quote:
Originally posted by danbaltzell
Hard to believe the internet used to be free, but then it didn't have this awesome gui.
Of course, not counting that DARPA was paid for out of confiscatory and un-Constitutional Tax Robbery... [
]
As I recall, it was always just about as free as it is now. I run several free servers from my house using
a free Static IP simulator. I have always run something like that starting with a dialup BBS in the 80s.
I started with a 300 baud handset cradle, and I had to pay the slight increase in my phone bill (maybe a dollar a month or so) when I connected to some of the bigger Wildcat BBSs for hours at a time to download 500kb of programs and usenet. But the big guys had to pay out the nose for their T1s so they could connect to ArpaNet or BitNet for usenet access...
Of course, by the time Gopher came out for file searching, I was already paying Compuserve $19/month. I think that was the late 80s or so...
Now I am about a million times as fast for a dollar a day with free chat server, a free music server and a free webcam server. All inhouse and secured, running on my old machines. Plus I have VPN with about ten relatives and several of my old student/customers.
Good fun then, good fun now...
