From: rh120@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) Newsgroups: alt.culture.internet,alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.internet.media-coverage,news.misc Subject: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: 15 Sep 1999 19:15:52 GMT Organization: Columbia University Lines: 254 Message-ID: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> Reply-To: rh120@columbia.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: bonjour.cc.columbia.edu X-Trace: newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu 937422952 4068 128.59.59.133 (15 Sep 1999 19:15:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: postmaster@columbia.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 Sep 1999 19:15:52 GMT X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.nyu.edu!newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu!bonjour!rh120 The following post is a response to a post that was on the Community memory list about the importance of ARPA's office of Information Process (IPTO) in the development of the Internet. And this is actually a controversy over the importance of the role of government and of computer science in the creation and development of the Internet. A reporter called me later today and was interested in this controversy as there are celebrations planned on the 30th anniversary of the ARPANET (1969). It's also the 25th anniversary of the publication of the paper describing the TCP protocol (1974). Following are my comments in response forwarded by Bob Bickford: Bob Bickford BB>This was posted on another list which I read. BB>With the author's permission, BB>I am forwarding it here. I generally agree with what he ways. {grin} >.....rab --BEGIN-QUOTE--------------------------------------------------------- I wonder who Tim May is quoting in this early part of his response? And where was the original post? >Date: 9 Sep 1999 11:34:05 -0600 >From: Tim May >Subject: DARPA Considered Unnecessary >>>DARPA funding for ARPANET, etc. used a different approach. Rather than >>>mandating specification before implementation of protocols designed by >>>properly-constituted international committees (OSI), it funded competent >>>researchers and mostly gave them their head to determine appropriate >>>directions by actually trying things. > >>>This approach was rare. Most countries that dabbled in network funding >>>went the other way, of mandating things that didn't work: EU, most >>>European governments, etc. >>ARPA/DARPA is the darling example always cited as the rationale for "good" >>government funding. The funding _did_ work. (Caveat about my bias: my first >>ARPANet account was around 1973.) The point here that is missed is that ARPA's Information Processing Techniquest Office (IPTO) didn't just *fund* researchers. It was a component and important part of the research paradigm. That is well hidden,however, by those who talk about ARPA funding. It makes it seem as if it is only a way of giving money to researchers. But actually ARPA/IPTO was a component and crucial part of the computer science research community, and the leadership of IPTO was for an important period of time in IPTO's lifetime a crucial part of the research community. My recent paper on IPTO begins to document this. See http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/arpa_ipto.txt >>Would networks and user interfaces and other such things have advanced as >>much without DARPA funding? >>I think so. And John McCarthy even wrote an article about 15 or so years >>ago explicating just this point, and even claiming that probably we would >>have a _better_ network model, more akin to the point-to-point phone model >>than the "spoke and hub" model championed by the ARPANet. Not much of an argument by the writer of this post. Just that he thinks so. This leaves out that JCR Licklider was the guiding force at ARPA/IPTO making time sharing (which was McCarthy's idea) a reality by the way he built a community of computer science researchers, who advised him in turn on what he was doing and which he called the Intergalactic network. See http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/internet.txt Also the ARPANET was the result of the work done by IPTO And the Internet the next advance, *not* the same as the packet switching advance of the ARPANET. While the ARPANET was one network controlled as a network, the Internet is built on the model of the intercommunication of diverse packet switching networks. The Internet model made it possible to scale as it welcomed diverse networks under the open architecture principle developed by Bob Kahn, then at ARPA/IPTO. All were welcomed to become part of the Internet. Also a lot of the important early work developing the Internet was done out of the IPT office itself by the program manager or director etc. >>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being >>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way. It's easy to make such statements without giving any evidence to back them up. The batch processing mode of computers was the mode in 1962 and would have continued to be the mode for a number of years if not for ARPA/IPTO's research work developing time sharing and interactive computing. And it wasn't that any commercial entities were out to put in the millions of dollars and years of research work and support of researchers that was needed to develop packet switching through the ARPANET research, nor the open architecture principle and protocol development that made the Internet a reality. It took 10 years from 1973 from the date that Kahn and Cerf designed the protocol for internetworking, TCP as it was then called, till the cutover to TCP/IP on the ARPANET in January 1983. This wasn't the kind of research that industry was doing or would do. So May's comments are denying the need for both computer science researchers and for a government role in that research. And that would leave us now with batch processing and without Unix Usenet packet switching the Internet >>(I joined Intel in 1974, working in Technology Development, and I can >>assure you all that neither memory chips nor microprocessors nor the early >>personal computers were affected in any noticeable way by what DARPA at >>that time was doing. I sometimes see claims that VLSI was pioneered by >>DARPA, or that computer-aided design was invented by Mead and Conway, and >>so on. Just ain't so.) How strange. By 1974 ARPA/IPTO had accomplished a revolution in the form of computing ARPA/IPTO started in 1962. And it did its work well. Also I have only read a bit about VLSI, but as I understand it each chip manufacturer had its own proprietary designs and VSLI took on that challenged and opened up the process. And the Information Science Institute (ISI) became a center for the work in this field. >>Don't get me wrong. I think what DARPA threw money at was mostly money >>well-spent. Ditto for what Xerox PARC was spending (sometimes with links to >>DARPA projects). But it wasn't that ARPA/IPTO was a question of "throwing money". It was a crucial part of a computer science research community. >>But many people have been drawing overbroad conclusions about the effects >>DARPA had. It is almost certain that the pace of technological development What are these overbroad conclusions? ARPA/IPTO fundamentally changed the computer science paradigm. Also companies like Sun etc wouldn't exist. >>would have been about the same had DARPA never existed. The same applies, >>by the way, for other players, including Intel, Microsoft, Apple, etc. Well Microsoft and Apple in fact are the product of work done by Kemeny creating basic as part of the Dartmouth Time Sharing system. And DOS by Microsoft is a beneficiary of the work done developing time sharing and then CTSS and MULTICS and its beneficiary UNIX. And the work on time sharing and CTSS was the result of ARPA/IPTO's work. The programming languages for the personal computer were the offspring of the programming language developed for time sharing systems like Kemeny's DTSS. >>The actual history would have been different, obviously. In some ways less >>progress, in some ways more progress. But there was a certain inexorability >>about most of the technological developments. Other companies would have >>introduced much the same products. No the paradigm was fundamentally changed. And the participatory role of users on the Internet is *not* something that industry seems to recognize as important as they seem to equate computer users or users on the Internet as customers. The whole concept of Netizens is a development in fact of the computer - human relationship that Wiener (Norbert Wiener) recognized was the crucial relationship to be explored as part of his work on Cybernetics. So it isn't that the technology is rushing ahead at all, nor that industry, at least in the computer field, is the great creator of the future. It is that the development of computer science and of cybernetic science has led to the ability to make certain leaps and the computer science research community which was developed as part of ARPA/IPTO was able to have both the vision and the ability to develop the science that has made these technological developments a reality. >>In summary, I'm not dissing DARPA, just questioning the notion that >>DARPA-like funding is needed. The vision and research that ARPA/IPTO carried out is needed more than ever. And we need to learn the lessons from these developments *not* deny that they were made. >>- --Tim May Ronda ronda@ais.org ----------------- Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet Published by IEEE Computer Society Press ISBN # 0-8186-7706-6 http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ ______________________________________________________________________ Posted by David S. Bennahum (davidsol@panix.com) Moderator: Community Memory http://memex.org/community-memory.html A CPSR Project -- http://www.cpsr.org -- cpsr@cpsr.org Materials may be reposted in their *entirety* for non-commercial use. Get this list in digest form: SET CYHIST DIGEST Leave this list: SIGNOFF CYHIST Send these commands to: LISTSERV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU ______________________________________________________________________ ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Thu, 16 Sep 99 12:09:08 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 61 Message-ID: <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> X-Trace: rcazcgr0Exwluy10mfLbQewRoD3smdzXEDmUY3Sothc= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Sep 1999 14:16:32 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feeder.qis.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d11 In article <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu>, rh120@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) wrote: >The following post is a response to a post that was on the >Community memory list about the importance of ARPA's office >of Information Process (IPTO) in the development of the Internet. >And this is actually a controversy over the importance of >the role of government and of computer science in the creation >and development of the Internet. > >A reporter called me later today and was interested in this >controversy as there are celebrations planned on the 30th >anniversary of the ARPANET (1969). It's also the 25th anniversary >of the publication of the paper describing the TCP protocol >(1974). > >Following are my comments in response forwarded by Bob Bickford: > > >Bob Bickford > >BB>This was posted on another list which I read. >BB>With the author's permission, >BB>I am forwarding it here. I generally agree with what he ways. {grin} > --BEGIN-QUOTE--------------------------------------------------------- > >I wonder who Tim May is quoting in this early part of his response? >And where was the original post? > > >>Date: 9 Sep 1999 11:34:05 -0600 >>From: Tim May >>Subject: DARPA Considered Unnecessary >>>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being >>>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way. > >It's easy to make such statements without giving any evidence >to back them up. > >The batch processing mode of computers was the mode in 1962 and would >have continued to be the mode for a number of years if not for >ARPA/IPTO's research work developing time sharing and interactive >computing. This is such complete bullshit. What is really worrying me is that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. There were OTHER reasons for developing timesharing. I really wish she would stop presenting her (erroneous) conclusions as facts. Harumph! /BAH /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: rh120@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT Organization: Columbia University Lines: 81 Message-ID: <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Reply-To: rh120@columbia.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: bonjour.cc.columbia.edu X-Trace: newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu 937497363 7750 128.59.59.133 (16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT) X-Complaints-To: postmaster@columbia.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.nyu.edu!newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu!bonjour!rh120 jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: : : >>Date: 9 Sep 1999 11:34:05 -0600 : >>From: Tim May : >>Subject: DARPA Considered Unnecessary : : >>>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being : >>>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way. : > : >It's easy to make such statements without giving any evidence : >to back them up. : > : >The batch processing mode of computers was the mode in 1962 and would : >have continued to be the mode for a number of years if not for : >ARPA/IPTO's research work developing time sharing and interactive : >computing. : This is such complete bullshit. What is really worrying me is : that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of : the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. : There were OTHER reasons for developing timesharing. I really : wish she would stop presenting her (erroneous) conclusions as : facts. Harumph! What OTHER reasons were there for developing timesharing? What erroneous conclusions? The issue in the original post was about whether or not "technology was advancing relentlessly, and,...it was not being driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way." Or was ARPA's office of information processing techniques doing something significant to make a substantial change in what was happening which resulted in the technological developments we have today. T. May says that ARPA didn't make any impact. That the technology was developing without ARPA's role. My post pointed to the role of the ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) as being crucial in changing the computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the future of computing to time sharing via CTSS and Multics at MIT, Unix, as inflenced by the work Thompson and Ritchie and other Bell Labs people did as part of the Multics project, etc. These and other time sharing projects that Licklider developed or supported from the IPT office at ARPA developed interactive computing and the timesharing systems which made possible the networking developments of the ARPANET. The plan for the ARPANET was to connect time sharing systems at different sites so the sites could share their resources and communicate. And the development of time sharing by the IPTO at ARPA set the basis for the significant development of computer technology we have today. Is the issue that certain ideology says that there should be no government role in computer science research. That industry will do it all? And the facts of what has happened are irrelevant and when one points to them, the emphasis is shifted to the person, as there are no arguments possible. : /BAH : Ronda ronda@panix.com Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook also in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6 ###### From: roggblake@iname.com () Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: 16 Sep 1999 17:22:44 GMT Lines: 10 Message-ID: <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> X-Trace: 1KPPgkcNUxfejNDs6nnTV93kf81sxRRXcBDAYPh5WsY= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Sep 1999 17:22:44 GMT X-No-Archive: Yes User-Agent: slrn/0.9.5.4 (Windows) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-fra.pop.de!f.de.uu.net!howland.erols.net!outgoing.news.rcn.net.MISMATCH!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!roggblake On 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT, Ronda Hauben wrote: >computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing >which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well before ARPANET came on the scene? -- Roger Blake (remove second "g" from address for email) ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: 16 Sep 1999 21:23:46 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 123 Sender: neil@chonsp.franklin.ch Message-ID: <6uzoymirst.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 rh120@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (Ronda Hauben) writes: > > jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > > : >>From: Tim May > > : >>>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being > : >>>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way. > : > > : >It's easy to make such statements without giving any evidence > : >to back them up. > : > > : >The batch processing mode of computers was the mode in 1962 and would > : >have continued to be the mode for a number of years if not for > : >ARPA/IPTO's research work developing time sharing and interactive > : >computing. Error. Timeshareing was invented to allow people to interactively work without monopolising the machine for untolerably expensive amounts of time. This would have happend without ARPA or any other net. Actually it did happen without, as there was no net when the first such systems were written (the earliest I know is CTSS, ca 1963). > : This is such complete bullshit. What is really worrying me is Thanks Barb for noticing this one. I had passed by this thread. > : that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of > : the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. Places of which there exist far too many and, far worse, have too much influence on future developments for people of such ignorance. > What OTHER reasons were there for developing timesharing? What the name says: sharing computer/processor time. Batch: get 3 minutes of computer after 3 hours of waiting. Debug after recieving data, repeat twice a day. Not good. Interactive: sit there for 30 minutes experimenting and analysing, fast feed back. But only after reserving your session the day before. And get bill 10 times more. Not good either. Timeshareing: just walk up, anytime. Hack for hours. Get billed 4 minutes. Downside is you never get the full processor. Definitively the best compromise. > What erroneous conclusions? Yours: ARPAnet -> timesharing Real: timesharing -> ARPAnet > T. May says that ARPA didn't make any impact. That the technology > was developing without ARPA's role. Their impact lays in making modern computer communications, not in making timesharing, which was well along at that time. > Techniques Office (IPTO) as being crucial in changing the > computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing Which was already happening. > which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the > future of computing to time sharing via CTSS and Multics In 62/63. ARPAnet did not start until late 60s. > at MIT, Unix, as inflenced by the work Thompson and Ritchie and > other Bell Labs people did as part of the Multics project, Starting 1969, but without any Net whatsoever until about 77. Unix may be the premier networking system today, but it was an late starter. I suppose them punny 16bit processors had something to do with it (not playing with an full DEC, you see). > developed interactive computing and the timesharing systems > which made possible the networking developments of the ARPANET. Timeshareing made the net (which requires multiple remote logins) possible. But the net did not need to drive timesharing. That was coming along nicely on its own. The net simply rode on its coat tails. > The plan for the ARPANET was to connect time sharing systems > at different sites so the sites could share their resources > and communicate. There you are right. Timesharing drove the ARPA to make the net, as an efficient way to remote login. > Is the issue that certain ideology says that there should be > no government role in computer science research. That industry > will do it all? This has got nothing to do with ideological bullshit. Rather with the motives of those designing. And those being missrepresented. > And the facts of what has happened are irrelevant and when > one points to them, the emphasis is shifted to the person, The facts definitely seem to be irrelevant for intellectuals who want to push their political agendas. But that is nothing new. Has 1000s of years of history, possibly even too old for a.f.c :-). -- Neil Franklin, Nerd, Geek, Unix Wizzard and Guru, Hacker, Mystic neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Computer: toy that speeds work, so you have more time to play with it ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 25 Message-ID: <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ11.nn.bcandid.com 937509504 207.238.206.3 (Thu, 16 Sep 1999 15:18:24 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 15:18:24 EDT Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 19:18:24 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!isdnet!howland.erols.net!gate.bcandid.com.MISMATCH!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ11.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >On 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT, Ronda Hauben wrote: >>computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing >>which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the > >Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well >before ARPANET came on the scene? According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were single-user machines. They did not timeshare. The hackers Levy profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. Timesharing was something Corbato was doing, not something they wanted anything to do with. IIRC, it wasn't until the 1970s that they started writing ITS. I'm sure there are folks on this newsgroup who can tell us their memories of what actually happened at MIT in those days. Surely MIT would have been one of the first places timesharing DEC systems would have shown up, right? -- Kragen Sitaker Thu Sep 16 1999 53 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### Sender: lynn@LYNNPC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> Reply-To: Anne & Lynn Wheeler From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Message-ID: Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 95 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070095 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.95) Emacs/20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 19:40:16 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.63.28.138 X-Complaints-To: support@adcomsys.net X-Trace: news-west.eli.net 937510816 209.63.28.138 (Thu, 16 Sep 1999 13:40:16 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 13:40:16 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.algonet.se!algonet!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed2.news.nl.uu.net!sun4nl!uunet!ams.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!news-west.eli.net!not-for-mail significantly larger timesharing install during the late 60s and during the 70s; see http://pucc.princeton.edu/~melinda/ although some of the people doing early development in the mid-60s had previously also worked on ctss. ignoring the actual customer install base, at various times during the 70s I was personally building & distributing to larger (internal corporate) install base than some of the other systems total customer install base. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#14 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#35 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#15 from the customer install base, the resource manager I released in spring of 76 (it was the first IBM "priced" SCP code ... I spent six months learning how to price operating system software), at a license fee of $990/month hit a 1000 licenses within six months of release (I don't know the total size of the customer install base ... just for some of the stuff I was involved in). as mentioned before, the just internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from effectively the start up into the '80s. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 which was also the basis for BITNET and EARN. also http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 & http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#53 and my part of the earlier thread on parts of this subject. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm small extract from Melinda's paper ... II. A BRIEF HISTORY OF VM CTSS In the beginning was CTSS, the ``Compatible Time­Sharing System''. CTSS was written by a small group of programmers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Professor Fernando Corbato. One of the CTSS programmers was Robert Creasy, who was later to become the leader of the CP­40 project. Papers discussing the idea of a time­sharing system began being published about 1959. There followed a period of experimentation at MIT and other institutions. An early version of CTSS was demonstrated on an IBM 709 at MIT in November, 1961. From that beginning, CTSS evolved rapidly over the next several years and taught the world how to do time­sharing. CTSS was developed on a series of IBM processors. In the 1950s, IBM's president, T.J. Watson, Jr., had very shrewdly given MIT an IBM 704 for use by MIT and other New England schools. Then, each time IBM built a newer, bigger processor, it upgraded the system at MIT. The 704 was followed by a 709, then by a 7090, and finally by a 7094. IBM also gave MIT the services of some highly skilled Systems Engineers and Customer Engineers, who formed its MIT Liaison Office, which was housed at the MIT Computation Center. As CTSS evolved, Professor Corbato and his students and colleagues began to encounter problems that they knew were better addressed by hardware than by software, so they asked IBM for modifications to their processor. The IBMers in the Liaison Office had the job of finding engineers in Poughkeepsie to build the hardware extensions that MIT had determined were necessary to do time­sharing properly. By the time CTSS was in full production in 1963, the 7090 at MIT had been modified to have a second memory bank (32K words), an address relocation register, and memory protection. With these extensions to the hardware, Corbato's group was able to build CTSS into the system that became the exemplar for time­sharing systems. -- -- Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@adcomsys.net, lynn@garlic.com http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn/ ###### Sender: lynn@LYNNPC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Reply-To: Anne & Lynn Wheeler From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Message-ID: Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 40 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070095 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.95) Emacs/20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 21:02:47 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.63.28.138 X-Complaints-To: support@adcomsys.net X-Trace: news-west.eli.net 937515767 209.63.28.138 (Thu, 16 Sep 1999 15:02:47 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 15:02:47 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.abs.net!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!easynews!news-west.eli.net!not-for-mail ... from footnote in melinda's paper From the preface to the ``candy­striped manual'' (F.J. Corbato, M.M. Daggett, R.C. Daley, R.J. Creasy, J.D. Hellwig, R.H. Orenstein, and L.K. Korn, The Compatible Time­Sharing System: A Programmer's Guide, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1963): The only other general purpose time­sharing system known to be operating presently, that of the Bolt, Beranek and Newman Corporation for the PDP­1 computer, was recently described by Professor John McCarthy at the 1963 Spring Joint Computer Conference. Other time­sharing developments are being made at the Carnegie Institute of Technology with a G20 computer, at the University of California at Berkeley with a 7090, at the Rand Corporation with Johnniac, and at MIT (by Professor Dennis) with a PDP­1. Several systems resemble our own in their logical organization; they include the independently developed BBN system for the PDP­1, the recently initiated work at IBM (by A. Kinslow) on the 7090 computer, and the plans of the System Development Corporation with the Q32 computer. To establish the context of the present work, it is informative to trace the development of time­sharing at MIT. Shortly after the first paper on time­shared computers, by C. Strachey at the June 1959 UNESCO Information Processing Conference, H.M. Teager and J. McCarthy at MIT delivered an unpublished paper Time­Shared Program Testing at the August 1959 ACM Meeting. Evolving from this start, much of the time­sharing philosophy embodied in the CTSS system has been developed in conjunction with an MIT preliminary study committee (initiated in 1960), and a subsequent working committee. The work of the former committee resulted, in April 1961, in an unpublished (but widely circulated) internal report. Time­sharing was advocated by J. McCarthy in his lecture, given at MIT, contained in Management and the Computer of the Future (MIT, 1962). Further study of the design and implementation of man­computer interaction systems is being continued by a recently organized institution­wide project under the direction of Professor Robert M. Fano. -- -- Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@adcomsys.net, lynn@garlic.com http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn/ ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <6uzoymirst.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 20 Message-ID: <_RgE3.15344$N77.1149758@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ11.nn.bcandid.com 937531898 207.238.206.3 (Thu, 16 Sep 1999 21:31:38 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 21:31:38 EDT Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 01:31:38 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!nyc-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!crtntx1-snh1.gtei.net!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ11.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article <6uzoymirst.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, Neil Franklin wrote: >Error. Timeshareing was invented to allow people to interactively work >without monopolising the machine for untolerably expensive amounts of >time. This would have happend without ARPA or any other net. Actually >it did happen without, as there was no net when the first such systems >were written (the earliest I know is CTSS, ca 1963). Nobody claimed timesharing came from ARPANET. (Indeed, as you pointed out, Ronda claimed the opposite: ARPANET was driven by timesharing!) Ronda claimed it was funded by ARPA, which is the government agency that funded ARPANET. Didn't ARPA fund CTSS? Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker Thu Sep 16 1999 53 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### From: phil@ricochet.net (phil) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 07:24:46 GMT Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Lines: 28 Message-ID: <37e1e5f8.13641605@news.ricochet.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.abs.net!remarQ-easT!rQdQ!supernews.com!remarQ.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail On Thu, 16 Sep 99 12:09:08 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > > >This is such complete bullshit. What is really worrying me is >that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of >the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. >There were OTHER reasons for developing timesharing. I really >wish she would stop presenting her (erroneous) conclusions as >facts. Harumph! > Bullshit it certainly is. You object to timesharing and i object to bizarre references to the microprocessor developments that really took place. Tim May's comment (assuming he's being quoted here; if not, i still agree): >>>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being >>>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way. is, afaiac, spot on. Didn't get a penny. Not surprised. It's naive to associate personal computer development with the Internet. It's only been the last five years or so that they have really come together (i know that there are exceptions). phil. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 17 Sep 99 10:02:46 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 15 Message-ID: <7rtb38$fgd$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: OGG8FoOfaeAR90KkaGbBWAvOx0z+7cY7iBNjIy0xq34= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 17 Sep 1999 12:10:16 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!nyc-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!easynet-tele!easynet.net!newspeer1.nac.net!netnews.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d4 In article <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, roggblake@iname.com () wrote: >On 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT, Ronda Hauben wrote: >>computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing >>which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the > >Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well >before ARPANET came on the scene? > Yes. But Rhonda has chosen to ignore that fact. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 17 Sep 99 10:15:16 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 45 Message-ID: <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> X-Trace: MauCj0vEyqci4yR7pyIKN3r/YBVSI555WH9aDDYFq+U= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 17 Sep 1999 12:22:46 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!nyc-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!easynet-tele!easynet.net!newspeer1.nac.net!netnews.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d4 In article <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>, kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >In article <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>On 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT, Ronda Hauben wrote: >>>computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing >>>which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the >> >>Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well >>before ARPANET came on the scene? > >According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were >single-user machines. They did not timeshare. Not the ones I worked on. > The hackers Levy >profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took >control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. Phooey. That was not our philosophy. The philosophy was to make a very, very expensive machine appear to look like the user "owned" it all and allowed many users to have that illusion at the same time. That's what timesharing is. >Timesharing was something Corbato was doing, not something they wanted >anything to do with. IIRC, it wasn't until the 1970s that they started >writing ITS. My first encounter with a timesharing system was in 1969. > >I'm sure there are folks on this newsgroup who can tell us their >memories of what actually happened at MIT in those days. Surely MIT >would have been one of the first places timesharing DEC systems would >have shown up, right? I don't know who DEC's first timesharing customer was. [At least] one of the guys who designed the PDP-10 did come from MIT. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: Tracy Nelson Newsgroups: alt.culture.internet,alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.internet.media-coverage,news.misc Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 12:13:22 -0400 Organization: Ralph Spoilsport Motors Lines: 36 Message-ID: <37E268A2.F55FF46C@fast.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: maxtnt09-abe-45.fast.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.5-15 i686) X-Accept-Language: en Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!nyc-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!easynet-tele!easynet.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.fast.net!news.fast.net!not-for-mail Ronda Hauben wrote: > Well Microsoft and Apple in fact are the product of work done > by Kemeny creating basic as part of the Dartmouth Time Sharing > system. Microsoft, maaaaybe, although if BASIC hadn't existed I dare say that we might have wound up with a different language (FORTRAN, probably) being implemented by Paul Allen & Bill Gates. As for Apple, it made its mark based on its hardware merits, not due to Applesoft BASIC. > And DOS by Microsoft is a beneficiary of the work done developing > time sharing and then CTSS and MULTICS and its beneficiary UNIX. Heh, if there's one thing DOS definately does *not* have, it's the time-sharing nature. Everybody knows that DOS was originally QDOS (Quick-n-dirty DOS), a transposition of CP/M to the key of 8086. AAMOF, if Digital Research had licensed CP/M to IBM, we'd probably have better computers/software today, as we wouldn't have had to wait for DOS to play catch-up to CP/M's capabilities for so many years. > And the work on time sharing and CTSS was the result of ARPA/IPTO's > work. > > The programming languages for the personal computer were the offspring > of the programming language developed for time sharing systems like > Kemeny's DTSS. Not sure what you mean by "the programming languages for the personal computer", but most of the "real" (shrink-wrapped) software written for personal computers was written in (first) assembler, then Turbo Pascal and C, and only recently in Visual Basic (and Visual C++, and Delphi, and ...) I actually used Pascal on a TRS-80 Model I in 1980, and I saw a lot of LOGO code being used on Apple ][s. Sure there was a lot of BASIC code being run, but most of it by hobbiests and gamers. I think you'd be hard-pressed to vindicate it as an important part of Internet history. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 40 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ11.nn.bcandid.com 937581285 207.238.206.3 (Fri, 17 Sep 1999 11:14:45 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 11:14:45 EDT Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 15:14:45 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-fra.maz.net!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ11.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >In article <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>, > kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were >>single-user machines. They did not timeshare. > >Not the ones I worked on. . . . starting in 1969? Remember, we're talking pre-1963 here. >> The hackers Levy >>profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took >>control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. > >Phooey. That was not our philosophy. Would I recognize your name from the book? Which floor of which building were you on? >The philosophy was to make >a very, very expensive machine appear to look like the user "owned" >it all and allowed many users to have that illusion at the same >time. That's what timesharing is. Of course :) >>Timesharing was something Corbato was doing, not something they wanted >>anything to do with. IIRC, it wasn't until the 1970s that they started >>writing ITS. > >My first encounter with a timesharing system was in 1969. What system was it? ITS, CTSS, WAITS? Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker Fri Sep 17 1999 52 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### From: yuska@my-deja.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 20:39:58 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Lines: 84 Message-ID: <7ru8us$r5m$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.175.7.2 X-Article-Creation-Date: Fri Sep 17 20:39:58 1999 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95) X-Http-Proxy: 1.1 x24.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 206.175.7.2 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDyuska Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!carrier1.net!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!newsfeed.icl.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!netnews.com!newspeer1.nac.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail In article <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu>, rh120@columbia.edu wrote: > jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > : > > : >>Date: 9 Sep 1999 11:34:05 -0600 > : >>From: Tim May > : >>Subject: DARPA Considered Unnecessary > : > > : >>>Technology was advancing relentlessly, and, by the way, it was not being > : >>>driven by ARPA or DARPA funding in any significant way. > : > > : >It's easy to make such statements without giving any evidence > : >to back them up. > : > > : >The batch processing mode of computers was the mode in 1962 and would > : >have continued to be the mode for a number of years if not for > : >ARPA/IPTO's research work developing time sharing and interactive > : >computing. > > : This is such complete bullshit. What is really worrying me is > : that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of > : the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. > : There were OTHER reasons for developing timesharing. I really > : wish she would stop presenting her (erroneous) conclusions as > : facts. Harumph! > > What OTHER reasons were there for developing timesharing? snip some sniping about ARPA. > > Is the issue that certain ideology says that there should be > no government role in computer science research. That industry > will do it all? No, the issue is that the chronology of the development of timesharing indicates that ARPA was just jumping on the MIT bandwagon. From Tom Van Vleck's page at: http://www.best.com/~thvv/7094.html "MIT professors, such as Herb Teager and Marvin Minsky, wanted more access to the machine, like they had had on Whirlwind in the fifties, and quicker return of their results from their FMS jobs. These desires led to time-sharing experiments, such as Teager's "time-stealing system" and "sequence break mode," which allowed an important professor's job to interrupt a running job, roll its core image out to tape, make a quick run, and restore the interrupted job. Teager and John McCarthy presented a paper titled "Time-Shared Program Testing" at the ACM meeting in August 1959." The page goes on to trace the development of their ideas into the CTSS paper presented in 1962. According to Van Vleck, the ARPA funding didn't come in until the Project MAC period. Their involvment with CTSS was to buy Project MAC a 7094 on which to run CTSS. The development of time-sharing systems in the sixties was a multi- threaded line, containing government research, development by academics not only at MIT, but several other universities, and commercial development by several computer manufacturers. It is this diverse development that brought about the necessity for a network like ARPANET to interconnect a heterogeneous set of computers geographically distant. You're the one bringing ideology with "there should be no government role". We have a difference of opinion on what the government's role was, not should be. Joe Yuska Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Sat, 18 Sep 99 10:03:26 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 57 Message-ID: <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: Q4esyTHfhadLzySVbVmvV2DISBkzzeMUf+T4553+m1c= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Sep 1999 12:11:03 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news0.de.colt.net!blackbush.xlink.net!EU.net!howland.erols.net!outgoing.news.rcn.net.MISMATCH!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d12 In article , kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >In article <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>In article <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>, >> kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>>According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were >>>single-user machines. They did not timeshare. >> >>Not the ones I worked on. > >.. . . starting in 1969? Remember, we're talking pre-1963 here. That isn't entirely clear to me. The year 1963 was mentioned, but the activity talked about seems to have happened in the 70s. > >>> The hackers Levy >>>profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took >>>control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. >> >>Phooey. That was not our philosophy. > >Would I recognize your name from the book? Which book? > Which floor of which building were you on? Which year? :-) I'll give you a list of my office locales but that wasn't where I worked usually since the machines were elsewhere. It's just where I parked my boots in the winter. 1971-72, ML12-1; 1972-74; ML3-5; 1974-87; MRO1-2. > >>The philosophy was to make >>a very, very expensive machine appear to look like the user "owned" >>it all and allowed many users to have that illusion at the same >>time. That's what timesharing is. > >Of course :) That's not the definition of some :-). > >>>Timesharing was something Corbato was doing, not something they wanted >>>anything to do with. IIRC, it wasn't until the 1970s that they started >>>writing ITS. >> >>My first encounter with a timesharing system was in 1969. > >What system was it? ITS, CTSS, WAITS? Sigh! TOPS-10. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: Bernie Cosell Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 16:19:31 -0400 Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers Lines: 60 Message-ID: References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.6/32.525 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!remarQ-easT!rQdQ!supernews.com!remarQ.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: } In article <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: } >On 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT, Ronda Hauben wrote: } >>computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing } >>which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the } > } >Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well } >before ARPANET came on the scene? } } According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were } single-user machines. They did not timeshare. The hackers Levy } profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took } control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. } Timesharing was something Corbato was doing, not something they wanted } anything to do with. IIRC, it wasn't until the 1970s that they started } writing ITS. This early history is a bit muddled here. I'm pretty sure [probably someone like Les Earnest can provide more info] that the Air Force had been funding Timesharing development for some time. In the early 60's, BBN hosted several projects to develop timeshared computer systems. The early work was on DEC PDP-1s, later on the PDP-6/10/20. The first project [and arguably one of the first multi-user timesharing systems in operation anywhere] was BBN's "Little Hospital" system. I think it was a 3-user system on a PDP-1 [using PDP-1b, #2]. That was funded by the NIH and their funding for timesharing development continued for some time [in 1965 BBN had already discarded and written-anew the "hostpital" system twice more, and was on "Exec III", which was able to run more users concurrently [and effectively] on a single PDP-1 than Corbato could do on CTSS]. In addition, BBN also had contracts from ONR [office of naval research] that spawned an incredible amount of development and basic research. Truth is, I *never* really understood what BBN's mandate was from the Navy or quite what that group was expected to do, but that research money funded *LOTS* more timesharing development [culminating in TENEX, which DEC would later take over], the development of a monster Lisp dialect [BBNLisp, later InterLisp when many of the principals left BBN for PARC]], lots of AI work in odd nooks and crannys. I wasn't part of that project, but not too much of that looked "navy-like" to me, but as I say, I don't know what their actual mandate was. } I'm sure there are folks on this newsgroup who can tell us their } memories of what actually happened at MIT in those days. Surely MIT } would have been one of the first places timesharing DEC systems would } have shown up, right? Partly. The first hacks to do "timesharing" were at the RLE on their PDP-1, but the first real timesharing was done at BBN, on *THEIR* PDP-1. MIT's work on a timesharing system for their PDP-6 only comes a fair bit later... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: ehrice@his.com (Edward Rice) Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Message-ID: Organization: NDS Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 22:00:03 -0400 References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pm8-231.his.com Lines: 19 X-Authenticated-User: ehrice Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!nyc-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!crtntx1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.frontiernet.net!nntp.gctr.net!news4.his.com!user In article <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, roggblake@iname.com () wrote: > Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well > before ARPANET came on the scene? And the Johnniac Open-Shop System (JOSS) predated that by a fair bit, and was a real success. A book called "Conversational Computers," edited by Orr, includes a lovely quote that I'll paraphrase, from an engineer at RAND who was looking back on several years of JOSS access. The writer of that quote said that JOSS had become as necessary to the engineers as morning coffee, as critical to their output as their sliderules; and that vast despondency befell them if they came to work when the system was unavailable, while all the world was joy if they could hear the terminals clattering happily away. A wee bit before ARPA, Rhonda. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Sun, 19 Sep 99 09:10:10 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 82 Message-ID: <7s2gp6$rs1$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rr3uj$7i6$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> X-Trace: g4l8v5rZVF4YoAIKDNhxEr9iYH16JLOo4VTdvwMWprA= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Sep 1999 11:17:58 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d14 In article , Bernie Cosell wrote: >kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: > >} In article <7rr914$f5g$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >} >On 16 Sep 1999 15:56:03 GMT, Ronda Hauben wrote: >} >>computing paradigm from the batch processing mode of computing >} >>which IBM and other computer manufactures in 1962 saw as the >} > >} >Wasn't DEC selling interactive computers (rather than batch mode) well >} >before ARPANET came on the scene? >} >} According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were >} single-user machines. They did not timeshare. The hackers Levy >} profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took >} control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. >} Timesharing was something Corbato was doing, not something they wanted >} anything to do with. IIRC, it wasn't until the 1970s that they started >} writing ITS. > >This early history is a bit muddled here. I'm pretty sure [probably >someone like Les Earnest can provide more info] that the Air Force had been >funding Timesharing development for some time. > >In the early 60's, BBN hosted several projects to develop timeshared >computer systems. The early work was on DEC PDP-1s, later on the >PDP-6/10/20. The first project [and arguably one of the first multi-user >timesharing systems in operation anywhere] was BBN's "Little Hospital" >system. I think it was a 3-user system on a PDP-1 [using PDP-1b, #2]. >That was funded by the NIH and their funding for timesharing development >continued for some time [in 1965 BBN had already discarded and written-anew >the "hostpital" system twice more, and was on "Exec III", which was able to >run more users concurrently [and effectively] on a single PDP-1 than >Corbato could do on CTSS]. > >In addition, BBN also had contracts from ONR [office of naval research] >that spawned an incredible amount of development and basic research. Truth >is, I *never* really understood what BBN's mandate was from the Navy or >quite what that group was expected to do, but that research money funded >*LOTS* more timesharing development [culminating in TENEX, which DEC would >later take over], the development of a monster Lisp dialect [BBNLisp, later >InterLisp when many of the principals left BBN for PARC]], lots of AI work >in odd nooks and crannys. I wasn't part of that project, but not too much >of that looked "navy-like" to me, but as I say, I don't know what their >actual mandate was. > >} I'm sure there are folks on this newsgroup who can tell us their >} memories of what actually happened at MIT in those days. Surely MIT >} would have been one of the first places timesharing DEC systems would >} have shown up, right? > >Partly. The first hacks to do "timesharing" were at the RLE on their >PDP-1, but the first real timesharing was done at BBN, on *THEIR* PDP-1. > >MIT's work on a timesharing system for their PDP-6 only comes a fair bit >later... OK, I'll give you some dates about the PDP-10 which ran TOPS10, a timesharing operating system. (TENEX arrived at DEC around 1974 and later, after much work, was named TOPS20.) TW was hired in 1966 to do the software that involved disks and file systems. I have a memento here from the DECUS, 1984 which celebrated the 20th anniversary of 36-bits. The guy who would know about this stuff is Alan Kotok (although he didn't do the software). When JMF was hired by DEC in 1970, his first job was to get all kinds of computers to talk to each other at ORNL (and by 'all kinds of computers', I mean DEC's and IBM's). /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 69 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ11.nn.bcandid.com 937795095 207.238.206.3 (Sun, 19 Sep 1999 22:38:15 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 22:38:15 EDT Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 02:38:15 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ11.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >In article , > kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>In article <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>>In article <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>, >>> kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>>>According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were >>>>single-user machines. They did not timeshare. >>> >>>Not the ones I worked on. >> >>.. . . starting in 1969? Remember, we're talking pre-1963 here. > >That isn't entirely clear to me. The year 1963 was mentioned, but >the activity talked about seems to have happened in the 70s. It's sort of a moot point now; others have attested that you were correct, and CTSS didn't start out being funded by ARPA (circa 1962?), and furthermore, BBN was developing TENEX already in the early 1960s. >>>> The hackers Levy >>>>profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took >>>>control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. >>> >>>Phooey. That was not our philosophy. >> >>Would I recognize your name from the book? > >Which book? The one mentioned above, in which Levy was profiling hackers. It was called _Hackers_. He didn't talk to *all* hackers at MIT. He talked to a specific group of hackers, the guys from the MIT AI lab who later left for the LispM companies, the group that started out as the TMRC, the ITS guys from the ninth floor. Other people obviously didn't think timesharing was heretical, and some of them probably have pretty good claims to being hackers themselves. >> Which floor of which building were you on? > >Which year? :-) I'll give you a list of my office locales >but that wasn't where I worked usually since the machines >were elsewhere. It's just where I parked my boots in the >winter. 1971-72, ML12-1; 1972-74; ML3-5; 1974-87; MRO1-2. :) Since *I* wasn't at MIT during any of this time -- or since then, for that matter -- none of those numbers mean anything to me. >>>The philosophy was to make >>>a very, very expensive machine appear to look like the user "owned" >>>it all and allowed many users to have that illusion at the same >>>time. That's what timesharing is. >> >>Of course :) > >That's not the definition of some :-). How do other people define timesharing? -- Kragen Sitaker Sun Sep 19 1999 50 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Mon, 20 Sep 99 09:58:17 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 81 Message-ID: <7s57vn$o4h$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: UcONHik5bWtQXV6DRu8IDUU+72baMCHoKaNXpFRbrnk= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 20 Sep 1999 12:06:15 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d5 In article , kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >In article <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>In article , >> kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>>In article <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>>>In article <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>, >>>> kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>>>>According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were >>>>>single-user machines. They did not timeshare. >>>> >>>>Not the ones I worked on. >>> >>>.. . . starting in 1969? Remember, we're talking pre-1963 here. >> >>That isn't entirely clear to me. The year 1963 was mentioned, but >>the activity talked about seems to have happened in the 70s. > >It's sort of a moot point now; others have attested that you were >correct, and CTSS didn't start out being funded by ARPA (circa 1962?), >and furthermore, BBN was developing TENEX already in the early 1960s. > >>>>> The hackers Levy >>>>>profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took >>>>>control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. >>>> >>>>Phooey. That was not our philosophy. >>> >>>Would I recognize your name from the book? >> >>Which book? > >The one mentioned above, in which Levy was profiling hackers. It was >called _Hackers_. Nope. I doubt even JMF or TW would be in it. I hope I'm not in it. > >He didn't talk to *all* hackers at MIT. He talked to a specific group >of hackers, the guys from the MIT AI lab who later left for the LispM >companies, the group that started out as the TMRC, the ITS guys from >the ninth floor. > >Other people obviously didn't think timesharing was heretical, and some >of them probably have pretty good claims to being hackers themselves. > >>> Which floor of which building were you on? >> >>Which year? :-) I'll give you a list of my office locales >>but that wasn't where I worked usually since the machines >>were elsewhere. It's just where I parked my boots in the >>winter. 1971-72, ML12-1; 1972-74; ML3-5; 1974-87; MRO1-2. > >:) > >Since *I* wasn't at MIT during any of this time -- or since then, for >that matter -- none of those numbers mean anything to me. Oh, you meant MIT. Those aren't MIT numbers. Sorry, I really misread your question. > >>>>The philosophy was to make >>>>a very, very expensive machine appear to look like the user "owned" >>>>it all and allowed many users to have that illusion at the same >>>>time. That's what timesharing is. >>> >>>Of course :) >> >>That's not the definition of some :-). > >How do other people define timesharing? > IBM had a very strange definition (we called it paritioning). And then there are those who think Windows 3.1 is an OS and that DOS timeshares...snort...snicker. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <7s2gp6$rs1$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: Wizvax Communications, LLC From: multics@wizvax.wizvax.net (Richard Shetron) NNTP-Posting-Host: wizvax.wizvax.net Message-ID: <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net> Date: 20 Sep 1999 23:39:39 -0400 X-Trace: 20 Sep 1999 23:39:39 -0400, wizvax.wizvax.net Lines: 7 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.wizvax.net!news.wizvax.net!wizvax.wizvax.net!multics I gather no one here remembers the GE Time Sharing network (mid/late 60's?). My high school had access to something called TSS-645 running on the GE-645 at Griffiss AFB in 68 or 69. The timesharing module for GECOS was older then that. The 600 series came out around 64/65. The GE-645 was a modified GE-635 used for the Multics project. I actually used Multics on the Griffiss/RADC GE-645 back around 74. ###### Message-ID: <37E7D024.7883C8F6@cs.uml.edu> From: Paul Wexelblat X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 112 Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 14:36:20 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.63.8.141 X-Trace: testbox 937939054 129.63.8.141 (Tue, 21 Sep 1999 14:37:34 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 14:37:34 EDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!masternews.telia.net!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!testbox!not-for-mail Kragen Sitaker wrote: > In article <7rvvgn$gup$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: > >In article , > > kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: > >>In article <7rtbqm$fgd$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: > >>>In article <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com>, > >>> kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: > >>>>According to my memory of Steven Levy's _Hackers_, yes, but they were > >>>>single-user machines. They did not timeshare. > >>> > >>>Not the ones I worked on. > >> > >>.. . . starting in 1969? Remember, we're talking pre-1963 here. > > > >That isn't entirely clear to me. The year 1963 was mentioned, but > >the activity talked about seems to have happened in the 70s. > > It's sort of a moot point now; others have attested that you were > correct, and CTSS didn't start out being funded by ARPA (circa 1962?), > and furthermore, BBN was developing TENEX already in the early 1960s. Not quite, we got the SDS-940 (later called XDS) in about 64, the -10 didn't come in 'til mid/late 1960's as I remember (And there was a significant project to connect the big analogue computer to that digital thing) What I think you mean, however is that BBN was working on the BBN Pager (that eventually went on the -10 for TENEX) while the 940 was there, so you _could_ almost-legitimately say that BBN was working on TENEX (even before we got or saw the -10, I guess). Barnaby was doing a PDP-6 simulator for the 940, too. Mostly, I try to stay out of these blathering conversations, I only check here about once a month, but it sounded as though you needed some support from someone who _was_ there then (though in another dept). > > > >>>> The hackers Levy > >>>>profiled actually saw timesharing as rather heretical -- it took > >>>>control of the machine away from the user and forced them to share it. > >>> > >>>Phooey. That was not our philosophy. > >> > >>Would I recognize your name from the book? > > > >Which book? > > The one mentioned above, in which Levy was profiling hackers. It was > called _Hackers_. > > He didn't talk to *all* hackers at MIT. He talked to a specific group > of hackers, the guys from the MIT AI lab who later left for the LispM > companies, the group that started out as the TMRC, the ITS guys from > the ninth floor. Not sure whether you're saying he did or did not talk to the TMRC guys here. There certainly were a lot of Minsky's folks (and most of them were tmrc folks too) around BBN back then. (I also spent some time at DEC doing TOPS-10 (and a bit of TOPS-20 nee TENEX), and did a wee bit of code for the "compatibility package", so had some code in TENEX too) But timesharing had come a long way from the PDP-1's by then (Oh, I put BBN's PDP-1 on the Arpanet as an IMP, but never got any credit in any publication; sigh... :-> ) > > > Other people obviously didn't think timesharing was heretical, and some > of them probably have pretty good claims to being hackers themselves. > > >> Which floor of which building were you on? > > > >Which year? :-) I'll give you a list of my office locales > >but that wasn't where I worked usually since the machines > >were elsewhere. It's just where I parked my boots in the > >winter. 1971-72, ML12-1; 1972-74; ML3-5; 1974-87; MRO1-2. > > :) > > Since *I* wasn't at MIT during any of this time -- or since then, for > that matter -- none of those numbers mean anything to me. > > >>>The philosophy was to make > >>>a very, very expensive machine appear to look like the user "owned" > >>>it all and allowed many users to have that illusion at the same > >>>time. That's what timesharing is. > >> > >>Of course :) > > > >That's not the definition of some :-). > > How do other people define timesharing? > > -- > Kragen Sitaker > Sun Sep 19 1999 > 50 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. > -- ...wex ###### From: mwilson@interlog.com (Mel Wilson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Message-ID: References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <7s2gp6$rs1$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net> Lines: 25 X-Newsreader: VSoup v1.2.9.37Beta [95/NT] Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 07:46:54 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.20.43.41 X-Trace: cac1.rdr.news.psi.ca 937965115 209.20.43.41 (Tue, 21 Sep 1999 21:51:55 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 21:51:55 EDT Organization: Interlog Internet (Toronto) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!newsfeed.interlog.com!154.11.168.195.MISMATCH!cac1.rdr.news.psi.ca!not-for-mail In article <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net>, multics@wizvax.wizvax.net (Richard Shetron) wrote: >I gather no one here remembers the GE Time Sharing network (mid/late >60's?). My high school had access to something called TSS-645 running on >the GE-645 at Griffiss AFB in 68 or 69. The timesharing module for GECOS >was older then that. The 600 series came out around 64/65. The GE-645 >was a modified GE-635 used for the Multics project. I actually used >Multics on the Griffiss/RADC GE-645 back around 74. I wasn't sure of the dates, really, but my first job had me doing a little work using timesharing on a GE-635 (about '71) that had been installed around 1966, and in the machine room we worked next to a GE-225 TSS system that was considered ancient by '69. Mass store on that one was the MSU204 disk with the three-foot platters, and it had a free-standing floating-point processor the size of a wet bar, counting the room for the bartender. According to my Standards CD-ROM, RFC-10 dates from 29 July 1969. I'm pretty sure that GE-225, -465 and -635 TSS systems were all mature by then. Regards. Mel. -- "Unite your people. Unite your systems." ###### From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 22 Sep 1999 01:25:20 GMT Lines: 16 Message-ID: <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell5.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 937963520 214 gds@206.184.139.136 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news2.best.com!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail In article <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >What is really worrying me is >that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of >the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. >There were OTHER reasons for developing timesharing. I really >wish she would stop presenting her (erroneous) conclusions as >facts. Harumph! It seems that the Haubens are starting to become quoted in other studies of the Internet's origins, particularly concerning its commercialization and privatization. For example, a book I recently discovered, Robert W. McChesney's RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY, takes significant content from the Hauben's NETIZENS. --gregbo gds at best.com ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Wed, 22 Sep 99 12:08:08 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 26 Message-ID: <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com> X-Trace: ruqYaq4WN9+Xo3+MJLkGcIgyq+m2fJmYgykmxHUsBIA= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Sep 1999 14:16:24 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d15 In article <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com>, gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: >In article <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>What is really worrying me is >>that this person seems to be acquiring a persona of expert of >>the history in places that would be silly enough to believe it. >>There were OTHER reasons for developing timesharing. I really >>wish she would stop presenting her (erroneous) conclusions as >>facts. Harumph! > >It seems that the Haubens are starting to become quoted in other >studies of the Internet's origins, particularly concerning its >commercialization and privatization. For example, a book I recently >discovered, Robert W. McChesney's RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY, takes >significant content from the Hauben's NETIZENS. It's inevitable that bit creep of bad bits will travel :-(. Since others posted excellent answers, I didn't feel the need to duplicate their posts. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 22 Sep 1999 16:58:53 GMT Lines: 29 Message-ID: <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell5.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 938019533 201 gds@206.184.139.136 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!newsfeed.online.be!199.60.229.5.MISMATCH!newsfeed.direct.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news2.best.com!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail In article <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >In article <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com>, > gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: >>It seems that the Haubens are starting to become quoted in other >>studies of the Internet's origins, particularly concerning its >>commercialization and privatization. For example, a book I recently >>discovered, Robert W. McChesney's RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY, takes >>significant content from the Hauben's NETIZENS. >It's inevitable that bit creep of bad bits will travel :-(. >Since others posted excellent answers, I didn't feel the need >to duplicate their posts. In my opinion, the Haubens would catch much less flack, and gain much more support, if they approached the issue of Internet privatization and commercialization like this: Hi, we are the Haubens. We have been studying the past history of the Internet. We saw that in the past, there was coordination between government and research. The coordination allowed the Internet to develop and spread. It's our opinion that the privatization and commercialization that has taken place (and is being proposed) is harmful to the continued spread of the Internet as a communications medium that all citizens of the world can have access to. We would like to seek the help of all people who are interested in this goal. --gregbo gds at best.com ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Thu, 23 Sep 99 10:59:46 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 52 Message-ID: <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7rqu40$adq$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> X-Trace: jDND9bVaUNAXJfF0l33aWvQQYadbW9BYRUCGC4U0nvw= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Sep 1999 13:08:09 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newscore.ipf.de!newsfeed.germany.net!newsfeed.nyu.edu!news.globix.net!news-out.cwix.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d16 In article <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com>, gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: >In article <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>In article <37e83000$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com>, >> gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: >>>It seems that the Haubens are starting to become quoted in other >>>studies of the Internet's origins, particularly concerning its >>>commercialization and privatization. For example, a book I recently >>>discovered, Robert W. McChesney's RICH MEDIA, POOR DEMOCRACY, takes >>>significant content from the Hauben's NETIZENS. > >>It's inevitable that bit creep of bad bits will travel :-(. > >>Since others posted excellent answers, I didn't feel the need >>to duplicate their posts. > >In my opinion, the Haubens would catch much less flack, and gain much >more support, Not mine even if they did lay out their agenda. > ..if they approached the issue of Internet privatization >and commercialization like this: > >Hi, we are the Haubens. We have been studying the past history of the >Internet. We saw that in the past, there was coordination between >government and research. .... Now add the word business to that list. > ...The coordination allowed the Internet to >develop and spread. It's our opinion that the privatization and >commercialization that has taken place (and is being proposed) is >harmful to the continued spread of the Internet as a communications >medium that all citizens of the world can have access to. We would >like to seek the help of all people who are interested in this goal. From my point of view, networks have been private and commercialized since I've been using them. No, the legislation that she keeps harping about deals with government control of the bits that get sent to whereever. She wants to "solve" this problem by making the access to the so-called internet free to every person in the world. Now who in the hell is going to pay for that? Who's going to organize that? Her solution is "THE GOVERNMENT". Which is counter to her problem statement. None of it makes sense. And then she sorta rewrites the "history" to support her viewpoint. Sheesh!!! /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: yuska@my-deja.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 20:44:27 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Lines: 49 Message-ID: <7se3f8$otd$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <4obE3.14838$N77.1102203@typ11.nn.bcandid.com> <7s2gp6$rs1$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.175.7.2 X-Article-Creation-Date: Thu Sep 23 20:44:27 1999 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95) X-Http-Proxy: 1.1 x25.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 206.175.7.2 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDyuska Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail In article <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net>, multics@wizvax.wizvax.net (Richard Shetron) wrote: > I gather no one here remembers the GE Time Sharing network (mid/late > 60's?). My high school had access to something called TSS-645 running on > the GE-645 at Griffiss AFB in 68 or 69. The timesharing module for GECOS > was older then that. The 600 series came out around 64/65. The GE- 645 > was a modified GE-635 used for the Multics project. I actually used > Multics on the Griffiss/RADC GE-645 back around 74. > > My professional involvement in the industry started in 1967, so my hard facts start there. My first sighting of a timesharing system however, goes back to 1965-66. One of our math profs was doing work with AFCRL at the time, and had a time-sharing terminal to somewhere. I would guess that it was connected to CTSS system at MIT. First, because it was an IBM terminal, and second, because I think AFCRL was using systems at MIT then. Next, I used a time-sharing service based on a PDP-6 running out of somewnere in Princeton in 1967. Can't remember the name of the company. I didn't have much direct contact with GE systems, but I can say that by 1969 their time-sharing system was mature and extensive enough in use to be copied. McDonnel-Douglas contracted with CDC in 1968 or '69 to provide a time-sharing system based on the CDC 6400. One of the absolute requirements was that the system have the same user interface and filesystem as GECOS. This was the KRONOS system, which begat NOS, etc. KRONOS systems were then sold to several large aerospace companies and universities, and provided the timesharing side of CDC's service bureau operation. Joe Yuska -- I'm glad I don't have to die twice-- it's boring. -Feynman Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't. ###### From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 24 Sep 1999 00:31:22 GMT Lines: 39 Message-ID: <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell5.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 938133082 218 gds@206.184.139.136 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newscore.ipf.de!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news2.best.com!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail In article <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >From my point of view, networks have been private and commercialized >since I've been using them. Indeed, many networks that predate the ARPAnet and Internet were private and commercialized. One can only speculate how those networks would have evolved, in the absence of the research that went into developing and running the ARPAnet and Internet. >No, the legislation that she keeps harping about deals with >government control of the bits that get sent to whereever. She wants >to "solve" this problem by making the access to the so-called >internet free to every person in the world. Hmmm. I don't recall her ever saying that. I don't think that's a realistic goal. Someone has to pay for the construction and operation of the net, even if it's tax dollars. >Now who in the hell is going to pay for that? Who's going >to organize that? Her solution is "THE GOVERNMENT". I can imagine the existence of federally funded networks that operate for non-commercial, or perhaps limited commercial use, but I think it would require quite a bit of work to establish and run such networks. You'd have to find a way of funding them that wouldn't be a burden to taxpayers. Perhaps it could be funded through bonds. There would be some rather sticky issues such as awarding contracts to build and operate these networks (because the pool from which these resources will be drawn is dominated by the existing commercial players, who could make a strong argument that they are the best people to build such networks since they have the expertise). There would also be sticky issues regarding how that network might attach to other networks (such as today's Internet). In the current laissez-faire governmental regulatory environment, it would require even more work to push such a thing through. --gregbo gds at best.com ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 21 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ11.nn.bcandid.com 938146355 207.238.206.3 (Fri, 24 Sep 1999 00:12:35 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 00:12:35 EDT Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 04:12:35 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gw22.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ11.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com>, Greg Skinner wrote: >I can imagine the existence of federally funded networks that operate >for non-commercial, or perhaps limited commercial use, but I think it >would require quite a bit of work to establish and run such networks. >You'd have to find a way of funding them that wouldn't be a burden to >taxpayers. At some point, someone had a study of NSFnet costs up on the Web, as part of an argument for usage-based costing of Internet access. It turned out that NSFNet (this was in the days when it was made of T1s, IIRC) was costing something like a dollar or two per person per year. Compared to the cost of maintaining the first/last mile of cable -- the one that connects everybody's houses together -- running the network is free. -- Kragen Sitaker Thu Sep 23 1999 46 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 24 Sep 99 11:02:42 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 62 Message-ID: <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> X-Trace: AvMhUA3gMVzPUMA5wy6ia1ouLgvjE5agF+pmenmV918= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Sep 1999 13:11:17 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newscore.ipf.de!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d1 In article <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com>, gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: >In article <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>From my point of view, networks have been private and commercialized >>since I've been using them. > >Indeed, many networks that predate the ARPAnet and Internet were >private and commercialized. One can only speculate how those networks >would have evolved, in the absence of the research that went into >developing and running the ARPAnet and Internet. Why speculate? I don't know how much input DARPA had to our developments, but I never heard about them until we got an IMP. > >>No, the legislation that she keeps harping about deals with >>government control of the bits that get sent to whereever. She wants >>to "solve" this problem by making the access to the so-called >>internet free to every person in the world. > >Hmmm. I don't recall her ever saying that. I don't think that's a >realistic goal. Someone has to pay for the construction and operation >of the net, even if it's tax dollars. > >>Now who in the hell is going to pay for that? Who's going >>to organize that? Her solution is "THE GOVERNMENT". > >I can imagine the existence of federally funded networks that operate >for non-commercial, or perhaps limited commercial use, but I think it >would require quite a bit of work to establish and run such networks. >You'd have to find a way of funding them that wouldn't be a burden to >taxpayers. Perhaps it could be funded through bonds. Bonds issued by whom? Congress? Once they get a control, then they can determine the content. Do you really want politicians to tell you how to program or how to configure your hardware? These are people who have delusions. > There would be >some rather sticky issues such as awarding contracts to build and >operate these networks (because the pool from which these resources >will be drawn is dominated by the existing commercial players, who >could make a strong argument that they are the best people to build >such networks since they have the expertise). There would also be >sticky issues regarding how that network might attach to other >networks (such as today's Internet). That's small potatoes. Start by considering providing the power grid that is required to make the Internet available to the "netizens" in places that don't have one. > >In the current laissez-faire governmental regulatory environment, it >would require even more work to push such a thing through. That's not the problem. The problem is the inefficiency (thus costing so much that availability would have to be rationed). /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Fri, 24 Sep 99 11:05:37 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 24 Message-ID: <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> X-Trace: 4N0/ciBFSAbjP7bxjW/Wj7QUdkvxA77qufNfUpG6Ho8= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 24 Sep 1999 13:14:10 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d1 In article , kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >In article <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com>, >Greg Skinner wrote: >>I can imagine the existence of federally funded networks that operate >>for non-commercial, or perhaps limited commercial use, but I think it >>would require quite a bit of work to establish and run such networks. >>You'd have to find a way of funding them that wouldn't be a burden to >>taxpayers. > >At some point, someone had a study of NSFnet costs up on the Web, as >part of an argument for usage-based costing of Internet access. It >turned out that NSFNet (this was in the days when it was made of T1s, >IIRC) was costing something like a dollar or two per person per year. > >Compared to the cost of maintaining the first/last mile of cable -- the >one that connects everybody's houses together -- running the network is >free. And what about upgrades? What about those who don't want to upgrade? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7s2gp6$rs1$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net> <7se3f8$otd$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Organization: Wizvax Communications, LLC From: multics@wizvax.wizvax.net (Richard Shetron) NNTP-Posting-Host: wizvax.wizvax.net Message-ID: <37ebc3cc_3@news.wizvax.net> Date: 24 Sep 1999 14:32:44 -0400 X-Trace: 24 Sep 1999 14:32:44 -0400, wizvax.wizvax.net Lines: 13 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.new-york.net!newspeer1.nac.net!news.mv.net!newsfeed.wizvax.net!news.wizvax.net!wizvax.wizvax.net!multics In article <7se3f8$otd$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, wrote: >In article <37e6fdfb_1@news.wizvax.net>, > multics@wizvax.wizvax.net (Richard Shetron) wrote: [snip] How about DTSS? when did DTSS go online? I seem to remember they started with a GE-200 series and went to a 600 series in the mid/late 60's. I remember several of us from RPI went to visit a friend at Dartmouth around 75 and during the tour someone stopped by her office to get permission to use the card reader. All my friends from RPI were surprised as back then it was extremely difficult to get an interactive account on the 360-50 (later replaced by a 360-67). ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 20 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 938187409 207.238.206.3 (Fri, 24 Sep 1999 11:36:49 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 11:36:49 EDT Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 15:36:49 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!isdnet!howland.erols.net!gate.bcandid.com.MISMATCH!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >In article , > kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>At some point, someone had a study of NSFnet costs up on the Web, as >>part of an argument for usage-based costing of Internet access. It >>turned out that NSFNet (this was in the days when it was made of T1s, >>IIRC) was costing something like a dollar or two per person per year. >> >>Compared to the cost of maintaining the first/last mile of cable -- the >>one that connects everybody's houses together -- running the network is >>free. > >And what about upgrades? What about those who don't want to upgrade? What kind of upgrades are you talking about? -- Kragen Sitaker Thu Sep 23 1999 46 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### Sender: lynn@LYNNLT Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> Reply-To: Anne & Lynn Wheeler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Message-ID: Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 11 User-Agent: Gnus/5.07008 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.80) Emacs/20.3 Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 16:24:54 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.63.29.149 X-Complaints-To: support@adcomsys.net X-Trace: news-west.eli.net 938190294 209.63.29.149 (Fri, 24 Sep 1999 10:24:54 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 10:24:54 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newscore.ipf.de!news-fra.pop.de!newsfeed.tli.de!remarQ-easT!supernews.com!remarQ.com!news.new-york.net!uunet!ffx.uu.net!news-west.eli.net!not-for-mail with regard to nsfnet costs ... it that the calculation based on the amount of the nsfnet contract ... or based on the cost of the amount of resources actually involved in nsfnet (which possibly were supplied by commercial companies far in excess of the size of the nsfnet contract)??? -- -- Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com, finger for pgp key http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: None X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test72 (19 April 1999) From: kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) Lines: 58 Message-ID: <%sOG3.28619$I6.509606@typ12.nn.bcandid.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.238.206.3 X-Trace: typ12.nn.bcandid.com 938193851 207.238.206.3 (Fri, 24 Sep 1999 13:24:11 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 13:24:11 EDT Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 17:24:11 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!bignews.mediaways.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.cwix.com!gw12.nn.bcandid.com!gate.bCandid.com!typ12.nn.bcandid.com.POSTED!not-for-mail In article , Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote: >with regard to nsfnet costs ... it that the calculation based on >the amount of the nsfnet contract ... or based on the cost of >the amount of resources actually involved in nsfnet (which >possibly were supplied by commercial companies far in excess >of the size of the nsfnet contract)??? I think I found the original paper: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/infoecon/FAQs/FAQsALL.html -- It is difficult to say how much the Internet as a whole costs, since it consists of thousands of different networks, many of which are privately owned. However, it is possible to estimate the cost of the NSFNET backbone, since it was publicly supported. In 1993, NSF paid Merit about $11.5 million per year to run the backbone. Approximately 80% of this was spent on lease payments for the fiber optic lines and routers. About 7% of the budget was spent on the Network Operations Center, which monitorer traffic flows and troubleshoots problems. To give some sense of the scale of this subsidy, add to it the approximately $7 million per year that NSF paid to subsidize various regional networks, for a total of about $20 million. Based on estimates that there were approximately 20 million Internet users (most of whom were connected to the NSFNET in one way or another), the NSF subsidy amounted to about $1 per user per year. Of course, this was significantly less than the total cost of the Internet; indeed, it does not even include all of the public funds, which came from state governments, state-supported universities, and other national governments as well. No one really knows how much all this adds up to, although there are some research projects underway to try to estimate the total U.S. expenditures on the Internet. It has been estimated---read ``guessed''--- that the NSF subsidy of $20 million per year was less than 10% of the total by expenditure U.S. public agencies on the Internet. . . . Consider the average cost of the NSFNET backbone in 1993: about $10^6 per month, for about 60,000 * 10^6 packets per month. This implies a cost per packet (around 200 bytes) of about 1/600 cents. If there are 20 million users of the NSFNET backbone (10 per host computer), then full cost recovery of the NSFNET subsidy would imply an average monthly bill of about $0.08 per person. If we accept the estimate that the total cost of the U.S. portion of the Internet is about 10 times the NSFNET subsidy, we come up with 50 cents per person per month for full cost recovery. The revenue from congestion fees would presumably be significantly less than this amount. . . . On the NSFNET alone nearly 60 billion packets are being delivered each month. -- Kragen Sitaker Thu Sep 23 1999 46 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08. ###### Sender: lynn@LYNNLT Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7saobo$jd5$5@winter.news.rcn.net> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Reply-To: Anne & Lynn Wheeler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Message-ID: Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 10 User-Agent: Gnus/5.07008 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.80) Emacs/20.3 Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 22:23:21 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.63.29.121 X-Complaints-To: support@adcomsys.net X-Trace: news-west.eli.net 938211801 209.63.29.121 (Fri, 24 Sep 1999 16:23:21 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 16:23:21 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!nntp.abs.net!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!easynews!news-west.eli.net!not-for-mail somewhat related article http://www.sjmercury.com/svtech/columns/gillmor/docs/dg092499.htm -- -- Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com, finger for pgp key http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ ###### From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 24 Sep 1999 23:56:54 GMT Lines: 51 Message-ID: <37ec0fc6$0$203@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell5.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 938217414 203 gds@206.184.139.136 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!paloalto-snf1.gtei.net!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!newsfeed.enteract.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!news2.best.com!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail In article <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >In article <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com>, >Why speculate? I don't know how much input DARPA had to >our developments, but I never heard about them until we got >an IMP. What I meant was that we'll never really know how things might have turned out if the ARPA networking program had been cancelled or never gotten off the ground. >Bonds issued by whom? Congress? Once they get a control, then >they can determine the content. Do you really want politicians >to tell you how to program or how to configure your hardware? >These are people who have delusions. These are certainly legitimate concerns. Personally I don't relish the idea of government having that level of control over what I do with my equipment. Others disagree, saying that a certain level of government intervention in the operation of public networks is necessary in order to ensure that these networks are run in the public interest. One thing that the Haubens (and some others) argue is that the issues have never really been brought out in the open for public discussion. To a certain extent, I agree, but I also think (at least in our present laissez-faire media regulatory environment) that there isn't going to be a lot of public opposition to the type of private enterprise networking we see today. Also, you have to take into account that the Internet exists largely as an agreement between entities who've decided they will share certain resources that enable them to communicate. The technology is cheap and sufficiently widely available that interested (and motivated) persons could build parallel Internets that could be operated at their discretion. In general, I don't see much motivation in Congress to address the Haubens' concerns. I wish there was a way to get some kind of widespread opinion poll on how satisfied people are with the Internet. That would go a long way towards resolving debates on these issues. >[laissez-faire governmental regulation is] not the problem. The >problem is the inefficiency (thus costing so much that availability >would have to be rationed). In general, I don't think we'll ever see anything like that happening. Too many people are happy with cheap (and now in some cases free) Internet access. This sort of discussion probably needed to happen about ten years ago, if it was to have any effect. --gregbo gds at best.com ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Sat, 25 Sep 99 08:57:44 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 30 Message-ID: <7siabk$4hm$3@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: nHReG8VsYfXXZLwqXMEZfBS2jINv2ceo+/1mQWP3kiE= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Sep 1999 11:06:28 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d3 In article , kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >In article <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>In article , >> kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker) wrote: >>>At some point, someone had a study of NSFnet costs up on the Web, as >>>part of an argument for usage-based costing of Internet access. It >>>turned out that NSFNet (this was in the days when it was made of T1s, >>>IIRC) was costing something like a dollar or two per person per year. >>> >>>Compared to the cost of maintaining the first/last mile of cable -- the >>>one that connects everybody's houses together -- running the network is >>>free. >> >>And what about upgrades? What about those who don't want to upgrade? > >What kind of upgrades are you talking about? Any upgrade, hardware, software, or whatever. If you want an analogy, look at how cable TV systems have been handled (this is in the USA). And then just think about how a government (whether local, state or federal) would handle something that's way more complex. /BAH /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Sat, 25 Sep 99 10:51:17 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 80 Message-ID: <7sih0j$k4c$1@winter.news.rcn.net> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37ec0fc6$0$203@nntp1.ba.best.com> X-Trace: xkdy1KdjsSlXVwADoxJsnAAFito5gRFiYKkgqJapYmw= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Sep 1999 13:00:03 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d3 In article <37ec0fc6$0$203@nntp1.ba.best.com>, gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) wrote: >In article <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>In article <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com>, >>Why speculate? I don't know how much input DARPA had to >>our developments, but I never heard about them until we got >>an IMP. > >What I meant was that we'll never really know how things might have >turned out if the ARPA networking program had been cancelled or never >gotten off the ground. Ah, I see; I did misread your post. I suspect, if one wants to play the "what if" game, that similar things would have happened...but that is purely a speculation. > >>Bonds issued by whom? Congress? Once they get a control, then >>they can determine the content. Do you really want politicians >>to tell you how to program or how to configure your hardware? >>These are people who have delusions. > >These are certainly legitimate concerns. Personally I don't relish >the idea of government having that level of control over what I do >with my equipment. Others disagree, saying that a certain level of >government intervention in the operation of public networks is >necessary in order to ensure that these networks are run in the public >interest. And who defines public interest? For that matter, who defines the public? It certainly isn't clear to me that those things are well-defined in other areas. > >One thing that the Haubens (and some others) argue is that the issues >have never really been brought out in the open for public discussion. Oh, phooey to that (not your comment but their opinion). They simply haven't been listening. There have been public discussions for decades. Just because politicians haven't been discussing it, in no way implies that this stuff hasn't been discussed. What do you think goes on at meetings such as IEEE and DECUS? >To a certain extent, I agree, but I also think (at least in our >present laissez-faire media regulatory environment) that there isn't >going to be a lot of public opposition to the type of private >enterprise networking we see today. Also, you have to take into >account that the Internet exists largely as an agreement between >entities who've decided they will share certain resources that enable >them to communicate. The technology is cheap and sufficiently widely >available that interested (and motivated) persons could build parallel >Internets that could be operated at their discretion. In general, I >don't see much motivation in Congress to address the Haubens' >concerns. > >I wish there was a way to get some kind of widespread opinion poll on >how satisfied people are with the Internet. That would go a long way >towards resolving debates on these issues. Maybe, instead of relying on opinion polls (which are highly suspect, anyway) one should just count the bits that fly through the wires. I buy a computer and a modem and an ISP service. That should account for something. > >>[laissez-faire governmental regulation is] not the problem. The >>problem is the inefficiency (thus costing so much that availability >>would have to be rationed). > >In general, I don't think we'll ever see anything like that >happening. Too many people are happy with cheap (and now in some >cases free) Internet access. This sort of discussion probably needed >to happen about ten years ago, if it was to have any effect. I wouldn't rely on happiness as a metric. Now, in addition to paying for my ISP, my phone bill has _two_ line access charges that seem to be doubling. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Sender: lynn@LYNNPC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> <%sOG3.28619$I6.509606@typ12.nn.bcandid.com> Reply-To: Anne & Lynn Wheeler From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Message-ID: Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070095 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.95) Emacs/20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 15:40:30 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.63.28.138 X-Complaints-To: support@adcomsys.net X-Trace: news-west.eli.net 938274030 209.63.28.138 (Sat, 25 Sep 1999 09:40:30 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 09:40:30 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nuq-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!easynews!news-west.eli.net!not-for-mail the question wasn't how much did NSF pay for NSFNET1 & NSFNET2 ... the question was what was the price of the resources that commercial companies actually installed for NSFNET1 & NSFNET2. misc comments: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#40 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#59 NSFNET1 contract called for T1 backone between a number of sites ... I was in the NCAR room and a couple others. Large room with rack of IBM PC/RTs with interface adapter cards supporting 440kbit transmission connected to IDNX telco multiplexors ... multiplexing multiple 440kbit channels into T1 trunks operating between sites. -- -- Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@adcomsys.net, lynn@garlic.com http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn/ ###### Sender: lynn@LYNNPC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7sftf2$rrc$2@winter.news.rcn.net> <%sOG3.28619$I6.509606@typ12.nn.bcandid.com> Reply-To: Anne & Lynn Wheeler From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler Message-ID: Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 20 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070095 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.95) Emacs/20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 15:48:41 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.63.28.138 X-Complaints-To: support@adcomsys.net X-Trace: news-west.eli.net 938274521 209.63.28.138 (Sat, 25 Sep 1999 09:48:41 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1999 09:48:41 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nuq-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!easynews!news-west.eli.net!not-for-mail i would even guess that they learned something by the time they tried the high performance storage system lab and the high performance network initiatives ... the vendors were asked to contribute equipemnt for free and the vendors could bask in the glow of the publicity. I remember talking to some of the participants somewhat after some of the press releases ... one of the pacific rim countries had invited all the US participants in the US high performance network initiaive over and ordered/payed for a duplicate of the US installation. it somewhat idlely crossed my mind who were they going to be most responsive to, an organization that asks for free donations or organization that pays in full for the installation. -- -- Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@adcomsys.net, lynn@garlic.com http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn/ ###### From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <7sft9l$rrc$1@winter.news.rcn.net> <37ec0fc6$0$203@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sih0j$k4c$1@winter.news.rcn.net> Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 25 Sep 1999 22:02:41 GMT Lines: 33 Message-ID: <37ed4681$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell5.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 938296961 201 gds@206.184.139.136 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news2.best.com!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail In article <7sih0j$k4c$1@winter.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >And who defines public interest? For that matter, who defines >the public? It certainly isn't clear to me that those things >are well-defined in other areas. With regards to use of media, historically, the public interest has been hard to quantify. >Oh, phooey to that (not your comment but their opinion). They >simply haven't been listening. There have been public discussions >for decades. Just because politicians haven't been discussing >it, in no way implies that this stuff hasn't been discussed. What >do you think goes on at meetings such as IEEE and DECUS? Well, I wouldn't exactly call these meetings public ... not because the public is not invited to attend, but because typically speaking, only technically [computer] oriented people are likely to attend. >Maybe, instead of relying on opinion polls (which are highly >suspect, anyway) one should just count the bits that fly through >the wires. I buy a computer and a modem and an ISP service. >That should account for something. Generally speaking, this is the argument that is made; people buy Internet access cheap (and are now getting it free in some cases in exchange for running ads). It's not an unreasonable assumption to make that if large numbers of people make use of a service, the service must be good in some sense. However, it's not necessarily the case that people are as happy with this service as they could be if it was administered and structured differently. --gregbo gds at best.com ###### From: Ian Stirling Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 17:18:09 GMT Message-ID: <938539089.27090.0.nnrp-12.9e98d142@news.demon.co.uk> References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37e90acd$0$201@nntp1.ba.best.com> <7sd8np$saj$3@winter.news.rcn.net> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mauve.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: mauve.demon.co.uk:158.152.209.66 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 938539089 nnrp-12:27090 NO-IDENT mauve.demon.co.uk:158.152.209.66 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980818 ("Laura") (UNIX) (Linux/2.2.5 (i586)) Originator: root@mauve.demon.co.uk Lines: 32 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!colt.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mauve.demon.co.uk!root Kragen Sitaker wrote: >In article <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com>, >Greg Skinner wrote: >>I can imagine the existence of federally funded networks that operate >>for non-commercial, or perhaps limited commercial use, but I think it >>would require quite a bit of work to establish and run such networks. >>You'd have to find a way of funding them that wouldn't be a burden to >>taxpayers. >At some point, someone had a study of NSFnet costs up on the Web, as >part of an argument for usage-based costing of Internet access. It >turned out that NSFNet (this was in the days when it was made of T1s, >IIRC) was costing something like a dollar or two per person per year. >Compared to the cost of maintaining the first/last mile of cable -- the >one that connects everybody's houses together -- running the network is >free. I did some similar sums, a little while back, (1997?) on the cost of an average text (4K) post to usenet, inspired by the message given by an early version of tin. Came out at $6, IIRC, now it's probably a little lower, due to economy of scale. This was just a guesstimate, on number of servers, cost to run a server for a year, network costs. It did not take into account the costs to end users, dialing in, to read news, as that's a lot harder to work out, and in some ways irrelevant. ###### From: gds@nospam.best.com (Greg Skinner) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.society.netizens Subject: Re: Dispute about Internet's origins References: <7ror98$3v4$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu> <37eac65a$0$218@nntp1.ba.best.com> <938539089.27090.0.nnrp-12.9e98d142@news.demon.co.uk> Organization: a user of Best Internet Communications, Inc. www.best.com Date: 28 Sep 1999 19:39:40 GMT Lines: 20 Message-ID: <37f1197c$0$214@nntp1.ba.best.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell5.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 938547580 214 gds@206.184.139.136 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!carrier1.net!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!gxn.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news2.best.com!news3.best.com!nntp1.ba.best.com!not-for-mail In article <938539089.27090.0.nnrp-12.9e98d142@news.demon.co.uk>, Ian Stirling wrote: >I did some similar sums, a little while back, (1997?) on the cost of >an average text (4K) post to usenet, inspired by the message given >by an early version of tin. >Came out at $6, IIRC, now it's probably a little lower, due to economy >of scale. If you're arguing that it really is cheaper to fund the Internet out of taxpayer dollars, I might agree with that. However, what would the rest of the US say? Keep in mind that the price of domain name registration was going to drop substantially, even with the included price of the ICANN tax (or user fee if that's what you want to call it). Yet, Nader and others blasted ICANN for it. So there doesn't seem to be a consensus yet on what taxpayers are willing to spend to subsidize Internet operation (in the US at least). --gregbo gds at best.com