• OldCoder (unregistered)

    "each Tandem box would be replaced by a state-of-the-art Dual Pentium 60mhz"

    That there is a whole WTF itself.

    "running SCO Unix"

    (sound of maniacal laughter)

  • bored (unregistered)

    I smell a made up story. Kinda like The IT Crowds "Internet in a box".

  • Peter (unregistered)

    I remember my first experiences with e-mail on a local network in ND called SENDIT, an educational system setup to give students access to 'the internet'. Good old days of login limits, local access numbers, and messing with modem protocols.

  • Mortal (unregistered) in reply to bored
    bored:
    I smell a made up story. Kinda like The IT Crowds "Internet in a box".
    You'd best put seatbelts on your ears, because I'm going to take them to the ride of their lives!
  • Warren (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that AOL lasted so much longer by "doing" the internet in their own unique way.

  • Bosluis (unregistered)

    These days i think my toothbrush has a faster processor!

  • (cs)

    What, they didn't have Al Gore's number?

  • (cs)

    There should be a phone number for the internet, if only to record the caller requests for posts here!

  • ih8u (unregistered)

    That line about calling the internet reminds me of my time spent at a computer HelpDesk in college.

    A customer (student, faculty, or staff) would walk in and immediately open with: Is the server down?

    Me (thinking): We have a LOT of servers. Got one in mind?

    Me (saying): What are you trying to do?

    Customer (basically): See something on the internet.

    You see at my college, which must have been worlds beyond yours, we owned the internet. In fact, we had the entirety of the internet on our server.

    Someday, we may allow you to have some internet, but we don't just share our server with anyone.

    -- Oh, and I do by the way. I really do.

  • Kris (unregistered) in reply to Warren
    Warren:
    TRWTF is that AOL lasted so much longer by "doing" the internet in their own unique way.

    Nah, they lasted because they flat out refused to cancel subscriptions EVER. They didn't have any actual users, or even a network. Just one giant call center full of reps who were trained not to cancel an account for anything less than a mobilized military force bombing the CEO's headquarters.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Erm, wasn't CompuServe the European version of CompuServe?

  • (cs)

    This one reminds me of the olde days when GEnie started offering "gateway" access to internet email and newsgroups.

    Kind of clunky, but it worked!

  • (cs)

    Ah, yes... Compuserve via 300 baud modem (later upgraded to lightning-fast 1200), accessed over a long distance line because my area didn't have a local access number. Those were the days... the days of $300 monthly phone bills.

  • (cs)

    Ah yes, the days of dialup... My brother and I ran our own local BBS while we were in Jr High. He handled the ascii art, I handled the technical stuff. LORD was the best game ever I tell you! Anyways... It kinda faded into the sunset as 'the internet' become more available to the public. Meeeeemoooooriiiiiiiess...

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    That image sure does take me back - my first ever modem was a US Robotics Courier Dual Standard. I still remember browsing the (rather limited) web through NCSA Mosaic on my state-of-the-art Amiga 500. Oh yes, them were the days...!

  • rjw (unregistered)

    This has got to be about CIX, right?

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    We're all having a proper reminisce here aren't we! I've gone all glassy eyed!

  • dru (unregistered)

    I just can't understand why the governments didn't bail this company out?

  • Carra (unregistered)

    Unlimited monthly, I wish I had that. Damn 12 gb limits.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Carra
    Carra:
    Unlimited monthly, I wish I had that. Damn 12 gb limits.
    Damn, how do you survive? I changed ISPs when my old one started imposing a 30GB per month limit. Thankfully, there is plenty of competition here in the UK. I'm now on an unlimted 24 megabit service.
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Carra:
    Unlimited monthly, I wish I had that. Damn 12 gb limits.
    Damn, how do you survive? I changed ISPs when my old one started imposing a 30GB per month limit. Thankfully, there is plenty of competition here in the UK. I'm now on an unlimted 24 megabit service.

    For real, I'd run hard into that 12gb limit in less than a day using steam.

  • Flywheel (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    1-800-INTRNET?

  • Fast Eddie (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Carra:
    Unlimited monthly, I wish I had that. Damn 12 gb limits.
    Damn, how do you survive? I changed ISPs when my old one started imposing a 30GB per month limit. Thankfully, there is plenty of competition here in the UK. I'm now on an unlimted 24 megabit service.
    12 gb should be enough for anybody.
  • Lame (unregistered)

    I don't get it -- usually you can read through all the creative writing to actually understand what the actual WTF is. In this one, is the actual dialog the "real" part? (the dialog is usually entirely fictionalized, though). So is the WTF that the techs didn't really understand the internet? Are any of the details true? I don't get it.

    This is another one of those cases where all the fluff writing has made it impossible to know what actually happened.

  • Murray (unregistered) in reply to BobB

    Ahh yes... my bbs loaded with all sorts of INTERESTING files from all over the local calling area. LORD is not gone though, you can play it on facebook. Now usurper, there is a game I miss.

  • j. biden (unregistered)

    Do you know the website number?

  • Jimmy (unregistered) in reply to j. biden
    j. biden:
    Do you know the website number?

    42

  • Zach Bora (unregistered)

    I found the Internets website! http://www.w3.org/

    Phone number to each Internets is here! http://www.w3.org/Consortium/contact

  • (cs) in reply to j. biden
    j. biden:
    Do you know the website number?
    http://1249717604/
  • Skyspook (unregistered)

    Internets? You need to talk to rick!

    989-272-RICK

  • Smorkl (unregistered) in reply to BobB

    Nah, Cripple smash was way better than LORD

  • (cs) in reply to Flywheel
    Flywheel:
    1-800-INTRNET?
    That much I knew. What I really want is the branch line for thedailywtf.com
  • (cs) in reply to Fast Eddie
    Fast Eddie:
    Anonymous:
    Carra:
    Unlimited monthly, I wish I had that. Damn 12 gb limits.
    Damn, how do you survive? I changed ISPs when my old one started imposing a 30GB per month limit. Thankfully, there is plenty of competition here in the UK. I'm now on an unlimted 24 megabit service.
    12 gb should be enough for anybody.
    So should 640kb of memory.

    And we all know how that one turned out. ;)

  • asdf (unregistered) in reply to BobB

    [quote user='BobB'] LORD was the best game ever I tell you! [/quote]

    Hell yeah, LORD was great! I was also addicted to MajorMUD when I was a lot younger. I met a lot of good friends from the BBS days and every now and again we set up a BBS to play games on. Good times :)

  • A. Bear (unregistered) in reply to Murray

    Usurper was way better than LORD.

  • IT Girl (unregistered) in reply to d3matt
    d3matt:
    j. biden:
    Do you know the website number?
    http://1249717604/

    http://tinyurl.com/mejh5t

  • Steve (unregistered)

    Hindsight being 20/20, we can call this a WTF, but those were some volatile times. This is just a case of a company not choosing the best business strategy to stay alive. Not really a WTF.

  • (cs)

    Ahh, this reminds me of my first Bulletin Board System. I used to love the MUDD they had on there, something about the four elements and some sphinx.

  • Beavis (unregistered) in reply to BobB

    Legend of the Red Dragon.. only the best game ever to be rendered line by line on my Amiga.

    There were others.. Mechwars, or Tradewars, Imperialism, but no one cared much for them.

    It was always about the Dragon.

  • Joey Stink Eye Smiles (unregistered)

    Programming in FORTRAN in the early nineties? What, was ALGOL 68 not sexy enough for you?

  • Global Warmer (unregistered) in reply to Kris
    Kris:
    Warren:
    TRWTF is that AOL lasted so much longer by "doing" the internet in their own unique way.

    Nah, they lasted because they flat out refused to cancel subscriptions EVER. They didn't have any actual users, or even a network. Just one giant call center full of reps who were trained not to cancel an account for anything less than a mobilized military force bombing the CEO's headquarters.

    ROFLMAO OMG aint that the truth!!!!

  • bigbird (unregistered) in reply to Lars Vargas
    Lars Vargas:
    Fast Eddie:
    Anonymous:
    Carra:
    Unlimited monthly, I wish I had that. Damn 12 gb limits.
    Damn, how do you survive? I changed ISPs when my old one started imposing a 30GB per month limit. Thankfully, there is plenty of competition here in the UK. I'm now on an unlimted 24 megabit service.
    12 gb should be enough for anybody.
    So should 640kb of memory.

    And we all know how that one turned out. ;)

    1k used to be enough for many people http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/

  • Mike (unregistered)

    This is probably the only article that is not a wtf, but rather a sad story of a company that could not keep up with the technology.

  • Rick (unregistered)

    Completely fabricated bullshit story.

    There was never any kind of pan-European CompuServe/AOL/whatevah equivalent. CompuServe was available in Europe, that's about it.

  • (cs)

    Hold on, I'm busy flirting with Violet.

    After that I'm gonna leave Sacre Base to colonize some Urban planets, and then find out that my warp schedule takes me to Eden.

  • random internet wanker (unregistered)

    as someone who used to write code on Tandem hardware for a living(in 2000-2004, even), I take offense to the implication that Tandem didn't have Unix.

    What were they running on the tandem machines? Fortran on bare metal? not likely, given the hardware architecture of tandem machines. (and if so, props to superbnet for writing their own OS in fortran!) There were two of everything, and in the most redundant configuration everything ran in lock-step, right down to a redundant cpu executing the same instructions as the "live" one. The hardware itself should have been capable of running a version of unix called NonStop-something or other, somewhat appropriately abbreviated NSUX. (I'm not saying it was a great version of unix, just that it was unix and it was available on Tandems as recently as 5 years ago)

    so TRWTF here is why they decided to rewrite from fortran on whatever they were running on the tandems to fortran (on what? minix? 386 bsd?) on crappy consumer grade Pentium 60's.

    Tandems had their own handful of problems, but not running unix wasn't necessarily one of them. It's also possible that Tandem wrote NSUX some time after this story, that's fine with me if they did. Just call me a bit miffed that the submitter didn't take the time to separate trashing SuperbNet from trashing Tandems. They had amazing hardware redundancy.

  • random internet wanker (unregistered)

    and now that I've read the whole article, typical, I know... I've got to agree with one of the previous posters.

    complete bullshit fabricated just because it sounds cool and funny like a typical WTF. Someone just happened to find the Tandem name somewhere and decided to throw it in with all the other made-up stupidity to help sell how fucked up the situation was. no way any of this is real.

    wankers.

  • (cs) in reply to random internet wanker
    random internet wanker:
    and now that I've read the whole article, typical, I know... I've got to agree with one of the previous posters.

    complete bullshit fabricated just because it sounds cool and funny like a typical WTF. Someone just happened to find the Tandem name somewhere and decided to throw it in with all the other made-up stupidity to help sell how fucked up the situation was. no way any of this is real.

    wankers.

    INTERNET RAGE

  • Dweedle (unregistered)

    Even assuming the company somehow didn't know about a Unix distro for the Tandems, wouldn't it have been obvious to just keep the current service running on the Tandems... While hooking their "Internet Gateway" PC's to the internet... Then just tether the two machines together through uh, a network interface or something? Rather than re-write the dang compiler, all they'd have to do then would be write some network socket-based glue to run between the two services.. No way any mgmt would be that blind. Calling BS.

  • SoonerMatt (unregistered)

    No one will believe this, but yesterday a junior developer was tasked with setting up some joomla apps for a department.

    One task was to create an admin account.

    She eventually gave up and stated that she needed to call Joomla because we didn't have the ability to do this.

    I'm not making this up.

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