2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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the network
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. 1. Historically, the union of all the major noncommercial, academic, and
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hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet,
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BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and Usenet networks , plus the corporate
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in-house networks and commercial timesharing services (such as CompuServe,
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GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them. A site is generally considered on the
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network if it can be reached through some combination of Internet-style
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(@-sign) and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See Internet , bang path , network
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address. 2. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in 1994 and
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subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, the network is
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increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was before the
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second wave of wide-area computer networking began around 1980). 3. A
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fictional conspiracy of libertarian hacker-subversives and
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anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers described in Robert Anton Wilson's novel
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Schrdinger's Cat , to which many hackers have subsequently decided they
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belong (this is an example of ha ha only serious ). In sense 1, the network
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is often abbreviated to the net. Are you on the net? is a frequent question
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when hackers first meet face to face, and See you on the net! is a frequent
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goodbye.
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