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What Is the Internet?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Deeper_Background, Jan 30, 2011.

Page 3 of 3
  1. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Wait, I thought AOL was the internet, but it wasn't the World Wide Web. Or is it the other way around?
     
    RickStain, Jan 31, 2011
    #25
  2. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Nope. AOL actually had a long history before it was AOL. It started from a service called PlayNet, I believe. This is back in the days of the Commodore 64. It was mostly game oriented. Then they added a chat interface. By the time DOS came about, AOL managed to jump ahead by developing software that had a GUI (graphical interface), which put it yards ahead of other closed services, such as Compuserve. The service offered a lot of features, but it was completely separate from the Internet and was late to adopt Internet access into its strategy. I think it offered access to Usenet at one point, but not the World Wide Web for the longest time. It was just a dial up service, in which you paid an hourly fee, and found games and education and chat and lots of other features within a closed community.
     
    The Big Ragu, Jan 31, 2011
    #26
  3. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Nothing to add to that except how badly I wanted a Commodore 64 of my very own. I would have traded a kidney for one.
     
    RickStain, Jan 31, 2011
    #27
  4. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Still waiting for his tab key to work...

    [​IMG]
    I heard the internet is now on computers.
     
    93Devil, Jan 31, 2011
    #28
  5. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    I remember when we first got push button phones instead of a rotary dial. We were promised that "#" and "*" would have functions in the "future". That took about 20 years. Still waiting for my jet pack
     
    heyabbott, Jan 31, 2011
    #29
  6. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

    Al Gore was elected VP in 1992; wasn't he talking about the Information Superhighway during the campaign? And didn't he pass the bill called The High Performance Computer and Communication act before that -- around 1991 or 1990?

    [paging Boom for a Gore slam]
     
    TigerVols, Jan 31, 2011
    #30
  7. Double J

    Double J Active Member

    I remember being told by my dad about "the future" in regards to those buttons. He was right! But I still remember pushing those buttons and you immediately lost your dial tone in favour of something that sounded like a busy signal.

    We never did use the second dial on our TV, though. The one that went from 14 to 83 after you turned the main dial to "U." By the time anything higher than Channel 13 was made available to us in our little part of Bumfuck, Ontario, you had to use a cable box with the digital number display.
     
    Double J, Jan 31, 2011
    #31
  8. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    I love that popping sound when you slid the dial on the cable box, and the speed and which you could change channels. Call me ADD, but I still hate the idea of getting satellite because of that half-second pause in between each channel flip. Flip already!
     
    Point of Order, Jan 31, 2011
    #32
  9. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I used to turn on the UHF dial every once in a while. Rarely got anything other than static, a religious station, and for a few months in 1985, World Class Championship Wrestling.
     
    Baron Scicluna, Jan 31, 2011
    #33
  10. Guy_Incognito

    Guy_Incognito Well-Known Member

    U68 was an early version of MTV.
     
    Guy_Incognito, Feb 1, 2011
    #34
  11. patchs

    patchs Active Member

    My last month in college was Dec. 1989.
    A girl from my political stats class was using a computer and I asked her what she was doing, she said her mom worked at Cornell and she was sending a letter to her over the computer network that links colleges.
    I thought that was cool, this thing called electronic mail.
    Yeah, I'm old.
     
    patchs, Feb 1, 2011
    #35
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