IN OTHER NEWS
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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva all over 56k well into the 2000s (hang up the phone! I want to use the internet!)
Web: Netscape navigator on windows 3.1
Chat: AIM
Piracy: IRC (still one of the best protocols out there IMO)
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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva Wow. For me it was 1990, my first year at uni, sneaking into the computer room there (!) and playing with whatever I found. Gopher and Eliza over telnet, mainly, I think. So you've got six years on me.
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@blogdiva And ftp sites. Man I lived in those weird random stashes of goodies you could find in those days
@FeloniousPunk @blogdiva we were using bbs's in '95, so ... 31 years?
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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva Had BITNET email in 1985, and got an internet gateway for it (UUCP to RSCS) in 1986. First actual use of the TCP/IP protocol directly was FTPing stuff with NeXT workstations in 1988. So 40 or 38, depending on your definition.
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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva BBSes in 1984 and 1985, and then Bitnet in 1986, from the campus IBM 4341 and later from the CS department's Vax 11/780.
Bitnet had email, meaning mailing lists (LISTSERV), RELAY (which eventually was rewritten for Arpanet as Internet Relay Chat, IRC), and email gateways from bitnet to/from arpa, so if you emailed a properly formatted request, in 24 hours you'd magically get several emails back that contained the uuencoded version of what you requested. I got a lot of CP/M software from some software archive on some army base that way.
After I finished my Navy hitch and went back to school in late 1991, we had real internet, and that meant Usenet and real FTP (and Archie to search) and then Gopher (and Veronica) and finally NCSA Mosiac.
Computers and networks were so diverse back in the day. I miss that.
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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva
internet explorer? Maybe Netscape. Both in the mid 90s when they came out. I made a really wild website using Microsoft publisher and hotspot links. Early internet was so weird but I miss the wackiness of it. It is very commercial ‘hotel look’ standardized now. -
@blogdiva And ftp sites. Man I lived in those weird random stashes of goodies you could find in those days
@FeloniousPunk seeeeriously. do you know which was my last of such downloads? i kid you not, The Grey Album. that was 2003-4, at the end of that era.
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@blogdiva
internet explorer? Maybe Netscape. Both in the mid 90s when they came out. I made a really wild website using Microsoft publisher and hotspot links. Early internet was so weird but I miss the wackiness of it. It is very commercial ‘hotel look’ standardized now.MOSAIC was my first browser
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@blogdiva all over 56k well into the 2000s (hang up the phone! I want to use the internet!)
Web: Netscape navigator on windows 3.1
Chat: AIM
Piracy: IRC (still one of the best protocols out there IMO)
@blogdiva fave anecdote:
I stole System of a Down's "Steal this album" via IRC and the channel admin let me jump the queue to do it. Still took all night. -
IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva Started via BBSes, so the first large network I was on was FidoNet - however, the same BBS also offered internet email but more importantly Usenet. FTP and gopher followed once I got to college.
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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
For computer networks, it was using BBS's via the secondary school computer lab in the early 1980's.
I didn't get to use the internet until years later.
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@blogdiva Started via BBSes, so the first large network I was on was FidoNet - however, the same BBS also offered internet email but more importantly Usenet. FTP and gopher followed once I got to college.
@jf_718 can’t imagine life without Usenet tbh. it’s how i got news about what was happening back home because gringo media never reported on us and we ricans are friggin everywhere

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IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva uucp pulling Usenet overnight to my home minix system circa 1986. Even then I had to pick and choose which parts of the hierarchy to drop. Time flies.
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@matuzalem porque matuzalem eres

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@blogdiva BBSes in 1984 and 1985, and then Bitnet in 1986, from the campus IBM 4341 and later from the CS department's Vax 11/780.
Bitnet had email, meaning mailing lists (LISTSERV), RELAY (which eventually was rewritten for Arpanet as Internet Relay Chat, IRC), and email gateways from bitnet to/from arpa, so if you emailed a properly formatted request, in 24 hours you'd magically get several emails back that contained the uuencoded version of what you requested. I got a lot of CP/M software from some software archive on some army base that way.
After I finished my Navy hitch and went back to school in late 1991, we had real internet, and that meant Usenet and real FTP (and Archie to search) and then Gopher (and Veronica) and finally NCSA Mosiac.
Computers and networks were so diverse back in the day. I miss that.
@grumble209 @blogdiva
WE ARE POSIX.
WE WILL ADD YOU TECHNICAL AND SOCIAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN.
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. -
IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva
Would have been around 1995; local BBSes, QWK mail, and Fidonet. -
IN OTHER NEWS
i just reckoned i have been online for 42 years. started using the internet at the University of Puerto Rico. compared to my friends, twas living in the future using Gopher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
my digital footprint is older than most Millennials and Zoomers.
which protocol did you first use to pop your internet cherry?
@blogdiva 34 years later this year, I think. I poked around briefly on some BBSs and a text-based online multi-player game, but then when I discovered Usenet I got hooked.
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@blogdiva 34 years later this year, I think. I poked around briefly on some BBSs and a text-based online multi-player game, but then when I discovered Usenet I got hooked.
@blogdiva
TIN and TRN on a dos box 8088 clone I'd mostly been using as a word processor then a friend gifted me a used dial-up modem. -
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@blogdiva
TIN and TRN on a dos box 8088 clone I'd mostly been using as a word processor then a friend gifted me a used dial-up modem.Clearing out my old files a few years ago, I found this instruction sheet for accessing New Orleans Public Library online in 1994. I scanned it before adding the paper to recycling.