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Its genuinely getting harder to explain what a forum is to people especially younger ones  , I'm mostly defaulting to 'its sort of like a Facebook group but more. And not poo poo.'
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Apr 24, 2018 11:16
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NonzeroCircle posted:Its genuinely getting harder to explain what a forum is to people especially younger ones Would've thought "reddit but not dictated by popularity votes" might do it.
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Apr 24, 2018 11:17
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Powered Descent posted:There are a few simple steps you can take to help with that. Just install an extension or two like Privacy Badger or Cookie Auto-Delete and you're already ahead of 99% of the population. To do even more, you can turn on first-party isolation, install a canvas-fingerprint blocker, turn off WebRTC and WebGL, etc. Before you know it you've gone mad and you're spoofing your user agent, running NoScript, and routing all your connections through a good VPN. By this point your friends might think you're a little weird but the advertisers don't know what the hell to think of you because they can't track you anymore. I wonder how the GDPR will work out - it seems to be specifically targeted at the web tracking companies, and there's enough bite in the punishments to make the usual "eat the fine and move on" approach unsustainable. The only relevance to this thread is tangential, though - the typical answer to "how can we survive as ad companies if we can't track everything our viewers do" is "you have managed it before and can do it again".
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Apr 24, 2018 11:20
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NonzeroCircle posted:Its genuinely getting harder to explain what a forum is to people especially younger ones “It’s like a newsgroup, without multipart binaries or syndication” 
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Apr 24, 2018 11:31
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I wonder when was the last time someone had to tell a new forums poster "hey, this isn't a chat room" I was definitely on the receiving end of this back in like 2001. What do you mean I might have to wait a few hours for someone else to say something? What in the heck is a "thread"??? I just want to talk to people about pokemon online 
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Apr 24, 2018 11:41
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I remember it blew my mind that the other people on the WWIV board I dialed up to weren’t necessarily other kids at my high school who knew the teachers I was talking about
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Apr 24, 2018 12:00
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The Big Word posted:I wonder when was the last time someone had to tell a new forums poster "hey, this isn't a chat room" Every minor forum had a chat thread for exactly this. Usually the places I hung out were just happy that people had found the place so idiocy was greatly tolerated. Making the jump to SA was a huge deal for me with that 
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Apr 25, 2018 00:27
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Data Graham posted:I remember it blew my mind that the other people on the WWIV board I dialed up to weren’t necessarily other kids at my high school who knew the teachers I was talking about All WWIV boards were run by the same teenagers at the same high school. Ergo, you went to my high school. I do not remember your handle though
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Apr 25, 2018 03:52
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Using Sub7 on dialup to remotely connect to my friends dad who was over a microwave connection on a resort island resulted in me and his son sending porn to his printer used to do SCUBA certificates. Fun times.
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Apr 25, 2018 04:03
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I miss the days when kids would think they sounded real scary when they started typing "I'm about to DOS your IP, say goodbye to your computer" in IRC and then nothing happens because they thought I was stupid enough to believe them and log out.
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Apr 25, 2018 04:06
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Humphreys posted:Using Sub7 on dialup to remotely connect to my friends dad who was over a microwave connection on a resort island resulted in me and his son sending porn to his printer used to do SCUBA certificates. Fun times. Wait, so you were dialing in to a server and then using some kind of broadcast equipment to send that connection a couple miles away or something? That's nuts and please tell us more. Also what kind of porn was it
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Apr 25, 2018 04:07
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Casimir Radon posted:I'd kind of like to mess around with some 90s - early 00s Mac software. What's a good decision as far as a machine to run most of what's out there? Powermac g5 is the fastest powerpc based Mac and with older versions of OS X it can run old software in classic mode. If you want the fastest Mac that can actually boot into os 9 that would be the mirrored drive door powermac g4.
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Apr 25, 2018 04:12
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Humphreys posted:Using Sub7 on dialup to remotely connect to my friends dad who was over a microwave connection on a resort island resulted in me and his son sending porn to his printer used to do SCUBA certificates. Fun times. ahhhh the salad days where ISPs didn't block SMB traffic at the edge I gave some poor fucker in my TFC clan a heart attack when I accidentally printed his steamID on his printer. I was going to print something more internet troll-y but that really freaked him out so win/win.
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Apr 25, 2018 04:25
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I hope this falls under the realm of Tech Relics, but lately, I've been slightly obsessed with 90's music rack gear. For some reason, rack-mounted amps, effects, tuners, and just about anything else were all the rage back in the 90's, and it cost a small fortune. This is about $2500 worth of gear, back in the day, which I was able to pick up from ebay/craigslist for less then $150, and still fun as hell to play through. Dig that A.R.T. pink/black graffiti
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Apr 25, 2018 15:44
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an AOL chatroom posted:I hope this falls under the realm of Tech Relics, but lately, I've been slightly obsessed with 90's music rack gear. For some reason, rack-mounted amps, effects, tuners, and just about anything else were all the rage back in the 90's, and it cost a small fortune. This is about $2500 worth of gear, back in the day, which I was able to pick up from ebay/craigslist for less then $150, and still fun as hell to play through. What is all that? The first two are some kind of effects units, but the second two I can't read the names good enough to gooogle. Grand Prize Winner has a new favorite as of 20:29 on Apr 25, 2018 |
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Apr 25, 2018 20:26
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Buttcoin purse posted:I was just about to delete this old VM I used to play with Microsoft Office 4.x, and I started Word and just as I hit escape to close the "Tip of the Day" I noticed it said something about not running with scissors. So I went back in and hit "Next Tip" a bunch of times and eventually this appeared: So this reminds me of when I worked at Computer Renaissance back in the late 90's. We used to refurb/rebuild older PCs and sell them. Low end Pentiums sometimes 486 DX4 systems. Put a fresh Windows 95 install on them, a 33.6 modem, maybe some more ram, and sell them combo'd with a 15 Inch monitor for $200. It was a pretty good deal for lower income and entry level computers users back in the day who just wanted AOL dial up or what ever. One of the guys I worked with had a roommate who worked in the building next to us. He would come and hang out several times a day with us, some times playing with some of the machines. One day I found out he had altered the tooltip messages that showed up when Windows 95 finished booting to desktop. He left the first 1 or 2 of them the untouched, but then added some new ones Tip of the Day: Did you know... I hosed your mom. Tip of the Day: Did you know... Oh you have a sister? I hosed her too. Tip of the Day: Did you know... You can copy text in applications by selecting text, pressing ctrl-c and paste text using crtl-c. You can also staple my nuts to your forehead. Our manager was not amused.
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Apr 25, 2018 20:44
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What is all that? The first two are some kind of effects units, but the second two I can't read the names good enough to gooogle. Third is an ART MDC dynamics processor (compressor), last is an ART Power Plant guitar preamp.
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Apr 25, 2018 21:35
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Laserjet 4P posted:Third is an ART MDC dynamics processor (compressor), last is an ART Power Plant guitar preamp. Yup! It's the ART Power Plant. It actually does a decent job of cabinet emulation, too, so putting it right into the PA doesn't sound all too bad as long as you get your overdrive from pedals. The OD channel on the Power Plant sounds like 90's solid state amp overdrive.
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Apr 26, 2018 00:16
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Wait, so you were dialing in to a server and then using some kind of broadcast equipment to send that connection a couple miles away or something? That's nuts and please tell us more. No just justing our standard dialup ISP. The island had a microwave type system back to the mainland for phone and internet and we had previously sent his dad the exploit in an email. His dad was amused with everything initially, but became a bit paranoid and would type 'are you about to gently caress with me boys?' into notepad and see if there was a mouse wiggle or we typed something. Grand Prize Winner posted:Also what kind of porn was it Just some pic of a lady with big tits.
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Apr 26, 2018 02:23
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What was the big online shop before amazon? eBay?
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Apr 26, 2018 11:07
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Before Amazon? They were the 800-lb gorilla in 1996 already (when they were still just a bookstore).
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Apr 26, 2018 11:46
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Empress Brosephine posted:What was the big online shop before amazon? eBay? I don't really think there was a lot of online shopping prior to amazon. Most of it was pretty niche, so Real Doll would be my guess, but that's based on the hours of entertainment that site gave me and my friends in high school.
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Apr 26, 2018 12:31
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Empress Brosephine posted:What was the big online shop before amazon? eBay? Buy.com had a pretty good run for a while
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Apr 26, 2018 12:39
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I remember buy.com! What was the other site eBay owned that was like warehouse items? It’s escaping my mind
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Apr 26, 2018 12:41
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Now I'm having traumatic flashbacks to eBay in the dark days before Paypal was a thing. You used to win an auction, then you'd mail(!) a personal check(!!) to the seller. The seller would then inevitably sit on it for a week waiting for the check to clear their bank, though if you were in a hurry you could drag yourself to the post office and get a money order to send instead. (Most sellers would ship immediately for those, but for some it had to be an actual USPS money order, nothing else.) So between a week or so to receive your check, a week for it clear, and a week for the seller to ship your item and get it to you, it was generally a cool 3 weeks or more between the time you won an auction and the time you actually got your item. And god help you if you were trying to do anything international. There's a lot of legitimate reasons to hate on Paypal, but the times before Paypal also suuuuuuuucked for using eBay. On the plus side not everyone was on eBay yet, so you could find some real deals on stuff that escaped notice by the masses.
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Apr 26, 2018 13:55
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Known Lecher posted:Now I'm having traumatic flashbacks to eBay in the dark days before Paypal was a thing. You used to win an auction, then you'd mail(!) a personal check(!!) to the seller. The seller would then inevitably sit on it for a week waiting for the check to clear their bank, though if you were in a hurry you could drag yourself to the post office and get a money order to send instead. (Most sellers would ship immediately for those, but for some it had to be an actual USPS money order, nothing else.) Oh christ, you've stirred up my memories here. There was also a bunch of payment systems available, but both you and the other party had to be enrolled in them to make it work. So any auction, you had to offer at least 2 of the 4 currently prevailing systems and hoped the seller had at least one of them.
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Apr 26, 2018 14:19
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Known Lecher posted:Now I'm having traumatic flashbacks to eBay in the dark days before Paypal was a thing. You used to win an auction, then you'd mail(!) a personal check(!!) to the seller. The seller would then inevitably sit on it for a week waiting for the check to clear their bank, though if you were in a hurry you could drag yourself to the post office and get a money order to send instead. (Most sellers would ship immediately for those, but for some it had to be an actual USPS money order, nothing else.) Internet commerce in general used to be such that you would pick out what you wanted online, then call the store with a credit card or print out the order and mail it with a check or money order. COD used to be a thing too, although I think it cost extra. Back then my bank didn't charge for money orders as long as you withdrew the money from an account there, so that was handy for teenage me without a checking account. I bought and sold a lot of stuff over the internet in the old days via mailing lists and usenet *.marketplace groups, including international transactions, and I don't think I was ever ripped off save once on eBay, but the item in that case was only $10. These days everyone wants cash, nobody is willing to entertain interesting trades anymore.
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Apr 26, 2018 15:58
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Empress Brosephine posted:I remember buy.com! What was the other site eBay owned that was like warehouse items? It’s escaping my mind Overstock.com? They used to be amazing for shoes and furniture (they had a flat rate $2.50 shipping cost no matter the item size iirc)
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Apr 26, 2018 16:22
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There was manufacturer-specific activity in e-commerce around the same time as the Amazon Ascendancy kicked off. Dell was one good example of embracing online shopping -- I remember reading their conversion was something like 20% higher online vs. quotes delivered via phone/fax, so of course they pushed it. I think Gateway had the same foresight. But other than that... Yeah, general-purpose shopping choices were slim. I think Overstock was the only other place that had a chance at challenging Amazon early on. My guess -- with nothing to back it up other than a gut feel -- is that no retailer was willing to eat (some or all of) the cost of shipping before there was a critical mass of online orders to justify it. So they passed high shipping costs to customers, who balked at the cost and therefore didn't order, which failed to produce the critical mass of orders. Those retailers that were willing to roll the dice probably came out ahead or at least survived long enough to get bought out by someone else.
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Apr 26, 2018 16:29
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Data Graham posted:Before Amazon? They were the 800-lb gorilla in 1996 already (when they were still just a bookstore). wow. I completely forgot they started out selling just books.
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Apr 26, 2018 17:28
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anyone remember liksang.com
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Apr 26, 2018 17:32
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One big moneymaker for early eBay users on the East Coast was buying up old antiques and sending them out west, since a lot of that stuff simply wasn't available in certain regions of the country. You could easily get a 50% markup if you knew the market.
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Apr 26, 2018 17:37
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Last Chance posted:anyone remember liksang.com Gonna pick up a hot new Bung product! 
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Apr 26, 2018 17:50
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Known Lecher posted:Now I'm having traumatic flashbacks to eBay in the dark days before Paypal was a thing. You used to win an auction, then you'd mail(!) a personal check(!!) to the seller. The seller would then inevitably sit on it for a week waiting for the check to clear their bank, though if you were in a hurry you could drag yourself to the post office and get a money order to send instead. (Most sellers would ship immediately for those, but for some it had to be an actual USPS money order, nothing else.) The early days of eBay more closely resembled a digital version of your newspaper's classified ads than anything else. You could (and I did) make a good amount of money on the side just flipping stuff with a nicer looking listing. This was also the time when pictures were OPTIONAL, and you had to have your own web hosting space. I'd buy a box full of model trains and accessories for $50, then spend the next few weeks cleaning, photographing, and listing the parts individually to make around $200 after fees. Not a ton of money, but a good use of time when you're in college.
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Apr 26, 2018 19:13
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Last Chance posted:anyone remember liksang.com I had forgotten about them. I used to buy all kinds of knock off GBA stuff. 
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Apr 26, 2018 19:17
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I remember lik-sang, and buying computer stuff from lian-li. However, can anybody forget the greatness that was the personal Yahoo webstores? They could use Yahoo's credit card processor, or set theirs up on their own, or even just have the webform email them your CC info in plaintext  . I bought a LOT of poo poo from Yahoo webstores.
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Apr 26, 2018 20:11
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Liksang was amazing back in the days when the British pound was so strong in comparison to the US dollar that it was actually cheaper to import games from the US than it was to buy them locally (also it was more common in those days for games to come out months later over here). gently caress Sony for killing them.
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Apr 26, 2018 20:52
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My high school drafting teacher lived in the same dorm as Mike Dell when they were both at UT, and, around 1999, told us he regretted not buying stock when Dell was shaking down his fellow students for startup capital.
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Apr 26, 2018 21:30
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Veotax posted:Liksang was amazing back in the days when the British pound was so strong in comparison to the US dollar that it was actually cheaper to import games from the US than it was to buy them locally (also it was more common in those days for games to come out months later over here). In the same vein, you wouldn't believe how cheap Steam was back when the dollar was weak, the Norwegian Krone strong, and steam listed everything in dollars. It was something like 50% off everything compared to buying in a store - it felt like it ought to be illegal. It was a sad day when they moved to regional pricing.
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Apr 26, 2018 22:16
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I love these eBay stories share more!
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Apr 26, 2018 22:24
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