"And that's the way it was, and we LIKED IT!"
Posted on 12/14/2013 9:44:32 AM PST by knarf
In your scenario, what purpose will internet access serve? Just keeping up on current events? Communicating with like minded persons would be better handled some other way.
No. To slow. Replaced with fiber. Hundreds of thousands of miles of the stuff.
simple answer is no…
Heck, I even remember DOS2. (((creak)))
One upping you
Remember PDP-8 and PAL-8?
I suppose you are asking if the gov shut the internet down is there any way to get online?
That situation exists in Cuba. Some Cubans do get online even so. They use satellite equipment that has been smuggled in from the US. Providers like Wildblue and Hughsnet both have spot beams that serve south Florida and work fine in Cuba. These illicit Cuban internet connections can also enable cell phone use with a small device plugged into the router.
However, if the US gov got so out of hand that they shut down the internet here you would have to be a super geek to get satellite access here.... could be done, but not easy.
A while back I wondered what the minimum equipment would be to enable slow data traffic over hf radio. I etched a couple of circuit boards and put an ATtiny84 and an LM567 on them along with a few other parts and was able to handle slow data traffic between two hf radios across a 1200 mile path...total cost of six bucks. Of course there is the cost of the hf radios and this was not useful for much beyond simple email type messages :-)
“I mean, if 123 Main Street has a protected generator and fuel source and the building and electronics and all that ...”
Maybe you have a misunderstanding of what constitutes “the Internet”.
It is neither a single entity, a single unduplicated set of telecommunications routers, a single system, a single point of control, or a single anything and very little of it is directly run through government telecommunications equipment.
The “Internet” is (1), (a) a set of telecommunications protocols that in the very most basic sense follow a set language by which one computing device can say: this is my location, this is the location I want to connect to, and this is the information I am sending, and (b) every telecommunication server and server system in the world that recognizes those protocols and (c) either routes an Internet message onto somewhere else (because it does not have direct access or addreessability to its final destination or routes an Internet message to its destination because it does have direct access or addressability (through routers it is connected to) to its final destination.
The Internet is, (B) phsyically, all the telecommunications backbones of the world and all the computing devices connected to them, directly or indirectly, with a means for communicating Internet communications.
The Internet is (C) not a “special place” in the computer, telecommunications world. It is a special way of communicating through the telecommunicatons networks.
I tried to forget DOS2 for years! Then you just brought it back into my stream. Next someone will play the Titanic song and I will be done for the day.
What crime might that be? I've not seen anything that MAC Address spoofing is illegal .....
And even if it was, it's like anything else: It's only illegal if you get caught.
Going back to before there was an internet, one could connect your PC to a mainframe by dialing it and knowing the codes to connect to it. You only got to one directory on it and you had to put the path to the info that you wanted. Archie was one in Canada with a bunch of scientific articles on it.
There also were bulletin board that you directly connected to via phone and you had access to all the info there. The one for country music concerts was particularly good as I recall.
There was also Tellnet and Timenet which allowed one to connect to it anyplace that there was a phone and you had a phone modem (remember them?)
I think there are work around the Internet if you are smart enough, want to learn Unic(sp?) , and perhaps work over phones or HF radio.
But do you remember how many Timex Sinclair computers could be linked together and what the modification was?
(((Triple-Creak.....)))
"And that's the way it was, and we LIKED IT!"
That was an old (#18) comment, but I’m wondering now ... if the USA was “shut down”, would we still be able to connect to each other via Germany (f’rinstance) or is the distance too far for electrical/electronic connectivity ?
local BBS systems could work
Your Internet Service Provider provides your link on to the Internet backbone..it other words it’s the access road to the hiway..
The internet is just a network of roads between computers...it a pathway way between your computer and another computer...The thing is the computers have to ask direction to other computers.and also.advertise direction to themselves...
remember local BBS?
It’s not cheap or easy.
“An ISP can be very small with a few thousand customers, or large, with millions.”
A small ISP that is not a telecommunications company - not a telephone or cable company, and/or not an operator of some segment of the phsyical telecommunications backbone, will pay something for a connection, and that connection’s bandwidth, to a company that is operating some segment of the telecommunications backbone. The larger ISP’s are the telecommunications companies and that cost - the local connection to the telecommunications backbone - is internalized (and economically less costly and more efficient) in their own company’s operations.
I remember seeing a ZX-80 once, in a friend’s “collection” but can’t answer the question.
2 tin cans and a long string.
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