Kevin Poulsen has noted the death (and birthday) of telnet on 27B Stroke 6. Microsoft has apparently decided to release the Vista OS without a telnet client, a first for Windows.
I have a long, storied personal history with the little network protocol. I actually used to telnet over to Wired's servers to read the magazine online back when I was in college in 1993 and 1994.
I was an RA, which is basically a glorified "den mother" for my dorm, and the job required me to sit in my room with the door open on weekend nights. So, that's what I did on those lonely Fridays and Saturdays – I learned how to ride the internet's backbone by telneting off to distant locations from the command line. The girls all thought I was super-cool. So much so, they always asked me to fix their computers for them. Can't buy that kind of attention at the store!
In later years, I got a girlfriend and switched to PuTTY, the free client I still use today.
