[LINK] Happy 20th Birthday WWW

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Roger Clarke
> Sent: Sunday, 15 March 2009 9:34 PM
> To: link at anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Happy 20th Birthday WWW
> 
> 
> At 21:12 +1100 15/3/09, Carl Makin wrote:
> >I had a slip account at the ANU in 93/94 and was using it to 
> demo the 
> >"World Wide Web" to anyone who would listen where I worked in the 
> >systems admin area at the Department of Health.  Unfortunately 
> >management had decided that the future was GOSIP and this Internet 
> >thing was a fad so they were only interested in X.400 
> messaging using 
> >Telecom's Telememo service via Austpac (X.25) at $0.60/page received.
> 
> The *real* case-study would be:
> 
> how long did it take them to work out they were backing the 
> wrong horse?
<Snip>

Well - in the case of Optus - they were still claiming that X.400 would
be the winning standard in October 1996.
I actually resigned my consultant position on the Optus Strategy Team
because young "Kit" (ex-BT) was the messaging guru and he had decided
that X.400 was far more relevent than TCP-IP. I informed them sadly that
unfortunately, consumer pressure was demonstrating that TCP-IP was the
users choice and the x.400 was far too complex and overly topheavy
protocol for simple text messaging and wouldn't fit into cellphone usage
parameters.

Its interesting that 13 years later, I seem to be lobbying on behalf of
the consumer again.

Linkers - is there anyone out there that can tell me how to make a
couple of shekels from being an internet activist ?