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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wizzer who wrote (1145)	4/13/1998 1:18:00 AM
From: Lady Lurksalot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4710

Wisam, I too have found most people I have encountered on the Internet to be friendly, helpful, and other good things. The same was true of the old BBSs (bulletin board systems). There is a genuine sense of community in the online world. The BBSs are pretty much gone now, having been absorbed into the World Wide Web and Internet, and only a few of the old free-standing diehards remain. The Internet was a government project begun in 1969 and was intended to serve as communication in the event of nuclear or other disaster. It linked universities and government and various research centers. A lot can be found via any web search engine in the way of more information about the origin and progression of the Internet into what it is today and will be in the future. The World Wide Web, which most people know as the Internet is new since about 1993. However, many people, particularly those in academia, still access the Internet with text only, I included about half the time. Those of us who still use the old and very awkward Unix online text editor (wordprocesser) will not always produce polished and perfect prose because of the limitations of that text editor. Why it has never been updated is a mystery to most of us. Holly

To: Wizzer who wrote (1145)	4/24/1998 3:37:00 PM
From: Lady Lurksalot	Respond to of 4710

Wisam, Sorry to be so long in getting back to you on this, but here's a link to an in-depth history of the Internet and a hefty cargo of other useful computer information. elsop.com The page is well worth the clicking around and exploring. Lots of goodies can be found there. Back on our subject of the use of emoticons to soften terse prose, I had mercifully forgotten the astronomical cost of most commercial online connections in those golden early days of 300- to 2400-baud modems--another reason to keep it simple. It wasn't all that long ago, really, that our hourly online charges exceeded what is now the standard monthly charge, and databases costing a couple of hundred dollars per hour to access were not unusual. Commercial e-mail then was another costly adventure. Additionally, our hourly rates were based on our modem speed, with the higher speeds costing more. Holly