past: we are living in the year 2012.

past.html

@@ -215,13 +215,13 @@ <h2 id=history-of-the-img-element>A long digression into how standards are made<
 
 <h2 id=an-unbroken-line>An unbroken line</h2>
 
-<p>I am extraordinarily fascinated with all aspects of this almost-17-year-old conversation that led to the creation of an <abbr>HTML</abbr> element that has been used on virtually every web page ever published. Consider: 
+<p>I am extraordinarily fascinated with all aspects of this almost-19-year-old conversation that led to the creation of an <abbr>HTML</abbr> element that has been used on virtually every web page ever published. Consider: 
 
 <p class=ss><img src=i/openclipart.org_johnny_automatic_Corsican_Pine.png width=216 height=405 alt="pine tree">
 
 <ul> 
 <li>HTTP still exists. HTTP successfully evolved from 0.9 into 1.0 and later 1.1. <a href="http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/charter/">And still it evolves</a>. 
-<li>HTML still exists. That rudimentary data format &mdash; it didn&#8217;t even support inline images! &mdash; successfully evolved into 2.0, 3.2, 4.0. HTML is an unbroken line. A twisted, knotted, snarled line, to be sure. There were plenty of &#8220;dead branches&#8221; in the evolutionary tree, places where standards-minded people got ahead of themselves (and ahead of authors and implementors). But still. Here we are, in 2010, and <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#Examples">web pages from 1990</a> still render in modern browsers. I just loaded one up in the browser of my state-of-the-art Android mobile phone, and I didn&#8217;t even get prompted to &#8220;please wait while importing legacy format&#8230;&#8221; 
+<li>HTML still exists. That rudimentary data format &mdash; it didn&#8217;t even support inline images! &mdash; successfully evolved into 2.0, 3.2, 4.0. HTML is an unbroken line. A twisted, knotted, snarled line, to be sure. There were plenty of &#8220;dead branches&#8221; in the evolutionary tree, places where standards-minded people got ahead of themselves (and ahead of authors and implementors). But still. Here we are, in 2012, and <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#Examples">web pages from 1990</a> still render in modern browsers. I just loaded one up in the browser of my state-of-the-art Android mobile phone, and I didn&#8217;t even get prompted to &#8220;please wait while importing legacy format&#8230;&#8221; 
 <li>HTML has always been a conversation between browser makers, authors, standards wonks, and other people who just showed up and liked to talk about angle brackets. Most of the successful versions of HTML have been &#8220;retro-specs,&#8221; catching up to the world while simultaneously trying to nudge it in the right direction. Anyone who tells you that HTML should be kept &#8220;pure&#8221; (presumably by ignoring browser makers, or ignoring authors, or both) is simply misinformed. HTML has never been pure, and all attempts to purify it have been spectacular failures, matched only by the attempts to replace it. 
 <li>None of the browsers from 1993 still exist in any recognizable form. Netscape Navigator was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite#Open_sourcing_of_Communicator">abandoned in 1998</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite#Rewriting_from_scratch">rewritten from scratch</a> to create the Mozilla Suite, which was then <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Firefox">forked to create Firefox</a>. Internet Explorer had its humble &#8220;beginnings&#8221; in &#8220;Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95,&#8221; where it was bundled with some desktop themes and a pinball game. (But of course that browser <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyglass_Mosaic">can be traced back further too</a>.) 
 <li>Some of the operating systems from 1993 still exist, but none of them are relevant to the modern web. Most people today who &#8220;experience&#8221; the web do so on a PC running Windows 2000 or later, a Mac running Mac OS X, a PC running some flavor of Linux, or a handheld device like an iPhone. In 1993, Windows was at version 3.1 (and competing with OS/2), Macs were running System 7, and Linux was distributed via Usenet. (Want to have some fun? Find a graybeard and whisper &#8220;Trumpet Winsock&#8221; or &#8220;MacPPP.&#8221;)