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The AOL discussion reminded me of when I found that I got better dial-up speeds from a free ISP than I did from my paid AOL account. I switched to using NetZero from AOL and connected at consistently better speeds. That short window of free ad-driven ISPs seems to count as a tech relic.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:09
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CaptainSarcastic posted:The AOL discussion reminded me of when I found that I got better dial-up speeds from a free ISP than I did from my paid AOL account. I switched to using NetZero from AOL and connected at consistently better speeds. That short window of free ad-driven ISPs seems to count as a tech relic. I had to troubleshoot some lady's net zero account but where I worked got phone service through Vonage. So I had to dial out through the internet. Cojawfee has a new favorite as of 22:56 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 14, 2017 22:10
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IIRC, Juno got in big trouble for replacing every website's ads with their own.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:26
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Lord, that's a blast from the past. The Juno TOS also allowed them to use your PC during "off-hours". The software would determine when your PC was typically inactive but on, then dial into their servers and use your PC to "process" whatever they needed to process aka old fashioned timeshares. When it dialed in it usually did so with the modem volume turned off, but one update they goofed and left the modem volume on. Imagine being awoken by space invaders at 2am.
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Jun 14, 2017 22:55
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We used to use Juno at our house, and I discovered really quickly how that if you proc-killed the client software as soon as you saw the connection icon in the systray but before the ad banner pops up, you would stay connected, but have no ads on your screen. That was great.
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Jun 14, 2017 23:07
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Edit: Wrong thread whoops
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Jun 14, 2017 23:12
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The original Juno was an email-only client, and I downloaded and printed out some elaborate way to email commands to a site ripper which would then email me the contents of the URL I asked for. Speaking of ads in free things, I used an ad-based Opera for a year or so because it was fast, had tabs, and was the rebel's choice of web browsers at the time. And because I didn't want to pay $30 for a browser. Anyone remember Pointcast and the whole "push client" revolution? It was this idea that instead of getting your customers to visit web sites like a buncha morons, they'd download your thing and just get content delivered automatically to it. And of course there were ads on it. I kinda liked it, it was like having a newspaper on my screen and I didn't have to wait for stuff to load at 56k speeds because it had already fetched it all. I even had a plugin from adbusters.org that would block all the ads. The last gasp of push clients that I recall were Windows widgets or maybe this other software I forget the name of that displayed little configurable boxes on your desktop that would pop open like drawers when you hovered over them.
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Jun 15, 2017 01:46
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Active Desktop. *shudder* I worked for a bandwidth management company around 1996 and one of the biggest marketing efforts at the time was countering "Push Technology", which as we could all see was going to be the next big thing. Desktop widgets that get dynamic content streamed to them all day long. Our ad campaign was: PUSH BACK
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Jun 15, 2017 02:10
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Nutscrape Nardigrator. That's what Netscape became after it stopped being cool and new and starting being the crashy piece of poo poo you had to put up with.
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Jun 15, 2017 02:14
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doctorfrog posted:Anyone remember Pointcast and the whole "push client" revolution? It was this idea that instead of getting your customers to visit web sites like a buncha morons, they'd download your thing and just get content delivered automatically to it. And of course there were ads on it. I kinda liked it, it was like having a newspaper on my screen and I didn't have to wait for stuff to load at 56k speeds because it had already fetched it all. I even had a plugin from adbusters.org that would block all the ads. Sounds like a smartphone app.
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Jun 15, 2017 03:47
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Sounds like RSS, but shittier.
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Jun 15, 2017 04:59
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Pham Nuwen posted:Sounds like a smartphone app. An app running on a Windows95 PC that only had dial up internet, yeah. (We had a Compaq Presario way back that had this worthless piece of poo poo program on it)
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Jun 15, 2017 04:59
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Back in 2000-2001 I had an ipaq handheld that didn't have any mobile connectivity but when I would sync/charge it overnight it would grab content for me to read the next day on my bus/train ride to work. That plus some lovely NES emulator made that thing kick rear end at the time.
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Jun 15, 2017 13:38
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My mother still pays for AOL and Compuserve, despite having cable internet, just for the email client. She signed up for CS in 1996 -- two-year contract for a $400 discount on our first real PC (Packard-Bell 486 with a key lock and turbo button), and same with AOL for the next one, and ... still has both accounts (the computers let the smoke out around the turn of the century).
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Jun 15, 2017 21:07
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Platystemon posted:Sounds like RSS, but shittier. which sounds like a smartphone app
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Jun 15, 2017 21:20
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doctorfrog posted:which sounds like a smartphone app Time is a flat circle
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Jun 15, 2017 21:26
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsS0E4G310Y
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Jun 16, 2017 21:00
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This is awesome. I can't believe I never heard of such a thing back in the day. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gLypLPTljg Pfffffffffffft. I bought Polybius for PS VR two weeks ago, played the poo poo out of it, and I only ever got 6 or 7 nosebleeds, TOPS. *wakes up screaming from night terrors*
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Jun 17, 2017 07:35
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Screw that, ANSI/ASME Y14.1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI/ASME_Y14.1 In one of my first weeks at work I had a simple diagram for my boss that I wanted to print out in B and ended up sending out in E. So I came in his office with this massive bedsheet-sized drawing. He laughed. 
Three-Phase has a new favorite as of 03:01 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 02:59
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Ew, alternating aspect ratios? I've made the opposite mistake - I was printing a proof of a thesis, and accidentally selected the label printer, scaling it neatly down onto 1x0.5" freezer labels. Not quite readable at 300dpi b/w , sadly.
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Jun 20, 2017 14:21
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Humphreys posted:Remember when you had to have multiple instances of a browser open in the days before tabs? Meanwhile now I regularly have 20 tabs sitting there ready for me to browse. i remember someone showing me firefox and having my mind absolutely blown at the concept of tabbed browsing and whatever improvements it made over IE6. but that was still the time when most people were willingly technologically illiterate and just used what came with their computer so it was like some kind of bizarro sci fi future using this incredibly fast browser with a new UI with addons while everyone else was still using IE6 and refused to do anything else because it was too complicated like i am really glad that technological accelerationism means people have been forced to keep up with technology at a bare minimum because i swear that was a much longer period than the 2 year gap between firefox and IE7. i see senior citizens using facebook on their smartphones and have to chuckle to myself that not even ten years ago they were hemming and hawing over learning how to use an internet browser to check the weather
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Jun 23, 2017 07:19
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Computer viking posted:I've made the opposite mistake - I was printing a proof of a thesis, and accidentally selected the label printer, scaling it neatly down onto 1x0.5" freezer labels. Not quite readable at 300dpi b/w , sadly.
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Jun 23, 2017 08:17
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nigga crab pollock posted:i remember someone showing me firefox and having my mind absolutely blown at the concept of tabbed browsing and whatever improvements it made over IE6. but that was still the time when most people were willingly technologically illiterate and just used what came with their computer so it was like some kind of bizarro sci fi future using this incredibly fast browser with a new UI with addons while everyone else was still using IE6 and refused to do anything else because it was too complicated I mean, IE7 was still a pile of crap and IIRC about as poor security wise as IE6 was, so the gap from Firefox to an actually decent IE release was definitely longer than the gap between Firefox first releasing and IE7's release with Vista. But yeah, those were the days. My brother started using Firefox and when he mocked me for using lovely IE6, I was totally convinced he's just using some overly convoluted piece of poo poo browser that barely works for whatever reason (because that's the sort of thing he'd do). But then I tried it once, and never looked back. I think my dad made the switch around the same time too because the difference in usability and stability was simply that staggering. (also Firefox let you delete search form history so nobody would know about all those porn searches on Google) Ruflux has a new favorite as of 18:55 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 14:58
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Browser chat reminds me of a couple things: I used the Camino browser on Mac for a long time. I don't remember at this point why I liked it. I also remember using iCab. First browser I ever used was NCSA Mosaic. I also played around with Lynx. To go from telnet and gopher to Mosaic was pretty neat. We around that time someone told me that a couple guys were compiling a list of all the web sites in the world at akebono.stanford.edu. (Until then, there was no good way to find a web site, someone else had to give you the address. Occasionally WAIS would prove useful ) If you found a new web site you could email him and he'd add it. That, of course, became yahoo. And those guys made a little money. Lastly, anyone ever play with Gopher VR? Not sure it added anything to the experience but it was kind of neat.
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Jun 23, 2017 15:06
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Ruflux posted:(also Firefox let you delete search form history so nobody would know about all those porn searches on Google) I definitely remember in middle school (so ~1999) there was this belief that Google was only for looking up porn. Was it because Google was just indexing everything automatically with no filtering, so it became easy to find porn? Did the other search engines of the time take steps to prevent porn getting indexed? I hadn't quite gotten into computers yet so the particulars didn't really interest me.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:05
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I remember using the 37.com to search for porn because I was getting results from from 37 search engines which meant 37x the porn!
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Jun 23, 2017 16:18
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Pham Nuwen posted:I definitely remember in middle school (so ~1999) there was this belief that Google was only for looking up porn. Was it because Google was just indexing everything automatically with no filtering, so it became easy to find porn? Did the other search engines of the time take steps to prevent porn getting indexed? I hadn't quite gotten into computers yet so the particulars didn't really interest me. I don't remember this being a problem for Google but it definitely turned into a problem for Alta Vista. What used to be the best search engine ever started handing out porn results for basically everything after a while. Really bizarre, too.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:39
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Pham Nuwen posted:I definitely remember in middle school (so ~1999) there was this belief that Google was only for looking up porn. Was it because Google was just indexing everything automatically with no filtering, so it became easy to find porn? Did the other search engines of the time take steps to prevent porn getting indexed? I hadn't quite gotten into computers yet so the particulars didn't really interest me. At work a couple of years ago I was looking for a hood for one of the conduits that we'd just installed through an exterior wall. Not knowing exactly what they're called I type in "building exit hood". So I ended up with a bunch of instructions for how to build exit hoods. If you're not in the know an exit hood is a modified cooking bag you velcro over your head to kill yourself, and now it's in my work internet history.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:42
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Porn always gets the interesting technical developments. There used to be this one site where you just type a search term and it would search for porn videos. They would all play at once while slowly scrolling past. If you saw one that was interesting, you could click it and it would expand and the sound would play.
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Jun 23, 2017 16:47
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:I used the Camino browser on Mac for a long time. I don't remember at this point why I liked it. I do: because it was Cocoa and therefore THE FUTURE. (Also it was faster and saner than OmniWeb.)
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Jun 23, 2017 17:24
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I can't find it right now, but I remember watching a technical talk on youtube where a guy from one of the major porn delivery networks talked about the fairly unique challenges they face. It was really interesting. You also have the Pornhub Insights blog (mostly SFW) which is pretty fun to read.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:30
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Collateral Damage posted:I can't find it right now, but I remember watching a technical talk on youtube where a guy from one of the major porn delivery networks talked about the fairly unique challenges they face. It was really interesting.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:35
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I kept using IE for longer than it was smart cause you could just type C: into the address bar and it turned into windows explorer and you could type a URL into windows explorer and it turned into IE. That was really loving handy!
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Jun 23, 2017 18:03
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In the early days of porn tube sites, Bing was amazing for doing video searches. It had them all indexed, with animated thumbnails.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:18
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evobatman posted:In the early days of porn tube sites, Bing was amazing for doing video searches. It had them all indexed, with animated thumbnails. I remember someone saying they had a team dedicated to making porn results work decently in Bing search lol. Not sure if that's bullshit or not though, take it with a grain of salt.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:24
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Remember when you need to DL the whole file because if you got interrupted or whatever you'd have to start again. Nothing like loving up a 10 meg download a minute before it finished 
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Jun 23, 2017 18:28
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FilthyImp posted:Remember when you need to DL the whole file because if you got interrupted or whatever you'd have to start again.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:40
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Tribes2, with its patches to fix a previous patch that had rolled back a different patch which added features identical to a different patch which rebalanced a patch released a day before
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Jun 23, 2017 18:50
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Shai-Hulud posted:I kept using IE for longer than it was smart cause you could just type C: into the address bar and it turned into windows explorer and you could type a URL into windows explorer and it turned into IE. That was really loving handy! Funnily enough I tried this recently just to see what would happen. Ofc it did the most meh thing imaginable and just opened whatever site's address I typed in in Firefox.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:57
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Last Chance posted:I remember someone saying they had a team dedicated to making porn results work decently in Bing search lol. Not sure if that's bullshit or not though, take it with a grain of salt. There is no way it worked as well as it did by accident.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:56
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