On Saturday, September 23, 2000 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, David Razler wrote:
> On 22 Sep 2000 20:04:26 GMT, Mike Hartigan <mi...@hartigan.dot.com>
> wrote:
> >In talk.politics.misc David Razler <david....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >> On 22 Sep 2000 16:07:45 GMT, to...@y1.jdyson.net (John S. Dyson) wrote:
> >
> >>>In article <QGxy5.90220$NH2.6...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>,
> >>> "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hal...@ai.mit.edu> writes:
> >>>
> >>>I am waiting for the docs to show Algors intention to create
> >>>the internet that we have today. If they exist, you probably
> >>>have them.
> >>>
> >> They exist - in the pre-Internet Congressional record.
> >
> >Gore had not even entered politics in the 'pre-internet' days.
> >
> Not wishing to get into the when-did-the-Internet-start argument
> (already posted) with bill names, Gore (Like George W. (1)) was born
> into politics, son of a senator [Al Sr. elected @ late 50s, early 60s,
> defeated 1970] "more for his ooposition to the Viet Nam War [than
> civil rights issues] according to the Almanac of American Politics
> (see below)
> Gore Jr.'s personal carreer, according to the Almanac of American
> Politics, 1986, (what I was able to grab off the shelf in the way of
> non-partisan political bios)
> "Career: Army (Viet Nam); Reporter, The Nashville Tennessean;
> home-building business, 1971-16 Elected to the US House 1976-84,
> Elected to the US Senate 1984."
> [he served there until becoming VP in 1/93 following election in
> 10/92]
> dmr
> Political trivia:
> 1 - George W.'s family has almost as many politicans and wannabes as
> the Kennedy family including George Sr. the most successful and his
> brother Prescott, who sought nomination (I believe US Senate, possibly
> Governor) in Connecticut, back in 1982.
> 2- Then again Connecticut's Senior Senator Chris Dodd, a Democrat,
> took the seat once held by his dad, who left the Senate in disgrace.

Dave,

I enjoyed the political trivia, thank you!

Adam

Sent from my iphone excuse the typos
https://www.allianceinteractive.com/

On 22 Sep 2000 20:04:26 GMT, Mike Hartigan <mi...@hartigan.dot.com>
>> wrote:
>>> In talk.politics.misc David Razler <david....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>> On 22 Sep 2000 16:07:45 GMT, to...@y1.jdyson.net (John S. Dyson) wrote:
>>>
>>>>> In article <QGxy5.90220$NH2.6...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net>,
>>>>> "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hal...@ai.mit.edu> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>> I am waiting for the docs to show Algors intention to create
>>>>> the internet that we have today. If they exist, you probably
>>>>> have them.
>>>>>
>>>> They exist - in the pre-Internet Congressional record.
>>>
>>> Gore had not even entered politics in the 'pre-internet' days.

[I hope I got the trimmed attributions correct]

While the Internet had existed since around 1979 (and the ARPAnet even
earlier), it could not be used for commercial purposes well into the
early 1990s, the reason being that the network backbone was funded by
the US Federal Government, and it was deemed unseemly for businesses to
use resources expressly built by the government to support higher
education and government funded research. When I spent a year in Denmark
(on sabbatical from my California employer) I was telecommuting back to
California, but because I would not "sign the NSF pledge" that all my
network use was educational, I could not make connections to Australia,
because the transpacific links were owned by NASA.

Al Gore Jr solved this problem, by changing the funding for network
connections from universities to government supercomputer centers. That
connectivity had been provided by the government funded NSFnet. Gore's
revision of the High Performance Computing Act (of 1992?) cut the
funding from NSFnet and replaced it with grants to the universities to
buy connectivity from commercial network operators. This made it
possible for commercial Internet backbones to become viable. The biggest
were very quickly built by ATT and MCI. These backbones were available
to all that wanted to use them, whether universities or corporations.

Thus Al Gore's statement that "During my tenure in the legislature I
took initiative to write the legislation that created the commercial
Internet as we know it." (Or something very close to that.)

This is a very concise statement of exactly what his contribution was,
and it was indeed immensely important.

As an aside: The press at the time liked to refer to the Internet as
"the Information Superhighway". This was an acknowledgement of the work
of his father, Senator Al Gore Senior, who drafted the legislation that
created the "Interstate and Defense Highway System" in the 1950s.

I got HSDT project (T1 & faster computer links), early 80s ... then fall
of 1982 (just before 1jan1983 cut-over to tcp/ip) IBM SJR gateway to
(NSF fundec) CSNET ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSNET

and was working with the NSF Director and was suppose to get $20M to
interconnect the NSF supercomputer centers, then congress cuts the
budget, various other things happened ... finally RFP was released (in
part based on what we already had running). 28Mar1986 Preliminary
Announcement:

The OASC has initiated three programs: The Supercomputer Centers Program
to provide Supercomputer cycles; the New Technologies Program to foster
new supercomputer software and hardware developments; and the Networking
Program to build a National Supercomputer Access Network - NSFnet.

....

IBM internal politics was not allowing us to bid. The NSF director tried
to help by writing the company a letter (3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM
Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM
CEO) with support from other gov. agencies ... but that just made the
internal politics worse (as did claims that what we already had
operational was at least 5yrs ahead of the winning bid), as regional
networks connect in, it becomes the NSFNET backbone, precursor to modern
internet.

NCSA, came out of 1986 OASC ... origins of MOSAIC
https://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/
https://research.illinois.edu/researchunit/national-center-supercomputing-applications

.... I was told that the AUP (acceptable use) for NSFNET and regional
networks was in part, commercial entities had contributed tax deductable
resources (in case of NSFNET 4-5 times the RFP), in which case the tax
deductable resources couldn't be used for commercial purposes.

Mar1991, AUP altered allowing commercial traffic.
https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/nsfoutreach/htm/n50_z2/pages_z3/28_pg.htm

Dec1991 legislation promoting gov. agencies commercializing
gov. technology (as part of making US more competitive). I'm
participating in National Information Infrastructure meetings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Information_Infrastructure
& High Performance Computing meetings at LLNL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_Act_of_1991

US Gov. wanted companies to participate in the NII on their own nickel
..... then Singapore invited all the same participants to build a fully
gov funded one there.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970