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The Max Headroom Incident

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Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#191

Post by _blu »

PostThisTooFast wrote: post #132
asdff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People actually used to save stories that were interesting or cut them out of the paper, or go to the library and read a book on the subject. Fastforward to today, with the world at their fingertips, and who even saves anything anymore? It's all transient information on the web today. That interactive nyt article you might have bookmarked a few years ago has probably link rotted by now. If it wasn't for wikipedia cat…

A few of us (and probably a disproportionate number on this site as compared to the general public) undoubtedly download and archive interesting material for just that reason. I wish there were a very good conversion utility to download sites and convert them to PDF, especially for Mac. If there is one, I don't know about it. I've resorted to either printing the "reader" version to PDF from Safari, or copying and pas…

Chrome/chromium has the best html to pdf utilty of alle browsers. Safari is not good at it.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#192

Post by _blu »

kingcharles wrote: post #93
dangle1 wrote: post #2

It's always fascinating seeing the internet catalog and consolidate knowledge, especially regarding events that occurred pre-internet. Back when these events happened, a blurb appeared on TV news and in papers, but there was no easy way to get the big picture as the investigations evolved.

I love that the Internet allows closure on pre-Internet mysteries that might not have been practically solvable before. I recently managed to track down some people online and between us we solved a late 90s mystery that would have been very annoying to solve back then and had bugged me for over 20 years. Closure is such a beautiful thing.

what mystery? was it about time travel?

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#194

Post by dredmorbius »

cronix wrote: post #112
caymanjim wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popular, misguided jokes about Gore "inventing the Internet" come from the work he did in Congress in the 70s and 80s, and into the very early 90s, when he was one of the first politicians to embrace and push legislation for it. He was definitely influential in its adoption and proliferation, insofar as politicians are important in funding all these things, and acting as evangelists. There's a pretty good Wikiped…

> The popular, misguided jokes about Gore "inventing the Internet" come from the work he did in Congress in the 70s and 80s I think most people got it from this interview he did with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. At least that's how I remember it. The jokes started flowing the next day. The number of people who knew of his work on internet related legislation pales in comparison to those who heard him say this on a major TV n…

Declan McCullagh, a now largely-forgotten libertarian opinion writer, seems generally responsible for the perception that Gore's claim was hyperbolic rather than the factual statement it actually is.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Political-m...

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#195

Post by denton-scratch »

bregma wrote: post #135
setpatchaddress wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet effectively did not exist in 1987. Even the most tech savvy people didn’t have access. That didn’t start to change until the early 90’s. Al Gore’s contribution was actually important.

I wasn't all that tech savvy but I was using the internet in 1985 when I was a university student. Oh, right, it wasn't called "the internet" and we used bang addresses for email and rcp instead of scp to copy files between hosts because security was physical locks on the room with the VAX in it, but it was continuous with what is today called the internet.

I was using internet email and Usenet in 1985. I wasn't "tech savvy" - I coded, but I didn't know much about the internet or email. I got access through a UK BBS system called CIX (Compulink Information eXchange).

I first came across Usenet through my employment with Olivetti. They were selling AT&T Unix minis at the time, so we had a Usenet feed via AT&Ts office on the other side of the city. Two updates daily, I think.

[Edit] For home access to CIX, I was using a 1400-baud acoustic coupler, which I had "liberated" from the basement of a former employer. Bandwidth mattered in those days - you could DoS someone by sending them ten pages of text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

(Not one of those, but similar)

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#196

Post by denton-scratch »

mattl wrote: post #50
FredPret wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the internet era is generally taken to be from 1995 on

That’s the rise of the web though. 1995 is when operating systems for PC and Mac start shipping with browsers preinstalled.

Isn't 1995 when the tag was introduced to HTML, and when commercial use of the internet (read: advertising) was first permitted?

I can't find any substantiation for the Gates quote "The internet is just a passing fad", which is often dated to 1995, but apparently never cited.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#197

Post by lqet »

Tho85 wrote: post #55

This always reminds me of the 2007 incident on Czech TV, where someone hijacked a weather panorama broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4eft_3p-I IIRC the panorama cam was connected to the Internet and had been hacked, so no microwave magic there. Good execution nonetheless...

Brilliant.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#198

Post by _blu »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #95
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I don't like pearl clutchers who shit on others for having fun because they don't know how to have it themselves. Jesus dude, develop a sense of humor. You'll enjoy life more. The part you're failing to understand is that from my perspective you are the person making the world a worse place. I understand why you don't like me, but you don't seem to understand why some people don't like you. Anyway, like I said be…

I could ask the same of you: develop some empathy and shame, but it would seem that you don't really care about others so long as you are entertained. More charitably, I imagine that you care at least a little bit, you just think the entertainment value to you outweighs any inconvenience it caused others to the extent that no one should feel at all embarrassed by having behaved that way. I disagree. > you don't seem…

You are just arguing to "win" the agument. It make no sense. No one was actually harmed by the incident. I bet if you asked the people who got pranked today, they would remember it fondly.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#199

Post by _blu »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #105
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is unaware of the externalities of the prank, you are just the only one who cares. The reason you make the world a worse place is by lecturing people about things nobody cares about but you, insisting it's the only thing that matters and the world is going to shit because nobody shares your values - meanwhile the world is carrying on just fine by ignoring you. You don't recognize you're actually taking an incr…

My values? You mean having empathy for people you don't know? Yes, I'd say that people not sharing that is indeed why the world is going to shit. Though of course most people do share it, probably even you. It is a mystery to me why you seem to be saying that no one should care at all about the people negatively affected by this. An argument for the funnieness of it, or the art of it, outweighing that would be unders…

You are actually the one who strikes me as cold and lacking empathy here, because you don't understand that no one got hurt in any serious manner. You also talk about things that are obvious (why they aren't said), like the sheer joy of the prank.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#200

Post by mattl »

denton-scratch wrote: post #196
mattl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the rise of the web though. 1995 is when operating systems for PC and Mac start shipping with browsers preinstalled.

Isn't 1995 when the tag was introduced to HTML, and when commercial use of the internet (read: advertising) was first permitted? I can't find any substantiation for the Gates quote "The internet is just a passing fad", which is often dated to 1995, but apparently never cited.

No. Commercial use was 89.
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