First of all, 1999 was 15 years ago but since I started an ISP from the ground up in 1996, I know for a fact that the Internet wasn't quite the dark ages at that time he tries to make it seem. 28.8k modems were around in '94 and by '96 to '97, 56k were standard. And maybe I was just in a lucky area, but I had a Comcast cable modem in 1996 (http://corporate.comcast.com/news-information/timeline).
Getting beyond that, he complains about everything. TCP sucks, UDP sucks, the Internet sucks. A clue for anyone with introspection is when you think everything but you sucks, it's actually you that sucks.
For an example of much more highly skilled engineers working on an arguably even bigger engineering problem in 1996 on a much larger game, read here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3094/1500_archers_on_a...