Lordy, Lordy, look who’s 40!
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the creation of the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. On that day in 1969 a small laboratory on the UCLA campus unleashed a force which has spread to every corner of the world, revolutionising communications forever.
Henceforth people working in far corners of the globe would be able to find each other easily, pool their knowledge, and trade information.
The first message ever sent immortalised a word which would become part of everyday vocabulary – it was supposed to be ‘loggin’ but in a FAIL that would equally become part of the common vernacular, only the first two letters were successfully transmitted before the system crashed.
Still, that humble greeting marked the start of a phenomenon that has become such an important part of modern life that many experts argue access to it should be a right rather than a privilege.
Its birthday has been disputed, depending on how we interpret the term Internet. The right to access to it is equally disputed by frightened Governments and irate copyright holders. How unfortunate then, that yesterday should also have been marked by the sentencing of Neil Strachen and James Rennie.
It is not only the world of academic knowledge that was pooled by the Internet.
Sex offenders world wide have been spared the embarrassment of that fireside chat in the pub – ‘I fancy raping an eighteen month old kid, then a quick kebab, how about you?’ – only to be rebuffed by a horrified neighbour. Now those of similar tastes can seek each other out in safe anonymity, pool their knowledge and encourage each other in their excesses.
Police in Edinburgh discovered that Rennie, the chief executive of a charity which offers ‘advice’ to young gay and lesbian people was at the heart of an electronic web which linked almost 200 such deviants through 125,000 indecent images of young children.
Rennie’s idea of celebrating Hogmanay was to rape an eighteen month old baby boy. That he had managed to make contact with 200 other people of similarly deranged minds is solely due to the Internet. The law of probability states that you would have been rendered unconscious by a swift blow to the jaw long before you had held sufficient ‘fireside chats’ to weed out 200 such minds from the general population.
Truly the Internet is a remarkable invention.
So was splitting the Atom.
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1
October 30, 2009 at 1:06 pm -
The greatest has to be Sliced Bread. It paved the way for the second greatest- The Bacon Sandwich!
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2
October 30, 2009 at 1:19 pm -
Brown sauce or ketchup?
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3
October 30, 2009 at 1:29 pm -
Ketchup. (I almost said Sausage sandwich, but that would be risking the ire of Ms Raccoon).
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4
October 30, 2009 at 2:14 pm -
I’m a brown sauce kinda gal m’self, whether the butty be bacon or sausage.
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5
October 30, 2009 at 4:31 pm -
Happy New Year
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6
October 30, 2009 at 8:43 pm -
I love the parallel with splitting the atom, but neither the internet nor the Manhatten Project are up there with the arrival on this earth of Peter Hain’s Tectonic Plates. Before that fateful day in 1906, the Earth was a place of innocence where (continued in a Commons Bar near you this coming Thursday)
To be a tad more serious Raccoon-threaders, I would add to Anna’s sardonic piece on kiddy sodomy just the one very important point viz, that none of the following has the faintest idea what to do about Percy Paedophile: the Government, the education system, social services, local councils, the police, swimming pools, and the Judiciary.
Their solution to date is pretty much that of GCHQ and airport security when it comes to Islamic terrorism: make everyone guilty and thus prone to constant checks. And gagging orders. You need to have the gagging orders for the judging. I could’ve been a judge but I dropped gagging in the Third Form. So I became a normal person instead.
Unfortunately, paedophilia is a narrow form of psychopathic illness; and like all psychos, Percy Paedo is very cunning and absolutely convinced that kids love having their innards torn to shreds on a twice-nightly basis.
He is far, far too clever for the aforementioned folks who as we know suffer a different and even more tragic form of delusional perception, Harmanballs Hain Syndrome by Proxy Vote. And thus the degree to which most of our childcare systems are compromised by these happy sadists is going to get clearer and clearer, and the control freaks will cover it up more and more ….until somebody who knows what he or she is doing gets involved – and government butts out.
Sorry for that note of anguish, but I know of which I write – for once.
Have you ever tried threading Peter Hain by the way? It’s easy til you get to his feet.
Yesterday Man -
7
October 31, 2009 at 1:25 am -
Holy shit. No wonder 5 out of 6 comments are about bacon sandwiches, what a load of bollocks. The fact that he found 200 like minds is solely down to him not the internet. If he had been smarter he would have joined the clergy and met 20000 like minds whilst saving £20 a month on broadband. Likening the internet to splitting the atom in that context is truly the work of a genius. When I grow up I hope I have as much insight into the world as you.
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8
October 31, 2009 at 12:33 pm -
Which leading Labour politician amazed everyone at a recent party when he took to the dancefloor and shook his rump to ‘It’s Raining Men’, then partnered up for a disco romp with Neil Kinnock? In classic 80s teen movie stylee, the floor cleared and a circle of clapping people formed. He was brilliant apparently! Unfortunately Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper muscled in with some shit-awful mum ‘n’ dad dancing and completely ruined the moment.
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9
October 31, 2009 at 4:09 pm -
I think it must have been Peter Hain – nobody else has the feet. Also it should be clear to all thinking people that only homosexuals dig up cricket pitches.
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