Computers and Internet Publications Computers and Internet Links Search the Internet

Computers and Internet

A collection of less formal writings and links related to Computers and the Internet. Some of these may become more formal as time goes on.

Publications

• Computers and Internet publications
  • Article on linking: Why on earth would I link to you?
    • Follow-up to this article.
    • In defence of Wikipedia

• Web page style

• How I stop spam

• Error-tolerant web server

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Computers and Internet Links

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My teaching

I lecture courses in Computer Science:

• CA651 - Intro to Networks and OS
• CA249 - Enterprise Computer Systems Configuration

which, along with introductions to UNIX, Shell, HTML, Javascript, PHP and CGI, contains many discussions:

• The Internet
  • History of the Internet
  • The Web
    • Why did the Web (since Mosaic) work?
  • The Internet in the 1980s
  • Web page style

• RSI - A Lecture

• In defence of command-lines (not GUIs alone)
  • I simply couldn't live without being able to write Shell scripts and short utilities and ftp scripts on the command-line.
  • Imagine having to point-and-click and point-and-click instead.
  • In defence of text file formats (not binary formats)

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I am from the generation that started using the Internet in the 1980s.

On the Internet since: late 1987.
My first trace on the Internet that survives: post to comp.unix.questions, 31 Mar 1988.

The pre-Web Internet was great fun, but not easy to use. I watched with delight as the Web was invented to make sense of the chaos that we had used before. I had imagined that some kind of point-and-click menus would make the Internet more usable, and I even had my own personal "Home page" running via chat commands in the 1980s, but it never crossed my mind that hypertext was the answer. When I saw the command-line Web I still wasn't impressed. But after my first trip out with Mosaic for X-Windows in 1993, I saw the point of the Web and I was converted totally.

My own "Web page" (menu of online files) since: February 1989.

On the Web (command-line browser) since: late 1992 - early 1993.
On the Web (Mosaic) since: late 1993.
Home page on the Web since: November 1994.
Movies on my website since: 1995.

My first home page was basically a list of links, which is now my AI Links page.
My second home page was about my research, with the list of links moved to a separate page.
In my third home page, research is just one of the things I do, and is moved to a separate page (in fact a number of separate pages). The home page is now a jump point for the 4 or 5 major things I do.