Internet

Bon Pantalon · 739976. Sun Sep 05, 2010 8:58 pm

Well Someone Had to do it!

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet, giving rise to services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IPTV. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking sites.

The origins of the Internet reach back to research in the 1960s, both commissioned by the United States government to develop projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks as well as private research. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation, as well as private funding for commercial backbones spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the merger of many networks. The commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet.

Efros · 740059. Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:19 am

Al Gore invented it and Dan Quayle invented the spell check, I read it on the interwibble must be true.

Neotenic · 740065. Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:25 am

I think one of my favourite web-related nuggets of recent times was Mr Berners-Lee admitting that the '//' at the start of every web address is completely pointless.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6872873.ece

Efros · 740073. Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:58 am

Well Gore didn't invent it but his political machinations and pushing various bills through congress did enable the web to expand much faster than it would have done otherwise. I believe he did coin the phrase the "information superhighway".

Moosh · 740081. Mon Sep 06, 2010 6:09 am

If you're interested in the early days of the Web, it's worth having a look around here and other pages on w3.org.

Jenny · 740335. Mon Sep 06, 2010 12:43 pm

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

tchrist · 741786. Thu Sep 09, 2010 9:33 pm

RLDavies · 741871. Fri Sep 10, 2010 5:21 am

In Esperanto (which doesn't have a W in its alphabet anyway) the WWW is known as the TTT: la Tut-Tera Teksaj^o. Which translates as "world-wide web".

(I had to use J^ to indicate a J with a ^ over it. Don't know how to make the posting display it properly.)

Efros · 741872. Fri Sep 10, 2010 5:38 am

RLDavies · 741892. Fri Sep 10, 2010 6:29 am

That's the letter! Pronounced "zh".

Posital · 742020. Fri Sep 10, 2010 4:32 pm

Wasn't ethernet based on how a number of radio stations on a pacific island chain communicated together?

Make a transmission and listen to it at the same time. If it's garbled, then wait a random amount of time and have another go...

Maybe I just made that up...

Efros · 742026. Fri Sep 10, 2010 4:40 pm

The one I remember from the early days was the Cambridge Ring.

mckeonj · 742034. Fri Sep 10, 2010 5:05 pm

suze · 742039. Fri Sep 10, 2010 6:01 pm

Ah yes, the Pitcairn hand cranked telephone network. Every telephone on the island was indeed connected to one party line. International calls had to be connected by an operator, but local calls could be directly cranked.

Each telephone had a handle, by means of which you could make every telephone on the island ring. So if Mr McKeon's "telephone number" happened to be a long ring followed by two short rings, you'd operate the crank appropriately, every telephone would ring with his "number", and he could pick up the nearest instrument and speak to the caller.

That system was finally decommissioned in 2006 when every building on the island was fitted with modern equipment connected to the New Zealand telephone network. This means that international calls can now be dialled directly, and the main reason for doing it was to enable Internet use.

Although in practice, the old system was little used in its last years - everyone had a multi-channel walkie-talkie (marine band VHF), and you'd shout over the open channel for the person you wanted to speak with to come to another channel.

Ian Dunn · 742570. Sun Sep 12, 2010 2:52 pm

An interesting area to look at with regards to the internet is Wikipedia's "List of Internet phenomena".

There is a huge list which includes Rickrolling, the "This is Sparta" line from 300 and the badly translated video game Zero Wing with it's famous line: "All your base are belong to us."

One of the most "disturbing" is something coming from what is known as the "Rule of the internet". The most famous of these is Rule 34: "If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions."

Now, if you have just read that last bit, you may be wondering about something perhaps involving Stephen and Alan. If you are, the answer is, "Yes. There is QI porn."

I've just come across a LiveJournal account called "britpanelslash" which contains slash fiction involving panel shows including QI. I'm not going to link to it, but it is there, and I apologise for putting any disturbing thoughts into your heads.

Still, I think it is something that would make a quite interesting question.