Internet history (was: We need a better Internet)

[Benjamin Scott]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:
> Because we can't keep track of 100 systems & what they do in our head.

  Yah.  At $WORK, desktops and laptops have generic names (a static
prefix followed by a number), because they're commodities,
interchangeable and uninteresting.  We only have a few servers, all
doing multiple duties, so they have interesting names, like TIGER and
MAGNUM.

  At a previous job, we used Simpsons characters.  I remember the
nameservers were ITCHY and SCRATCHY, and the firewall was WIGGUM.  One
benefit to using visual source material is you can print images of the
characters and tape them to the machines.  :)

> Fidonet had some cross platform too.  Mostly PC DOS, but I remember Z100
> (not PC compat, but still MS-DOS) running binkyterm, opus, etc.  There was a
> Linux port of Fidonet stuff as well.

  There's more than one Fido-style BBS package for *nix.  FidoNet's
still around.  http://www.fidonet.org/  I'm told it's still popular in
regions of the world that don't have strong Internet connectivity.

-- Ben