On 21/12/10 13:55, Philip Chee wrote:
[cross posted to various places because I don't blog]
[email protected] was the first email address I ever had. For the
last fifteen years aleytys was a uucp node and I got my email and usenet
via uucp. Today my ISP closed down UUCP and switched me to some unholy
combination of cpanel/horde/IMAP. This marks a bitter sweet end to an
era. This Christmas I shall offer a small libation to this period of
time and probably wax maudlin into my beer.
Once upon a time we heard of this strange wondrous thing called the
Internet from far off America. A group of visionaries decided that it
was good and that we too should have it. A bunch of loud arrogant
American consultants came by and laughed at us saying that a third world
country like ours didn't have the smarts to build an internet. It became
a point of honour, of pride and so we set forth on a shoe string budget
with freeBSD, with Morningstar, NSCS Telnet, SLIPdial, UUCP, with blood,
sweat and tears. It wasn't easy, connections were frequently dodgy and
our usenet feed was a mag tape flow out of Berkeley once a week. The
return trip carried our messages for the previous week and the earliest
you could get an answer to your question was a fortnight. But built it
we did, node by node, cable by cable. And we proved those arsehole
Americans wrong.
A fortnight to get an answer by Usenet! Well, once upon a time
Californians and New Englanders exchanged mail by way of threemasters
sailing over Cape Horn… And nowadays we talk of "snail mail" when it
takes only a couple of days and a trip to the mailbox at the front gate…
I was the 39th individual to sign up for an account when they became
available. As early adopters every thing was new and there were no
precedents. We helped each other and we helped less technically astute
users get on the internet in our self help forums and newgroups. We were
the new Prometheans bringing the Internet to the masses, we were the
Lokapalas. Those were heady days and we the first users jokingly called
ourselves "The Jaring Cabal" after our ISP (Jaring Internet). We were
the leaders, the defenders and the supporters of the local Internet. I
ran several successful RFCs for local usenet usegroups. Others
contributed in their own ways. To all the other uucp nodes that were
there, thank you all for the camaraderie. We had a real blast then
didn't we back when the world was all new and bright and shiny.
Back then we even had our own tongue-in-cheek slogan so one more time I
shall raise my fist in the air and cry "There is no Cabal! Long live the
Jaring Cabal"!
[email protected]
Ah, the time when "open relay" was not a dirty word! And no, I'm not a
UUCP old-timer but I boned up on Net history before replying.
Have a merry Christmas, Philip, and a happy New Year :-) ! Midnight (my
time) is in three and a quarter hours (about), yours in several more if
you are back home and not visiting family in Britain — I shall have a
thought for you and all the nice SeaMonkey guys tomorrow when we cut the
cake at my nephew's. (Why so few girls BTW? Is monkeying around with a
Suite so unladylike?)
Tony.
--
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
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