I’m not sure if this was the origin point, but Coop’s Corner on C-Net News today reported that in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee authored the paper Information Management: A proposal: “On March 13 of that year, he submitted a plan to management on how to better monitor the flow of research at the labs.” For some, this is considered to be the beginning of the idea for the World Wide Web.

However, the intent of his paper was more about managing, centralizing and controlling information  than about making the web commercial, so the World Wide Web as we know it was not “born” on that day. In even the most liberal terms you could barely say it was CONCEIVED on that day… and the day of your conception is not your birthday.

It was not until several years later that an operating web browser (Mosaic) existed. Without a browser, there was no web. So, officially the “Public” World Wide Web came into existence, or was “born”, sometime around 1993.

Yet, there are numerous posts on boards and blogs around the online universe insisting that TODAY IS THE INTERNET’S BIRTHDAY!

Get a grip, people. Learn some history. The internet is more like 40 years (or more) old.  Email was invented in – get this NINETEEN FUCKING SIXTY FIVE! There were providers of access (for a fee) to the internet in the 1980s, well before the 1989 idea of having a place to host information on a central site, rather than distribute it through various interconnected network nodes.

It’s this kind of stupid lack of understanding that makes me concerned about not only the state of education, but the fact that people will just take whatever information they are spoonfed, and without verifying it or understanding it, parrot it along. It’s like the assignment of various pieces of pop culture to The Simpsons. No, people, the Simpsons did not make up most of the stuff on the Simpsons, they were reflecting obscure bits of history and culture that were around LONG BEFORE that… I am almost certain that someday, we’ll have history books that insist the Simpsons are the origin of EVERYTHING… ahh, but that’s another rant altogether…

The internet for sale to those willing to trudge through “newsgroups” at 300 baud?  WELL before 1989. The internet, as in web pages where people can look at pictures and read text? Well AFTER 1989. The internet as an interconnected network of computers? Before 1970.

I would provide all sorts of citations and links, but I’m not going to bother. Why? Because you need to learn to look it up for yourself. Then, maybe you wouldn’t be here with your mealy-mouthed argument all ready to “correct” me for not understanding what you mean. I know EXACTLY what you mean.

You’re just wrong, dumbass.

How the heck did I get a Mac? Well, thanks to a very old friend (not his age, he’s younger than I am – just that I have known him since a long time ago although we were out of touch for 10+ years in the middle), I was able to pay in installments to purchase his used Mac Mini. He was very generous to allow me to do that, and the ‘Mini was inexpensive enough to make it worth a little temporary suffering (although at this point, I do have a twinge of regret as I know NOW what I did not know when I agreed to buy it – I need a better lens for my camera which is going to cost big $$$). Anyway, Mike, I really and truly appreciate it and thank you very much, I doubt we ever would have owned one of these if not for you.

Now, many of you have gathered the impression that I loathe Macs. I really don’t. I simply loathe Mac hype and the lies that get spread about them by the brainwashed Mac masses, or Macolytes as I have decided they should be called. They say things like Macs don’t crash, and “it just works” and sound more like a Mac commercial and marketing campaign than an actual user.

I know that Macs crash, so don’t tell me they don’t – I watch Kevin Rose on Diggnation and he sometimes has problems with his browser locking up and being unable to read his email live on the air. My brother uses a Mac at work and he hates the damn thing due to its shortcomings. And I too have used Macs before – and at the school board where I worked several years back, there were a couple of schools that decided that instead of getting Y number of IBM PCs they would get X number of Macs (and yes, X<Y). Part of our job in the department where I worked was to get the Macs working. And you know what, Macolytes? IT JUST WORKS is a lie. I could configure a dozen PCs a day while working at that job, and these were old PCs I was rebuilding from scrap. It took our best guys – both of which had expertise with Macs – 2 days to get one SINGLE Mac to do what was needed. I’m not even going to get any further into the description of the added nightmare they had trying to get the it just works Airport networking going. If the damn Macs didn’t cost double what the PCs cost, I am sure we would have, as a group, risen up and stomped one of them out of existence. I do have to confess, however, that this was in the OS 9 era, before they started basing things on UNIX/Darwin/FreeBSD.

I’ve tinkered with them over the years since, but never owned one. First of all we just are not in the income bracket to allow it. Second, even if we were in that income bracket, I feel they are grossly overpriced. Third, although I tend to be naturally intuitive about all computers and OSes, it would require me to teach everyone in our house a whole new set of skills. There are other reasons as well… but in this particular situation, most of my concerns are alleviated by getting a fairly-recent, very small and stylish machine that I can tinker with and no one else will be forced to use. The kids have their own computer, the wife has her own computer, and I can flip between my MacMini and my PC as simply as changing a setting on my dual-input monitor.

And that brings me to right here. I have been tinkering for a little while. I installed Firefox and all my “usual” plugins. I started investigating what might be gained and what it would cost if I want to someday install the newest version of OS X (this one has Panther). I discovered that the Mac support on my Ximeta networked hard drive is actually a very limited level of support which annoys me.

But… here are my first impressions:

• It really is a cute little machine, and is well engineered. The Mac keyboard and mouse are solid, and the computer itself, which is just over the size of a large sandwich made on regular bread, has a nice heft and solid feel so it doesn’t feel “cheap” in spite of being one of the least expensive Macs ever made.
• While trying to test out the built-in optical drive, I put in my “Garchive” disk, which is all of the Garfield comics from 1978 to 2003. I didn’t even look at the disk before the drive snatched it out of my hand (nasty little thing!) The pictures came up, but browsing them was no more or less intuitive than browsing pictures on a Windows XP machine. However, it was noisy so I took the disc out and discovered my kids must have been handling it with sticky hands. I mean, this is a CD that on the laser-read side is absolutely filthy with fingerprints and sticky gunk. The Apple drive still managed to read it. That was kind of impressive.
• Installing software is easy, although almost counter-intuitive. You almost feel as though something went wrong becuase it just doesn’t interact with you much at all. I loathe Windows installers that don’t tell me what they are doing and just take over, so this irritates me on the Mac as well.
• It just works! Yes, it does! But… so does my Windows XP machine. I have not had any problems where something didn’t “just work”. I’m not sure who, exactly, has had something that DIDN’T just work – except obviously someone who works for Apple marketing.
• Because I have not played a lot with the Mac in recent years, I now have a learning curve – not in how the system works (although I had a terrifying few minutes wracking my brain figuring out how to find how to reboot or turn off the damn thing) but in what software I should use for my various needs.
• The system required an update in order to connect wirelessly to my router. If I had not had a wired network switch within reach, I would have had some very serious aggravation about this, as in order to get the update, I would have had to download it from the internet, and in order to download it from the internet, I would have had to be connected wirelessly. The standard which was needed to connect existed when this machine was shipped, so it should have had it already properly implemented, in my opinion.

So what do I think?

Exactly what I thought before. From an operating standpoint, it is a computer, no better and no worse than any other properly-configured machine. It is nice to have fewer worries about installing anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities, but on the other hand when someone DOES decide to hunt down a Mac exploit, all the barely-technically-literate Mac users are going to have a really serious problem fixing it, which will make Apple lots of money in support/repair fees. Having to remember I am on the Mac and the implementation of cut, paste and so on is done differently is an irritation but more a function of me flipping back and forth from one machine to the other.

The hardware is pleasing to the eye and feels like it has substance. It is in no way an unpleasant addition to our collection of
hardware. It reminds me a lot of our Wii, and that brings a little smile to my face.

I am now a Mac Owner. I like my MacMini. I don’t like it better than my XP machine, and I don’t like it worse. It’s just different, like having 2 children. There is a difference, though – if I had to give up one of my children, I could never choose between them. If I had to give up one of my computers, the Mini would be the one sold into white slavery.

Go to Pownce.com and sign up for an account. Then you can come and find me as a friend. Or send me a message with your email (see contact page) and I will invite you to Pownce.

My Pownce page is here, but unless you are one of my Pownce friends, you can’t see much of anything.

I am sure you are saying WTF is Pownce… so I’ll tell you. Pownce is like a bunch of different web things rolled into one. It is a little bit of Facebook, a little bit of message board, a little bit of blog, and a little bit of instant messenger. It lets you post your pictures, videos, links or whatever to show them to your friends, or just a small group of friends, or everyone in the world. It doesn’t matter what it is. You post something on Pownce, direct it to who you want it to go to or to the whole world, and they can see it, download it, look at it, comment on it, rate it and talk about it with everyone else who can see it.

Come on people, you should know I am not a faddy kind of person, I don’t pull out every little thing going and jump on board. For example, I was dragged onto Facebook kicking and screaming, and I have left it as soon as it started to get crazy popular.

Pownce is a really good way to be able to keep in touch and share pics, media and links with anyone you want to share them with. Go, sign up!