“Relcomization of the whole country”
A selection of articles on piracy in the 1990s, somehow perceived by Habrom with hostility, ended with optimistic forecasts from the leaders of the IT industry that the development of networks in the near future will replace most PCs with simple "thin clients" and resource-intensive applications will not work on the user's computer, and on the central servers. Progress did not go entirely in this direction — even web applications now require substantial resources on the user’s side — but it's interesting to look at what they wrote about PC progress just a couple of years before the article on “replacing personal computers with networked computers”:(ComputerPress, January 1995)
Rumors about the birth of a home computer are a bit exaggerated
N.Ivanov
In the summertime, under the shade of an acacia,Nice to dream of dislocation.
Thaddeus Kozmich Prutkov
Recently in the Russian press, not only computer, but also universal, more and more often you can find the phrase "home computer". The noise raised around the “computer for the people” is somewhat reminiscent of the mass informatization and general computer literacy campaign of the beginning of perestroika. That campaign was caused by the unprecedented success of the Soviet engineers, who still managed to copy the Intel 8080 and master the serial production of the clone (please do not view this as a reproach to the aforementioned engineers - we all fell out of the same nest). You remember that 3-4 years ago in every store of food products it was possible to buy a freak, programmed in BASIC cheaply, with an “Electronics-302” streamer and a black and white high-resolution monitor, which could also be used as a television receiver . True, the mass buyer did not go in the wake of the prophets of the computer era, preferring sausage, and professionals assembled computers and more powerful from improvised means (if they did not manage to drag off the bourgeois AT-shku from work). In general, the first wave of domestication of “smart machines” broke against the wall of indifference.
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The current situation is significantly different from the then. First, in connection with a significant increase in the price of sausage, effective demand is gradually shifting towards high-tech goods. Secondly, the industrial and business market seems to be saturated with computers, and the offer naturally looks for access to other market segments. Thirdly, the new wave is not inspired by the success of Russian science and is moving not from Zelenograd and Podlipok, but from somewhere overseas. Fortune Magazine (July 25, 1994, p. 113) notes that in 1993, "unprecedented sales growth to" home "users took the industry by surprise." The gradual return of Russia to the bosom of the global economy contributes to the fact that the Russian market is increasingly responding to changes in the Western market. Thus, the prerequisites for the second computer revolution, which will allow each cook to control a computer, are more substantial. What can we expect on our shelves, and how to treat this?We have a fairly clear picture of what is happening at the epicenter of all computer cataclysms - in the USA. The company Channel Marketing (Dallas, Texas) published its study, from which it appears that in 1993, 30% of computers in the United States were sold to home users. It is expected that by 1996 this figure will increase to 42%. 33% of American families have at home one or more computers, which results in 36 million computers in 33 million homes. The authors of the study believe that by 2000 the number of home computers will increase 8 (!) Times. The vast majority of computer owners acquire them (most often at the expense of their employers) in order to do basic work at home, or to run their own business. Among other major buying motives, there is an opportunity to use multimedia tools and manage your own finances.
From all this we can conclude the following:
- those who acquire computers to perform basic work are likely to choose models and configurations similar to those used in their office, that is, modern business computers;
- Not every computer is also suitable for effective use of multimedia: a fast processor, a lot of memory, a high-resolution monitor, a CD-ROM are necessary.
To this should be added the developed infrastructure of computer communications (at least reliable telephone lines), a multitude of on-line systems with a huge amount of various information, thousands of reference books and encyclopedias on CDs, training programs for schoolchildren and students — and all this, notice in native language! How can you not buy a computer or another. Especially if there is enough money.
The situation on the Russian market is slightly different from the rainbow picture described above. According to a survey by the sociological service Monitoring (Center Plus, No. 24, 1994), conducted among Muscovites, 10% of the capital’s residents already have a computer at home, 21% really want to have it, and another 18% want it, but get along. Moscow, as is clear, although it is the first violin in all Russian innovations, still cannot represent the all-Russian tendency. Nevertheless, the prospects seem tempting, especially when you consider that the main players in the computer market work in Moscow. What do they offer (or are going to offer) to almost 4 million Muscovites who want to join the high technologies?
The leaders of the "red assembly" - Kami, Steenes Coman, Aquarius and Steepler, who put a hand on the "Dandy", almost simultaneously and most likely independently of each other decided at the end of this - early next year to put their models of mainstream computers on the market. For obvious reasons, the details of these shares remain classified, only Kami and Stins Coman set out their plans in detail. Computers for home, most likely, will be cheap, even compared with the most simple models of "computer for the office." Moreover, it is planned to adjust the system of sales on credit (the capitalist analogue of the Soviet installment plan). Such a scheme should attract the interest of a post-Soviet person with a relatively thin wallet - or an economical “new Russian”. Obviously, from a microeconomic point of view, such a computer should be a success.
Unfortunately, a computer is a high-tech product and for its marketing analysis it is necessary to take into account its technical characteristics. "People's computer", apparently, will resemble an enlarged game console with (gradually out of use) 386-m processor, 1-2 MB of RAM and a floppy disk drive. Probably installing a small hard drive, CD-ROM drive, sound card; As the monitor most likely the household TV will be used. It is clear that such a configuration is significantly inferior in power to ordinary business computers. A person accustomed to "486DX2 / 66, RAM 8 MB, HDD 200 MB ..." is unlikely to be able to safely drink tea while his "electronic household" loads the file.
There are a few dubious moments. It is unlikely that an intuitive operating environment like “C:>” would be suitable for a home computer. And how can you boot Windows from a floppy? Not to mention System 7. Another problem can be that after 15 minutes of working with a TV at a distance of half a meter the user of such a computer will look like a Dandy baby elephant with bulging pink eyes. Working sitting three meters from the monitor with a computer on your lap is also not very convenient.
There is another approach to the concept of "home computer". Small firms that import ready-made models or assemble them here on the knee of components, offer the usual Western (or rather, Eastern) configurations of multimedia. Such computers have quite a decent set of characteristics, including the price (about $ 2,000). Macintoshs are in a somewhat better position, which, in addition to traditional multimedia tools, have no less traditional simplicity and intuitiveness of the interface. In addition, many may prefer the well-known brand for reasons of prestige and guaranteed reliability. The same Roger McNami (Fortune, see above) believes that “any company with a strong brand has an advantage [in the home market], in particular, Apple and Compaq”.
Nevertheless, each of these approaches will certainly bear fruit, happy owners will bring elegant boxes to their apartments and, surrounded by joyfully excited children and doubting mother-in-law, will turn on their purchases in the sockets. What do they see on the screen? Wyndouz. Tc, who got the diskless "Kami Megadrayv" - PTS-DOS (developed by PhysTech, if not mistaken). Word processor Lexicon . Turbo Accountant or 1C. Ten primitive tutorials. Two dozen toys. The lucky ones with a CD-ROM drive will be able to complete a computer literacy course, right up to writing resident programs, or see a guide to the museums of the Moscow Kremlin, designed for foreigners looking for exotic things and translated into Russian. It seems that this is all (or almost all) that our software industry has to offer the Russian user, who finally and irrevocably passed English in the third year. Those who have a modem lying around their home will be able to read UNIX news and find out the dollar rate on the Relkom network or chat with hackers on one of the local BBS. However, in order to run UUCP (the protocol used in Relcom), one higher education will not be enough.
Pretty bleak picture. But we still have some time left. While home computers will make their way to the hearts and wallets of consumers, we must have time to write at least a dozen programs focused on the Russian reality; stamp a dozen CD-ROMs with the Great Russian Encyclopedia and telephone directory; create a couple of our CompuServe'ov that would be interesting to the common man, speaking not only in assembly language. If we do not succeed, I fear that the second Russian computer revolution will end just as inglorious as the recent "informatization of the whole country".
Note. This article in no way claims to be complete and unambiguous. Comments, suggestions and insults will be received with interest by the author.
Separately, I would like to draw attention to the phrase “However, in order to launch UUCP (the protocol used in Relcom), one higher education will not be enough.”
By 1995, the Internet had already arrived in Russia - the WWW was still being formed, but the e-mail and Usenet conferences were already in full swing; Nevertheless, the word "Internet" in everyday life has not yet been - it was called "relkom" by the name of a single provider. As an example of the then word usage, Google Groups preserved post titles: “On violations of freedom of speech in reklom.” “Some postings from reklom do not reach ...” “Can I get a file from Relcom by Fido?” Etc.
There is such a touching story:
It all started with the fact that approximately in 1986, different teams began to play with various network priladami. The first internal networks appeared, which were mainly based on telephone channels - both on redundant and
dial-up (with dialing).
Gamma built its networks in organizations where it installed the MISS OS, and the IPK-KIAE team created a network of three nodes in Moscow: Demos - KIAE - JV Dialogue. All Unix networks of that time were based on the UUCP protocol, TCP / IP was still far away.
In the same 1990, it turned out that one of the employees of Demos, Dima Volodin, had a friend Finn named Leo Tomberg living in Estonia. And he, in turn, knew Petri Ojala, a 19-year-old student at the University of Helsinki, who had good access to university computers.
Once, when modems were already in Demos, Leo Tomberg went to Demos for a cup of tea. Having drunk some tea, the demos and Leo thought: Why don't we call and log in to Helsinki. No sooner said than done: they called and stopped.So Demos received a UUCP login at the University of Helsinki. And here it was already close to Relcom. Began to drive mail, newsy. And it went, and went - reklomizatsiya the entire country.
A month after being connected to Helsinki, on September 19, 1990, Vadim Antonov registered the .su domain (this domain is still alive). The first machine connecting the USSR with the rest of the world was the 486th Pisyuk operating at 25 MHz.
At first, everyone was hooked up for free, in the spirit of, so to speak, catholicity and familiarization with the values of a foreign civilization. There was a sort of enthusiasm for the opportunities that had opened up. Then telephone bills began to come to Demos for international calls to Finland, and network construction in Russia had to be commercialized.
The money from commercialization was purchased by the modem Telebit T2500 which on the Soviet lines gave out 2 kb / s. In February 1991, the first TCP / IP link in Russia was launched. Link was on a modem between Moscow and Barnaul at a speed of as much as 9600 baud.
Meanwhile, the magazines explained to their readers what this Relcom is and how to use it:
(ComputerPress 2'92)
Continuing the conversation begun about the immense possibilities of global computer networks, let's talk more about the teleconferences. Hereinafter, the main focus will be on the USENET worldwide teleconferencing system, specially created for the distribution of teleconferences. Subscribers to most networks in the world, including the Relcom network, have access to it. The technology of “teleconferans” has already been covered earlier, but nevertheless it does not hurt to remember several things.
Newsgroups - what is it?
How does it look
Most of all, the newsgroup is like a newspaper publishing what readers send to it. By sending his letter to the teleconference, the author appeals to all its participants, and their number can vary from 50 to 300,000. Any user of a machine connected to USENET can participate in any teleconference - on the territory of the “ruble zone” (what was previously designated by the letters of the USSR) each subscriber of the Relcom network has such an opportunity. To do this, you must follow the subscription procedure.
Subscription can be carried out in two modes. In any case, you choose from the extensive list of newsgroups those topics that interest you.
By subscribing to the first of these modes, you receive on your computer a list of the headers of the letters of articles that are currently being sent to the conferences you have selected. The title includes the author’s name, the number of lines in the letter, and the name he gave to his article. In fact, this title is the same as the Subject: field (Email Subject :). It may be completely new if the author starts a new topic, or may contain an indication that the article is a continuation of the discussion. For example:
Ivanov II 35 New joke about Scoop(Ivanov I.I. sent an article 35 lines long with a new anecdote about Scoop.)
Kozloff K.K. 125 Re: New joke about Scoop(Kozlov KK tells everyone in detail what he thinks about Mr. Ivanov and his new joke about Scoop.)
Sidorov Vasya 1 Re: Re: New joke about Scoop(Vasily Sidorov briefly tells everyone his thoughts on Mr. Kozlov’s thoughts about the new joke about Scoop.)
After receiving this list, the differences in the two subscription modes become clear. In the first mode, you first get a list of new article headers, and then ask the site to which your computer is connected to send only those articles that have intrigued you with their headers. In the second mode, you get all the articles at once and completely, paying for each transferred byte, although some of the articles are likely to be useless and uninteresting. If you can not afford this luxury, then the first mode suits you more. By the way: many newsgroups have a very large total volume, and if you do not very often disassemble them, there is a chance that the hard drive will be clogged up to the last bit in a couple of weeks.
However, the choice of the regime strongly depends on the conference and the atmosphere in it: there are newsgroups purely business-like, in which the “noise” coefficient is minimal, and there are those where the minimum amount of useful information is lost in the sea of “mumble” and skirmishes.
Both modes give users a minimum of headaches, since all the rough work is performed by computers, with computers being nodal. The main problem is that you may not appreciate the number of articles in a conference or your abilities, improved on speed reading courses, and you will literally be buried under an avalanche of information that slashes on you from newsgroups - there are some among them. day there are several hundred articles.
What they are
At USENET, there are newsgroups devoted to virtually any area of human interest, from picking up old radio sets to protecting sexual minorities, from nuclear research to discussing Muppets. In past years, computer-related topics were clear leaders, but in the past few years they have been rapidly losing ground. The total number of different conference groups distributed throughout the world varies around two thousand. Almost all of them are available through the Relcom network.
In order to navigate this sea of topics and information, the names of newsgroups are set in accordance with certain rules. There is a certain hierarchy of conferences - there are sections (for example, comp - computers, ges - entertainment, talk - conversations, soc - having public interest, nordunet - internal newsgroups of the Scandinavian network, relcom - internal conferences of the Relcom network), and to them is added the word specifying topic of the conference. According to these rules, a conference inside Relcom that discusses terminology is called relcom.terms. With the extensiveness of the initial section, subsections appear and further nesting - for example,
| rec.arts.books | (entertainment. art. books) |
| rec.arts.movies | (entertainment. art. movies) |
| rec.arts.sf-lovers | (entertainment. art. science fiction lovers), etc. |
Example:
| Teleconference | relcom.infomarket.talk |
| Leading | aoand@talk.asmp.msk.su |
| Purpose | Discussion of various issues in the framework of the project "Inforynok" |
But in general, the rules of conduct in conferences and the “network” etiquette are a separate topic for conversation, the information already available on this issue could make up material for several dissertations.
Where do they live
It is clear that an audience of hundreds of thousands of people does honor to any speaker, but is it worth your speech to spend several thousand man-hours on it that a global audience will take to read your one-page message? Do scientists in Northern California need to read about your torment with the Russification of a strange German printer? Before you send an article, consider where it will go. If she is sent to a newsgroup from “comp", “news", “misc“, “soc“, “sci“, “rec“ or “talk" sections, then she will probably go to the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, many Asian countries. Some articles are only of local interest and should not be sent to the whole world.
To solve this problem, USENET provides two possible solutions. The first one (and more witty) is to use the Distribution field in the sent letters: (Distribute :). With it, you can set the distribution limit of your message. For example, if you set the value of this field to “su“, then the article will not go beyond the boundaries of the “ruble zone”, if you put “europe“ - then beyond the borders of Europe.The second possible solution is to organize regional conferences with duplication of topics already existing in USENET. This happens, for example, in Relcom - taking into account the specificity of the interests of our users and the fact that they want to communicate in Russian separately from the whole world. As a result, relcom.msdos (dedicated to the MS-DOS operating system), relcom.x (issues related to X.Windows), and so on appeared.
And what about us?
Right now inside Relcom, more and more new conferences are rapidly emerging. Obviously, this is due to the fact that the number of Relcom subscribers has exceeded some critical value, and many have already gained considerable experience in this system. If in the first six months of the work of the network of conferences there were only two or three, and they discussed issues related to the development of the network, now there are more than 20 of them, and the increase in both the number of conferences and the number of articles in them occurs exponentially. In addition to the already mentioned relcom.msdos, relcom.infomarket.talk, relcom.terms, relcom.x, and a number of conferences serving the internal needs of the network (relcom.test, relcom.postmasters, and so on), several more exist ( see tab.).
| Teleconference | Purpose |
|---|---|
| relcom.ads | Various commercial and advertising announcements |
| relcom.infomarket.quote | Stock quotes |
| relcom.netnews | Various news of general interest |
| relcom. politics | Political Discussion |
| relcom.sources | Source codes of programs and another |
In addition to the conferences described, (the payment for information in which is made on the basis of the transmitted bytes), there is also a number of commercial teleconferences. One of them is The Teleputing Hotline, familiar to you from the ComputerPress news releases .
A couple more words
In this article, an attempt was made to show only the very edge of another corner of the grandiose world, which offers us the latest technology. The capabilities of newsgroups and their various subspecies are only beginning to penetrate into the consciousness of even those who have been working with them for a long time. In the next issues we will try to talk about mailing lists, rules of conduct in the network and netiquette, USENET, commercial sources of information within the Relcom network.
E.Peskin
Network address: eugene@hq.demos.su
The examples of letters given in the article - with the name of the sender in Latin, and the heading in Cyrillic - quite optimistically reflect the situation of that time: in fact, due to the disagreement of the Cyrillic encodings used and due to (intermediate to unpredictable) text transcriptions by intermediate servers - a significant part of the messages reached “Krakozyabrami”, so that the most cunning tried to write in Latin at least the title: they say, if you are interested in the reader so much that he downloads the message itself - then he is already offline taken as his decrypt and read.
Two years later, when alternative Internet providers appeared and “reklom” turned into “runet” - problems associated with the lack of a “common” Cyrillic encoding in the network, became the “topic of the issue” of Computerra for March 1997. At the same time, the first domestic rating appeared websites:
Top 100 Russian Internet
Those who at least occasionally visit the Internet probably noticed that a blue-and-white icon “Rambler's Top 100 Counter” has recently appeared on many Russian-language pages. This is a free “counting service” for sites located on the territory of the former USSR. According to the statements of the organizers of the “Rambler's Tor 100” project (they may be remembered by the Russian Rambler search engine), its main goals are: to provide page owners with the ability to quickly and accurately calculate the number of hits (hits); determining a comparative assessment of the popularity of large servers; Evaluation by advertisers of the traffic of their potential partners for making a decision on the appropriateness of advertising. Server Top 100 is available at www.rambler.ru/top100 .
Becoming a participant in the project, the host of the page gets the opportunity to place the icon “Rambler's Top 100” on it with a visit counter, and a link to its page appears in the monitoring table of the number of visits.
Participants can analyze the statistics of visits to their Web pages. Moreover, a registered user may not take part in the rating at all, then his data will be available only to him.
According to the organizers, the results of comparing the popularity of large servers are correct, as the automatic counter of visits works according to the same algorithm for all registered sites.
The server tracks the total number of visits to the specified page, the number of visits for the current day, the number of visits following from one site in less than 30 seconds, the number of suspicious visits (the Referer does not match the stated URL during registration), the number of callbacks of the declared page (Reload), the number of returns to the page in less than an hour, the number of returns after an hour, as well as the average hourly values of the number of visits for the page. The user is given the opportunity to get acquainted with the most detailed statistics for the last day, as well as with the data in the dynamics for the month and year.
Perhaps the new service will cause the birth of another fun on the Russian Internet: add your page to the rating and lust to see how its popularity is growing in the electronic community.
According to some Russian observers, the popularity of the Top 100 servers has reached a dead end when the first major Internet providers entered it. At the moment they occupy six positions in the top ten. Two more positions in the leaderboard belong to the chat-servers “Divan” and “Cot”, where a large number of visits is created due to the fact that members of chat'ov are forced to reload the page (build up hits) with each new replica, their own or someone else’s. The organizers of the “Top 100" agree that chat servers should be put in a separate rating, but they categorically refuse to create a special category for Internet service providers' sites, the secret of a large number of visits to which is easily explained: the browser simply automatically brings the user to the home page. provider page. -ABOUT.
It is interesting to pay attention to related advertising: "$ 1.5! For one hour of access to the Internet via a direct link of 2 Mbit / s!" With a coupon for as many as five free hours!
It is interesting what kind of connection is being discussed: for a modem - suspiciously fast, for a dedicated line - hourly charging seems ridiculous ...
However, probably it’s still a modem, and “2 Mbit / s” refers to the provider’s channel. The stereotype that an Internet connection can only be made via a telephone was still firm in 1997: even in that August article, full of optimistic forecasts about the development of networks and "networked computers", there was a concern:“A networked computer connected to the Internet for an individual consumer in Russia has more vague prospects. The reasons are well known: the same piracy, extremely backward telephone communication and insufficient development of the Internet ... ”The
development of wireless communication was even less optimistic - and this against the background of the first steps of cellular communication : the launch of the Moscow NMT station, the acquisition of AMPS technology from Americans, and negotiations with the army on the use of GSM-frequencies. (ComputerPress 3'92)
Wireless data transmission
In 1992, various methods of wireless data transmission at various frequencies will begin to operate. BellSouth acquired half of Ram Mobile Data's data network for $ 300 million, and IBM and Motorola are behind Ardis' rival network. There is also the company Cellular Data Inc., which is going to offer packet data transmission over ordinary cellular telephone networks, possibly, together with the companies' network operators. Add here Fleet Call and other ESMR data transfer systems, and get huge amounts of capital in pursuit of a market that no one can prove.The Teleputing Hotline,
January 27, 1991.
Cellular communication in Moscow
This week, three messages came about how quickly the ubiquity of cellular communications is becoming a reality. Kirill Chaschin writes that Moscow Cellular Communications announced the start of trial operation of a cellular system at a frequency of 450 MHz - Managing Director Veronika Blomsted expects that in 5 years the system will have 60,000 customers. The partner of the Moscow City Telephone Network on MSS is the company US West (Colorado, USA). Even if the MCC is not crowned with success, then there are still engineers from Vympel, who are studying in the USA from Plexsys in the USA how to create cellular nodes for work in Russia. Another deal with Pennant with Cellular Inc. (Colorado) may put on the agenda the creation of a PCN service on a microwave basis.The Teleputing Hotline,
January 13, 1991.
With a small “battle”, the Soviet army can give a part of the frequency range around 900 MHz, which is used throughout the world for cellular communication networks, and in the CIS for military air navigation. Presumably, the military will give away those parts of the spectrum that they had taken, but were not actually used. As news agency Newsbytes learned, in addition to organizations aiming at creating public cellular telephone networks, the police and state security service, who want to improve their own communication systems, are also fighting for 900 MHz.
Newsbytes News Network,
January 27, 1991.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/177673/
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