Geek Reminiscing

[Robbie Honerkamp <robbie@opus.shorty.com>]

Everywhere you turn today people are shouting about the Internet
and computers and how cool they are and how you have to have one.
While in the timeline of the Internet I'm just a newbie
(I got my first shell account in 1990) it's scary to think that
compared to the general populace of today's Internet I'm an oldtimer.
So, even though I missed net.events like the Great Renaming on
Usenet or the conversion from NCP to TCP, I've been thinking
recently about the good old (recent) days of my memory..

I miss..
-sitting up all night in front of my Apple IIgs with
 a 2400bps modem, calling long lists of BBSes to leech files.
-being a sysop and using Waffle to get netnews.
-Using batch Zmodem to download large batches of files while
 I slept.
-Getting into flamewars with the moderator of the Fidonet
 humor group.

Remember..
-when gopher was cool?
-when spam was something that came in a can?
-Canter and Siegel?
-Serdar Argic / Zumabot?
-Joel Furr's tshirts?
-When Windows users had a hard uphill battle ahead of them
 to get on the Internet? (early winsock problems)
-When the Macintosh was the best thing outside of Unix to
 use on the 'net?
-When Netscape was called Mozilla?
-When Mosaic was really, really cool?
-Predicting the imminent death of the net when you came across
 a site that you had to pay for or a banner ad? 
-Using Veronica to search for web pages?
-..and Archie to look for software?
-Some guy named Linus posting to get people to try his new 
 operating system?
-Robert McElwaine?
-Predicting the imminent death of the net when we heard in
 news.admin.misc that AOL was about to get USENET access?
-Telnetting to a server and logging in as 'gopher' to use
 gopher?
-Telnetting to a gopher server and finding a link that 
 dropped you to a shell?
-People dreading the annual fall influx of college newbies
 onto USENET?
-Dick Depew and his original cancelbot? *
-Fingering the Internet Coke Machine?
-The Internet Refrigerator?

Servers of yore..
-http://akebono.stanford.edu/  (Yahoo's original URL)
-gopher://compass.gac.peachnet.edu/  (The Internet Compass)
-gopher://wiretap.spies.com/  (Spies) (A really cool gopher site)
-That server at MIT that archived late show monologues and
 streamed the video to you on demand (in 1993)
-CU-SeeMe reflectors back when you could actually find intelligent
 non-naked people on them?

Instead of trying to get people _on_ the Internet, I think
we should be spending our energies to get people _off_ the 
Internet! Bring back the Internet of five or six years ago!
Give me gopher! Bring back the NSF T1 backbone that restricted
commercial traffic! End spam! Woo Hoo!

Robbie

*: I actually remember _flaming_ Dick Depew for cancelling other
people's articles. If he ever sees this post, I apologize. 
God Bless The Spam/Binary Cancelbots.