April 15th, 2015 at 10:24 PM ^
Probably when I invented them in 1991.
April 15th, 2015 at 11:31 PM ^
Hey, I didn't know that Al Gore was a Wolverine Fan....
he catches a lot of shit for that, but he was absolutely instrumental in establishing the non-military internet.
April 16th, 2015 at 12:02 PM ^
This. Also, he never actually claimed to have invented it, just that he was responsible for the economic support it got.
To quote Vinton Cerf, who actually played a major role in in inventing the internet:
"Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
"No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."
April 16th, 2015 at 12:35 AM ^
As a Math/Teacher Ed. student at EMU.
Used pine email starting in early '90s while at UM. Cool story bro: when I entered the Ross MBA program in '12, my original uniqname was still on file and I had to use it. At Ross I was the only one of my colleagues whose uniqname wasn't some form of his/her actual name.
My email address is my initials @umich.edu, and has been for 25 years, including a detour through @alumni.umich.edu and through Ross when i came back for my MBA.
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
April 16th, 2015 at 10:03 AM ^
Freshman year was 94 for me, where I learned of Pine email and IRC. I can't remember when I started checking out ESPN.com, but I think it was around 95 or so. Used to play Doom II online with all the other geeks at the UGLI computer lab instead of studying for orgo. I quit after Warcraft II, but many of my friends continued on with Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Diablo, etc. at NUBS, and then the Media Union after gaming was banned at NUBS due to a fight breaking out over Starcraft, I think.
Pine email was weird. The "finger" function (where you could find out when a certain person last logged in) was a bit creepy in retrospect.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:26 PM ^
My first computer was a Compaq Presario.
It had a cool Pentium 75Mhz processor, 8 Megabytes of ram and a 750 Megabyte hard drive. I had a sweet 14.4Kbps modem!
The Internet Service Provider was The Internet Ramp!
Those were the days!
April 15th, 2015 at 10:27 PM ^
April 15th, 2015 at 11:16 PM ^
April 16th, 2015 at 10:26 AM ^
Ha, I used to scroll through Encarta files clicking on random media files to see what I could find. What an adventure for a 10 year old!
Sir, you've already made my day and it's only 7:30. +1 for you
April 15th, 2015 at 10:29 PM ^
1999 with good ole Jaguar Netlink 56k if you can even call it that on the OG Dell XPS Pentium II.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:29 PM ^
I still use the internet.
April 15th, 2015 at 11:24 PM ^
use the inner-netz
April 15th, 2015 at 10:31 PM ^
bought an actual computer in '04.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:31 PM ^
When I was 8 (1998); remember the dial-up at my dad's university. To think my phone is more powerful than that Window's 98 computer using Netscape; still remember when AskJeeves, AIM, and Yahoo all seemed advanced.
April 15th, 2015 at 11:23 PM ^
So....we're the same age, did you go to UM? We might have met.
April 16th, 2015 at 11:33 AM ^
my elementary had us online i think in 96 for first grade
April 16th, 2015 at 12:47 AM ^
The day eWorld started offering it (i believe they were the first from AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy), I think 1993. Before then these services did not offer "internet", they only offered an online community within their service, you couldn't go outside of their community - chat, marktplace, business, etc. I skipped school that day waiting for the "Internet" icon to show up.... when it did I had no idea what to do. It was awesome
April 16th, 2015 at 10:03 AM ^
April 16th, 2015 at 11:31 AM ^
Come on, do you think a 14 year old would be visiting those sites???? Only museums and scientific libraries for me ;-)
April 16th, 2015 at 10:30 AM ^
This is awesome, I remember having the same experience! My cousin and I couldn't figure out how to get a site to come up for a few days until we realized you had to put .com behind it... and yes, playboy was high on the list of sites that needed to be visited.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:32 PM ^
it was cool.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:34 PM ^
April 15th, 2015 at 11:28 PM ^
A/S/L
translation, please...
i think i'm too old to grasp the context.
Back in the old days in chat rooms for AOL when you surfed for "hot chicks" (which were probably just guys) to talk to, you asked A/S/L? So you saw it everywhere. That was the context so it became I guess a meme.
thanks alum.
not sorry i missed that part of life given your last comment about 'hot chicks' probably being guys. yeesh.
April 16th, 2015 at 10:11 AM ^
LOL, yeah that happened a lot, but eventually people stopped falling for it.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:34 PM ^
April 15th, 2015 at 10:34 PM ^
April 15th, 2015 at 10:37 PM ^
So limited.
April 15th, 2015 at 11:05 PM ^
April 15th, 2015 at 11:35 PM ^
Yeah back when the / key had another use.
And don't forget about Freelance Graphics and we all were thrilled when they added Always as wysiwyg aid to 1-2-3.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:39 PM ^
2000. My parents got it as a gift from a neighbor. It was a Compaq that ran Windows 98.
At 5 years old I was on there playing computer games and doing all kinds of stuff. I was better at using the computer than my parents at that age. It was a time when having a computer was a big deal. I remember having family members coming over to use it.
Other than the using the ones at the public library, not many had access to it it seemed.
I remember the ORIGINAL MGoBlue.com when it probably consisted of 1/16 of the coding it does now.
The internet modem was a pancake-looking box with blinking red lights across it. To use the internet, you had to plug it into the computer and run a phone cord all the way across the hallway to my parent's room where the nearest phone jack was.
I miss the Windows 98. Good memories. I remember it taking at least 3 minutes to navigate to a single website, though.
These hands were made to type and be on a computer. Funny how something like that lead to me pursuing a career in it 14 years later.
I don't think having a computer in 2000 was a "big deal" at all. I was a sophmore, and was on my third by that time...
Good for you. You weren't 5 years old in 2000.
April 28th, 2015 at 12:25 AM ^
Guess you told him, prick.
April 15th, 2015 at 10:40 PM ^
April 15th, 2015 at 10:49 PM ^
AIM was still all the rage when I was nearing and at junior high age.
This was when parents weren't insane and giving their 12 year old (and younger...) children a cell phone.
I went back to my old elementary school to do community service work for college admissions and whatnot and these kids have cell phones in 5th/6th grade! Teachers don't even use chalk/white boards anymore there. It's all this touchscreen stuff.
I could write a book where I rant on human dependency on technology and title it "What Happens When Technology Fails....?"
April 15th, 2015 at 11:32 PM ^
You're too young to remember the original AIM.
When you logged on before dinner, ate, then sat down at the computer after dinner and the dial-up had worked and got on.
Turned the speakers up loud to hear the door open and the first person IM you.
...or the free AOL discs that came in the mail.
FTW
April 16th, 2015 at 12:16 AM ^
I remember getting those discs until at least 2002 in the mail. They were always in those small tin containers and there was never one that looked the same in color scheme.
My AIM name was Michigan24OSU12 in reference to the 1969 win. No joke. WD my whole life, really.