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Emperor1956 -> RE: explain your name (7/15/2006 11:47:14 PM)
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Well I guess I'll come clean. In fact, "Emperor", all lordly dominant and such sounding, has NOTHING to do with WIIWD.
A true story: A LONG time ago...before the Web, and in fact before the Internet, children, there was a small computer network* operating between a number of the Big 10 schools, including Northwestern U. where I was a geeky freshman in the early 1970s. This network was called PLATO. It linked NU, U of Illinois at Champaign (where the computer was), Purdue, Indiana U. and maybe a few more. My dormitory (a "residential college") had a PLATO terminal in the basement, and I was appointed the keeper of the terminal. My most important august duty was to change the 100 ft roll of yellow paper on the teletype so that the dumb thing wouldn't type without paper and we'd lose messages (there was NO memory of any sort). As the keeper of the terminal, I was dubbed "PAPER EMPEROR". That became shortened to EMPEROR, and it has been part of my handle, in some variation, on every sort of computer system I have been on since 1974.
They say the Internet is a "network of networks?" Well PLATO was the prototype for one of those early networks. Al Gore thinks he invented the Internet? HAH. I invented the Internet! Or at least one small part of it.
The 1956 is the year I was born.
E.
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* this "network" didn't look anything like what you all think a network is. We communicated with a central computer (I think it was an IBM System 370 with (gasp) ONE MEG of memory) via TELETYPES...yes, these huge clunky electronic typewriters that spat out characters on yellow roll paper. You typed in a query in proto-netspeak (R U THR?) and about 3 minutes later it came back with a reply (Y. WE R HRE DORKFISH). There were only capital letters. GOD I feel so old now.
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