Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 335 posts

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#181

Post by CaptSpify »

overcast wrote: post #174
kronos29296 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should make sites incompatible with NoScript illegal. Back in my days (lol its just 10+ years) they used plain text for Web pages and used javascript like custom animation in presentations. Now only javascript is there with some html sprinkled in between. P.S the rest of it was in Flash though. So no back button for you.

That's just silly. The dynamic nature of javascript is what caused the explosion of websites around 2007, due to the advent of jQuery. Saying we should all go back to plain text is just being an old grump. Should it be overused? No. Just like GIFs shouldn't have been overused on Geocities.

I generally agree with you but...

> The dynamic nature of javascript is what caused the explosion of websites around 2007, due to the advent of jQuery.

I'm not convinced that was a good thing. Pretty much all of that content is terrible. Quality > Quantity

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#182

Post by mulmen »

Frondo wrote: post #86
77pt77 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just miss that it was mainly text and could be used in a terminal without missing much. More content density, better S/N ratio.

Not specifically directed at you, but sort of directed at you: I wish everyone who pined for the 25-years-ago days of mostly text pages would, instead of pining, just go out there and produce that content they want to see. Instead of pining, start writing. Hosting is cheap or free, browsers still parse simple HTML, there's nothing stopping anyone from creating a return to that simpler form.

Rent is expensive in my city, do you think it is reasonable to tell someone who can't afford rent to just buy their own building?

That's what you are suggesting.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#183

Post by overcast »

CaptSpify wrote: post #181
overcast wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just silly. The dynamic nature of javascript is what caused the explosion of websites around 2007, due to the advent of jQuery. Saying we should all go back to plain text is just being an old grump. Should it be overused? No. Just like GIFs shouldn't have been overused on Geocities.

I generally agree with you but... > The dynamic nature of javascript is what caused the explosion of websites around 2007, due to the advent of jQuery. I'm not convinced that was a good thing. Pretty much all of that content is terrible. Quality > Quantity

That doesn't really mean anything though in the context of things.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#184

Post by exergy »

jedberg wrote: post #105
Asooka wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that illegal, since you don't own the copyright? Or are you not distributing it and keeping it for archive purposes?

It's on my website, which is a blatant copyright violation. So far the NYT hasn't asked me to take it down. It could potentially be considered fair use, since I'm not making a profit and I provide commentary.

> It's on my website, which is a blatant copyright violation

Tangential, but I long for a world where we can all be as candid with each other.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#185

Post by throwawaywonk »

mulmen wrote: post #182
Frondo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not specifically directed at you, but sort of directed at you: I wish everyone who pined for the 25-years-ago days of mostly text pages would, instead of pining, just go out there and produce that content they want to see. Instead of pining, start writing. Hosting is cheap or free, browsers still parse simple HTML, there's nothing stopping anyone from creating a return to that simpler form.

Rent is expensive in my city, do you think it is reasonable to tell someone who can't afford rent to just buy their own building? That's what you are suggesting.

Building a web page costs basically nothing; commercial real estate is much more expensive.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#186

Post by exergy »

Frondo wrote: post #130
mi100hael wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do and I test my personal website on lynx. Doesn't change the fact that sites like this are under the misguided impression that it's cheaper to ship 2 MB of JavaScript with each request rather than just responding with the fucking 2 KB of article text so they end up looking like: # I Bought a Book About the Internet From 1994 and None of the Links Worked - Motherboard #motherboard Quantcast [p?c1=2&c2=8568956&cv=2.…

So how much would you pay for a bare-bones, text-only version of the content, if you're going to read JS-decorated content?

The question isn't one of us creating it, although, unlike those downvoting you, I understand where you come from. The question is, who will (and how to) create a curation of sorts. A Google for the simple web. A one stop shop that encourages barebones simplicity and fosters a community where people only allow a simplified internet, and adtech is a nonstarter.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#187

Post by wila »

orbitur wrote: post #138
jacquesm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather the opposite, a very large fraction of the original pages have been preserved. Many of them were deleted long before by the owners themselves and/or rehosted elsewhere. Original Geocities content is probably the oldest large body of internet content that will be preserved for many years to come and it will look roughly how it looked on Geocities because it wasn't relying on much of anything other than basic HT…

For whatever reason, my site (Hollywood/Academy/4430) disappeared from Geocities before the mass archival happened. I certainly didn't delete it. I search for it once a year, hope springs eternal.

LOL, same here.

Yosemite/6022

Looks like I even got some of the images on disk here, but no html.

Jacques, I never knew it was you behind reocities, thanks for saving a large part of the old content geocities! The story on what you did at creating reocities alone is a worthwhile read. [1]

[1] http://reocities.com/newhome/makingof.html

edit: Just found again (and remembered) web.archive.org has 2 of its pages, so some of it is still out there.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#188

Post by awj »

dep_b wrote: post #89
CharlesDodgson wrote: post #45

I miss the optimism of the early web, when you could create a simple web page, join a web ring and going online was an event. It's richer and deeper now, but the rawness and simpleness of it all was enjoyable and novel.

I remember browsing the internet was much more of a networked thing. If you want to know what it was like you could take a look at Wikipedia, where you still can get lost in a never ending deeper web of links. However WikiPedia is a very cleaned up version of the early web. It lacks animated .gifs for sure. But the difference with Wikipedia was that people would maintain a Links section full of interesting stuff and…

> If you want to know what it was like you could take a look at Wikipedia, where you still can get lost in a never ending deeper web of links.

I would have said TVTropes, but the core point is the same.

I remember having to restart my computer, because IE lacked tabs and Windows would let you open so many instances of it that the whole OS ground to a halt.

It's weird to think that now, in the absence of Google, I couldn't find my way from anything to anything else.

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#189

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ControlledBurn wrote: post #41
garethsprice wrote: post #23

I Bought a Book of Restaurant Recommendations from 1957 and None of them would Serve Me Dinner Any More

I bought a telephone book from 1942 and none of the phone numbers work

Pennsylvania-6-5000 still works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEnnsylvania_6-5000

Re: I Bought a Book About the Internet from 1994 and None of the Links Worked

#190

Post by 0134340 »

cJ0th wrote: post #116
ChrisSD wrote: post #39

Related to this, I had trouble finding examples of pre 1996 web design. The internet archive has a lot from 1997 onwards. The oldest live examples of sites from that era, that I know of are: http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T... http://oreilly.com/gnn/gnnhome.html http://www.trincoll.edu/zines/tj/tj12.02.93/tjcontents.html The BBC also donated its Networking Club to the Internet Archive: htt…

https://www.warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm ;)

/r/abandonedweb. It's also ironically now a victim of time.
Post reply on HN