2004.11.27 ~08 How times change (inet). Via random perusals, I found this joke page with an mdate of 1996 Feb: http://users.vnet.net/matjohns/humor/10.ways.internet.worse.html ("Top ten ways the internet could get worse") Relevant Google searches peg a date predating mid-1995. Around this time, Microsoft Windows 95 started, Intel Pentium CPUs were clocking in at around 100 MHz and still stinging from the FDIV bug, and WWW was just starting to bloom with Mosaic and Netscape Navigator. What's scary is how much of the joke's content has come to pass. > 8. Home shopping "network". Online shopping (e.g. amazon, e-bay). 'nuff said. > 6. Sun internet servers replaced with pentiums. It's pretty clear the pentiums referred to are the original series pentium, the i586-equivalent, and not Pentium IV, but still, a good number of online servers these days are running x86-family CPUs (e.g. Xeon, Opteron, ... Celeron...). And let's not forget the vast sea of wintel machines ripe for zombification. > 5. Dan Quayle appointed head of "bandwidth expansion tiger team". I think President G.W. Bush (#43) is pushing for more spread of high-speed net connections in homes across the US. But then, so had Pres. Clinton (#42), but Quayle was VP under Pres. G.H.W. Bush (#41), which sort of compounds the eerie-ness factor. > 4. Free netcom account with purchase of big mac. I get a weird deja-vu-ish feeling that something very similar had come to pass. The following come to mind: juno, netzero, gmail, hotmail. I can't think of any in particular associated with purchase of fast food, though. On another note, the significance/meaning of "netcom" has faded with time as well; I have no idea what "netcom" is supposed to mean in this context, and a naive lookup of www.netcom.com redirects to www.earthlink.com; www.netcom.org is beyond my comprehension. > 3. Gameboy web browsers. As with the pentium bit, the referenced device is clearly the Z80-powered original Gameboy, and not the contemporary StrongARM-powered Gameboy Advance. Regardless, we now have Gameboy [Advance] web *servers*: http://www.fivemouse.com/gba/ > 1. Two words: "Microsoft Network". Indeed. www.msn.net. ph33r.