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BAR[_3_]

wrote:
On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:31:58 -0500, BAR wrote:

wrote:
On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:34:37 -0500, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:

On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:47:49 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Dec 12, 3:01 pm, "Calif Bill" wrote:
"Mike" wrote in message

...

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:54:38 -0500, BAR wrote:
Why did anyone ever pay for AOL?
There was a time when it was only Prodigy and AOL, before there really
was an internet, from the consumer standpoint. It was all proprietary
software and captive content. Other than that you just had local BBS
services. If you traveled you wanted something with national coverage.
It still is about the most stable ISP. The rest came and went with too
much frequency to actually give anyone your Email address and have it
be useful a year later. Even now I can still use my 15 year old AOL
address but my Mediaone address is dead, as is the successor
Roadrunner (ended up Comcast), Sprint then Earthlink, ended up Embarq.
and a half dozen other places that I had accounts with. (RIP)
The software stopped being stable when they incorporated Internet
Explorer as the browser and W/9x. Prior to that it was rock solid. I
used to use the W/3.1 version to test communication on machines that
had suspected software problems since it didn't have to be "installed"
and it would run straight from a diskette.
Before Prodigy and AOL there was Compuserve and GEnie. Same stuff, just
earlier.
--Mike
Actually there was ARPA net for a lot of us.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
That ran off of heated rocks and bronze, didn't it?!!!!!
Not exactly, but close enough.

Things were pretty primitive in those days. :)

When I think back on our first "big" machine - a whole 2K RAM on a
12X12 PCB with a bootstrap console and a paper tape reader - SANDIA
labs went ga-ga over that much memory on a single board and PAPER TAPE
for programming - man, that was 'da bomb. :)

Literally in this case.

Heck, I go back even further. Our high school math club used to
program Sylvania's mainframe (this was '62) using phone jacks/plugs on
racks six feet tall and four wide - there were fifteen of them.

With vacuum tubes no less. :)
I got in the computer biz in 1966 with IBM. One of my customers was
Army Stratcom out past Wheaton Md in the boonies. They had a 360 mod
30 that was a Arpanet node. This place was of those photomat looking
buildings with nothing inside but a guard and an elevator that took
you an undisclosed distance underground where there was a huge
complex. I suppose the cows walking around the field might have
tricked the ruskies if it wasn't for the parking lot with 100 cars in
it.
Was there a Nike site close by? Have you been back to Wheaton since? If
no, you wouldn't recognize the place.

I haven't been up there for 15 years. I bet that cross county
connector from Gaithersburg to Odenton goes right through that area.
I hardly recognized Gathersburg/Redland when I was there 15 years ago.
That used to all be farm land in the 60s and 70s. I suppose it is
progress but that is one of the reasons I moved. Unfortunately
progress moved with me. The little 2000 person town I moved to in Fl
is now 30,000 people with 2 regional malls.

They just started to build the Inter County Connector this year and it
is going to be a toll road. The drive will cost you about $13 each way.
I'll use it when I fly in and out of BWI on the company's dime.

The old King Farm on Redland Road, where they had Texas Long Horns, is
gone. Old man King died and left the property to his kids and didn't do
any estate planning. The development vultures moved in and bought up the
land for not much more than what was owed in taxes.

The old Becthel facility on Shady Grove Road is long gone. Replaced by a
Home Depot and a Best buy.

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