24 Nov
2019
24 Nov
'19
10:16 p.m.
Yes.
But what REALLY happened was even more exciting than some cockamamy TV
news "Birthday of the internet!" headline story with a segue into malware
and fake news warnings.
The message being discussed, "LO[GIN]", was an important "proof of
concept" of what could eventually be done.
More worrisome is that Murray is NOT A "NEWCOMER" who will be "scared
off"
by corrections of his facts! This is not the first time that he has
needed to be admonished to be VERY specific about what was "FIRST" about
something. He wrote about the exact same event three weeks ago, on the
correct date, with much more accurate details, other than calling it "the
first inter-computer communication". Not sure where he got the November
21 date, nor the "SIXTY years ago" (probably a simple misteak)
He is quite capable of some fairly good writing. I don't remember any
prior time that he had to be reminded to "PICK A TOPIC!" rather than
string together eight unrelated concepts into four sentences.
On the other hand, if his confusion was recreational, that's OK, too.
Let's have a toast with him to the people who got the idea to work,
disunirregardless of who was "first".
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
On Sun, 24 Nov 2019, Jim Manley via cctalk wrote:
Don't spoil the spirit of excitement over this
sort of thing, even if they
get every detail wrong. You weren't present for this event, and even
"expert" historians routinely also get a _lot_ of things wrong. I lived
through this era, and have spent the last two decades conveying the
importance of such things to current-day scientific and engineering
researchers, as well as the public, as a volunteer senior docent and
restoration engineer at the Computer History Museum, as well as a STEM
teacher.
I'd commit some high crimes and misdemeanors if I could get any of my high
school and college students to exhibit even one percent of this level of
excitement about the stupendous things that happened just in 1969. Beyond
the first successful remote login between heterogeneous computers via a
standard interface (not the first time a "message" was sent over the
"Internet"), that included the Apollo 11 Moon landing, the first Concorde
test flight, the debut of the Boeing 747, the first version of UNIX being
developed, the first microprocessor being produced, etc., etc., etc.
It's not just about fawning over the past accomplishments for nostalgic
reasons, but, to also learn from the mistakes that led to the advancements,
and there are many more errors than there are successes. It has to be that
way, but, we don't celebrate the goof-ups and we absolutely should - let
those who have never failed cast the first stone, as it were.
One of my special tours at the CHM is "Mistakes That Kept Getting Repeated"
because, as we now know, those who don't learn the lessons of history are
doomed to repeat them. It's not so simple though, because history doesn't
exactly repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and we have to be observant and
clever enough to recognize the meter as well as the lyrics. Complaining
about the small stuff doesn't contribute to that and should be avoided so
that we don't scare off the enthusiastic newcomers and others not so
steeped in the details as we are.
All the Best,
Jim
On Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 5:11 PM allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
>
> OK, this is gibberish, word salad, English words mangled meaning.
> Pick a topic and get concise.
>
> Gah,