When did you first get an internet connection at home?

[RED_EL_XR8]

We had the internet at home since the early 60's, but it was Black & white until 1975.
No hang on that was television, both tiny screen full of nonsense. :



was the early days when bulletin boards ruled the earth, 1200baud modem were the fast ones, and OZ-email began advertising accounts in APC that Australia finally lept forward on mass.

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by Falcon Freak

I classify 1994 as the start of the internet revolution when Netscape released a browser which made the internet accessible for the "non computer geeks".

I think mosaic was around before netscape, well thats what I used before netscape anyway..

And yes there was heaps of porn even back them alt.bin need I say more

[Tornado]

Here you go..

The first widely used web browser was NCSA Mosaic. The Mosaic programming team then developed the first commercial web browser called Netscape Navigator, later renamed Communicator, then renamed back to just Netscape. The Netscape browser led in user share until Microsoft Internet Explorer took the lead in 1999 due to its advantage in being bundled with Windows operating systems. An open source version of Netscape was then developed called Mozilla, which was the internal name for the old Netscape browser, and released in 2002. Mozilla has since gained in market share, particularly on non-Windows platforms, largely due to its open source foundation, and in 2004 was released in the quickly popular FireFox version.

A chronological listing of some influential early web browsers is provided below, each of which advanced the state of the art:

* WorldWideWeb. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser on a NeXT computer, called WorldWideWeb, finishing the first version on Christmas day, 1990. He released the program to a number of people at CERN in March, 1991, introducing the web to the high energy physics community, and beginning its spread.

* libwww. Berners-Lee and a student at CERN named Jean-Francois Groff ported the WorldWideWeb application from the NeXT environment to the more common C language in 1991 and 1992, calling the new browser libwww. Groff later started the first web design company, InfoDesign.ch.

* Line-mode. Nicola Pellow, a math student interning at CERN, wrote a line-mode web browser that would work on any device, even a teletype. In 1991, Nicola and the team ported the browser to a range of computers, from Unix to Microsoft DOS, so that anyone could access the web, at that point consisting primarily of the CERN phone book.

* Erwise. After a visit from Robert Cailliau, a group of students at Helsinki University of Technology joined together to write a web browser as a master's project. Since the acronym for their department was called "OTH", they called the browser "erwise", as a joke on the word "otherwise". The final version was released in April, 1992, and included several advanced features, but wasn't developed further after the students graduated and went on to other jobs.

* ViolaWWW. Pei Wei, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, released the second browser for Unix, called ViolaWWW, in May, 1992. This browser was built on the powerful interpretive language called Viola that Wei had developed for Unix computers. ViolaWWW had a range of advanced features, including the ability to display graphics and download applets.

* Midas. During the summer of 1992, Tony Johnson at SLAC developed a third browser for Unix systems, called Midas, to help distribute information to colleagues about his physics research.

* Samba. Robert Cailliau started development of the first web browser for the Macintosh, called Samba. Development was picked up by Nicola Pellow, and the browser was functional by the end of 1992.

* Mosaic. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina from the NCSA released the first version of Mosaic for X-Windows on Unix computers in February, 1993. A version for the Macintosh was developed by Aleks Totic and released a few months later, making Mosaic the first browser with cross-platform support. Mosaic introduced support for sound, video clips, forms support, bookmarks, and history files, and quickly became the most popular non-commercial web browser. In August, 1994, NCSA assigned commercial rights to Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., which subsequently licensed the technology to several other companies, including Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer. The NCSA stopped developing Mosaic in January 1997.

* Arena. In 1993, Dave Raggett at Hewlett-Packard in Bristol, England, developed a browser called Arena, with powerful features for positioning tables and graphics.

* Lynx. The University of Kansas had written a hypertext browser independently of the web, called Lynx, used to distribute campus information. A student named Lou Montulli added an Internet interface to the program, and released the web browser Lynx 2.0 in March, 1993. Lynx quickly became the preferred web browser for character mode terminals without graphics, and remains in use today. Resources include the Browser.org Lynx page, the ISC Lynx page, and the Lynx User Guide.

* Cello. Tom Bruce, cofounder of the Legal Information Institute, realized that most lawyers used Microsoft PC's, and so he developed a web browser for that platform called Cello, finished in the summer of 1993.

* Opera. In 1994, the Opera browser was developed by a team of researchers at a telecommunication company called Telenor in Oslo, Norway. The following year, two members of the team -- Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy -- left Telenor to establish Opera Software to develop the browser commercially. Opera 2.1 was first made available on the Internet in the summer of 1996.

* Internet in a box. In January, 1994, O'Reilly and Associates announced a product called Internet In A Box which collected all of the software needed to access the web together, so that you only had to install one application, instead of downloading and installing several programs. While not a unique browser in its own right, this product was a breakthrough because it distributed other browsers and made the web a lot more accessible to the home user.

* Navipress. In February, 1994, Navisoft released a browser for the PC and Macintosh called Navipress. This was the first browser since Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb browser that incorporated an editor, so that you could browse and edit content at the same time. Navipress later became AOLPress, and is still available but has not been maintained since 1997.

* Mozilla. In October, 1994, Netscape released the the first beta version of their browser, Mozilla 0.96b, over the Internet. On December 15, the final version was released, Mozilla 1.0, making it the first commercial web browser. An open source version of the Netscape browser was released in 2002 was also named Mozilla in tribute to this early version, and then released as the quickly popular FireFox in November, 2004.

* Internet Explorer. On August 23rd, 1995, Microsoft released their Windows 95 operating system, including a Web browser called Internet Explorer. By the fall of 1996, Explorer had a third of market share, and passed Netscape to became the leading web browser in 1999.

[InitialD]

I never had a PC untill i started building my own from peoples old 8088's 286's etc :P

got the net in '98 when I found a 33.6k modem at school and "borrowed" it :P lol
use to connect to BBS's back in 1995 on my Crazy powered dual 386DX33. Go StreetRod 2 and stunts!

[Perun]

oh man... I got onto the net in 1996 on a 14.4 modem! I can't believe how slow internet was back then, even though it wasn't as graphic-intense as it is today.

When 33.6 modems became affordable and I got one, I couldn't get over how "quick" it was! haha

[Kapn_Kiwi]

Originally Posted by InitialD

Go StreetRod 2 and stunts!

Just out of interest, how do you get over those weirdly coloured bits on mulholland drive in SR2?

[Rodp]

Originally Posted by dogbreath_48

seriously, what was there back then? Did any company's advertise on it like they do now!?

-Stu

P.S. I'll do it; what's BBS?

No. There was no WWW back then. At that time it was mostly learning academies that would have information that you could gopher, my accounts back then were uhm, uni accounts that weren't being used by a uni student. It was all text based. Back when the internet actually was a font of knowledge and that if you did a search for something what you got in return was usually on the money based out of a government department or a university.

Back then I used the net for 3 things, usenet, IRC (back then there was only 1 IRC network to the public anyway) and ftp (yo ho ho) :P

BBS, Bulletin Board System. In 1987 was probably a lot better than the internet. It would normally have a message base much like FF does, sometimes a file section, sometimes a place to chat. Due to phone costs it was almost always locals and they had a lot longer fuses than they do now. I still have friends I chat to that I met through BBS's in the mid 80s.

[Sox]

96 on a 28k modem.

Rick.

[LuvinmyEB]

Originally Posted by Rodp

BBS, Bulletin Board System. In 1987 was probably a lot better than the internet. It would normally have a message base much like FF does, sometimes a file section, sometimes a place to chat. Due to phone costs it was almost always locals and they had a lot longer fuses than they do now. I still have friends I chat to that I met through BBS's in the mid 80s.

Hehe I still have lots of friends I used to chat to on BBS's too. In fact I'm engaged to one. :P

[The MaDDeSTMaN]

Originally Posted by LuvinmyEB

Hehe I still have lots of friends I used to chat to on BBS's too. In fact I'm engaged to one. :P

Hehehe, yup, you were the only one that managed to drag me out of the file librarys and into chat.

I miss the BBS days, when more then 2 other people in all of Australia still used Amiga computers...

[Steffo]

In 2000, when I got rid of my Pentium 75 and got a Celeron 466. It had a 56k modem. I was using GlobalFreeway. Man that ISP rocked.. free internet, only catch being every now and then an add would fly accross the screen. Shame they don't exist anymore.. as far as I know.

[loxxr6]

But things were not so regulated either. I remember finding a 100 plus page document which explained in precise details how to make all sorts of explosives - all the way up to nitro glycerine! Dangerous poo. Plus I believe there wasn't as much spying on users back then as there is now.

Ah yes. The Anarchist's handbook and other lovely receipes online. I never did get all the ingredients to make thermite, to test that whole burn a hole through any metal trick...

[-jjM-]

when i was like...10 :P

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by Steffo

I was using GlobalFreeway. Man that ISP rocked.. free internet, only catch being every now and then an add would fly accross the screen. Shame they don't exist anymore.. as far as I know.

Thanks.... I knew I did a good job.
I was one of the guys that built their servers and then maintained them for a while before they got their own staff. GlobalFreeway did rock, the only problem was they didn't sell enough adds to keep it going. I remember using it for over an hour and only one add poppping up. The Australian Tennis Open Add.

You would always get a good strong connection everytime you dialed up, no busy signals at all.

[parawolf]

I remember finding a 100 plus page document which explained in precise details how to make all sorts of explosives - all the way up to nitro glycerine!

Anarchists Cookbook or something... man that was a good read. I was just starting chemistry at high school when I was reading that - stole stuff and blew other stuff up!

[needfordspeed]

Originally Posted by loxxr6

Ah yes. The Anarchist's handbook and other lovely receipes online. I never did get all the ingredients to make thermite, to test that whole burn a hole through any metal trick...

I got them if you want :P, I can never get it to work though :

[megsy]

believe it or not i dodnt get "the net" until my parents got their first computer in 2000, (tax n stuff). so i missed out on BBS but i did manage to get a free ISP though, it was called FREE2AIR, and i used that for about 15 months until there were so many ppl on it we couldnt connect. im at uni now and are enjoying cable.

BTW my parents now make up the small minority that cant connect faster than 28.8 (dialup)

[LuvinmyEB]

There was another free ISP around for a while, I think it was called FreeNet or something similar, word spread quickly around the remaining BBS's and everyone was using it. You only had to put up with a banner across the top of your screen all the time.
I was still on 14.4k at the time and during peak time would have to turn graphics off if I didn't want to wait for 10 mins for a page to load. Ahh the good old days.. :P

[lv619]

Originally Posted by loxxr6

Ah yes. The Anarchist's handbook and other lovely receipes online. I never did get all the ingredients to make thermite, to test that whole burn a hole through any metal trick...

Originally Posted by 10. Thermite II by Jolly Roger

Thermite is nasty . Here is a good and easy way to make it. The first step is to get some iron-oxide (which is RUST!). Here is a good way to make large quantities in a short time:

• Get a DC converter like the one used on a train set. Cut the connector off, separate the wires, and strip them both.

• Now you need a jar of water...
[snip]
...
[/snip]
• Now when you see your victim's car, pour a fifty-cent sized pile onto his hood, stick the ribbon in it, and light the ribbon with the blow torch. Now chuckle as you watch it burn through the hood, the block, the axle, and the pavement. BE CAREFUL! The ideal mixtures can vaporize CARBON STEEL! Another idea is to use thermite to get into pay phone cash boxes.

LMAO, the wonders of the internet... :

[parawolf]

I think there was the original copy which was called the Terrorists Handbook, and the followup/refinement was the Anarchist Cookbook. or was it the other way around... one has been around since the 60's and the other is a concise revamp for digital distribution.

Man I loved reading those at high school

[GlennBA]

got dialup in 1998, had it until late 2003 then upgraded to 256 dsl, upgrade to 512 dsl takes place on 1st of august this year.

[Steffo]

My speeds have been interesting....

56k -> 3.7mb cable -> 56k -> current 512kb ADSL

I miss that cable connection......

[MITCHAY]

I think we got the net when it was becommin easily accessable in homes. We were with one provider i think for at least 5-8 yrs though with a changeover of owners. Cant remember what speed it was because i wasnt too computer minded back then. Now we got 256/64 ADSL.

[EA2BA]

I guess I have been using the internet around 1988/89, started when BBS boards were all you could dial into, I think my first modem could have a 9,600 speed, oh dear :(
I would have been delboy on the BBS boards.

[Shonky]

Got first computer in 1997. Got internet in 1998.

Now got broadband.

And that my friends is the extent of my computer knowledge...

[4.9 EF Futura]

I got dial up 56k in 1999 when i started uni. Dial up blows and i've got little use for it at home. So i stroffed of the internet account and the phone line and got Foxtel instead.

Good net connection at work for any online needs. WAP for ty little stuff at home.

[Perana]

I got it in about '97 i think it was 33.6k didnt seem too bad back then either !... Upgraded to 256k last year and now on 1.5mbit

[AlbertM]

Bought my own computer in 1998 bundled with a Bigpond installation disk.

Back then it was a STD call to dial up(56K) for me and ran up a $480 phone bill in the first month. After that i had to only use the net between 7pm - Mid night as it was capped at $2. Did that for 5months till a local provider popped up.

Wasn't until mid 2003 I got 512/256 ADSL

[xceler8shun]

94 I think, like $5 per hour as well

[Bucknaked]

Hotweb I think I was with in 97. $50 permonth for 35 hours. I just logged on for 1 hour a night with 2 hours on weekends. The plan wasn't too bad. It was 56 k and it was $1 an hour for every hour you went over. Most times my month internet costs were around $50 a month. Weekends were a killer