111–120 of 171 posts
When I set up my first website, you had to email CERN to be put on a list of websites around the world, that was published on their website... I think it was about the 60th (I forget the exact number, it was a long time ago :) website in the UK, serving the “needs” of (ok, playing with tech for) the image processing group in Kings College London’s physics dept while doing my PhD. The server ran on my desktop DECstati…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be great if a big band of Doctorates got together and committed to renouncing their PhDs if copyright (at the very least in the scientific domain) is not abolished. They have the power to do that. 30 years after the great gift of the web we are still waiting, and Alexandra Elbakyan has shown us how amazing it is to have all scientific papers be available to everyone.
Why would that make for a reasonable threat to the publishers or government? The power the academics have here is much more direct, if they are organised enough to make such an action: they can simply stop using the journals (indeed many fields and subfields do not use such closed-access journals).
> indeed many fields and subfields do not use such closed-access journals
This would maybe make for a good public ranking—showing a list of fields and percentage of open access journals—and hopefully academic in closed fields would adapt quickly to avoid the embarrassment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because the long distance phone bill was $926 and my dad was furious Blimey. I'm not surprised. In today's money that's $2,239.52. You were like a very early forerunner of those kids running up massive credit card bills on in-app purchases. Great story though: thanks for sharing.
Long distance calling used to be a pretty big deal. Even intrastate calls outside of your local calling area could be expensive--in fact, sometimes more than interstate. For BBSs, there was various software available that basically let you logon, do your uploads and downloads of messages, hang up and do your reading and writing offline. Go back a few years further and people would do all kinds of tricks if, for examp…
When I set up my first website, you had to email CERN to be put on a list of websites around the world, that was published on their website... I think it was about the 60th (I forget the exact number, it was a long time ago :) website in the UK, serving the “needs” of (ok, playing with tech for) the image processing group in Kings College London’s physics dept while doing my PhD. The server ran on my desktop DECstati…
that asterix.ph.kcl.ac.uk sounds familiar. did you host an irc server ?
Kinder eggs came out with a bunch of asterix-themed toys inside, and there was a frenzy of kinder-egg-eating to get your character to sit on top of your workstation.
We eventually got an SGI Indy, and that one was called getafix, because it was “magical”, in the Jobs sense before Steve made it a thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because the long distance phone bill was $926 and my dad was furious Blimey. I'm not surprised. In today's money that's $2,239.52. You were like a very early forerunner of those kids running up massive credit card bills on in-app purchases. Great story though: thanks for sharing.
Long distance calling used to be a pretty big deal. Even intrastate calls outside of your local calling area could be expensive--in fact, sometimes more than interstate. For BBSs, there was various software available that basically let you logon, do your uploads and downloads of messages, hang up and do your reading and writing offline. Go back a few years further and people would do all kinds of tricks if, for examp…
I still find the web to be so beautiful. I can talk and meet people all around the world. I can stream hundreds of videos around every conceivable topic, in 4K60 resolution, on-demand. I can make a livelihood without ever stepping feet out of my home; and conversely, work from almost anywhere that'll give me a visa. The digitized information of our civilization is just one search away.
The web != all things transferred over TCP/IP. Talk and meet? Skype, Zoom don't run on "the web" as such; need dedicated apps even if those may be based on Electron. Video (Youtube) only has left Flash-based playback behind like 3 or 4 years ago; the resulting DRM required for video playback hasn't made purist happy, and resulted in a bitter controversy over TBL accepting interfaces to proprietary DRM into (proprieta…
For a glimpse of what discussions looked like at the dawn of the public web ("slow, mostly local connections; a growing accumulation of posts; the absence of surveillance and metrics"), Rhizome has just released a painstaking "emulation" of The Thing BBS net art discussion forum. How ironic that the "last avant garde of the 20th century" should now be enshrined forever by an NEH Digital Humanities grant when it was c…
I still find the web to be so beautiful. I can talk and meet people all around the world. I can stream hundreds of videos around every conceivable topic, in 4K60 resolution, on-demand. I can make a livelihood without ever stepping feet out of my home; and conversely, work from almost anywhere that'll give me a visa. The digitized information of our civilization is just one search away.
The web != all things transferred over TCP/IP. Talk and meet? Skype, Zoom don't run on "the web" as such; need dedicated apps even if those may be based on Electron. Video (Youtube) only has left Flash-based playback behind like 3 or 4 years ago; the resulting DRM required for video playback hasn't made purist happy, and resulted in a bitter controversy over TBL accepting interfaces to proprietary DRM into (proprieta…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long distance calling used to be a pretty big deal. Even intrastate calls outside of your local calling area could be expensive--in fact, sometimes more than interstate. For BBSs, there was various software available that basically let you logon, do your uploads and downloads of messages, hang up and do your reading and writing offline. Go back a few years further and people would do all kinds of tricks if, for examp…
Bob Wehadababyitsaboy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxhTnWrKYs
When I set up my first website, you had to email CERN to be put on a list of websites around the world, that was published on their website... I think it was about the 60th (I forget the exact number, it was a long time ago :) website in the UK, serving the “needs” of (ok, playing with tech for) the image processing group in Kings College London’s physics dept while doing my PhD. The server ran on my desktop DECstati…
I love stories of yore like this. I got my first machine in ~1985 or so... I convinced my dad he needed a machine for his business - and then I just played populous and called long distance from Tahoe to a BBS in San Jose to play the pit and trade wars. I got grounded for a month because the long distance phone bill was $926 and my dad was furious. He yelled at me one time and said "stop wasting your time on the damn…