[ih] Internet Talk Radio

Wed Jul 22 18:10:17 PDT 2026

I'm not sure which "Interop Movie" you mean.

There was one filmed by Linda Fefferman, under contract to the Interop 
Company, at a DC interop in 1993.  (I contacted her several years ago 
- I was hoping for a chance to get them and digitize the raw takes.  I 
have a suspicion that those original Beta-SP takes were destroyed in the 
big fires in Los Angeles.  And yes, she and her camera person did seem 
to stick the camera into our nasal passages.

(I think it was at that same DC Interop where I gave you and Vint the 
very first Interop Shownet Tour.  I think it was that same show where we 
came up with our rules for "five hours of sleep" and "take a shower!!" - 
yes, we did kinda stink, but one person from Cisco, after several days 
in the same clothing, revealed to us that there was a previously 
undiscovered higher level of work-generated scents.)

The DC Interop movie is up on YouTube and somewhere on the Internet 
Archives.  Here's the YouTube link (where yours truly can be seen, among 
others...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMkKIaHee4c

My wife and I have a quite incomplete set of video interviews that we 
did for our never finished "History of the Internet 1965-1995" project.  
I've got those materials squirreled away on many a backup drive in 
multiple locations, but with a few early exceptions they've never been 
published, much less edited.  For instance, we talked with Dave Farber 
for about eight hours - we did the interview at the University Club in 
San Francisco, so the audio is punctuated with cable car bells.  We were 
prepping for a second visit to Dan Lynch when he died.  Our lack of 
skills in video and sound are quite apparent.  We've always intended to 
publish those unedited raw materials under a creative commons 
attribution/non-commercial license (except for some materials which, as 
requested, will go into the public domain.)  We want to leave a body of 
raw materials that others can edit to tell their stories of what 
happened.  Our focus was not so much on technology as it was on the 
process of creation, of conflicts of ideas, and of the way we were 
uncertain where we were going.  One thought I tried to bring up in the 
interviews was that there were so many ideas that were never fully, or 
even partially, explored.  (We also tried to illuminate some of the fun 
and social aspects - some of the almost Gatsby level parties we had 
[such as on top of the La Grande Arche in Paris, at the Howard Hughes 
penthouse in Las Vegas - everyone wore a bath robe, or a three-day long 
blur at my house in Santa Cruz and various beaches], some of the lesser 
events such as gathering at the Einstein memorial on the DC Mall, the 
amount of alcohol consumed by the Interop show net team (which we 
usually charged to Dan Lynch's credit card), or white water rafting 
(there is a person on this list who perhaps remembers that day, in 
particular an inoperable passenger door that required people - or 
person, me - to climb in via the window.)  The Puritan ethos was not 
strong - The Interop experience brought on many marriages, including my 
own.)

We haven't done many such interviews of late - many people are tired of 
having a microphone/camera stuck in front of them and being asked 
onion-skin thin questions.  And too many have died.  Because my wife and 
I know so many of the people we tried to go deeper, particularly with 
regard to the humanity that went into (and continues to go into) the 
creation of the Internet.

(We have a long list of people we would like to interview - probably 
includes every one on this list - Our kit is still too large for easy 
travel and I need to buy a new camera.  [We've been using an aging 
Panasonic 4K GH-4] as the primary camera.] And, we are getting older and 
increasingly adverse to travel outside of the West Coast.)

         --karl--

On 7/22/26 2:43 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Wow, Thanks Carl!   Just out of curiousity, I found the "Interop 
> Movie" that was filmed at Interop in San Francisco in 1992, but I 
> guess was shown later at Interop France.  I had never seen that movie 
> until just now, and was surprised to find that I'm in it!
>
> That was the year that Oracle took the MazeWars game to Interop and it 
> seems at some point someone stuck a video camera in my face to hear 
> about what we were doing at Oracle.   I don't remember that, and 
> didn't even recognize myself at first -- until my name appeared on the 
> screen.  The memories of that show are a bit fuzzy.  But I seemed to 
> be fairly articulate, even after spending my first and only 96-hour 
> period with no sleep, working before the show opened on getting 
> everything to work (along with a bunch of other sleep-deprived Oracle 
> engineers).
>
> A true historical resource at archive.org!
>
> /Jack Haverty
>
>
> On 7/22/26 14:11, Carl Malamud via Internet-history wrote:
>> :) thanks Brian. Here’s a pointer to the full collection:
>>
>> https://archive.org/details/RT-FM?sort=date&and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22Publications%22 
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 1:55 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I just realised what a fantastic historical resource Carl Malamud 
>>> created:
>>>
>>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>>> Subject: Re: the dangers of April Fool's RFCs....
>>> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:53:28 +1200
>>> From: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
>>> To: Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net>, IETF discussion list <
>>> ietf at ietf.org>
>>>
>>> Craig,
>>>
>>> BTW, it was probably about a year after April 1, 1992 that Carl Malamud
>>> started Internet Talk Radio and Geek of the Week. Milo Medin was the 
>>> first
>>> geek, interview published May 7, 1993. Carl interviewed quite a 
>>> number of
>>> geeks during IETF 27 (Amsterdam, July 1983).
>>>
>>> See 
>>> https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Internet+Talk+Radio%22
>>>
>>> The point is: things move fast on the Internet.
>>>
>>> Regards/Ngā mihi
>>>       Brian Carpenter
>>>
>>> On 23-Jul-26 07:23, Craig Partridge wrote:
>>>> Dan Harkin wrote:
>>>>   > You know, I wrote an April Fools I-D suggesting this sort of thing
>>>> to ensure diversity and I got in trouble!
>>>>
>>>> And I wrote an April Fools RFC (1313) that posited the notion of a 
>>>> radio
>>> station broadcasting audio over the Internet, an outlandish idea we now
>>> call podcasting!
>>>> We should, perhaps, compose an (?April Fools?) RFC on the hazards of
>>> April Fools RFCs becoming reality.
>>>> Craig
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> *****
>>>> Craig Partridge's email account for professional society activities 
>>>> and
>>> mailing lists.
>>> -- 
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>>>
>
>