Happy Birthday Www

[Mekong]

I know it is hard to imagine nowadays but there was a time Pre-WWW.

 

12 March 1989 is recognised as the birth of the World Wide Web, WWW is not the internet we had JANET and ARNET years before but Tim Burners-Lee had this simple idea 25 years ago to allow all computers of various OS to share data.

 

OK I confess that I am what some may consider as a bit of a "Nerd" even back in 1984 I was using corporate Intranet, the good old green on black monitor, that is how we built Nuclear Power Plants in the UK 30 years ago.

 

My first internet account in Thailand was 1992, Loxinfo 1,000 THB / Hour for 28.8 Kbps Dial up, I remember connecting downloading emails and disconnect as soon as I could , now in 2014 I have 10Mbps unlimited data for the similar price.

 

So today is WWW Silver Anniversary, let us tip our Hats to TBL and give him a nod, unlike others (Zuckerburg I am looking at you) he never wanted money from his idea, it was his gift to society, and what a gift it was.

[cavanami]

Hey....Al Gore said he invented the internet, WTF...

[Coss]

Al Gore also invented global warming….

 

Any hoo, I'm with Mekong, hats off to Tim Burners-Lee

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

And for those interested, a list of milestones for internet in Thailand:

 

http://www.nectec.or.th/users/htk/milestones.html

 

BTW, Mekong, you must have gotten your years messed up as there were no ISPs until 1995

 

Another interesting tidbit is that in 1997 the total bandwidth of the country was only about 10-12Mb. Most of us have similar (or greater) speeds at home now.

 

Sanuk!

[Mekong]

KS,

 

My years are correct, back in 1992 I was in a relationship with a woman who was, and still is as far as I know, at AIT, Asian Institute of Technology up in Nontaburi, which later launched Loxinfo I was on a 28.8 Dial up whack was 5K best through AIT network. I accept it was not a public available ISP, but that is how I first got online in Thailand, Slow connection speeds and high costs, I don't miss the bad old days.

 

In my boring line of work we use numerous communications protocols Modbus RTU being the prime but over the past 10 years or so TCP/IP is taking a foothold but I prefer Modbus, even idiots like me understand it.

[cavanami]

The Thai gov projects still luv Modbus...

[JaiRai]

Early 92 had an internet account at Indiana University, no ISP but web access and email through the school. Used a modem in my dorm room, can't remember the speed. We used to play text only RPGs over the school network.

 

Late 92 to 93 Windows 3.1 and I remember getting a 14,400 modem which I thought was lightning quick at the time. AOL chat after that. Had private internet account but was expensive. 95/96 came windows 95 and 19.95 flat fee for net access which we thought was a great deal.

 

Blew up exponentially fast late 90s into 2000. IDSN, DSL, Napster... and all the dot.com bullshit. ESPECIALLY in California. Every other douche bag I met was a project manager for some dot com. I even interned at one, I think the CEO is selling aluminum siding now.

[Flashermac]

I remember that back in 1986 or '87 Tony Waltham, Steve Van Beek and one or two others had some sort of a network in Bangkok. All they did was send messages about getting together for lunch or whatever through their phones to their Apple IIe's. I'd hardly call it an internet.

 

I also remember writing my first book on a Kaypro 256kb "luggable" with a small green monitor. When it came time to publish, we had a hard time finding someone who could covert it to a Mac. Finally found a kid whose family was from India. Never think the Indians aren't smart.

[radioman]

My first "on-line" experience was probably AX.25 over VHF radio to various bulletin boards and individuals, multi-hopping to remote and sometimes international end points. Actually the real first on-line digital communication was morse at about 12wpm on 3.5MHz .

The first pc was a 6MHz AT, I think it was originally 4MHz but we 'overclocked' it by changing the crystal That replaced an Atari ST, Sinclair QL, ZX81. I remember the first 286 and paying about US$160 for the coprocessor, necessary to run the pirated copy of AutoCAD First telephone line connections were a bare pc board modem converted from viewdata and running at 1200/75, yes that's 75 baud uplink Various FIDO bulletin boards I vaguely recall. Then I got a company Compuserve account Forget the browser name that was big back then on Win 3.1.

I still use the morse, though more like about 28 to 32 words per minute these days. The rest of the tech has long since been landfill.

[Flashermac]

Sinclair QL ... I remember looking all over Bangkok for one without luck. I had to stay with my 48k Sinclair Spectrum+. My first PC was a ZX81. My dad made it as a kit and sent it to me when he upgraded to a Texas Instruments 32K PC. I remember the Thai P.O. socked me for as much duty as thing thing would have cost to buy.

 

Central Department Store branches used to have a booth selling counterfeit software quite openly. I got the Spectrum sotware from a shop in Siam Centre. The Apple software was at Central and at Chatuchak. They would put on as much as a floppy disk would hold for 100 baht, back when programs were always under 100k. It invariably seemed to say "Cracked by Sam the Pirate" in Hong Kong.

 

I've mentioned before the Mango, a Thai clone of the Apple IIe. The ironic thing was that the Mango had been upgraded so that it was a bit better than the genuine Apple IIe. 60,000 baht for an Apple IIe in the mid-80s.That was back when the Ministry of Universities paid foreign lecturers about 16,000 baht a month! A Mango sold for around 24,000 baht.

 

I had a friend at the UN who would pick up my PCs in Hong Kong and bring them in "duty free".