "net" might be a good idea. However, I was
>> "chatting" with folks around the world via the Source and later with
>> CompuServe as far back as 1983 -- and this on a 1200 bps modem!
>
>So what?
>
>The community of 'talkers' back then was very limited. The
>Internet's crowning achievement is linking lots of computers
>everywhere in a unified standard at an affordable cost.

We might note also that CompuServe is *not* what evolved into
a worldwide network with millions of computers and many tens of
millions of users.

Al Gore's vision of The Internet did.

>> You "political folks" should take a
>> science course or two -- perhaps then you'd know how silly the
>> question is regarding Gore's role in the deployment of the internet..
>
>Others have already explained how the enviromental climate was
>necessary for the technology to take root and become widespread.

One might also note that the most techie of all the techies
involved, Vinton Cerf, allows that Al Gore is indeed due some
great amount of credit. And, he says that by 1988 he had
realized that The Internet could not realize his vision of what
it should be if it remained entirely a government funded
network. We might note that Cerf may have invented the
technology, but he pointedly says it was not viable in the
context that he worked with it. What he credits Al Gore with
doing is exactly what allowed that technology to be enabled.

Just consider the alternatives... we could all be using what?
Compuserve? Tymnet? and maybe dozens of other similar distinctly
less useful network protocols.

Thomas Andrews

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Sep 3, 2000, 2:37:32 PM9/3/00
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I wonder if people would still be objecting of Gore had said:

"As a member of Congress, I took the legislative initiative in
creating the internet."

It's almost exactly the same sentence - the word "legislative" is
redundant with "as a member of Congress" - but it would be harder
to snip and misrepresent.

--
Thomas Andrews tho...@best.com http://www.best.com/~thomaso/
"What's a man like me supposed to do,
With all this extra savoir-faire?" - TMBG

Chris Hedley

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Sep 3, 2000, 3:03:08 PM9/3/00
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In article <a1puo8.91q.ln@lucifer>,

I'm still frankly suspicious of this newfangled "internet" malarkey,
if we'd stuck with good ol' X.25 things'd be much better. In my day
we were happy with- [cont p.94]

Chris.

Bill Bonde

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Sep 3, 2000, 3:10:42 PM9/3/00
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Floyd Davidson wrote:
>
> jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) wrote:
> >On 03 Sep 2000 01:08:48 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
> >>Apparently the truth escapes some. Al Gore is just about as
> >>much the creator of The Internet as any other individual.
> >
> >That's the point, though: No one person created the Internet. I'd go so far
> >as to say that no hundred people created the Internet.
> >
> >Failing to realize that is what makes Gore's claim so thoroughly laughable.
>
> Jay, get real.
>
> "During my service in the United States Congress,
> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
>
> He did not say he invented the Internet. He said that he is the
> one in Congress who took the inititative. That is absolutely a
> true statement. No other Congressperson shared that initiative
> either.
>
> You and I (and many others who read and/or post to
> alt.folklore.computers were using the Internet before Gore made
> it a household word, but what percentage of those reading this
> in talk.politics.misc had even heard of TCP/IP until Gore ran
> for VP?
>

I knew about it. Gore claimed to have taken the initiative in creating
the Internet. That is way over the top.

Bill Bonde

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Sep 3, 2000, 3:17:31 PM9/3/00
to

Loren Petrich wrote:
>
> In article <39B1EE9C...@mail.com>, Bill Bonde <std...@mail.com> wrote:
> >Gore_In_Conte...@no-spam.com wrote:
>
> >> As was the case with
> >> the physical highway system championed by Mr. Gore's father, the
> >> government role in the information economy has been crucial.
> >> Lest anyone forget, the Internet came into existence through
> >> government initiative.]]
> >But not Gore's initiative. He's part of the group that brought us the
> >Assholes On Line.
>
> And how did that happen?
>
The way in which the private sector was brought into the Internet
brought us the likes of AOL. You know, that group of child
pornographers, thieves and low lifes that made it impossible for normal
people to sell products online by just sending checks back and forth.


> And I'm surprised that Mr. Bonde is not defending AOL as an
> organization that is exempt from all the rules that he believes ought to
> govern all ordinary citizens -- which is what he seems to believe about
> those who run businesses.
>
When have I said that? I support some level of sanction against
Microsoft for their illegal actions. Why should I like AOL?


> >> To say that an 'interent' existed before Gore expanded it, is a stretch. Almost
> >> everythign we call the internet was produced as a result of his bills.

> >Did Gore create usenet? No. Did Gore create the Web? No. Don't lie to
> >us, we know the truth.
>
> However, he was responsible for funding its early infrastructure.
>
Gore paid for the early internet infrastructure? The truth is that the
person's claim is wrong. Gore didn't even create usenet that thing that
some of us are communicating with now.

Bill Bonde

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Sep 3, 2000, 3:12:22 PM9/3/00
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Gore_In_Conte...@no-spam.com wrote:
>
> Take a look at what Gore really did to make our Internet possible. He wrote and
> pushed the bills which allowed it to happen.
>
> http://Gore_In_Context.tripod.com/internet.html
>
> All he claimed was that he led the Congressmen of his term during its creation. This
> is true.
>
Actually, he claimed far more than that. I don't know why you think that
the current version of the internet is the only internet that ever
existed.

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 3, 2000, 3:29:01 PM9/3/00
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vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>
>>Apparently the truth escapes some. Al Gore is just about as
>>much the creator of The Internet as any other individual. He is
>>the one member of Congress that had the vision to see what it
>>could be, and *fund* it while also setting up the legal
>>environment necessary for it to exist. If he had not, then IP
>>and HTTP would be things that roughly a million or two techies
>>would all know about, and the other dozens of millions of people
>>who know about them today would never had heard of them.
>
>Apparently, Gore isn't one of those dozens of millions.

You are saying Gore has never heard of IP or HTTP? Are you daft?

>"Open source webpage", anyone? Simple experiment for
>talk.politics folks: go to _any_ webpage and ask your browser
>to show the source.

How is being able to see the source to a web page linked in
any way to the phrase "Open source webpage"??? You can read
a lot of books too, and they are still very much copyrighted
material. So are many web page source listings that your
browser will allow you to read.

Your experiment is nonsense.

>Simple thought experiment: assume the somebody took a copy of
>Gore's page, modified it and put it for public access. Predict
>the reaction.

So? Copyright violations are against the law. Do you have
any concept of what a copyright is?

>Exercise: find definition of Open Source, read it and draw your
>conclusions.

It isn't what you seem to think it is.

>Another exercise: try to imagine the laughter on the net that
>followed Gore's playing with buzzwords.

How about the giggling following _your_ attempt above!

>"You're one of those condescending Unix computer users!"
>"Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer" - Dilbert.

We probably should also note that your attribution is incorrect.
Dilbert did NOT say that, which is what you are claiming. In fact
it was from a "Dilbert Cartoon". See the difference?

Ian Stirling

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Sep 3, 2000, 4:37:47 PM9/3/00
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Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) wrote:
>>On 03 Sep 2000 01:08:48 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>Apparently the truth escapes some. Al Gore is just about as
>>>much the creator of The Internet as any other individual.
>>
>>That's the point, though: No one person created the Internet. I'd go so far
>>as to say that no hundred people created the Internet.
>>
>>Failing to realize that is what makes Gore's claim so thoroughly laughable.

>Jay, get real.

> "During my service in the United States Congress,
> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Putting other words in someones mouth

"During my years as president, I took the initiative in creating the
apollo program"

He diddn't invent rocketry, or directly participate, either, before,
any lunar programs were strictly of the paper type, and unfunded,
existing as dreams from those involved in missile research, but
not having a concrete form.

Without that particular initiative, the evenutal manned landings on
the moon would have taken quite different form, even if it was eventually
the US that landed.

>He did not say he invented the Internet. He said that he is the
>one in Congress who took the inititative. That is absolutely a
>true statement. No other Congressperson shared that initiative
>either.

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------

Two parrots sitting on a perch. One asks the other, "Can you smell fish?"

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 3, 2000, 4:05:15 PM9/3/00
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Bill Bonde <std...@mail.com> wrote:

>Floyd Davidson wrote:
>> "During my service in the United States Congress,
>> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
>>
>> He did not say he invented the Internet. He said that he is the
>> one in Congress who took the inititative. That is absolutely a
>> true statement. No other Congressperson shared that initiative
>> either.
>>
>> You and I (and many others who read and/or post to
>> alt.folklore.computers were using the Internet before Gore made
>> it a household word, but what percentage of those reading this
>> in talk.politics.misc had even heard of TCP/IP until Gore ran
>> for VP?
>>
>I knew about it. Gore claimed to have taken the initiative in creating
>the Internet. That is way over the top.

And just who were the other Congress critters who also took
some initiative? Name one.

Alexander Viro

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Sep 3, 2000, 4:57:07 PM9/3/00
to
In article <87em31p...@barrow.com>,
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) wrote:

>>"Open source webpage", anyone? Simple experiment for
>>talk.politics folks: go to _any_ webpage and ask your browser
>>to show the source.
>
>How is being able to see the source to a web page linked in
>any way to the phrase "Open source webpage"??? You can read
>a lot of books too, and they are still very much copyrighted
>material. So are many web page source listings that your
>browser will allow you to read.

Many? Make it _all_ - rendering happens on the client side.

>Your experiment is nonsense.

>>Simple thought experiment: assume the somebody took a copy of
>>Gore's page, modified it and put it for public access. Predict
>>the reaction.
>
>So? Copyright violations are against the law. Do you have
>any concept of what a copyright is?

Sure I do. The little problem, though, is that Open Source implies
pretty specific kind of license. And I quite agree with you, using it
for a webpage would be a total nonsense.

Go and find the legal definition. Read it. Notice that one of the
requirements is that license must allow redistribution with any
modifications.

Now, care to translate Gore's babbling about his website being "Open Source"
into plain English? "Source is available" doesn't cut it - see above.
"You can modify and redistribute" _obviously_ is not true. IIRC, his
attempts to spin it (when the laughter came) were along the lines of
"We would be glad to hear your suggestions on potential improvements".
Officially, so would Microsoft, when it comes to suggestions on potential
improvements to any of their products.

If you can come with a plausible interpretation different from
* Gore was not aware that HTML _is_ the source, or
* Gore used a buzzword without any idea of its meaning
I would be very impressed.

Frankly, I find your utter lack of personal integrity rather amusing
(as in "oh, look - this freak got three legs"). Let's see what else
you can come up with. So far it was not too boring...

--

Bill Bonde

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Sep 3, 2000, 5:15:20 PM9/3/00
to

The Internet already existed at this point. You can't take initiative to
create something that is already here. In any case, there were plenty of
congressmen who voted for these bills or they would not be law.

Jay Maynard

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Sep 3, 2000, 5:43:52 PM9/3/00
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On 03 Sep 2000 09:32:47 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
> "During my service in the United States Congress,
> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
>He did not say he invented the Internet. He said that he is the
>one in Congress who took the inititative. That is absolutely a
>true statement. No other Congressperson shared that initiative
>either.

Your absurd insistence on limiting the possible contenders to those serving
in Congress during Gore's tenure there is why this is nothing but spin
control.

If you examine that sentence from the rules of English, you'll notice that
the first part is a dependent clause, used to explain or amplify the basic
meaning of the sentence of which it is a part. The part you appear to be
willfully ignoring is that there's nothing in that sentence that limits
Gore's claim to the legislative arena. He could just as easily have been
working on it in his copious free time.

The meat of the sentence is in the independent clause, the part you have
written on the second line of your quotation. Here, Gore claims that he took
the initiative in creating the Internet. This totally ignores the
contributions of literally thousands of people down in the trenches who were
doing the real work of building hardware and designing protocols and writing
software...you know, the things that made the Internet possible at all.
Creating it.

Now, if Gore had said that "I took the initiative in funding the Internet",
I would have no argument with his statement at all. As it stands, however,
it's so far out in left field, and so true to the standard politician trick
of claiming credit for things that he didn't do, that it's nothing but
laughable - it's so obviously false that it's not even insulting.

John Galt

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Sep 3, 2000, 6:21:51 PM9/3/00
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Floyd Davidson wrote:

> >Yup. There is no doubt about it. Algore and Tipper are also the models
> >for _Love Story_. (By the way, is "Tipper" her real UID? or just her
> >effective UID?) Algore discovered "Love Canal."

The _Celebrity Who's Who_ says he is married to a woman named Mary Elizabeth
Aitcheson


Karri Kalpio

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Sep 5, 2000, 4:20:48 AM9/5/00
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Mark Hohn <ho...@earthlink.net> writes:

> Gore said he invented the internet. Gore said him and his wife were what love
> story was based on. Gore looking at Picture of George Washington once asked
> "WHO is that?" Now I agree those aren't important issues, but they did
> happen.

No, he didn't.

No, he didn't.

No, he didn't.

Now, can we discuss about real topics and forget the BS? Yes, I know
we can't. People just don't bother to check out what they are talking
about... Sometimes[1] I hope that Mr. Gore hadn't "taken the initiative"
to help to make internet a public playground. Internet users were so
much more informed when internet was mostly an academic thing...

--k

[1] Actually, nowadays, most of the time...

--
/"\ : Karri Kalpio
\ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign : ka...@moremagic.com
X Against HTML Mail : [+358] (40) 5926895 (mobile)
/ \ : [+358] (9) 75111771 (work)

Chris Hedley

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Sep 5, 2000, 4:56:00 AM9/5/00
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In article <87k8crz...@batcave.moremagic.com>,

Karri Kalpio <ka...@batcave.moremagic.com> writes:
> Now, can we discuss about real topics and forget the BS? Yes, I know
> we can't. People just don't bother to check out what they are talking
> about... Sometimes[1] I hope that Mr. Gore hadn't "taken the initiative"
> to help to make internet a public playground. Internet users were so
> much more informed when internet was mostly an academic thing...

This is all nice and groovy, but could we keep US politics on US politics
newsgroups, please? I'm not sure where this all started, but the link to
alt.folklore.computers is becoming increasingly tenuous IMHO...

Chris.

gr...@apple2.com.invalid

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Sep 5, 2000, 5:18:49 AM9/5/00
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In alt.folklore.computers,
in article <39b58e9a...@news.sonic.net>,
Gore_In...@tripod.com wrote:

> See http://Gore_In_Context.internet.html

As soon as the top level domain ".html" becomes valid.

Al Gore did not found the Internet. He found the Internet.
There's a difference.

--
__ _____________ __
\ \_\ \__ __/ /_/ / <http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/>
.\ __ \ | | / __ /----------------------------------------------------
^ \_\ \_\|_|/_/ /_/ Don't mail me, I'll mail you.

gr...@apple2.com.invalid

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Sep 5, 2000, 5:23:28 AM9/5/00
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In alt.folklore.computers,
in article <39B4232D...@earthlink.net>,
Mark Hohn <ho...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Gore looking at Picture of George Washington once asked
> "WHO is that?"

And to whom did he ask that question? I can see a knowledgeable parent
asking his young child that question. Context is important.

D.J.

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Sep 5, 2000, 5:29:01 AM9/5/00
to

Urp.

Sorry, but I haven't been billed for political broadcasts. Can't stand
political adverts by anyone of any party, etc.

[plonk]

JimP.
--
djim55 at tyhe datasync dot com. Disclaimer: Standard.
My Web pages Updated: August 24, 2000:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~djim51/newlnks.html
Registered Linux user#185746

Floyd Davidson

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Sep 5, 2000, 5:14:02 AM9/5/00
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Karri Kalpio <ka...@batcave.moremagic.com> wrote:

>... Sometimes[1] I hope that Mr. Gore hadn't "taken the
>initiative" to help to make internet a public
>playground. Internet users were so much more informed when
>internet was mostly an academic thing...

Ah, yes. That was back in the days when the old timers on
Usenet, when faced with stupid posts, commonly make cracks like
"Well, what else could we expect... from an EDU domain."

Doc

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Sep 5, 2000, 6:27:02 AM9/5/00
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On 5 Sep 2000 08:56:00 GMT, Chris Hedley

<cbh@REMOVE_THIS.teabag.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>This is all nice and groovy, but could we keep US politics on US politics
>newsgroups, please? I'm not sure where this all started, but the link to
>alt.folklore.computers is becoming increasingly tenuous IMHO...
>

Better yet, they could drop it altogether. It never had *anything* to do
with Linux, and they keep changing the Subject line just enough to evade the
killfile....

--
Doc Shipley
Network Stuff
Austin, Earth

donald tees

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Sep 5, 2000, 8:32:38 AM9/5/00
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This is getting silly. Illegal? What law, pray tell?

I was connected to several networks way back when. I was breaking no laws.

Ron Hunsinger wrote in message ...
>In article
><91E057FD4E69EAE9.A66EE2A9...@lp.airnews.net>,
>jmay...@conmicro.cx wrote:
>
>> Oh? Why, exactly, was legislation necessary? Why would the Internet not
have
>> sprang up as it did without it?
>
>Think about what an ISP does. For a fixed fee, they'll sell you access to a
>network they do not own and did not build. There were many who felt that
>should be illegal. Almost everyone agreed that it was illegal.
>
>The only way to make it legal was to pass legislation making it legal.
>Without that legislation, ISPs would not exist. (Or, if they did, they'd be
>acting only as agents for the nationally funded networks, able to provide
>access only to people who could justify their access to the satisfaction of
>said nationally funded networks.)
>
>The very best alternative we could hope for is a world-wide network
>patterned after the world-wide telephone system. Built by large carries,
>similar to the national phone companies, and billed in much the same way.
>Sure, you could reach a web page in Japan from your home in New Jersey. And
>it would cost you only 75 cents a minute.
>
>How big would The Internet be with that kind of cost barrier? Fortunately,
>we had the key legislation at just the right time to make access completely
>unrestricted (and therefore virtually free).
>
>-Ron Hunsinger


John Varela

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 10:06:25 AM9/5/00
to
On Sun, 3 Sep 2000 23:36:34, tho...@best.com (Thomas Andrews) wrote:

> There was no illegal fund-raiser at the Buddhist temple.

That's right, there was no controlling legal authority.

--
John "or something like that" Varela
for e-mail add a to my user ID

TheCentralSc...@pobox.com

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 10:32:09 AM9/5/00
to
On Tue, 05 Sep 2000 14:17:10 GMT, Roger Blake <rogg...@inamme.com> wrote:
>
>Frankly all we need to know about your boy Gore is contained in his
>own writings. He's just another big-government-loving, socialistic,
>jackbooted thug.
>
>The creep won't be getting my vote.

Planning on voting for the big-government-loving rightwing
sleeping-with-the-religious-right jackbooted thug?

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:05:36 PM9/5/00
to
In article <87vgwcm...@barrow.com>,
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>10,000 was insignificant. There were 300,000 computers on the
>Internet in 1990. Soon the number was in the millions. The
>explosive growth followed Al Gore's legislative changes to the
>legal environment in which the Internet could operate.

No, the explosive growth stayed on a good old-fashioned exponential curve.

AOL made the internet what it is today. If Al Gore had never done anything,
we would still have roughly the same network, with roughly the same kinds
of things on it.

Now, I'm not a big fan of AOL's level of user education, but it was companies
like AOL, or UUNet, that made the internet change. If the government had
refused to pass any laws, the companies would have done it anyway.

-s
--
Copyright 2000, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:06:41 PM9/5/00
to
In article <87n1hpp...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
> "During my service in the United States Congress,
> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Which is total bullshit, because his actions had no effect on *creating*
it. He may have pushed for some changes, but he did not singlehandedly
cause them, and if he'd died before he ever heard of the Internet, nothing
significant would have changed.

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:08:25 PM9/5/00
to
In article <87snrhn...@barrow.com>,
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>The Internet that existed at that point was not The Internet that
>existed afterwards. *VERY* different things.

So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
are also "*VERY* different things".

Post hoc fallacy. You assume that, because Gore did something around
the time a change you noticed occurred, Gore was involved.

I would argue that the changes in the Internet forced politicians to begin
recognizing it and adapting to it. The Internet took the initiative in
changing Al Gore. :)

>For example, neither
>you nor I would be able to access the previous Internet in the same
>way we do today, by paying a fixed monthly fee to an ISP. It was
>illegal.

And it would have been impossible for companies to just build a for-profit
network? Bullshit.

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:10:32 PM9/5/00
to
In article <hnsngr-ya0231800...@news.pacbell.net>,

Ron Hunsinger <hns...@sirius.com> wrote:
>The only way to make it legal was to pass legislation making it legal.
>Without that legislation, ISPs would not exist. (Or, if they did, they'd be
>acting only as agents for the nationally funded networks, able to provide
>access only to people who could justify their access to the satisfaction of
>said nationally funded networks.)

Yes. CompuServe did not exist, because it obviously would have been illegal.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. The nationally funded networks were interesting
for research, but if they had been destroyed utterly, we would have built
something indistinguishable from the Internet anyway, because companies had
access to TCP/IP stacks.

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:11:56 PM9/5/00
to
In article <MTws5.5400$R87.137370@sjc-read>,
Thomas Andrews <tho...@best.com> wrote:
>I wonder if people would still be objecting of Gore had said:

> "As a member of Congress, I took the legislative initiative in
> creating the internet."

>It's almost exactly the same sentence - the word "legislative" is
>redundant with "as a member of Congress" - but it would be harder
>to snip and misrepresent.

I would, because I don't think his legislation was particularly crucial.
:)

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:13:41 PM9/5/00
to
In article <8oudv3$g...@weyl.math.psu.edu>,

Alexander Viro <vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu> wrote:
> * Gore used a buzzword without any idea of its meaning

That was my understanding, given that it had a copyright notice prohibiting
copying.

Oh, and he had the famous bit where there was a thing asking kids to submit
their parents' contact info and/or email addresses for his spam list. ;)

Alexandre Pechtchanski

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:32:50 PM9/5/00
to
On Sun, 03 Sep 2000 11:30:15 -0700, MC Choco <nav...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[ snip ]

>DARPA created it in the 50s. In other words, the Department of
>Defense.

And what, pray, is the sky color on your planet?
In the 50s, indeed. Using postal pigeons, I'm sure.

--
[ When replying, remove *'s from address ]
Alexandre Pechtchanski, Systems Manager, RUH, NY

H Dziardziel

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:44:52 PM9/5/00
to
On Sat, 2 Sep 2000 15:11:56 -0700 (PDT), q...@crazedgopher.edu (Quinn
Penn) wrote:

>Could you computer people help us political folks? The below quotes
>are being tossed about to prove that Al Gore was indeed instrumental
>in bringing about the Internet.
>
>What is the truth? Is Algore The Father of the Internet?
>
Presumably making Tipper the mother of the pc?

Jay Maynard

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 12:59:20 PM9/5/00
to
On Mon, 04 Sep 2000 20:54:07 -0700, Ron Hunsinger <hns...@sirius.com> wrote:
>Think about what an ISP does. For a fixed fee, they'll sell you access to a
>network they do not own and did not build. There were many who felt that
>should be illegal. Almost everyone agreed that it was illegal.

You assume that, absent such legislation, there would not have been a
competing, and open, network springing up. I'm not at all sure such an
assumption is valid.

Anne & Lynn Wheeler

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 1:11:14 PM9/5/00
to

se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes:
> AOL made the internet what it is today. If Al Gore had never done anything,
> we would still have roughly the same network, with roughly the same kinds
> of things on it.
>
> Now, I'm not a big fan of AOL's level of user education, but it was companies
> like AOL, or UUNet, that made the internet change. If the government had
> refused to pass any laws, the companies would have done it anyway.

also note that during the late '80s and early '90s ... the government
had switched to and was dictating OSI (GOSIP) ... not TCP/IP. The
government was attempting to replace use of TCP/IP with OSI
implementations which didn't have an internet layer and would have
stopped internet growth dead in its tracks.

randoms refs:

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#59
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#16
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#43
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm


also most of the internet growth in the 80s was the availability of
LANs and the tcp/ip stack on workstations and PCs. Prior to that
point, internet had been mainframes and minicomputers with
point-to-point connections. The number of workstations and PCs far
outnumbered the number of mainframes and minicomputers that had been
the networking nodes.

random refs:

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#38c

the internal corporate network (all mainframes) reached 1000 nodes at
least a year before the "internet":

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#110

The internal corporate network (distinct from bitnet, earn, etc)
reached 2000 nodes about the same time the "internet" reached 1000
nodes.

After that there was an explosive growth in internet nodes ... not
because of the NSFNET1 backbone (which only directly interconnected a
rather trivial number of nodes), but because of LANs, workstations,
and PCs all showing in the internet configuration.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com, finger for pgp key
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Robert Hill

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 1:15:47 PM9/5/00
to
gr...@apple2.com.invalid wrote in
<greg-4tbe49n...@news.binary.net>: [note followups]

>In alt.folklore.computers,
>in article <39B4232D...@earthlink.net>,
>Mark Hohn <ho...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Gore looking at Picture of George Washington once asked
>> "WHO is that?"
>
>And to whom did he ask that question? I can see a knowledgeable parent
>asking his young child that question. Context is important.
>

It was at Montecello(sp?) Jefferson's estate, on the day of the
inauguration. Clinton/Gore started the day there to taunt Jefersons
ghost and for the usual pap that we get from polititions. It was not
actually a painting of Washington, but several busts of various founding
fathers (that may have included Washington, it's been 8 years) The
person he was asking was I presume the curator or some local expert.
Clinton got a look on his face like I'm sure he gets whenever he hears
Hillary outside the oval office and started schooching out of camera
view.

To be fair, it was early in the morning, and Al had a big day. Rush made
a big deal out of it, as the media reaction was exactly zero. Had Quale
done something like this we could have expected the Tonight show so skip
any guests and just rip on Quale.

I figure the press was too busy covering the latest port of TECO to
linux.

--
Robert "On topic" Hill

Jim Stewart

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 1:56:51 PM9/5/00
to
Quinn Penn wrote:
>
> Could you computer people help us political folks? The below quotes
> are being tossed about to prove that Al Gore was indeed instrumental
> in bringing about the Internet.
>
> What is the truth? Is Algore The Father of the Internet?

Troll Detector off-scale, tongue-in-cheek reply mode enabled:

Oh hell yes. Not only did he invent the Internet, he wrote sendmail and
named, ported Bell Labs UNIX to a PDP-11 at Berkeley, and designed the
first packet switching hardware. He also appeared to Gordan Bell in a
dream and gave him the inspiration for the DEC VAX line of computers.

Bill Bonde

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 3:14:34 PM9/5/00
to

Peter Seebach wrote:
>
> In article <8oudv3$g...@weyl.math.psu.edu>,
> Alexander Viro <vi...@weyl.math.psu.edu> wrote:
> > * Gore used a buzzword without any idea of its meaning
>
> That was my understanding, given that it had a copyright notice prohibiting
> copying.
>

Open Source means that you can get it and change it. Would Gore mind if
I downloaded his website, changed stuff around to make him look bad and
then put it back up somewhere?

John Hendrickx

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 3:43:01 PM9/5/00
to
Gore wasn't the father of the internet, but didn he perhaps coin the term
"information superhighway"? It was the first time I ever heard of it at
least. There was an article in Byte back around 1993, to the effect that
the still largely academic internet at that time could be seen as a
prototype for this information superhighway, but that it was doomed to be
replaced by the far more sophisticated, great, cool, etc ISH. Of course
it could be that the article envisioned an ISH that was secure with a
formal organization, in which case their reasoning would have made good
sense. Still wrong though.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 3:49:52 PM9/5/00
to
wolf...@w202zrz.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE (Wolfgang Schwanke) wrote:

>hns...@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger) writes:
>>jmay...@conmicro.cx wrote:
>
>>> Oh? Why, exactly, was legislation necessary? Why would the
>>> Internet not have sprang up as it did without it?
>
>>Think about what an ISP does. For a fixed fee, they'll sell
>>you access to a network they do not own and did not
>>build. There were many who felt that should be illegal. Almost
>>everyone agreed that it was illegal.
>
>That's exactly the same thing phone companies do. According to
>what logic

That is not what "phone companies" do. If, for example, you
have a contract with a local telco to provide you with access to
the PSTN, and you use that access... each and every telco
involved gets paid for the time you spend using the circuits
provided. Your telco hands a long distance call off to a an LD
carrier of one type or another. The LD carrier charges you a
fee, and pays one to 1) the originating telco, 2) the
terminating telco, and 3) any other LD carrier whose facilities
are used in the process of connecting your call.

There are slight variations on that within different countries,
however that is basically also the way international calls are
handled.

Just imagine for one moment an Internet that worked the same
way! And then remember back in the mid-1980's when some people
proposed *exactly* that! Are we all glad that Al Gore was
listening to people like Vint Cerf instead of others?

>is it illegal? Since the Internet is not "owned" by anyone in any
>meaningfuly way, and was built by many different individuals and
>organisations, it's close to pointless to argue about that point.
>
>And illegal according to what country's laws anyway? (You
>_have_ noticed that this discussion is awfully US-centric,
>haven't you?) In my country, no laws had to "legalise" ISPs,
>they just sprang up. Nor did any US-specific funding issue
>influence the development of the net, because our part of the
>net is financed from different sources.

Generally I do have a problem with US-centricity, but in this
particular case it is a fact that the US is where the Internet
originated. If the US had not financed ARPANET and then NSFnet,
your Internet would not exist, period.

>BTW, who exactly is this Al Gore person? I understand he's some
>American politician, but why should he be so important for the
>world?

No reason at all.

>I was using the Internet in 1990 in Germany, long before I
>first heard his name, or before his alleged achievings could
>have made an impact.

Are you sure it really was the Internet? (A lot of people
posting on this subject have indicated a great deal of confusion
about which networks actually were the Internet at that time, so
you may or may not have been.) Regardless, by 1990 the impact
had already been significant (from actions 4-5 years past by
that time).

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 4:04:09 PM9/5/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>The Internet that existed at that point was not The Internet that
>>existed afterwards. *VERY* different things.
>
>So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
>are also "*VERY* different things".

You are in for a surprise. Ten years from now there will be
differences, but they will be relatively minor. Major changes
pre-1992 were not all that difficult. Major changes after 1996
are all going to be much slower. Virtually all changes between
now and 2010 are going to be easily predictable extentions of
exactly what we have now. Most will hinge directly on 1) faster
access and 2) ubiquitous access.

>Post hoc fallacy. You assume that, because Gore did something around
>the time a change you noticed occurred, Gore was involved.

That was not an assumption. The people most directly involved,
for example Vint Cerf, agree with what I've stated.

>I would argue that the changes in the Internet forced politicians to begin
>recognizing it and adapting to it. The Internet took the initiative in
>changing Al Gore. :)

I certainly agree that it was an equal exchange.

>>For example, neither
>>you nor I would be able to access the previous Internet in the same
>>way we do today, by paying a fixed monthly fee to an ISP. It was
>>illegal.
>
>And it would have been impossible for companies to just build a for-profit
>network? Bullshit.

There were several companies who were trying to do exactly that,
such as Tymnet, CompuServe, etc. They did not succeed. There
was also the telephone industry, which no doubt *could* have
done it (and in the end, actually did), and if you think they would
have ever woken up and smelled the coffee without the nudge that
Gore gave them... I've got a bridge for sale that you will no
doubt just love.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 4:08:58 PM9/5/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>Ron Hunsinger <hns...@sirius.com> wrote:
>>The only way to make it legal was to pass legislation making
>>it legal. Without that legislation, ISPs would not
>>exist. (Or, if they did, they'd be acting only as agents for
>>the nationally funded networks, able to provide access only to
>>people who could justify their access to the satisfaction of
>>said nationally funded networks.)
>
>Yes. CompuServe did not exist, because it obviously would have
>been illegal.
>
>Sorry, but I don't buy it. The nationally funded networks were
>interesting for research, but if they had been destroyed
>utterly, we would have built something indistinguishable from
>the Internet anyway, because companies had access to TCP/IP
>stacks.

And of course *that* is exactly what we got from those
nationally funded research networks. Without them those
companies could never have developed internetworking.

Besides, as you say... CompuServe did exist! So, if that was
all it took why isn't the model they used the one that the
Internet uses today? Why didn't CompuServe grow into a
multi-billion dollar industry?

And why are we not paying the the byte for Internet access
today??? ;-)

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 4:13:09 PM9/5/00
to

Then why didn't it happen?

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 4:32:22 PM9/5/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>10,000 was insignificant. There were 300,000 computers on the
>>Internet in 1990. Soon the number was in the millions. The
>>explosive growth followed Al Gore's legislative changes to the
>>legal environment in which the Internet could operate.
>
>No, the explosive growth stayed on a good old-fashioned exponential curve.

It did that instead of leveling off, which it would have *had* to do
if legislation had not changed the legal status of a variety of things.

But you don't need to take my word for it:

"In 1988 I made a conscious decision to pursue connection
of the Internet to commercial electronic mail carriers. It
wasn't clear that this would be acceptable from the
standpoint of federal policy, but I thought that it was
important to begin exploring the question." V. Cerf (in 1993)

"In 1988, I realized the Internet couldn't get any bigger
if the U.S. government continued to fund it alone. ...
And if you look at the statistics, 1988 was when the
exponential growth began." V. Cerf (in 1999)

>AOL made the internet what it is today. If Al Gore had never done anything,
>we would still have roughly the same network, with roughly the same kinds
>of things on it.

We all enjoy funny jokes. Thank you for that one.

>Now, I'm not a big fan of AOL's level of user education, but it was companies
>like AOL, or UUNet, that made the internet change. If the government had
>refused to pass any laws, the companies would have done it anyway.

What AOL did was not doable without Gore's initiative.

Thomas Andrews

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 5:46:58 PM9/5/00
to
In article <87snrek...@barrow.com>,
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:

>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>
>>AOL made the internet what it is today. If Al Gore had never done anything,
>>we would still have roughly the same network, with roughly the same kinds
>>of things on it.
>
>We all enjoy funny jokes. Thank you for that one.
>

Just to clarify for Peter:

AOL actively resisted the internet as it is today, for quite a long
time. AOL wanted to control the content available to their subscribers,
and people, once introduced to the web, were not willing to accept
the tiny sandbox that AOL wanted to keep them in.

For years, AOL did not support Usenet, for example. FTP? Nah. Telnet?
Nope.

AOL adapted better to the internet than did, say, Compuserve or
Prodigy, which is why it won. But originally the three were all
operating what now would be thought of as a minimal web site.
AOL adapted their business model because they started losing
business to the small mom-n-pop companies who sold mere internet
access plus a web browser.

--
Thomas Andrews tho...@best.com http://www.best.com/~thomaso/
"What's a man like me supposed to do,
With all this extra savoir-faire?" - TMBG

Tim Shoppa

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 6:08:44 PM9/5/00
to
Alexandre Pechtchanski wrote:
>
> On Sun, 03 Sep 2000 11:30:15 -0700, MC Choco <nav...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> [ snip ]
>
> >DARPA created it in the 50s. In other words, the Department of
> >Defense.
>
> And what, pray, is the sky color on your planet?
> In the 50s, indeed. Using postal pigeons, I'm sure.

Proper pronounciation around these parts is "Lasnerian 50s".

:-).

Tim.

Mimi Weasel

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 8:38:20 PM9/5/00
to
Thomas Andrews wrote:
> AOL adapted better to the internet than did, say, Compuserve or
> Prodigy, which is why it won.

I don't know if you know or care, but Compuserve IS AOL. They were
bought out by AOL a couple of years ago and it looks almost exactly like
AOL now.
--
Mimi Weasel
"If you want to live like a Republican,
vote Democrat". -- Harry Truman
Read my lips: "No new TEXANS"

Thomas Andrews

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 9:32:53 PM9/5/00
to
In article <39B59222...@home.com>,

Mimi Weasel <MimiW...@home.com> wrote:
>Thomas Andrews wrote:
>> AOL adapted better to the internet than did, say, Compuserve or
>> Prodigy, which is why it won.
>
>I don't know if you know or care, but Compuserve IS AOL. They were
>bought out by AOL a couple of years ago and it looks almost exactly like
>AOL now.

Yeah, I know. They lost...

Lars Poulsen

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 10:46:33 PM9/5/00
to
Roger Blake wrote:
> ... a useless political hack such as Gore, who has undoubtedly not
> ... done anything really productive in his entire life,

*plonk*
--
/ Lars Poulsen - http://www.cmc.com/lars - la...@cmc.com
125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277

Lars Poulsen

unread,
Sep 5, 2000, 10:56:19 PM9/5/00
to
Peter Seebach wrote:
> AOL made the internet what it is today. If Al Gore had never done
> anything, we would still have roughly the same network, ...

AOL wanted to BE THE network, not to be an integral part of the
Internet. For years they insisted that while they could exchange
e-mail with the Internet, AOL was valuable to its members because
AOL contained content that could only be accessed by AOL members.
This is a very different idea than the Internet that I know.

> ... it was companies like AOL, or UUNet, that made the internet


> change. If the government had refused to pass any laws, the
> companies would have done it anyway.

UUnet yes, AOL no.

UUnet was there and was ready when the High Performance Computing
Act allowed the commercial interconnections. AOL resisted the
interconnections.

Several private interests had tried to establish online
communities in a commercial framework, but not one of them
could ever reach critical mass and they resisted merging.
The (research) internet had the critical mass, and when
commercial connections were allowed, each of the commercial
operators found value in connecting to the lump.

Gore's vision was exactly that: We are so close to critical
mass that if we remove the roadblocks, it will want to fuse.
And it happened.

[ I have removed the poor linux guys from follow-ups ]

Morten Reistad

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 5:35:58 AM9/6/00
to
In article <87aedml...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>wolf...@w202zrz.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE (Wolfgang Schwanke) wrote:
>>hns...@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger) writes:
>>>jmay...@conmicro.cx wrote:
>>
>>>> Oh? Why, exactly, was legislation necessary? Why would the
>>>> Internet not have sprang up as it did without it?
[snip]

>>And illegal according to what country's laws anyway? (You
>>_have_ noticed that this discussion is awfully US-centric,
>>haven't you?) In my country, no laws had to "legalise" ISPs,
>>they just sprang up. Nor did any US-specific funding issue
>>influence the development of the net, because our part of the
>>net is financed from different sources.
>
>Generally I do have a problem with US-centricity, but in this
>particular case it is a fact that the US is where the Internet
>originated. If the US had not financed ARPANET and then NSFnet,
>your Internet would not exist, period.
>
>>BTW, who exactly is this Al Gore person? I understand he's some
>>American politician, but why should he be so important for the
>>world?

It is interesting how the US-centricness of the Internet
never carried over into the domain of the politicians
and the Fortune 500 CEOs before europeans started using it.

As far as I know, the first head of any country executive to
use intenet-based E-mail as a daily tool was Carl Bildt; then
PM of Sweden. (Jeltsin may have beat him to it, as E-mail was
heaviliy used in the soviet-to-russia transition, but documentation
is schetchy.) (and, yes,Sweden is a monarcy. Now even the king has
a web site).

There have been some embarrasing moments with US politicians
abroad talking about the Internet; which they know nothing about
to foreigners, not knowing the foreigners have used the internet
daily since college days.

There was an unfortunate blind alley called X.400, GOSIP etc.
where the X.25 crowd tried to emulate the internet, implemented
like a phone connection. And, yes, these protocols require quite
some hardware to keep up with a poor 64k line.

>No reason at all.
>
>>I was using the Internet in 1990 in Germany, long before I
>>first heard his name, or before his alleged achievings could
>>have made an impact.
>
>Are you sure it really was the Internet? (A lot of people
>posting on this subject have indicated a great deal of confusion
>about which networks actually were the Internet at that time, so
>you may or may not have been.) Regardless, by 1990 the impact
>had already been significant (from actions 4-5 years past by
>that time).

1990 was the year of the CIX wars; where the ISPs joined together
and made a bypass of the NSFnet core so they could run anything
they chose over their networks. This had the effect of making
the NSFnet 'just another ISP'; and they (eventually) had to obey
just the same rules as the rest of us to connect. Today they
are a rather marginalized core network provider, as the telcos
have taken over.

Up until 1990/1991 a lot of partially connected networks existed
throughout the world. Even then there was amazing geographic
diversity of the internet. Norway was connected from 1972, with
a famous IMP at Kjeller outside Oslo. We all thank Paal Spilling
for making that happen.

>
>--
>Floyd L. Davidson fl...@barrow.com
>Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Morten Reistad firs...@lastname.priv.no
Oslo, Norway

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 6:00:44 AM9/6/00
to
In article <871yyyl...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>Ron Hunsinger <hns...@sirius.com> wrote:
>>>The only way to make it legal was to pass legislation making
>>>it legal. Without that legislation, ISPs would not
>>>exist. (Or, if they did, they'd be acting only as agents for
>>>the nationally funded networks, able to provide access only to
>>>people who could justify their access to the satisfaction of
>>>said nationally funded networks.)
>>
>>Yes. CompuServe did not exist, because it obviously would have
>>been illegal.
>>
>>Sorry, but I don't buy it. The nationally funded networks were
>>interesting for research, but if they had been destroyed
>>utterly, we would have built something indistinguishable from
>>the Internet anyway, because companies had access to TCP/IP
>>stacks.
>
>And of course *that* is exactly what we got from those
>nationally funded research networks. Without them those
>companies could never have developed internetworking.

That's just pure and simple bullshit. It wasn't ONLY
nationally funded research.

>
>Besides, as you say... CompuServe did exist! So, if that was
>all it took why isn't the model they used the one that the
>Internet uses today? Why didn't CompuServe grow into a
>multi-billion dollar industry?

Bad programming? Incompatibility? That's why JMF
didn't buy their service.

>And why are we not paying the the byte for Internet access
>today??? ;-)
>

Why aren't we (the USA) paying by the message packet for
telephone use today?

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 6:09:07 AM9/6/00
to
In article <8p535u$k2h$1...@oslo-nntp.eunet.no>,

m...@foo.eunet.no (Morten Reistad) wrote:
>In article <87aedml...@barrow.com>,
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>wolf...@w202zrz.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE (Wolfgang Schwanke) wrote:
>>>hns...@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger) writes:
>>>>jmay...@conmicro.cx wrote:

<snip>

One of the above people asked:

>>>BTW, who exactly is this Al Gore person? I understand he's some
>>>American politician, but why should he be so important for the
>>>world?

<snip>

Al Gore is one of the guys who are running for President
of the US. We get to vote for one of them in November.
Presumedly, trade policy is set by the Prez. So, if
the guy pays attention to internet-specific issues, he
may do the wrong thing :-). Rumor also has it that
the outcome of the Microsoft antitrust suit might be
changed or dropped depending on who gets elected.

Now that's how it might effect you.

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 6:10:55 AM9/6/00
to
In article <39b51a11$0$72532$3c09...@news.plethora.net>,
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>In article <87n1hpp...@barrow.com>,
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>> "During my service in the United States Congress,
>> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
>
>Which is total bullshit, because his actions had no effect on *creating*
>it. He may have pushed for some changes, but he did not singlehandedly
>cause them, and if he'd died before he ever heard of the Internet, nothing
>significant would have changed.

And it's not the only time he's recast his history; I suspect
it won't be the last time.

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 6:21:52 AM9/6/00
to
In article <8766oal...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>The Internet that existed at that point was not The Internet that
>>>existed afterwards. *VERY* different things.
>>
>>So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
>>are also "*VERY* different things".
>
>You are in for a surprise. Ten years from now there will be
>differences, but they will be relatively minor. Major changes
>pre-1992 were not all that difficult. Major changes after 1996
>are all going to be much slower. Virtually all changes between
>now and 2010 are going to be easily predictable extentions of
>exactly what we have now. Most will hinge directly on 1) faster
>access and 2) ubiquitous access.

I'll let others talk about implemention changes since I
don't know much about that. However, you are so wrong about
usage of the internet in 2010 to be easily predicatable
of what we have now.

>
>>Post hoc fallacy. You assume that, because Gore did something around
>>the time a change you noticed occurred, Gore was involved.
>
>That was not an assumption. The people most directly involved,
>for example Vint Cerf, agree with what I've stated.

And I've never heard of this Vint Cerf. Look, I was typing
the command SET HOST foobar in the late 70s (and we had
customers who could do it before our site could). To me,
that implies a network.


>
>>I would argue that the changes in the Internet forced
>>politicians to begin
>>recognizing it and adapting to it. The Internet took the initiative in
>>changing Al Gore. :)
>
>I certainly agree that it was an equal exchange.
>
>>>For example, neither
>>>you nor I would be able to access the previous Internet in the same
>>>way we do today, by paying a fixed monthly fee to an ISP. It was
>>>illegal.
>>
>>And it would have been impossible for companies to
>>just build a for-profit
>>network? Bullshit.
>
>There were several companies who were trying to do exactly that,
>such as Tymnet, CompuServe, etc. They did not succeed.

Of course they suceeded. I don't recall either of them
going bankrupt.


> There
>was also the telephone industry, which no doubt *could* have
>done it (and in the end, actually did), and if you think they would
>have ever woken up and smelled the coffee without the nudge that
>Gore gave them... I've got a bridge for sale that you will no
>doubt just love.


You are attributing a series of coincidences as the effort
of one man (which why everybody is jumping down your throat :-)).

I assure that Gore had absolutely no influence on ANF-10
or the custom-built hard/software that was installed at
our (DEC) customer sites.

David Razler

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 9:53:28 AM9/6/00
to
On 03 Sep 2000 09:09:37 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net>
wrote:

>"Sjoerd Langkemper" <s.lang...@chello.nl> wrote:
>>"Floyd Davidson" <fl...@ptialaska.net>:
>>> diony...@hotmail.com (dionysus) wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >Being a foreigner, please excuse my ignorance, but what exactly did Al
>>> >Gore do for the internet's reputation apart from coin a rather silly
>>> >phrase?
>>>
>>> Money.
>>>
>>> He was basically responsible for introducing key legislation and
>>> guiding Internet projects through the US Congress. He did that
>>> at a time when most Congress critters had *no* idea what the
>>> significance was. He did that at a time when virtually the
>>> entire telecommunications industry had *no* idea what the
>>> Internet was. Well actually, he did that at a time when hardly
>>> *anyone* had any idea what it was! (Al Gore's legislation is
>>> what changed the ARPANET to the NFSnet and caused it to become
>>> known as The Internet too.)
>><cut>
>>
>>Tell me if I'm wrong but to me it looks stupid to spend money to something
>>where nobody ever heard off.
>
>In this instance at least, you are clearly wrong. Give it some
>thought, and be glad that money is spent on R&D every day,
>exploring things that "nobody ever heard of".


What it comes down to is a matter of political opinion and a method of
convincing one's opponents that they are wrong:

If you like Gore over Bush, the statement about the initiative is TRUE
If you like Bush over Gore, the statement about the initiative is
FALSE

None of this has anything to do, unfortunately, with the actual bill
that Gore pushed.

To determine the truthfulness for yourself, read the actual Gore
statement about the Internet from a reliable newspaper archive (first
appearance) and the actual history of the legislation (the
Congressional Record.

I doubt many will, and it will become another campaign soundbite in
which the truth does not matter.

dmr

Mike Hartigan

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 10:45:38 AM9/6/00
to
In talk.politics.misc Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
> se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>The Internet that existed at that point was not The Internet that
>>>existed afterwards. *VERY* different things.
>>
>>So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
>>are also "*VERY* different things".

> You are in for a surprise. Ten years from now there will be
> differences, but they will be relatively minor. Major changes
> pre-1992 were not all that difficult. Major changes after 1996
> are all going to be much slower. Virtually all changes between
> now and 2010 are going to be easily predictable extentions of
> exactly what we have now. Most will hinge directly on 1) faster
> access and 2) ubiquitous access.

Deja-vu! This is exactly the logic that drove Bill Gates to defend
MS-DOS's 640K memory limit by declaring, in effect, that 640K is all
anybody will ever need.

> [...]

--
+-----------------------------------------------+
Mike Hartigan <mi...@hartigan.dot.com>

It just goes to show you

Mike Hartigan

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 10:54:11 AM9/6/00
to
In talk.politics.misc Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:

> No reason at all.

This is a fact that Gore's supporters choose to ignore. 'Gore 1' (The
US High Performance Telecomputing Act, or whatever the heck it was
called) was passed in 1991 - *after* all the pieces were firmly cemented
in place. In other words, the internet was *not* the result of any
legislative initiative on the part of Al Gore.

--
+-----------------------------------------------+
Mike Hartigan <mi...@hartigan.dot.com>

Now that that's settled, can we proceed with lunch?

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 10:22:40 AM9/6/00
to
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>
>>>Sorry, but I don't buy it. The nationally funded networks were
>>>interesting for research, but if they had been destroyed
>>>utterly, we would have built something indistinguishable from
>>>the Internet anyway, because companies had access to TCP/IP
>>>stacks.
>>
>>And of course *that* is exactly what we got from those
>>nationally funded research networks. Without them those
>>companies could never have developed internetworking.
>
>That's just pure and simple bullshit.

Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed??? Name one
research lab that was even close to competing with DARPA in that
area. Name *major* contributions that were funded otherwise!

There were contributions, but they are all peripheral (ethernet,
for example; Hell, UNIX itself is an example!).

>It wasn't ONLY nationally funded research.

So? Where did you see any claim that it was?

The claim is that what private industry contributed was not
enough to give the Internet the push it needed. Without
government research funding critical mass would never have been
achieved. TCP/IP, or actually the splitting of TCP and IP, was
the central contribution as far as technology goes. The second
contribution that industry could not alone provide was the
volume of traffic needed to test, demonstrate, and then attract
customers to these networks.

Look at the various technologies that industry came up with to
compete with TCP/IP (x.25 ???), and tell us which one was going
to succeed if TCP/IP had not been there!

Look at the volume of traffic which resulted from the
supercomputer initiative, with NSFnet connecting every major
university in the US to the Internet, and tell us how private
industry was going to get that kind of exposure and
interconnectivity to other *networks*.

>>Besides, as you say... CompuServe did exist! So, if that was
>>all it took why isn't the model they used the one that the
>>Internet uses today? Why didn't CompuServe grow into a
>>multi-billion dollar industry?
>
>Bad programming? Incompatibility? That's why JMF
>didn't buy their service.

And you think they would have somehow corrected that and
magically invented TCP/IP if DARPA had not done so???

>>And why are we not paying the the byte for Internet access
>>today??? ;-)
>>
>Why aren't we (the USA) paying by the message packet for
>telephone use today?

That is exactly my point! If industry can't do that, even
today, how would anyone expect they would have done it
differently 15-20 years ago.

Jeeze, the telephone industry as a whole didn't even begin to
see a potential for profit in the Internet until about 1994/5.

I would suggest that instead of believing that industry would
have eventually invented the Internet itself, we should imagine
just exactly what we would have if DARPA hadn't. It's
depressing to even think about it!

Lars Poulsen

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 11:40:21 AM9/6/00
to
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> Look, I was typing the command SET HOST foobar in the late 70s
> (and we had customers who could do it before our site could).
> To me, that implies a network.

It implies a network, but it has nothing to do with the public
Internet. There were lots of private networks implemented with
all sorts of proprietary protocols, and connections were
possible in ways that some network planner had to specifically
engineer.

To implement that, all you need is technology.

What we are talking about here is not technology, but the change
of mindset that allows people to connect at will to all sorts
of things that nobody planned for them to do. The change from
a world of isolated, private networks to a world of ubiquitous
connectivity, where you have to design a firewall into the
network if you want to prevent access.

If you think this is about technology, we can stop now.

[Again, I dropped alt.os.linux from the newsgroups list.]

Anne & Lynn Wheeler

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 11:46:25 AM9/6/00
to
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> writes:
> Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed??? Name one
> research lab that was even close to competing with DARPA in that
> area. Name *major* contributions that were funded otherwise!

the arpanet protocol was a traditional homogeneous networking protocol
with IMPs providing the fabric interconnect. Along the way TCP was
developed to ride on top of HCP/NCP infrastruction.

The development of IP was done later ... by a number of university
people. While it is clear that the original work was arpa funded
... it isn't clear to what extent arpa was providing funding for the
later IP work (or even the TCP work).

misc. refs:

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#5
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#6
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#11
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#26
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#27
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#28
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#29

although from the following it is clear that DARPA at the time
recognized the need for being able to interconnect ARPANET and
the other networks.

excerpt from some 1980 email at

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#31

>
> Sunshine, Carl A., "Interconnection of computer networks,"
> Computer Networks 1, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1977,
> pp. 175-195.
>
>It took some time for me to read and understand it, but I think it
>was worth the effort and I recommend it. At roughly the same time
>that paper was published, DARPA and their associates began work on
>a specific approach for coherent interconnection of the myriad nets
>surrounding ARPANET. One result of their work is a large volume of
>documentation recording the design options that were taken and the
>reasons for taking them. If you're interested I can send you some
>of the pertinent documentation (most of which I have in soft copy),
>but there's a lot of it.


--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com, finger for pgp key
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 10:59:26 AM9/6/00
to
jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
> Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>>The Internet that existed at that point was not The Internet that
>>>>existed afterwards. *VERY* different things.
>>>
>>>So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
>>>are also "*VERY* different things".
>>
>>You are in for a surprise. Ten years from now there will be
>>differences, but they will be relatively minor. Major changes
>>pre-1992 were not all that difficult. Major changes after 1996
>>are all going to be much slower. Virtually all changes between
>>now and 2010 are going to be easily predictable extentions of
>>exactly what we have now. Most will hinge directly on 1) faster
>>access and 2) ubiquitous access.
>
>I'll let others talk about implemention changes since I
>don't know much about that. However, you are so wrong about
>usage of the internet in 2010 to be easily predicatable
>of what we have now.

Fine, but you don't seem to have any specifics. Just like the
previous response, you are saying that something is wrong but
you cannot demonstrate anything about it which isn't right.

But there are several precedents which can be used to gauge the
course that the Internet will take. The history of electric
motors as a power source in industry, replacing coal fired steam
engines and the like, is probably the best one. It is also the
most complicated. The telephone is another example that matches
well. TV is another.

Compare the way those technologies matured, and use that to
predict where the Internet will go. (And note that as opposed
to the Internet beginning to mature, micro computers aren't even
close...)

>>>Post hoc fallacy. You assume that, because Gore did something around
>>>the time a change you noticed occurred, Gore was involved.
>>
>>That was not an assumption. The people most directly involved,
>>for example Vint Cerf, agree with what I've stated.
>
>And I've never heard of this Vint Cerf. Look, I was typing
>the command SET HOST foobar in the late 70s (and we had
>customers who could do it before our site could). To me,
>that implies a network.

So? Networks are one thing, transparent inter-networking is another.

If you say you've never heard of Vint Cerf... then I would suggest
you will say *anything* to press your political point of view
about Al Gore.

>>>And it would have been impossible for companies to
>>>just build a for-profit
>>>network? Bullshit.
>>
>>There were several companies who were trying to do exactly that,
>>such as Tymnet, CompuServe, etc. They did not succeed.
>
>Of course they suceeded. I don't recall either of them
>going bankrupt.

Well just tell us about what great technology from each of them
we use now! Western Union, for example. TRT. CompuServe.

They became devalued enough that someone with the right technology
gobbled them up to get what was left of the assets, which in no case
included any significant technology to compete with the Internet.

That is the moral equivalent of going bankrupt.

>> There
>>was also the telephone industry, which no doubt *could* have
>>done it (and in the end, actually did), and if you think they would
>>have ever woken up and smelled the coffee without the nudge that
>>Gore gave them... I've got a bridge for sale that you will no
>>doubt just love.
>
>You are attributing a series of coincidences as the effort
>of one man (which why everybody is jumping down your throat :-)).

I am hardly the only one arguing this side of it. However, that
is beside the point anyway. You are clearly arguing out of your
field and basing it on personal predjudice and/or political
preferences rather than facts and history. It makes for good
giggles though when you claim not to know who Cerf is.

>I assure that Gore had absolutely no influence on ANF-10
>or the custom-built hard/software that was installed at
>our (DEC) customer sites.

Perhaps that is part of what explains DEC's great success during
the time period we are discussing... as they nosedived into
near extinction.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 12:02:07 PM9/6/00
to
Mike Hartigan <mi...@hartigan.dot.com> wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>> se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>
>>>So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
>>>are also "*VERY* different things".
>
>> You are in for a surprise. Ten years from now there will be
>> differences, but they will be relatively minor. Major changes
>> pre-1992 were not all that difficult. Major changes after 1996
>> are all going to be much slower. Virtually all changes between
>> now and 2010 are going to be easily predictable extentions of
>> exactly what we have now. Most will hinge directly on 1) faster
>> access and 2) ubiquitous access.
>
>Deja-vu! This is exactly the logic that drove Bill Gates to defend
>MS-DOS's 640K memory limit by declaring, in effect, that 640K is all
>anybody will ever need.

Did you even read what I said? "1) faster access"

That is the equivalent of saying "today's 640k is too small for
we will need and use tomorrow". In essence the opposite of your
Gates analogy. It will all be predictable, incremental
changes. The Internet will not be "*VERY* different things" in
ten years, it will be virtually the same things available at a
much higher rate and in places not available today.

The Internet technology is what, 30+ years in the making now?
We have half of the US population connected to the Internet and
billions of dollars invested in infrastructure. That puts a
great deal of stiffness into the backbone of the industry.
There will not be another change accomplished the way the move
from NCP to TCP/IP was done, because it would hit too many bean
counters too hard. Look at how long the move from IPv4 to IPv6
is taking! And that is not exactly going to enable a
revolution.

The Internet has matured past the point where we see the initial
discovery of mind boggling new technologies provided by
government funding and, mostly because of industry investment,
it is now at a stage where each change must necessarily be
incremental to avoid excessive risk to that investment. As time
goes on the increments will be smaller. (Perhaps one has to be
intimately involved in something similar, like the telephone
industry, to quite understand how important that is.)

Doubling the number of people connected to the Internet every
year can only continue until everyone is connected. And then
that measure goes flat. (And "ubiquitous access" takes on a
very different meaning, not measured by how many people have
access, but instead by *where* they have access.)

Use your imagination! New discoveries are not what will happen
to the Internet in the next decade. What we will see is the
actual wide spread implementation of the promise of those
discoveries made over the past two decades.

It isn't going to be very different, just very much more of what
we have right now.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 1:11:53 PM9/6/00
to
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> writes:
>> Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed??? Name one
>> research lab that was even close to competing with DARPA in that
>> area. Name *major* contributions that were funded otherwise!
>
>the arpanet protocol was a traditional homogeneous networking protocol
>with IMPs providing the fabric interconnect. Along the way TCP was
>developed to ride on top of HCP/NCP infrastruction.

NCP and TCP (which originally included the functionality of IP),
and IP were developed by DARPA.

>The development of IP was done later ... by a number of university
>people.

Yes. Initial work, through 1978 when IP was formalized, was
done at Stanford, University College London, and BBN (a defense
contractor). All with research grants from DARPA.

> While it is clear that the original work was arpa funded
>... it isn't clear to what extent arpa was providing funding for the
>later IP work (or even the TCP work).

You must be kidding. Does anyone care where, or who funded,
the last five percent of what TCP/IP is today?

I read through the below references as far as #26, and failed to
see what you think is relevant about them. They do not, as such
discuss who funded what... but overall the picture is
relatively clear that government funded virtually everything
related to NCP, TCP, IP, and ARPAnet.

If you see some other significance to your references, please be
specific about what and where there is any other inference.

Amusing. Are you looking for the understatement of the month award?

>excerpt from some 1980 email at
>
>http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#31
>
>>
>> Sunshine, Carl A., "Interconnection of computer networks,"
>> Computer Networks 1, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1977,
>> pp. 175-195.
>>
>>It took some time for me to read and understand it, but I think it
>>was worth the effort and I recommend it. At roughly the same time
>>that paper was published, DARPA and their associates began work on
>>a specific approach for coherent interconnection of the myriad nets
>>surrounding ARPANET. One result of their work is a large volume of
>>documentation recording the design options that were taken and the
>>reasons for taking them. If you're interested I can send you some
>>of the pertinent documentation (most of which I have in soft copy),
>>but there's a lot of it.
>

<http://www.isoc.org/internet-history/cerf.html>

"In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate
techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks
of various kinds." ...

"In 1986, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)
initiated the development of the NSFNET which, today,
provides a major backbone communication service for the
Internet. ... The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Energy
contributed additional backbone facilities in the form of the
NSINET and ESNET respectively." ...

"A great deal of support for the Internet community has come
from the U.S. Federal Government, since the Internet was
originally part of a federally-funded research program and,
subsequently, has become a major part of the U.S. research
infrastructure. During the late 1980's, however, the
population of Internet users and network constituents
expanded internationally and began to include commercial
facilities." ...

"Over its fifteen year history, the Internet has functioned
as a collaboration among cooperating parties. Certain key
functions have been critical for its operation, not the least
of which is the specification of the protocols by which the
components of the system operate. These were originally
developed in the DARPA research program mentioned above..."


That seems clear enough, eh? I can probably find dozens more
similar statements by Cerf and others equally qualified. Here is
another interesting document by Cerf,

<http://www.bell-labs.com/user/zhwang/vcerf.html>

Jim Johnson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 3:43:37 PM9/6/00
to
Karri Kalpio wrote:

> Mark Hohn <ho...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
> > Gore said he invented the internet. Gore said him and his wife were what love
> > story was based on. Gore looking at Picture of George Washington once asked
> > "WHO is that?" Now I agree those aren't important issues, but they did
> > happen.
>
> No, he didn't.
>
> No, he didn't.
>
> No, he didn't.

Yes, he did.

Yes, he did.

Yes, he did.

I've seen the video clips of all three of these things several times and Gore did,
indeed, say them all. (Actually, the last thing is slightly incorrect: He was in a
room with busts of several "founding fathers", including Washington, and asked,
"Who are these people?". His tour guide responded, "This is Thomas Jefferson, this
is George Washington...")


> Now, can we discuss about real topics and forget the BS? Yes, I know
> we can't.

> People just don't bother to check out what they are talking
> about...

How ironic it is that you should say that.
--
Jim J.

Thomas Andrews

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 2:52:12 PM9/6/00
to
In article <39B69E69...@jnlk.com>,

Jim Johnson <jjoh...@jnlk.com> wrote:
>Karri Kalpio wrote:
>
>> Mark Hohn <ho...@earthlink.net> writes:
>>
>> > Gore said he invented the internet. Gore said him and his wife were what love
>> > story was based on. Gore looking at Picture of George Washington once asked
>> > "WHO is that?" Now I agree those aren't important issues, but they did
>> > happen.
>>
>> No, he didn't.
>>
>> No, he didn't.
>>
>> No, he didn't.
>
>Yes, he did.

No he didn't. He did not say "invented," and no intelligent reading of
what he said could take him to mean it.

>
>Yes, he did.
>

He did say that he and his wife were the basis for Love Story. He was wrong.
He and his college roommate, Tommy Lee Jones, were the basis for the male
lead, but Tipper wasn't the basis for the woman.

>Yes, he did.
>

Perhaps - I haven't seen or heard about this one until very recently - but
it doesn't mean anything. My guess is that it was taken out of context.

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,
maybe you just don't fully understand the situation."

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 3:15:37 PM9/6/00
to
In article <871yyyl...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>And of course *that* is exactly what we got from those
>nationally funded research networks. Without them those
>companies could never have developed internetworking.

So you admit that the interesting work happened decades before Gore's
involvement? :)

Anyway, what about all the *non*-funded networking protocols? I assume
you deny that Xerox had a fairly functional (and in some ways more complete
than current Internet technology) networking system that allowed documents
to be shared *NATIONWIDE*? They had that a long time ago, and it didn't
use TCP/IP.

It was not merely *possible* to develop; it was *inevitable*. If the
government had stayed out of it completely, we would still have gotten
a network, and it would have happened in a similar time frame. It might
even have been faster, because there would have been more commercial interest
in a network that was built by scratch for commercial use.

>Besides, as you say... CompuServe did exist! So, if that was
>all it took why isn't the model they used the one that the
>Internet uses today? Why didn't CompuServe grow into a
>multi-billion dollar industry?

Because there weren't enough computer users, and the killer apps hadn't
been written yet.

You'll note that the key elements were all possible, merely *too expensive*.

Gore didn't make computers cheaper. Plain old economics made computers
cheaper.

Anyway, the fact is, all of your argument falls apart simply because
CompuServe *did* exist. Gore did not make commercial nation-wide networks
*possible*. He had some small influence in changing the role of an already
somewhat marginalized network, long after the writing was on the wall.

-s
--
Copyright 2000, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 3:19:27 PM9/6/00
to
In article <87zollh...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed???

Maybe we'd be using XNS, which came out of Xerox PARC, solved a similar
set of problems, and is still supported in some OS's today.

You don't know a damn thing about the history, and that's becoming more
and more clear as you keep arguing this. This is crossposted to
alt.folklore.computers. You are posting in a newsgroup full of people
*WHO WERE THERE*. Do you understand the implications? I'm a *NEWBIE*
in alt.folklore.computers, and I know about aspects of the history that
seem to have escaped your notice.

You're also crossposting near people who know enough economics to laugh
at your stupid assertions.

Free hint: Research happens whether or not the government funds it. Networks
were demonstrably useful; they were therefore inevitable. The government was
mostly irrelevant; if they hadn't funded the research, someone else would
have, and indeed, much of the work *was* duplicated, at one time or another.
Substantial chunks of the "internet" technology you're looking at were
developed by college kids, by companies, and by all sorts of other things
that were unrelated to the U.S. Government.

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 3:21:19 PM9/6/00
to
In article <87wvgqk...@barrow.com>,
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) wrote:
>>You assume that, absent such legislation, there would not have been a
>>competing, and open, network springing up. I'm not at all sure such an
>>assumption is valid.

>Then why didn't it happen?

Why bother? TCP/IP was available and free, and you could build a commercial
network using it as transport. I believe you'll find that there were
commercial TCP/IP networks *before* NFSnet changed its rules.

Anyway, there *were* nationwide networks, and if there'd been a need, any
of them would have opened up. AOL is still doing a nationwide network,
large portions of which are *not* standard Internet protocols. Juno is still
out there.

Mike Meredith at home

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 12:22:54 AM9/7/00
to
In article <87aedml...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> writes:
> Generally I do have a problem with US-centricity, but in this
> particular case it is a fact that the US is where the Internet
> originated. If the US had not financed ARPANET and then NSFnet,
> your Internet would not exist, period.

Rubbish. If the US hadn't been involved in WAN technology,
today's Internet wouldn't look like it does today, but there
*would* be one. European academic networks using protocols other
than IP/NCP have been around since the 1970's, and allowed some
form of internetworking capability. By the time I started using
JANET in the late 1980's, it was pretty obvious that IP was the
way to go but JANET's X.25 network had possibly reached a higher
percentage of UK academic sites than the Internet had reached US
academic sites.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 4:16:45 PM9/6/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>In article <871yyyl...@barrow.com>,
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>And of course *that* is exactly what we got from those
>>nationally funded research networks. Without them those
>>companies could never have developed internetworking.
>
>So you admit that the interesting work happened decades before Gore's
>involvement? :)

"Decades"???? No. about 10 years, 1 decade, max. That is when
the technology was essentially developed. It was implemented in
1982/1983, as far as ARPANET is concerned (DoD standardized on
it in 1980).

Gore's work began in 1985. What he acomplished between '85 and
the early 90's is what finally caused the Internet to be what it
is today.

>Anyway, what about all the *non*-funded networking protocols? I assume
>you deny that Xerox had a fairly functional (and in some ways more complete
>than current Internet technology) networking system that allowed documents
>to be shared *NATIONWIDE*? They had that a long time ago, and it didn't
>use TCP/IP.

Well, what about it? It didn't make headlines, did it!

>It was not merely *possible* to develop; it was *inevitable*. If the
>government had stayed out of it completely, we would still have gotten
>a network, and it would have happened in a similar time frame. It might
>even have been faster, because there would have been more commercial interest
>in a network that was built by scratch for commercial use.

Then *why didn't it happen that way*?

>>Besides, as you say... CompuServe did exist! So, if that was
>>all it took why isn't the model they used the one that the
>>Internet uses today? Why didn't CompuServe grow into a
>>multi-billion dollar industry?
>
>Because there weren't enough computer users, and the killer apps hadn't
>been written yet.
>
>You'll note that the key elements were all possible, merely *too expensive*.

Exactly. Only the Federal Government could afford it.

>Gore didn't make computers cheaper. Plain old economics made computers
>cheaper.

So?

>Anyway, the fact is, all of your argument falls apart simply because
>CompuServe *did* exist.

Except you are ignoring that the example of CompuServe *proves* my point.
It was a great effort. It didn't succeed, but the Internet did.

>Gore did not make commercial nation-wide networks
>*possible*.

And nobody has suggested that he did!

His legislation enabled the current *inter-networking* infrastructure.

> He had some small influence in changing the role of an already
>somewhat marginalized network, long after the writing was on the wall.

Peter, that is hilarious. Surely with the experience you have
had in the past ten years you must realize just how hard it is
to get some things moving, particularly on a national scene.
How long did it take to get the telecommunications industry,
which provides the transport hardware infrastructure, to even
recognize the existance of the Internet, much less see it as a
profitable business? Even within the past couple of years we
see that it still requires Federal E-Funds to jump start
expansion of Internet connectivity into many areas.

Your suggestion that all of this would have taken place without
Government nurturing is delightfully naive and inocent. And
very surprising coming from you.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 4:38:28 PM9/6/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed???
>
>Maybe we'd be using XNS, which came out of Xerox PARC, solved a similar
>set of problems, and is still supported in some OS's today.

And *ever* so widely used too!

>You don't know a damn thing about the history, and that's becoming more
>and more clear as you keep arguing this. This is crossposted to
>alt.folklore.computers. You are posting in a newsgroup full of people
>*WHO WERE THERE*. Do you understand the implications? I'm a *NEWBIE*
>in alt.folklore.computers, and I know about aspects of the history that
>seem to have escaped your notice.
>
>You're also crossposting near people who know enough economics to laugh
>at your stupid assertions.

I read this thread in alt.folklore.computers Peter.

The reason you merely say there are these aspects of history,
rather than reciting them, is?

>Free hint: Research happens whether or not the government funds
>it. Networks were demonstrably useful; they were therefore
>inevitable. The government was mostly irrelevant; if they
>hadn't funded the research, someone else would have, and
>indeed, much of the work *was* duplicated, at one time or
>another.

I'm not particularly impressed with Libertarian political
concepts. The fact is, government funds are what made it
happen. In fact, Government funding is *still* very significant
(look up what Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens has to say about it
sometime! Or just search for the key words "universal service"
in relation to the Internet.)

>Substantial chunks of the "internet" technology
>you're looking at were developed by college kids, by companies,
>and by all sorts of other things that were unrelated to the
>U.S. Government.

So Peter, what "substantial chunks" would that be? Why haven't
you demonstrated that such things exist?

The college kids were all spending government grant money. The
companies were all defense contractors spending government
contract money.

What "substantial chunks" were unrelated to the US Government?

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 4:49:56 PM9/6/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>jmay...@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) wrote:
>>>You assume that, absent such legislation, there would not
>>>have been a competing, and open, network springing up. I'm
>>>not at all sure such an assumption is valid.
>
>>Then why didn't it happen?
>
>Why bother? TCP/IP was available and free, and you could build
>a commercial network using it as transport. I believe you'll
>find that there were commercial TCP/IP networks *before* NFSnet
>changed its rules.

Yes, there were. What is the significance of that? Would you
care to cite a few significant examples of successful
commercial networks using TCP/IP, and show how that negates
anything I've said?

>Anyway, there *were* nationwide networks, and if there'd been a
>need, any of them would have opened up. AOL is still doing a
>nationwide network, large portions of which are *not* standard
>Internet protocols. Juno is still out there.

And the success of each and every one of them is *directly*
attributable to connecting to The Internet. (Notice what
happened to each and every competitor that did not embrace the
Internet...) You've demonstrated my point rather nicely.

Ric Werme

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 8:08:44 PM9/6/00
to
jmfb...@aol.com writes:

>In article <8766oal...@barrow.com>,
> Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:

>>That was not an assumption. The people most directly involved,
>>for example Vint Cerf, agree with what I've stated.

>And I've never heard of this Vint Cerf. Look, I was typing
>the command SET HOST foobar in the late 70s (and we had
>customers who could do it before our site could). To me,
>that implies a network.

Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet, came to DEC on Feb 6, 1978. I
went to the mill to hear him talk, as I had been the main ARPAnet
implementor at C-MU where I implemented the client side of the new FTP
and TELNET protocols. (Most people don't realize there were old, very
different versions.)

After his talk, he went to Marlboro to talk to people there, so you
may well have been in the same building with him. (Or, you might have
had the good sense to have gone home by then.) I remained in Maynard
to talk with him more on his return. He finally made it back around 3
PM, and I didn't get out until about quarter to 6 and tried to race
home (in Marlboro) to catch the weather at 6:15. Didn't make it, but
didn't miss by much. Pretty silly actually, it never occurred to me that
the weather was _the_ story. That was Monday. Vint made it to the
hotel in Boxboro okay, but didn't make it out until Friday.

http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme/blizz78.html has more details about
the Blizzard of '78. :-)

While I spent a lot of time on ANF-10, it was not a leader in the
greater world of networking. DEC would have been much better off had
they adopted the ARPAnet and Internet protocols, but several key
people wanted DEC-specific proprietary protocols and terminal
protocols designed for DEC's terminals and OSes. For what it was
needed for, ANF-10 worked well and was used by systems separated by
thousands of miles. It could have grown to ARPAnet size, and the last
thing I did before leaving in 1978 was to write a routing spec that
would have let it scale much further.

>I assure that Gore had absolutely no influence on ANF-10
>or the custom-built hard/software that was installed at
>our (DEC) customer sites.

No Gore at all there, to be sure. I haven't followed most of this thread,
and I haven't figured out what Gore did for the net, but being a software
engineer, I figure politicians are more readily replacable the scientists
and engineers who built the net. If Gore hadn't, someone else would have.
Whatever that was!

-Ric Werme


--
Ric Werme | we...@nospam.mediaone.net
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme | ^^^^^^^ delete

Bernie Cosell

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 10:09:34 PM9/6/00
to
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:

} Free hint: Research happens whether or not the government funds it. Networks
} were demonstrably useful; they were therefore inevitable. The government was
} mostly irrelevant; if they hadn't funded the research, someone else would
} have, and indeed, much of the work *was* duplicated, at one time or another.

Let me mention, though, that this isn't as much of a good thing as some of
the real free-market folk would have you believe. Look at the mess
surrounding HTML/HTTP and its extensions and (non)standarization. The
Internet has something like four [five?] incompatible streaming audio and
video formats. Look by contrast at the RFCs documenting the development of
protocols that seem to be rather solid, well-thought-through and nicely
extensible [and long lasting!!]. Having a 'referee' can really help...

} Substantial chunks of the "internet" technology you're looking at were
} developed by college kids, by companies, and by all sorts of other things
} that were unrelated to the U.S. Government.

True, but the fact that a lot of it ended up having to get deployed on the
gov't-controlled net [the only game in town when a lot of this was
developed] forced a degree of consensus and cross-fertilization that you
don't have when every tom, dick, harry, .com and .edu can cobble up and
immediately deploy any random thing they come up with...

That stabilization had, IMO, an nontrivial effect on the growth of the net,
growth that wouldn't have happened NEAR as effectively and [relatively]
quickly if it had been permitted to just segment into the .pdf community
versus the .html community versus the .doc community versus the .rtf
versus....

But the important point there is that some of the free-market folk look at
the technical chaos on the internet and argue that that's
innovation-in-action, as if only by having this madhouse of half-though-out
protocols and formats all deployed in different applications willy-nilly is
the only way to generate new ideas... but that's patently wrong: there was
*PLENTY* of innovation and new ideas _pouring_forth_ ... the only real
difference is that the gov't gave us the power to have a 'review board' and
a referee to sort out the wheat from the chaff and come up with some
*really* good stuff that would/has lasted for decades...

/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
ber...@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--

Peter Seebach

unread,
Sep 6, 2000, 11:02:06 PM9/6/00
to
In article <87u2btf...@barrow.com>,
Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:

>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>Maybe we'd be using XNS, which came out of Xerox PARC, solved a similar
>>set of problems, and is still supported in some OS's today.

>And *ever* so widely used too!

Yes, TCP/IP won. That doesn't mean that XNS wouldn't have won if TCP/IP
*hadn't existed*.

XNS worked. It solved the problem, and it did well enough that people were
still using it, happily, many years after TCP/IP had clearly "won". If no
one had done TCP/IP, we'd be using XNS, or something similar, and we'd be
talking about how George Fictitious had claimed to have "invented the global
sharespace" and people would be arguing about how that weird research crap
at Berkeley might have won, and someone just like you would be saying "yeah,
and *ever* so widely used too!".

>The fact is, government funds are what made it happen.

This is not a demonstrable fact. It is your *opinion*. When you stop
pretending that you know what would-have-been, people will be much more
tolerant of your belief system. :)

You go on believing that, without the government, exactly the one we have
today and no other, nothing good would ever happen. You go ahead and think
that it was government grants that domesticated fire, and did everything
else. The rest of us will get on with our work. :)

Natarajan Krishnaswami

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 1:55:15 AM9/7/00
to
(Newsgroups trimmed mercilessly)

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:

>>Maybe we'd be using XNS, which came out of Xerox PARC, solved a similar
>>set of problems, and is still supported in some OS's today.

>And *ever* so widely used too!

Um, IPX is a variant of XNS, and it was used in virtually every
NetWare shop until only very recently (nw5 was the first to really
support ip; nw4 just tunnelled ipx packets over it). Very likely it's
still being used in a lot of places.


<N/>
--
you have been evaluated. you have a negative reference count. prepare
to be garbage collected. persistence is futile.
-- Erik Naggum

Alexander Viro

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:38:43 AM9/7/00
to
In article <87u2btf...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed???
>>
>>Maybe we'd be using XNS, which came out of Xerox PARC, solved a similar
>>set of problems, and is still supported in some OS's today.
>
>And *ever* so widely used too!

As is OSI. Remeber GOSIP? Government _mandated_ that crap, right in the
period you are talking about. If they had their way we would not be
using TCP/IP. And if you believe that OSI-based network would be
similar to the things we have now... I have a nice bridge for you and
BTW, could you please switch to OSI-compliant mail address?

--
"You're one of those condescending Unix computer users!"
"Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer" - Dilbert.

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:42:49 AM9/7/00
to
nx...@po.cwru.edu (Natarajan Krishnaswami) wrote:
>(Newsgroups trimmed mercilessly)
>
>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>Maybe we'd be using XNS, which came out of Xerox PARC, solved a similar
>>>set of problems, and is still supported in some OS's today.
>
>>And *ever* so widely used too!
>
>Um, IPX is a variant of XNS, and it was used in virtually every
>NetWare shop until only very recently (nw5 was the first to really
>support ip; nw4 just tunnelled ipx packets over it). Very likely it's
>still being used in a lot of places.

I don't know if IPX is a good example of what came from XNS or not,
but it is a very good example of why TCP/IP became so popular!

Ron Hunsinger

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 6:14:27 AM9/7/00
to
In article <8p35d6$edn$1...@mamenchi.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE>,
wolf...@w202zrz.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE (Wolfgang Schwanke) wrote:

> hns...@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger) writes:
>
> >In article
> ><91E057FD4E69EAE9.A66EE2A9...@lp.airnews.net>,


> >jmay...@conmicro.cx wrote:
>
> >> Oh? Why, exactly, was legislation necessary? Why would the Internet
not have
> >> sprang up as it did without it?
>
> >Think about what an ISP does. For a fixed fee, they'll sell you access to a
> >network they do not own and did not build. There were many who felt that
> >should be illegal. Almost everyone agreed that it was illegal.
>
> That's exactly the same thing phone companies do. According to what logic

> is it illegal? Since the Internet is not "owned" by anyone in any
> meaningfuly way, and was built by many different individuals and
> organisations, it's close to pointless to argue about that point.

At the time, before Gore pushed through his legislation, it was owned by
the U.S. Defense Department. They sponsored the research, and funded all
the infrastructure. Even after Gore had the technology transferred to
National Science Foundation, the backbone (of NSFNet) was still owned by an
agency of the U.S. Government.

And in case you haven't noticed, the various Telephone Companies *did*
build the networks they sell access to. They have also negotiated among
themselves to route international calls from one Telco's network to
another. They also charge customers a pretty penny every time they place
such an international phone call.

> And illegal according to what country's laws anyway?

Since the networks I'm talking about were the ones built in the U.S., it
would have been U.S. law that applied. But in any country, selling
something that belongs to someone else is a crime.

> (You _have_ noticed that this discussion is awfully US-centric,
> haven't you?) In my country, no laws had to "legalise" ISPs, they just
> sprang up. Nor did any US-specific funding issue influence the development
> of the net, because our part of the net is financed from different sources.

But if your country's network was an internet (that is, used IP as its
underlying protocol), then it was using technology developed for the U.S.
Defense Department, through research grants issued by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was one of the laws that Gore pushed
through that directed the (U.S.) Department of Defense to make that
technology public. Without that law, your country's network would have had
to use some other underlying technology, not IP.

Sure, there would have been other networks. But the other technologies
available at the time do not scale up as cleanly as IP does. Instead of one
large Internet seamlessly covering the whole world, we'd have lots of
national or subnational networks with competing protocols and requiring
explicit action (and probably additional charges) each time you wanted data
to flow from one of these networks to another.

-Ron Hunsinger

Ron Hunsinger

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 6:20:36 AM9/7/00
to
In article <39b51af8$0$72522$3c09...@news.plethora.net>,
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:

> Yes. CompuServe did not exist, because it obviously would have been illegal.

I used CompuServe. And let me tell you, CompuServe was not the Internet!

Besides, CompuServe bought bandwidth from AT&T, a private company. That's
not the same as selling bandwidth on a network built by, say, National
Science Foundation, which has no need to make a profit (being supported
entirely by tax dollars) and, without Gore's legislation, had no incentive
to sell that bandwidth.

And without Gore's prior legislation, NSF itself wouldn't have had that
network, because it was Gore's legislation that gave NSF the funds to build
it with, and it was Gore's legislation that made DoD turn over the
technology.

> Sorry, but I don't buy it. The nationally funded networks were interesting
> for research, but if they had been destroyed utterly, we would have built
> something indistinguishable from the Internet anyway, because companies had
> access to TCP/IP stacks.

Public access to TCP/IP was one of things that can be credited to Gore.
Until then, the technology was owned by DoD.

-Ron Hunsinger

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 5:26:27 AM9/7/00
to
In article <8p5lai$1s5t$1...@news.enteract.com>,

Mike Hartigan <mi...@hartigan.dot.com> wrote:
>In talk.politics.misc Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>> se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>>The Internet that existed at that point was not The Internet that
>>>>existed afterwards. *VERY* different things.
>>>
>>>So? The Internet we have today and the Internet we'll have in ten years
>>>are also "*VERY* different things".
>
>> You are in for a surprise. Ten years from now there will be
>> differences, but they will be relatively minor. Major changes
>> pre-1992 were not all that difficult. Major changes after 1996
>> are all going to be much slower. Virtually all changes between
>> now and 2010 are going to be easily predictable extentions of
>> exactly what we have now. Most will hinge directly on 1) faster
>> access and 2) ubiquitous access.
>
>Deja-vu! This is exactly the logic that drove Bill Gates to defend
>MS-DOS's 640K memory limit by declaring, in effect, that 640K is all
>anybody will ever need.

And it's a perfect example of [what we used to call] small
computer thinking.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 5:32:50 AM9/7/00
to
In article <39B66565...@cmc.com>, Lars Poulsen <la...@cmc.com> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> Look, I was typing the command SET HOST foobar in the late 70s
>> (and we had customers who could do it before our site could).
>> To me, that implies a network.
>
>It implies a network, but it has nothing to do with the public
>Internet. There were lots of private networks implemented with
>all sorts of proprietary protocols, and connections were
>possible in ways that some network planner had to specifically
>engineer.
>
>To implement that, all you need is technology.
>
>What we are talking about here is not technology, but the change
>of mindset that allows people to connect at will to all sorts
>of things that nobody planned for them to do. The change from
>a world of isolated, private networks to a world of ubiquitous
>connectivity, where you have to design a firewall into the
>network if you want to prevent access.
>
>If you think this is about technology, we can stop now.

I don't think I implied that it was about technology. AAMOF,
it really happens to be about psychology and economics. It
wasn't too long ago that I was viewed with fear because
I knew about computers. The way the general population
got over their technophobia was, I believe, mainly due
to college kiddies getting exposure via a FORTRAN 101
class. I also think that computer games accelerated the
use of computers in the home, rather than the workplace.

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 5:41:07 AM9/7/00
to
In article <87vgw9h...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>>Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:

<snipt troll to prediction>

>>>>Post hoc fallacy. You assume that, because Gore did something around
>>>>the time a change you noticed occurred, Gore was involved.
>>>
>>>That was not an assumption. The people most directly involved,
>>>for example Vint Cerf, agree with what I've stated.
>>
>>And I've never heard of this Vint Cerf. Look, I was typing
>>the command SET HOST foobar in the late 70s (and we had
>>customers who could do it before our site could). To me,
>>that implies a network.
>
>So? Networks are one thing, transparent inter-networking is another.

It was the next thing to implement when calling an off-site
system manager for a phone number, userid, and password became
inconvenient. It takes about a 10 minute conversation to
complete this exchange. When the number of users needing
access becomes too large, somebody gets a bright idea.

>
>If you say you've never heard of Vint Cerf... then I would suggest
>you will say *anything* to press your political point of view
>about Al Gore.

Look, idiot. You have no idea WHAT my political point of
view w.r.t. Gore is.


>>>>And it would have been impossible for companies to
>>>>just build a for-profit
>>>>network? Bullshit.
>>>
>>>There were several companies who were trying to do exactly that,
>>>such as Tymnet, CompuServe, etc. They did not succeed.
>>
>>Of course they suceeded. I don't recall either of them
>>going bankrupt.
>
>Well just tell us about what great technology from each of them
>we use now! Western Union, for example. TRT. CompuServe.
>
>They became devalued enough that someone with the right technology
>gobbled them up to get what was left of the assets, which in no case
>included any significant technology to compete with the Internet.
>
>That is the moral equivalent of going bankrupt.

That last line has tilted my bullshit meter.

<snip more nonsense>

>>I assure that Gore had absolutely no influence on ANF-10
>>or the custom-built hard/software that was installed at
>>our (DEC) customer sites.
>
>Perhaps that is part of what explains DEC's great success during
>the time period we are discussing... as they nosedived into
>near extinction.

I have discussed some of the problems that caused DEC to
self-destruct. I assure you that having ANF-10 in
the TOPS-10 monitor was not one of them.

jmfb...@aol.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 5:53:54 AM9/7/00
to
In article <87zollh...@barrow.com>,

Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>jmfb...@aol.com wrote:
>> Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>>>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Sorry, but I don't buy it. The nationally funded networks were
>>>>interesting for research, but if they had been destroyed
>>>>utterly, we would have built something indistinguishable from
>>>>the Internet anyway, because companies had access to TCP/IP
>>>>stacks.
>>>
>>>And of course *that* is exactly what we got from those
>>>nationally funded research networks. Without them those
>>>companies could never have developed internetworking.
>>
>>That's just pure and simple bullshit.
>
>Where else was TCP/IP going to be developed??? Name one
>research lab that was even close to competing with DARPA in that
>area. Name *major* contributions that were funded otherwise!
>
>There were contributions, but they are all peripheral (ethernet,
>for example; Hell, UNIX itself is an example!).
>
>>It wasn't ONLY nationally funded research.
>
>So? Where did you see any claim that it was?
>
>The claim is that what private industry contributed was not
>enough to give the Internet the push it needed. Without
>government research funding critical mass would never have been
>achieved. TCP/IP, or actually the splitting of TCP and IP, was
>the central contribution as far as technology goes. The second
>contribution that industry could not alone provide was the
>volume of traffic needed to test, demonstrate, and then attract
>customers to these networks.

Wrong. The central contribution as far as technology goes
is manufacturing a computer that Joe Six-pack could _buy_
without taking out a second mortgage, plug into a wall socket
in his home, and click to get on line. Without that, there
wouldn't be any money to be made from providing access to any net.

>
>Look at the various technologies that industry came up with to
>compete with TCP/IP (x.25 ???), and tell us which one was going
>to succeed if TCP/IP had not been there!
>
>Look at the volume of traffic which resulted from the
>supercomputer initiative, with NSFnet connecting every major
>university in the US to the Internet, and tell us how private
>industry was going to get that kind of exposure and
>interconnectivity to other *networks*.

Schools were talking among themselves in the 70s. Can't you
get that in your head? People here in a.f.c. have been trying
to you to notice dates.

>>>Besides, as you say... CompuServe did exist! So, if that was
>>>all it took why isn't the model they used the one that the
>>>Internet uses today? Why didn't CompuServe grow into a
>>>multi-billion dollar industry?
>>

>>Bad programming? Incompatibility? That's why JMF
>>didn't buy their service.
>
>And you think they would have somehow corrected that and
>magically invented TCP/IP if DARPA had not done so???

I remember people talking about TCP/IP in the 70s. I
thought DARPA was long gone by then (having morphed into
ARPANET).

>
>>>And why are we not paying the the byte for Internet access
>>>today??? ;-)
>>>
>>Why aren't we (the USA) paying by the message packet for
>>telephone use today?
>
>That is exactly my point! If industry can't do that, even
>today, how would anyone expect they would have done it
>differently 15-20 years ago.

You completely misunderstood. In the US we don't pay for
our telephone use on a per-packet basis. However, Europe
does. Thus, industry can do it; it's just not the charging
method in the US. You need to listen to those posting from
Europe, especially the UK.

>
>Jeeze, the telephone industry as a whole didn't even begin to
>see a potential for profit in the Internet until about 1994/5.

And this is wrong. AT&T kept trying. They just didn't seem
to be able to get themselves into serious computer bisiness.
It was no coincidence that the rumor that DEC was getting
bought out by AT&T made the rounds every two years all
through the 80s.

>
>I would suggest that instead of believing that industry would
>have eventually invented the Internet itself, we should imagine
>just exactly what we would have if DARPA hadn't. It's
>depressing to even think about it!

But networks did exist and without DARPA. Networks
started talking to other networks as a way to reduce
manpower costs and get more efficient.

-m-

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 9:29:56 AM9/7/00
to

> "During my service in the United States Congress,
> I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
>
> One way of looking at that is he is claiming to have created the
> Internet, and another way is that of all the people who helped
> create it, he is the Congress person who took the initiative
> required. The former is clearly not true, and the later clearly
> is true.

So I guess you are saying what he said depends upon the meaning
of the word "creating." Sounds vaguely familiar somehow...

-m-

-m-

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 9:45:33 AM9/7/00
to
Floyd;

After studying the net for a number of years and concerning myself
with the current state of network security and vulnerabilities over
the past two or three years, I have come to the conclusion that we
have built for ourselves a house of cards. A house not well suited
to protect the money and information which we increasingly place
upon it each day. I have thought and thought about how this can have
occured. It appears that you have given me the answer.

A Congressman got together with a marketeer from Redmond (or perhaps
silicon valley) and they hatched an idea to move all things financial to
a packet switching network. The goal of the system was thus shifted
from technological development to making money. All effort and R&D
money went in that direction for a number of years. Network security
was essentially ignored during that time.

We will soon have a world economy based in large part upon a
communications system rife with compromised servers and subnetworks
because Al and his cronies have been looking at the world thru rose
colored glasses lo these many years.

Thanks Al. I am willing to give you credit for the whold darned thing.

> Apparently the truth escapes some. Al Gore is just about as
> much the creator of The Internet as any other individual. He is
> the one member of Congress that had the vision to see what it
> could be, and *fund* it while also setting up the legal
> environment necessary for it to exist. If he had not, then IP
> and HTTP would be things that roughly a million or two techies
> would all know about, and the other dozens of millions of people
> who know about them today would never had heard of them.


>
> --
> Floyd L. Davidson fl...@barrow.com
> Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

You are correct Floyd, the truth does escape some.

-m-

Lars Poulsen

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 12:15:26 PM9/7/00
to Ron Hunsinger
hns...@sirius.com (Ron Hunsinger) writes:
>>> Think about what an ISP does. For a fixed fee, they'll sell
>>> you access to a network they do not own and did not build.
>>> There were many who felt that should be illegal.
>>> Almost everyone agreed that it was illegal.

Close, but not exactly right. Because it was close, I let it pass
the first time. The issue was not whether the (at that time mostly
hypothetical) ISP was selling access to a backbone that they had
not built, but that the US Governement had built it for the
specific purpose of supporting first defense research, later the
academic research establishment in general. Converting that
federal government susidy to education to private corporate
profit in a way that was unrelated to the educational mission
was seen as a taking of public money for private gain, also
known as embezzlement. The general thinking was that if
the business community wanted such a network, they were free
to build one. But the cooperative spirit of the internet was
so contrary to conventional business thinking, that every time
someone tried to build such a network, they were trying to keep
others from connecting to it, or at least make it very expensive
for the others to connect to it. The only was it came together
was if the largest network - the research Internet - allowed
all the others to connect freely. The visionary thing was to
change the funding model to make that possible.

The following overview of a period in history is very compressed,
seen through my biased eyes from a distance in both time and
space, and obviously legally and politically incorrect, so
I should probably characterize it as a work of fiction, inspired
by a true story, so I won't get sued. Nevertheless, it may be
helpful for people who did not live through those years to
understand what happened. At least it may provoke someone
to correct what they know to be incorrect about it.

The NSFnet core was operated by MERIT, the Michigan Education
and Research something something, which had joined with
IBM and MCI to form the non-profit Advanced Networks and
Services coroporation. MERIT had the funding from NSF.
IBM built the large routers - each a multi-processor complex
of IBM POWER computers (RS/6000), billing only a fraction of
what they cost to develop and build. And MCI provided circuits
at below-market rates. I think Vint Cerf was vice president of
networking for MCI at the time ... he has been in and out of
that position a couple of times, I think.

The high-performance computing act modified the NSF funding,
so that rather than paying MERIT, the NSF would pay the
participating universities, so that they could buy network
services in the open market. This created a market for
backbone networks, were previously there had been none.
The regional cooperatives for University networking overnight
converted themselves into for-profit wholesale Internet Service
Providers. For example, NYSERnet was the New York State Education
and Research Network. One morning, the entire management team
of NYSERnet showed up for work and announced that they had
incorporated a startup company called PSI (Performance Systems
Incorporated, IIRC), they were all resigning within weeks, but
PSI would be happy to contract to provide to NYSERnet's members
all the same services that NYSERnet had provided. And by the
way, would NYSERnet like to sell their in-place equipment to
PSI? There were a dozen variations on this theme.

When the dust settled, there were several competing commercial
backbones. ANS created a for-profit subsidiary, which could
offer commercial traffic over the backbone that NSF had
originally sponsored, although it could be argued that IBM
had contributed most of the money for the equipment. The
non-profit ANS parent company still privided services to
purely academic networks, and MCI was competing against ANS
as well. After most of the research traffic had moved to
either purely government-paid circuits (e.g. NASA) or fully
commercial backbones (such as MCI) ANS stated to fade, and
eventually became part of AOL/Compuserve.

And Al Gore's office wrote most of the High Performance
Computing Act.

Yes, there was an Internet before Al Gore. I was LARS@ACC
in early 1982, soon to be LA...@ACC.ARPA and then la...@acc.com
(and then la...@cmc.com in 1990). Yes, the network has been
growing at a fairly constant rate since 1980, roughly doubling
the number of users every 9 months. But without the privatization
efforts by Gore, I (and most of the people who were there)
believe it would have stopped growing around 1990. It had
become too big to hide, so the "head-in-the-sand" attitude
that let commercial e-mail ride "unnoticed" on the R&E network
was becoming untenable. Gore did the right thing by pushing
it out in the open.

Ron Hunsinger wrote:
> But if your country's network was an internet (that is, used IP as its
> underlying protocol), then it was using technology developed for the U.S.
> Defense Department, through research grants issued by the Defense Advanced
> Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was one of the laws that Gore pushed
> through that directed the (U.S.) Department of Defense to make that
> technology public. Without that law, your country's network would have had
> to use some other underlying technology, not IP.

This is not correct. The fundamental TCP/IP research work took
place at a time when government-paid university reasearch results
automatically were placed in the public domain. I wish that were
still true.
--
/ Lars Poulsen - http://www.cmc.com/lars - la...@cmc.com
125 South Ontare Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93105 - +1-805-569-5277

Gore_In_Conte...@no-spam.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 12:50:04 PM9/7/00
to
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Will you at least share your credentials with the rest of us?

Are there any crumbs you might throw to
http://www.gore-in-context.com/internet.html

Email fi...@gore-in-context.com


Btw, according to Gingrich :-), Gore was pushing this sort of thing from 1978. What
do you have on Gore's earlier work?

Filia Rationis----

///


>. The fundamental TCP/IP research work took
>place at a time when government-paid university reasearch results
>automatically were placed in the public domain. I wish that were
>still true.

*************************************************

http://Gore_In_Context.tripod.com -- my new site

Pew/PEJ report: media coverage favors Bush:
http://www.journalism.org/publ_research/character1.html

Re campaign finance see
http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/col/cona/2000/06/07/china/index.html
At my site see link direct to "Temple in a Teapot", a very well-written
article at americanlawyer.com debunking Gore campaign
finance charges.

Other good sites debunking anti-Clinton/Gore stories:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/
http://www.americandispatches.com/index.html
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
http://www.prospect.org/

Vote out the Impeachers! moveon.org & pfaw.org
*************************************************

Troutman

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:15:06 PM9/7/00
to
Gore_In_Conte...@no-spam.com graced us with the following:

>http://Gore_In_Context.tripod.com -- my new site
>
>Pew/PEJ report: media coverage favors Bush:
>http://www.journalism.org/publ_research/character1.html
>
>Re campaign finance see
>http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/col/cona/2000/06/07/china/index.html
>At my site see link direct to "Temple in a Teapot", a very well-written
>article at americanlawyer.com debunking Gore campaign
>finance charges.
>
>Other good sites debunking anti-Clinton/Gore stories:
>http://www.dailyhowler.com/
>http://www.americandispatches.com/index.html
>http://www.consortiumnews.com/
>http://www.prospect.org/
>
>Vote out the Impeachers! moveon.org & pfaw.org

Can't you people live in alt.polysci without venturing out?

--
___________________________________________

Mike Troutman
http://www.troutman.org

Doc

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:40:09 PM9/7/00
to
I have killfiled this thread 4 times now. If you insist on crossposting
to non-political newsgroups such as alt.os.linux, PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE THE
SUBJECT LINE. Better yet, set your followups properly and fuck off.

On Thu, 07 Sep 2000 09:15:26 -0700, Lars Poulsen <la...@cmc.com> wrote:

<over 100 lines of off-topic crosspost>

--
Doc Shipley
Network Stuff
Austin, Earth

Anne & Lynn Wheeler

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:50:05 PM9/7/00
to

I think that at least some amount of NREN eventually devolved into the
government going to vendors and asking them to design and build a
demonstration on their own nickle.

About that time, I had just come back from giving some talks in
singapore ... and a group of vendors were going over.

The singapore government had invited every vendor that participated in
the US high speed networking initiative to singapore to duplicate the
US installation ... the big difference (that wasn't lost on any of the
vendors) was the singapore government was paying the vendors (instead
of asking that it be donated for free) for all the equipment and
setup. The vendors may have actually recovered enuf on the singapore
initiative to not only cover that cost but the cost of participating
in the US initiative as well


anyway misc. from the archives:

> Subject: "Bush administration, Gore spar over U.S. gigbit net"
> Source: Network World, 3/11/91, pg 6, Ellen Messemer
>
> The congressional hearing debate was on the federal role in NREN
> o the Nat'l Education and Research Network will be the Interstate of the 1990s
> - to revolutionize communications like the Interstate system of roads
> did for transportation
> - NREN will have gigabit capacity (a billion bits/second and more)
> o Allan Bromley, White House science advisor, testified last week
> - government will pay for the research
> - the private sector should pay for the building of it
> - he asked Congress for $658M for a new computer research project
> "Grand Challenges: High Performance Computing and Communications"
> . $92M would be used for an NREN prototype
> - Gore's proposals inappropriate because it's inflexible
> . it locks in funding levels
> . rapid change in technology dictate changes in plans
> o Sen. Albert Gore has sponsored the High Performance Computing Act
> - it calls for the gov't to fund NREN over 5 years
> - he sidestepped a direct confrontation with Bromley
> . his bill needs White House and bipartisan support
> - but he says the administration:
> . is trying to avoid Congressional participation
> "<They're> saying just allocate the money and get out of the way"
> . may not have the dedication to see the project through
> "Irrational things could happen" to derail the program
> - a 5-year program
> "sends an unmistakable signal to industry of the program's seriousness"
> o Bromley: although the Administration makes no promises on future funds
> "I can guarantee you <we are> committed to this as an initiative"
> - as much as a billion may be committed over the next 5 years
> - participants in the initiative would include:
> . DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (research)
> . Department of Energy (research)
> . NASA - Nat'l Aeronautics and Space Administration
> . NIST - Nat'l Institute of Standards and Technology
> . NIH - Nat'l Institutes of Health
> . EPA - Environmental Protection Agency
> o the Gore bill calls for:
> - $988M over 5 years
> - NSF, DARPA, Energy Dept., NIST and NASA participation
> o agrees of agreement include that NREN should:
> - evolve from todays NSFnet
> . the National Science Foundation Network has a top speed of 45M bps
> - be available to education, gov't, and the private sector
> o testimony on the need for NREN came from:
> . Cornell Univ. Theory Center, Apple, Eli Lilly, MIT, US Sprint

...

> Source: Network World, 12/9/91, pg 4, Ellen Messemer
>
> 'CEOs push Bush to broaden goals of program'
> - the CEOs were from AT&T, Data General, Apple, DEC, IBM, Sun, H-P
> - they're members of Computer Systems Policy Project - CSPP
> o chief executive officers from 12 US corporations asked for broadening
> - the NREN program should be expanded to support commercial applications
> and distributed computing
> - there's currently too much emphasis on technology useful to science
> and not enough on that for businesses
> "We're challenging the government to go beyond what they've proposed"
> Apple's John Sculley
> o National Research and Education Network is a planned gigabit network
> - both the White House and Congress have put forth funding proposals
> - Sen. Gore's bill was passed recently and awaits Bushs signature
> - the White House proposal spends too much on hardware development
> . when software is the real challenge: CEOs
> - make NREN a nationwide commercial and consumer network
> . and use client/server technology
> o the initiative is "well-conceived" but "esoteric": H-Ps John Young
> - create a complex net of distributed systems
> - enabling access to distributed government and industry databases
> - and tackle security issues which are already a problem on Internet
>
> Other non-technical issues need to be addressed as well
> - copyrights on database information
> - billing and accounting via multiple providers
> o "We're talking about extending the notion of clients and servers
> across a broad base" Joel Birnbaum, H-P VP of R&D
> - network management might have to be decentralized and distributed
> o the CEOs don't expect the government to build NREN
> "The private sector is perfectly capable of building the products.
> But the design of NREN and the issue of where the government decides to
> spend its $1 billion in seed money will influence industrys willingness
> to invest" Sculley
> o CSPP has concerns also about government involvement
> - current plans are that NSF involve Dept. of Energy, NASA and others
> - the Nat'l Science Foundation has responsibility for Internet & NREN
> - CSPP doubts gov't ability to manage both agencies and private sector
> activities


readme on the NREN implementation plan mid-92

>
> --------
> README:
> --------
>
> This describes the files containing the DRAFT NSF Interagency Interim
> NREN Implementation Plan. Since the Interagency Interim NREN is based
> on the evolution of the existing Federal Agencies' research and
> education networks (e.g. ESnet, NSI, NSFNET, and TWBnet) this document
> may prove to be valuable background reading when contemplating NSF's
> next NSFNET Backbone services solicitation in addition to the NSFNET -
> NREN realtionship and subsequent plans. The original set of these
> documents can be acquired via FTP from EXPRES.CISE.NSF.GOV. For the
> FTP session please log in as anonymous and use your e-mail address for
> the password. Once logged in change directory to recompete ("cd
> recompete"). We have included three versions of the Plan: a postscript
> version with embeded figures (which doesn't work on many Apple
> LaserWriters), an ascii version (we strongly recommend the
> postscript version), and a postscript version without the figures
> embedded (they are found in the directory as separate postscript
> files). Please direct all questions and/or comments to one of the
> authors (Bob Aiken = rai...@nsf.gov, Peter Ford = pe...@goshawk.lanl.gov,
> Hans-Werner Braun = H...@sdsc.edu or Steve Wolff = st...@nsf.gov).
>
>
> " FTP EXPRES.CISE.NSF.GOV"
> " cd recompete"
> " get ...."
>
> Plan Versions:
>
> impl.ps -- postscript version of the implementation plan with figures
> impl.nofig.ps -- postscript version of the implementation plan without
> figures (Figures for document in separate postscript files)
> impl.ascii -- ascii version (using dvi2tty)
>
> Figures:
>
> net.num.ps -- graph of number of networks on NSFNET backbone
> newlevel.ps -- toplogy diagram showing the existing heirarchy of networks
> nex.ps -- Network access point based internetwork diagram
> nsfnet.ps -- 1991 NSF backbone map, provided by ANS
>
> Thanks
> Bob Aiken
>
> Note: It *may* be possible to print the impl.ps file on a LaserWriter
> II if you submit it as the first job after restarting the printer.
>


note the "DOD transition from TCP/IP to ISO international protocols" in
the attached.


> [ netinfo/nic-pubs.txt ] [ 4/93 ]
>
> PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST TO
> INTERNET USERS
>
> When the DDN Network Information Center (DDN NIC) contract moved from
> SRI Network Information Systems Center to GSI/Network Solutions, Inc.,
> the responsibility of housing and making available, some files and
> documents moved too. The purpose of this file is to clarify what each
> site currently has. Sometimes, both sites have provide an online copy
> of a file or type of file.
>
>
> DDN NIC FILES AND DOCUMENTS:
>
> These documents are available on-line for anonymous FTP from the NIC
> host. The NIC host is nic.ddn.mil at 192.112.36.5.
>
>
> 1. DDN NEW USER GUIDE
>
> A "how-to" guide to the DDN for network users, including use of
> network tools such as electronic mail and file transfer. Published
> by the former NIC, December 1985, and revised (DRAFT) September 1991.
> Online filename -- netinfo/nug.doc.
>
> Should be available in hardcopy from Defense Technical Information Center
> (DTIC) when the final version is approved by Defense Information
> Systems Agency (DISA) in 1992.
>
>
> 2. DDN PROTOCOL IMPLEMENTATIONS AND VENDORS GUIDE
>
> A list of vendor-supplied software and hardware DDN protocol
> implementations, including TCP/IP, X.25, and OSI implementations.
> Published by the former NIC, August 1990. Online filename --
> netinfo/vendors-guide.doc.
>
>
> 3. GOVERNMENT OPEN SYSTEMS INTERCONNECTION PROFILE (GOSIP)
>
> The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) describing the
> Federal government's policy, including the DoD transition from TCP/IP
> to ISO international protocols.
>
> The package contains the Federal Register announcement of the FIPS,
> the GOSIP profile itself, the OSD directive to proceed with the policy
> within DoD, and the GOSIP FIPS draft.
> Online filenames --
>
> protocols/gosip-fips-draft.txt FIPS PUB GOSIP draft
> protocols/gosip-fedreg.txt Federal Register Announcement
> protocols/gosip-v1.docs The most recent version of the
> GOSIP document
> protocols/osdir-7-87.txt OSD Directive to adopt OSI protocols
>


--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Anne & Lynn Wheeler

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:57:26 PM9/7/00
to

... another (partial) file from the archives ... severely edited to
get the size down ... only small part of the ISP listing.


> host: ftp.nisc.sri.com
> directory: netinfo
> file: internet-access-providers-us.txt
> date: December 1992
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
>
> This file is Chapter 4 of the book "Internet: Getting Started," a book
> that tells what the Internet is and how to join it. "Internet:
> Getting Started" (ISBN 0-13-327933-2) is published by Prentice-Hall.
> It can be ordered directly from Prentice-Hall by calling 515-284-6751,
> and is also available in many bookstores.
>
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> CHAPTER 4
> SERVICE PROVIDERS
>
>
> Advanced Network and Services, Inc. (ANS) and ANS CO+RE
> 800 456 8267
> +1 313 663 2482
> in...@ans.net
> Services: Network connections. ANS CO+RE is a wholly owned, taxable
> subsidiary of ANS. ANS is a not-for-profit organization.
>
>
> AlterNet
> 800 488 6384
> +1 703 204 8000
> altern...@uunet.uu.net
> Services: Network connections; a product of UUNET Technologies.
>
> Infolan
> George Abe
> +1 310 335 2600
> a...@infonet.com
> Services: Network connections.
>
>
> MSEN, Inc.
> Owen Scott Medd
> +1 313 998 4562
> in...@msen.com
> Services: Network connections, dialup IP, dialup e-mail.
>
> NSFNET:
> Referrals available from:
> NSF Network Services Center
> +1 617 873 3400
> nn...@nnsc.nsf.net
> or
> Merit Network, Inc.
> +1 313 936 3000
> nsfne...@merit.edu
>
> Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSI)
> 800 827 7482
> +1 703 620 6651
> in...@psi.com
> Services: Network connections; dialup IP; dialup e-mail.
>
> SprintLink
> Bob Doyle
> +1 703 904 2167
> rdo...@icm1.icp.net
> Services: Network connections.
>
>
> 4.2. Providers of Dialup Services
>
>
> America Online, Inc.
> 800 827 6364
> +1 703 8933 6288
> in...@aol.com
> Area Served: US and Canada
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
>
> Anterior Technology
> +1 415 328 5615
> in...@radiomail.net
> Area Served: San Francisco bay area
> Services: Dialup e-mail; RadioMail.
>
>
> Big Sky Telegraph
> 800 982 6668 (in Montana only)
> +1 406 683 7338
> jro...@csn.org
> Area Served: Montana
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
>
> BIX 800 695 4775
> +1 617 354 4137
> T...@mhis.bix.com
> Area Served: Area code 617; local dialup connections outside 617
> available through TYMNET.
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
>
> CERFnet
> 800 876 2373
> +1 619 455 3900
> he...@cerf.net
> Services: Network connections, national dialup IP, dialup e-mail.
>
> Channel 1
> +1 617 864 0100
> whit...@channel1.com DRAFT 4
> Area Served: Massachusetts
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> CLASS
> Cooperative Agency for Library Systems and Services
> 800 488 4559
> cl...@class.org
> Area Served: US
> Services: Dialup access for libraries in the US.
>
> Community News Service
> +1 719 579 9120
> kl...@cscns.com
> Area Served: Colorado Springs, CO (719 area code)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> CompuServe Information System
> 800 848 8990
> +1 614 457 0802
> postm...@csi.compuserve.com
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> The Cyberspace Station
> +1 619 944 9498 ext. 626
> he...@cyber.net
> Area Served: San Diego, CA
> Services: Dialup e-mail
>
> Express Access Online Communications Service
> +1 301 220 2020
> in...@digex.com
> Services: Dialup e-mail in the Northern VA,
> Baltimore MD, Washington DC areas
> (area codes 202, 310, 410, 703).
>
> EZ-E-Mail
> +1 603 672 0736
> in...@lemuria.sai.com
> Area Served: US and Canada
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Halcyon
> +1 206 426 9298
> in...@remote.halcyon.com
> Area Served: Seattle, WA
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> HoloNet
> +1 510 704 0160
> in...@holonet.net
> Area Served: Berkeley, CA (area code 510)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Institute for Global Communications (IGC)
> +1 415 442 0220
> sup...@igc.apc.org
> Services: Dialup e-mail; affiliated with PeaceNet, EcoNet, and
> ConflictNet; member of the Association for Progressive Communications
> (APC).
>
> IDS World Network
> +1 401 884 7856
> sysa...@ids.net
> Area Served: East Greenwich, RI; northern RI
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> JvNCnet
> Sergio F. Heker
> Allison Pihl
> 800 358 4437
> +1 609 258 2400
> mar...@jvnc.net
> Services: Network connections, national dialup IP, dialup e-mail.
>
> MCI Mail Engineering
> 800 444 6245
> +1 202 833 8484
> 267...@mcimail.com
> 324...@mcimail.com
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> MindVox
> +1 212 988 5987
> in...@phantom.com
> Area Served: New York City (area codes 212, 718)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> MSEN, Inc.
> Owen Scott Medd
> +1 313 998 4562
> in...@msen.com
> Area Served: U.S.
> Services: Network connections, dialup IP, dialup e-mail.
>
> New Mexico Technet
> +1 505 345 6555
> reyn...@technet.nm.org
> Area Served: New Mexico
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Old Colorado City Communications
> +1 719 632 4848
> da...@oldcolo.com
> Area Served: Colorado
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Seattle Online
> +1 206 328 2412
> bru...@online.com
> Area Served: Seattle, WA
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Panix Public Access Unix
> Alexis Rosen
> ale...@panix.com
> +1 212 877 4854
> or
> Jim Baumbach
> j...@panix.com
> +1 718 965 3768
> Area Served:New York City, NY (area codes 212, 718)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Performance Systems International, Inc. (PSI)
> 800 827 7482
> +1 703 620 6651
> in...@psi.com Services: Network connections, dialup IP, dialup e-mail.
>
> Portal Communications, Inc.
> +1 408 973 9111
> c...@cup.portal.com
> in...@portal.com
> Area Served: Northern California (area codes 408, 415)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> Sugar Land Unix
> +1 713 438 4964
> in...@NeoSoft.com
> Area Served: Texas (Houston metro area)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> UUNET Technologies, Inc.
> 800 488 6384
> +1 703 204 8000
> in...@uunet.uu.net
> Services: Network connections, dialup e-mail; Alternet is a product of
> UUNET Technologies.
>
> Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL)
> +1 415 332 4335
> in...@well.sf.ca.us
> Area Served: San Francisco Bay Area (area code 415)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.
>
> The World
> +1 617 739 0202
> off...@world.std.com
> Area Served: Boston, MA (area code 617)
> Services: Dialup e-mail.

bill_h

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:58:25 PM9/7/00
to
Wouldn't it be fair to say the Internet, by itself, wasn't
really much of a cultural phenomenon? It was there for quite
a while, unknown and unused by the vast unwashed majority.

But it represented the highway that COULD carry the WWW.

Amatuer radio types COULD have given us the 'Web, via packet
radio. But they wanted to keep the 'fraternity' closed to
'outsiders', and strangled their own potential for growth.

Land line telephone COULD have carried the 'Web, and in some
ways Fidonet was heading in that direction. But the backbone
wasn't there, so traffic was a problem (read: latency?)

Highways have been around a long time. SUV's are a 'recent'
cultural phenomenon. And, strangely, one that seems out of
place on pavement! Yet without pavement, an SUV is a pain
in the ass to ride around in. Go figure.

(BTW, and I took delivery of a Blazer in Feb, 1972!)

It's the WEB (as in WWW) that matters, NOT the Internet.


one person's opinion.

Bill
Tucson, AZ

Floyd Davidson

unread,
Sep 7, 2000, 2:37:10 PM9/7/00
to
nx...@po.cwru.edu (Natarajan Krishnaswami) wrote:
>On 06 Sep 2000 22:42:49 -0800, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:

>> nx...@po.cwru.edu (Natarajan Krishnaswami) wrote:
>> >Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net> wrote:
>> >>And *ever* so widely used too!
>[snip]

>> I don't know if IPX is a good example of what came from XNS or not,
>> but it is a very good example of why TCP/IP became so popular!
>
><boggle/>
>
>OK, since you asked (I know you didn't but I'm pretending you're not
>arguing dishonestly):
>
>From <URI:http://developer.novell.com/ndk/doc/nwprotlb/prot_enu/data/h3fupjw7.htm>
>
> Both IPX and SPX are adaptations of the Xerox
> Network Systems (XNS) architecture. IPX conform to
> the Xerox Internetwork Datagram Protocol (IDP), and
> SPX conforms to the Sequenced Packet Protocol (SPP).
>
><N/>

That does not indicate whether IPX is a good example of an XNS
implementation. Nor does it avoid the problem that IPX does not
scale well to WAN topology, which was a very good reason for IP
becoming more popular.

If IPX is presented as an example of a viable alternative if IP
had not received the boost that federal funding gave it, it
merely demonstrates how inter-networking would have suffered a
serious setback.

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