October 29, 2004

Storm Blogging

Got quite the front moving through here -- the barometer is flip-flopping like a certain Presidential candidate, we lost power a couple times (only for a few seconds although the candles are lit and each of us has a flashlight at hand). Thanks to UPS technology, we have the internet (for 15 minutes anyway if it goes out for good) so blogging will continue... BTW: The Internet is 35 years old today - it seems appropriate to be lighting a candle for this birthday but ours are not lit for this reason: From the CBC article: bq. 'Lo' and behold! The internet turns 35 In the 1960s, computer scientists at American universities and in the U.S. Department of Defence devised a plan for a network of computers that could all communicate with each other. bq. After the hardware was put in place, researchers at UCLA attempted on Oct. 29, 1969, to log in to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. bq. In an interview on CBC Newsworld, Prof. Leonard Kleinrock admitted researchers weren't exactly prepared for the history-making moment. bq. "[The message] wasn't anything like 'What hath God wrought?' or 'Come here, Watson. I want you,' or 'a giant leap for mankind.' We weren't that smart," he said, referring to the first messages over telegraph, over telephone and from the surface of the moon. bq. In order to log in to the two-computer network, which was then called ARPANET, programmers at UCLA were to type in "log," and Stanford would reply "in." bq. The UCLA programmers only got as far as "lo" before the Stanford machine crashed. And that was NOT a Windows machine. Heh... Posted by DaveH at October 29, 2004 9:45 PM