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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 2d

There's a poetic justice angle to this that I might expand on later.

#Internet #Nostaliga

Simon @simon.poole.ch · 2d

Domain names are, as the name says, names and not addresses and using the same logic the BAKOM could have just as well started regulating company names.

This was later, a lot later, patched up by changing the FMG (the Swiss telecom law) and creating a specific ordinance for domain names.
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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 2d

It speaks for my nerdy nitpicking nature 😉 that I continue to be annoyed that in 2002 the BAKOM (the Swiss telecoms regulator) modified the AEFV (the ordinance regulating address elements used in telecoms) to include domain names even though there was no legal base to do that.
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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 2d

November 1994 I did a company internal presentation on IPng (the competing proposals that would eventually give us IPv6), more than 30 years later I'm still exclusively using an IPv4 network at home ... sigh.

#EUnet #Internet #Nostaliga

Simon @simon.poole.ch · 9d

But instead of getting a multitude of interoperable operating system we ended up with a duopoly.

#EUnet #Nostalgia

Simon @simon.poole.ch · 9d

One of the depressing things about looking back to 88/89 is that is when open systems en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_sy... really started winning, networking and the #Internet being one of levers that worked in our favour.

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Open system (computing) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 12d

...
myself, ch.network, July 31st 1992

I suppose this still kind of holds true for ISPs which was the topic of the discussion at the time.

#Internet #EUnet #Nostalgia

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 12d

"One of the main problems of the "Internet" today is that it is -near- to impossible to earn money from "non-connectivity" services. This is less a technology problem ..., it's just practically impossible to find a service to provide that somebody else is not doing for free."

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 13d

In "stuff that I've forgotten", did I coin the term "transit" (in an ISP context)? diswww.mit.edu/menelaus.mit... probably not, though nobody else is using it.

In any case a discussion that underlines how different the early Internet was from the fairy tales of today.

#Internet #EUnet #Nostalgia

[email protected]: [11171] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet

diswww.mit.edu

Simon @simon.poole.ch · 15d

In the mean time I'm fairly sure that the first demo was not in 89 but either late 90 or 91. There are simply conflicting accounts and as I said, this was still a non-event at the time.

Simon @simon.poole.ch · 15d

...

So the UUCP maps might be the only way to at least roughly date it.

#EUnet #UUCP #Nostalgia

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 15d

What I'm specifically trying to pinpoint is when we started registering CH domains for UUCP sites, it doesn't seem this was announced anywhere that has survived the not quite 4 decades and maybe we just sent a mail at the time.

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 15d

1989-1990 I managed them at SWITCH on chx400, that's not a secret either. But did we stop distributing them during that period, or did something else happen?

I don't have any mail archives from that period (for obvious reasons), but maybe somebody can remember.
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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 15d

Very minor mystery:

Does anybody know what happened with the UUCP maps for Switzerland in 1989/1990? That is likely u.che.0 and u.che.1.

Up to 1989 Dietrich Wiegandt (who ran cernvax at CERN) posted them to comp.mail.maps, and from 1991 on I posted them from chsun (the CHUUG/EUnet Switzerland).
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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 17d

... we didn't actually provide local Internet access in Geneva till 1993 (we did have mail and news customers there though).

* I can't verify this story one way or the other, while the history of the WWW is often told as a straight line going from A to B, it was anything but that.

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 17d

Just for those wondering: while we were connecting to the shared and #EUnet co-financed Internet access in Geneva at CERN at this time, and this was the actual first Internet presence in Switzerland operating since 1989, supposedly used by @timbl.bsky.social to demo the WWW in the same year*, ...

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 17d

Have you ever noticed that when the invention of the WWW by @timbl.bsky.social is discussed CERN is in Switzerland, just to mysteriously change countries when the first Internet connection in the country is mentioned?

Must be a quantum effect.

#EUnet #Nostalgia

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 18d

1993 was a wild year with lots going on, including EUnet suing the EunetCom consortium of France Telecom and Deutsche Telecom. That was the start of too many learning experiences that to this day #OpenStreetMap suffers from now and then when I start pontificating about protecting your trademarks 😎

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 18d

... giving the current Swiss status as an example. I had completely forgotten that Basel had been our first POP outside of Zürich in June 92, Geneva, Berne and Lugano followed the 93.

The POPs provided leased line and dial-up access with us working on providing X.25 and ISDN as well.

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · 18d

The next couple of weeks you are all going to have to suffer from a bout of Internet nostalgia from me as I dig through my archives.

This is from a February 1993 mail that I sent to colleagues at other #EUnet national orgs asking for them to update the POP (50 total) list I was maintaining ...

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · Sep 5

Data spaces are now mainly a thing because the open data consulting business has run its course.

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Reposted by Simon

SOSM @sosm.ch · Aug 31

community.openstreetmap.org/t/ich-tanke-... #OpenStreetMap

Ich-tanke-strom.ch and sharedmobility.ch

As some of you may know, for more than two years I’ve been trying to, on behalf of SOSM, arrange access to the BfE’s (Bundesamt für Energie) data that is used for “ich-tanke-strom.ch” for the Swiss OS...

community.openstreetmap.org

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Reposted by Simon

Vespucci @vespucci.io · Aug 20

Maintenance release V21.1.2 is available now and has been rolling out for a couple of days, see github.com/MarcusWolsch... for a list of changes since 21.1.0.

We've written a bit more on this release here en.osm.town/deck/@vespuc...

#OpenStreetMap

github.com

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Simon @simon.poole.ch · Aug 7

Joking aside (I wasn't expecting many to get it to start with), there's actually an historic #OpenStreetMap link there: osmarender wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmaren... was powered by XSLT github.com/openstreetma...

Osmarender - OpenStreetMap Wiki

wiki.openstreetmap.org

Simon @simon.poole.ch · Aug 6

gemini is showing signs of AGI ...
it's refusing to answer my questions about XSLT.

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