Internet and WWW Information Links -- dan.tobias.name

These features and Web links pertain to the Web itself, as well as the Internet and other online things. I originally used the header "The 'Net & Yahoo", as a lame pun on the name of the Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, but that became dated after he left office... but now he's back! (And [as of 2021] he's out again... but [as of 2022] back in yet another time!)

Features in This Site

Monoculture: Just As Bad an Idea in Computing as in Agriculture -- my essay in favor of greater diversity in software, particularly on the Internet.
The Problem with PayPal -- What's wrong with this ubiquitous funds-transfer service.
If Cybersitter Were Marketed Honestly -- My take on a "self-censorship" program.
Controversies in Cyberspace -- The 'net-related part of the controversies section of this site.
Reciprocal Links Page -- link me and I'll link you.
Europa -- my page in a linked list of Web pages that predates WebRing.

Some of My Other Related Sites

Dan's Web Tips helps you develop your Web site by providing some of the information you'll never find in any book.
Dan's Domain Site has all the information you want to know about domain names.
My parody of the .info registry site
dan.info -- the 'portal' into all my stuff on the Web

Internet history, statistics, etc.

My column for Softdisk for Windows #6 (1995), introducing that newfangled World Wide Web thingy.
History of ARPANET -- the predecessor of the Internet.
Statistics on NSFNET traffic, showing the growth of Internet up to the point in 1995 when NSFNET was phased out in favor of privatized nets. (Raw FTP file archive; no neat graphical menus or anything.)
The Internet Archive -- has historical copies of many Web sites from different times.
Google Directory: Internet History
This 1968 demo by Doug Engelbart mentions the Arpanet being about to start the following year, and shows off some visionary stuff like mouse-based navigation that wouldn't be used by the general public until decades later.
This book written in 1971 predicted a global "web" of information and other things ahead of its time.

Those big corporate online services... and the people who love to hate them.

America Online
AOL Sucks
Another AOL Sucks Home Page
CompuServe (now owned by AOL)
Prodigy (seems to be a regular ISP now, not a proprietary service as it used to be)

Other stuff

Podcast on K-12 remote learning during COVID pandemic
Search Thingy -- lets you use a number of search engines from one page.
All4One also lets you search in multiple search engines at once.
The Hacker Jargon Dictionary -- Are you a hacker, a suit, or a marketroid?
Everything2 -- a giant, interlinked "encyclopedia" that its users participate in creating.
Wikipedia is even more encyclopedia-ish than that one, and it's also user-editable.
Know your System Administrator -- What type is he/she?
Homesteading the Noosphere -- Some insight into what motivates participants in open-source software projects, and how their "geek culture" has evolved.
The Programmers' Stone -- online "book" with a somewhat dense writing style, but with some interesting points about the mindset of programmers vs. most others.
World of Ends -- What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.
Computerworld Sharktank -- has lots of amusing anecdotes from the information technology field.
The Internet is Shit -- and among the shit on the Internet is rants like that one which say that the Internet is shit.
Tact Filters -- an interesting essay about how geeks differ from others in their sense of "tact".
Let's Solve the File Format Problem! -- wiki-based project to document file formats of all sorts

This page was first created 09 Apr 1995, and was last modified 4 Dec 2022.