Sage who warned of Net's collapse eats his words.
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`4/11/97 Reuters News 00:00:00
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`Reuters
`Copyright © 1997 Reuters Limited
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`April 11, 1997
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`Sage who warned of Net's collapse eats his words.
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`SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 10 (Reuter) - The networking pioneer turned computer industry columnist who predicted
`the Internet would collapse last year, Thursday kept to his promise by literally eating his words.
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`Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet technology and founder of 3Com Corp, had pledged he would eat the words from a
`December 1995 InfoWorld column he wrote if the dramatic debacle he predicted did not come to pass.
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`In the column, Metcalfe warned of a "catastrophic collapse" of the Internet in 1996.
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`He made the original vow at a conference of World Wide Web engineers and enthusiasts in Boston in 1995, and he argued
`here before the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference Thursday that the Web had logged major outages.
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`Metcalfe said that outages at Netcom On-Line Communications, America Online and BBN Corp had demonstrated
`instances where thousands and millions of lost service hours had occurred.
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`But he also acknowledged the "gigalapse" catastrophe he'd projected had not yet happened.
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`Metcalfe did plead that he had just turned 51 years old and, although he had checked to determine the ink in his column
`was non-toxic, ingesting it could make him fatally ill, jeopardizing the happiness of his children.
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`Metcalfe's arguments in a closing keynote address on Thursday night were apparently not persuasive enough to swing a
`room packed with Internet partisans and experts with a stake the Web's continued growth.
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`The crowd erupted in hoops, claps and chants of "Eat, baby, Eat!" when he put the decision to a voice vote.
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`Then the crowd booed and whistled when Metcalfe tried to get away with eating a piece of giant cake, shaped and finished
`with icing to look like it was his column, instead of eating the column itself.
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`"You mean eating just a piece of cake is not enough to satisfy you? I kind of suspected it would turn ugly," he said in
`mock surprise.
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`Metcalfe then ripped a copy of the offensive column from a back issue of the industry publication, tore it into pieces and
`dropped it into a clear liquid in an electric blender he'd hidden on stage.
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`The columnist then poured the resulting mix into bowl, and tasted the cloudy, pulpy substance with a spoon before
`slurping down the bowl's contents to the crowd's cheers.
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` © 2017 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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`Sage who warned of Net's collapse eats his words.
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`(c) Reuters Limited 1997
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`---- Index References ----
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`Company: TIME WARNER INC; SUPERFLY ADVERTISING INC; 3COM CORP
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`Region: (North America (1NO39); Americas (1AM92); USA (1US73))
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`Language: EN
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`Other Indexing: (3COM CORP; AMERICA ONLINE; CORP; WEB) (Bob Metcalfe; Eat; Metcalfe; Sage)
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`Word Count: 381
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`End of Document
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`© 2017 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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` © 2017 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
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