Portal:Internet



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The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources, the development of packet switching in the 1960s and the design of computer networks for data communication. The set of rules (communication protocols) to enable internetworking on the Internet arose from research and development commissioned in the 1970s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense in collaboration with universities and researchers across the United States and in the United Kingdom and France. The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, encouraged worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and the merger of many networks using DARPA's Internet protocol suite. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of the World Wide Web, marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the internetwork. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, the subsequent commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s and beyond incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life. (Full article...)

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WikiWorld comic, by Greg Williams
Exploding whales have been documented on two notable occasions, as well as several lesser-known ones. The most famous explosion occurred in the United States at Florence, Oregon, in 1970, when a dead sperm whale (originally reported as a gray whale) was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of its rotting carcass. This incident became famous in the U.S. when American humorist Dave Barry wrote about it in his newspaper column after viewing a videotape of television footage of the explosion. It later became well-known internationally when the same footage circulated on the Internet. There have also been spontaneous explosions. The other best-reported case of an exploding whale was in Taiwan in 2004, when a buildup of gas inside a decomposing sperm whale caused it to explode while it was being transported for a post-mortem examination. As exploding whales are an interesting and absurd topic, they have been written about by several authors.

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Tech. Sgt. Troy Goodman watches the newest member of his family via webcam
Tech. Sgt. Troy Goodman watches the newest member of his family via webcam
Credit: United States Air Force, Master Sergeant Sean Brennan

Webcams are small cameras, (usually, though not always, video cameras) whose images can be accessed using the World Wide Web, instant messaging, or a PC video conferencing application. The term webcam is also used to describe the low-resolution digital video cameras designed for such purposes, but which can also be used to record in a non-real-time fashion.

vcash was a Malaysian digital wallet and online payment platform established in Shah Alam in November 2017, by Digi Telecommunications, a subsidiary of Telenor Group. vcash allowed users to make payments in local stores via a QR code, pay bills, top-up prepaid mobile phones, and do P2P transfers. Despite being a Digi product, user registration and usage of this service was opened to both Digi and non-Digi customers. Its competitors were GrabPay, Touch 'n Go eWallet, and Axiata's Boost. On 1 November 2019, Digi announced they were discontinuing vcash on 30 November 2019, two years after its launch, which were attributed to stiff competition from competitors that provide rewards to their users to retain customers in their services. (Full article...)

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Sergey Brin in 2004
Sergey Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is a Russian-born American entrepreneur who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin currently holds the position of President of Technology at Google and has a net worth estimated at $18.5 billion as of March 9, 2007, making him the 26th richest person in the world and the 5th richest person in the United States, together with Larry Page. He is also the fourth-youngest billionaire in the world. After graduating from the University of Maryland, Brin received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which allowed him to study for his master's degree in computer science at Stanford University. Brin received his master's degree in August 1995 ahead of schedule in the process of his Ph.D. studies. Although he is still enrolled in the Stanford doctoral program, Brin has suspended his Ph.D. studies indefinitely while he is working at Google. Brin met Larry Page while they were both graduate students at Stanford, and they authored a paper together entitled a paper entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."

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The following are images from various internet-related articles on Wikipedia.

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Nicholas Negroponte
Computing is not about computers. It is about life. We are discussing a fundamental cultural change: Being digital is not just being a geek or Internet surfer or mathematically savvy child. It is actually a way of living and is going to impact everything.

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