Re: [LUG] Request mailman configuration change;

[Simon Avery <digdilem@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 2 February 2015 at 08:59, Brad Rogers <brad@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Quite probably, but Gordon's right;Â Microsoft were late to the party.I recall that they ran their own nntp servers for quite some time. Compuserve, AOL et al were all OSPs before the internet became

available to the general public. In fact, even AOL offered initially internet access merely as an adjunct to their core business.

Â

Very late to the party.Â

I worked in IT during this late flowering in 1996 and the Microsoft methods were only just getting underway with Windows 95 with a native TCP/IP stack. Prior to that it was Trumpet Winsock in 3.11, or KA9Q under dos (which we supposedly supported, badly - in fact one of my tasks was to copy Demon's implementation and release it to Zynet's customers as a zeroconf package. I was ultimately "let go" and failing to finish this project was cited as a reason - talk about a poison chalice!) ÂTalking customers who weren't computer savvy (today, the general skill level is FAR higher) through connecting via these horrible tools was extremely difficult and many dropped by the wayside in those early days. Even Linux was very low profile then (being only 5 years old) and only just beginning to emerge alongside the likes of SCO Unix.

On browsers, Microsoft then were competing against Netscape Navigator and Mosaic. The mail client was Eudora and nntp was still readable with little spam. (Although I recall a decision being made even then about dropping binaries because they were getting too heavy on bandwidth)

AOL was a big thing then, with easy to use CDs attached to every magazine. They did BIG business at that time. Compuserve didn't cross my radar much, but my impression was they were even then shrinking.

Search engines were Altavista and Lycos, both saturated with adverts and really slow to use. Google's a long time in the future.

Nowadays, everything just works. You have a phone that's 50 times more powerful than the computers we had then and access to search and information systems that are amazing.

Back then, if somebody asked you a question you didn't know, well, you scratched your head and said so. Or rang somebody that might know. You didn't automatically reach for a web browser.

Kids today, don't know they're born... :)

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