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It's hard to believe, but this is the last MIND issue of the millennium. We know you're probably pretty tired of all those Top 100 lists and "A Look Back at the Millennium" features that the so-called "respectable" magazines have been running, but we thought, "what the hell, we're doin' it anyway." This has been an unusually busy millennium (as millennia go), but we feel confident we can provide a cursory overview of some events and fill up a page. So fasten your seat belts, and enjoy the ride through a thousand years of progress! (Ignoring the first 876 years, of course.) 1876 The Internet was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. Originally designed as a system to reliably transfer high-quality audio data over simple copper wires, the Internet has now advanced to a point where you can unreliably transfer low-quality audio data over fiber optic lines. 1966 In a lab at the University of California, Berkeley, a graduate student is reprimanded for using 512 bytes of the college's 2048 bytes of total hard storage for his own uses. The student thinks, "If only there were some way to store useless personal information and unpublishable fiction on someone else's machine," and the idea that would someday become the Internet is planted. 1983 First Internet-borne computer virus detected. However, it's written in IBM VM/SP so all it can do is create a temporary disk with the victim's account. 1985 Emoticons invented. No longer would the uncreative have to search for just the right words to express their thoughts in writing. Now they could use symbols that looked exactly like what they meant. Some examples: @-( Ow. Someone has crushed my head with a spool of CAT-5 cable. I am sad.1986 The first porn site is created on the Internet. Due to bandwidth restraints at the time, and because graphics had not yet been invented, this consisted of little more than big text files you could print out on a continual form printer that would look like a bikini model when you had someone hold it up while you looked at it from across campus. 1987 First spam mail sent. Ironically, the mail, sent to hundreds of people on the alt.waste.meats newsgroup, was an advertisement for a delicious new luncheon meat formed by processing otherwise inedible hog parts and squeezing it into a heavy brick. The Armour Meat Company, in no way involved in any such activity, becomes quite agitated.
1994 Five millionth ISP signup CD mailed out. To us, anyway. We don't know how many have been mailed overall. 1994 Craig Shergold, not only not a sickly kid, but 56 years old and living with his wife and three kids in New Zealand, receives his six millionth postcard. ISPs vow matching funds, offering to send him a free signup CD for every postcard he receives. 1995 MSN debuts. Initially marketed as "The Microsoft Network; no, not the Microsoft Network—that's one of your Windows for Workgroup options. This is something entirely different with the same name." 1996 One-price monthly access introduced. Millions of users are now greeted by a comforting busy signal dozens of times a day. Phone companies complain that their long-term capacity planning didn't take long data calls into account, and scheme to counter the trend by forming their own ISPs. 1998 PC prices plummet as the Internet comes standard on most new machines. Now instead of paying $600 for a basic machine, you can pay $200 for the same machine after a $500 "Internet rebate," but only if you dump your current ISP for theirs. 1999 Al Gore announces that he invented the Internet. Two months later, Bill Bradley announces that he, too, has invented the Internet. George W. Bush vows to make the Internet a more compassionate place, and calls for the death penalty for banner ads. 1999 Microsoft Internet Developer completes its fourth year of service by implying that 1999 is the last year of the millennium. Hordes of enraged readers fire off angry letters to the editors, and include long-winded histories of the current calendar system. Happy New Year! —J.T.
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From the December 1999 issue of Microsoft Internet Developer