What is generally claimed is that I was the first to put the general public on the internet. Unix shell account, $20, connected machine, have at it. I got enough crap at the time for doing this that it must have been significant! ``Wot??? You can't put the GENERAL PUBLIC on the internet? What are you CRAZY??? You're illegally reselling federal property!!! (etc)'' The leap was that it was around $20 to ANYONE with a modem and a terminal (yes we had customers who actually used VT100s) or PC rather than thousands per month for a 9.6KB or 56KB leased line, router, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World.std.com On July 12, 2014 at 12:18 randy@psg.com (Randy Bush) wrote:
And, for the record, it's pretty widely acknowledge that "The World" (Barry Shein) was the world's first commercial ISP - offering shell access in 1989, and at some point started offering PPP dial-up services. As I recall, they were a UUnet POP. yep. and uunet and psi were hallucinations. can we please not rewrite well-known history? or are you equating shell access with isp? that would be novel. unix shell != internet.
btw, not do denigrate what barry did. a commercial unix bbs connected to the real internet was significant. the left coasties were doing free stuff, the well, community memory, ... and barry created a viable bbs commercial service which still survives (i presume). a significant achievement.
randy
-- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*