Before the Internet

I suspect some of you nerds may have had experience with this next topic. The web (WWW) became available to the public in the mid-90s, as did AOL's dial-up service. But as I was working with a bunch of tech nerds, several of them rolled their eyes and said, "Yeah, well I've been on the internet for years". And they were referring to services like CompuServe.

At work, I happened to be using an internet-connected HP workstation in 1992, and I was able to email with people. But for personal use, I never got into any pre WWW stuff. So the question is, did any of you use the internet before the web? Was it a CompuServe account? And how did you connect? Was is dial-up via the phone line? Anybody?
 
I didn't get online until like, 1998. And that was via a WebTV that worked on dial-up thru the phone line. For what it was, it actually wasn't a bad system. Before then I had email thru my job in a warehouse, but never really had to use it.
 
scotchandcigar said:
I suspect some of you nerds may have had experience with this next topic. The web (WWW) became available to the public in the mid-90s, as did AOL's dial-up service. But as I was working with a bunch of tech nerds, several of them rolled their eyes and said, "Yeah, well I've been on the internet for years". And they were referring to services like CompuServe.

At work, I happened to be using an internet-connected HP workstation in 1992, and I was able to email with people. But for personal use, I never got into any pre WWW stuff. So the question is, did any of you use the internet before the web? Was it a CompuServe account? And how did you connect? Was is dial-up via the phone line? Anybody?
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I got an hour of dialup time to a server that gave me a unix shell. I would check e-mail and read newsgroups. I had some sort of internet e-mail as early as the late 80s but that was at work as I did not have my 386 powered home computer yet.

Every couple of months this early-ISP would invite its members to a bar for a 'meet'. Nerds on parade. I did go to a couple. We talked about which newsgroups we were using. As the 90s progressed. you could run PPP and get access to what would have been an infant version of the web. I thought it was a passing fad so I didn't bother,
 
Between 1993 and 2006, America Online (now AOL) sent out millions of discs offering a free trial. In 1997 I used one of those discs – I still have it, by the way – to sign up for AOL – which I also still have. When I first got AOL, it was dial-up. I selected four local access numbers from a list. When I opened the AOL software and clicked "Sign on," the first number would be dialed. If it was busy, the second number would be dialed. Eventually, after hearing a lot of screeching and static and pinging noises, I would be online. I was happy to discover a way to turn off the sound of that fershlugginer screeching, static and pinging. I was even happier when I got a broadband DSL modem. On September 30, 2025, AOL finally discontinued its dial-up Internet service.

www.mentalfloss.com

You've Got Mail: A History of AOL's Free Trial CDs

AOL's free trial CDs may have been a nuisance throughout the '90s, but they paved the way for an internet boom.
www.mentalfloss.com www.mentalfloss.com
 
MonoStereo said:
I didn't get online until like, 1998. And that was via a WebTV that worked on dial-up thru the phone line. For what it was, it actually wasn't a bad system.
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Oh goodness, I had Web TV too at my old apartment. It was fun. I even started in my first message forum, a sports site, with it.
Then it became MSN TV. I had a co worker that would ask me when I was going to get a computer. When MSN TV went out of business, he said their last customer (me) finally quit.
 
scotchandcigar said:
But as I was working with a bunch of tech nerds
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You were working with nerds? What a shock.

It's fun to tease you and stuff. And you do play in a local band with a didgeridoo or something. So it seems pretty obvious that you'd be working with a bunch of nerds...... But at the same time you're not an architect or anything super embarrassing like that so it's hard to picture you in both worlds like BMW, cool watches, building your own house, with an awesome wife and like family drama from years ago guy...... And then also a Poindexter.......I don't know. It's hard for me to put those two things together to make you in my head.

scotchandcigar said:
I happened to be using an internet-connected HP workstation in 1992, and I was able to email with people. But for personal use, I never got into any pre WWW stuff. So the question is, did any of you use the internet before the web?
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The first time I ever got online was aol. I was in 7th grade. So I was 12 going on 13. 7th grade was bar mitzvah year and bar mitzvahs happened when we were 13 so it had to be late 95 into 96.

However, it's possible my mother had something prior to that because she was working on her PhD back then in her den where my dad and I would just leave her alone and she'd constantly be on her computer. But it was like a piece of shit computer compared to these days like it didn't have a mouse. So I'm pretty sure if a mouse didn't exist yet, she didn't have the internet, but I don't know.

You're the nerd scotch you tell me.

Interesting topic though. Well done.
 
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Channel98 said:
This history of the mouse describes the first one as "a primitive affair." How exactly is a mouse an "affair"?

www.silicon.co.uk

Tales In Tech History: The Computer Mouse

Our ability to interact with computers was transformed with the arrival of the computer mouse, invented by Douglas Engelbart way back in the early 1960s.
www.silicon.co.uk www.silicon.co.uk
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THERE'S A THREAD FOR THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Channel98

Thread 'Annoying Words & Phrases'

We all get tired of hearing certain overused and/or idiotic words and phrases. The Marist Institute For Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie has conducted annual national opinion polls on a variety of topics since 1978. "Whatever" has just topped their list of Annoying Words & Phrases for the tenth consecutive year:

Top 5 Most Annoying Words of 2018

I do not like hearing people say "OMG" and "LOL," which are bad enough when written but are even more detestable when spoken. I do not like hearing people say something happened "literally" when it obviously did not -- or...

Hahahah. You're right though, that is a weird turn of phrase.
 
Well, before the internet, there were Tyrannosauruses.

T-Rex Game - Google Dino Run

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The "Dialing WebTV" theme featured original tunes and MIDI tracks created by Peter Drescher, Michael Pukish and Brian Salter – and I'm guessing they were influenced by Paul Hardcastle's 1985 hit Rain Forest.

 
Again I'm probably repeating a topic one of you brought up but if that's the case I have my own take on it.

Owning the media you purchase. That is something that existed WAY MORE before the internet.

If I care about this at all it's with videogames.

I was never a person to collect movies or music or whatever. I had a few binders of CDs in my car and that was about it. But I always bought games. When I bought a GameCube or N64 game it was my game. You put it into the system and it played and no one could ever take that away from you unless the physical cartridge or disk broke.

Now the downside to that was that if the game shipped with a flaw there was no way to correct it and you were just stuck with it. But that was incredibly rare. I don't remember that ever happening to me from the NES all the way through the GameCube (Wii came after GC and that's when shit changed).

I'm a Nintendo guy so I will be using their terms but it's the same for PC, XBOX or PS.

All platforms still sell physical games but they all push their eShops. It's often more convenient to just buy a game digitally. But that means you are basically leasing a license to play the game. If the publisher or platform whoever no longer wants the game online or some licensing agreement runs out Nintendo can simply pull the game from your digital library and make it no longer playable. That sucks. With Movies and music and whatever they usually wind up on another platform. With games they don't. They're often just gone. Now this doesn't happen very often. I have yet to experience it. But it still sucks.

Also there's the whole world of microtransactions (which Nintendo is the least awful about) but I'll ramble about that later.
 
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JHDK said:
If the publisher or platform whoever no longer wants the game online or some licensing agreement runs out Nintendo can simply pull the game from your digital library and make it no longer playable. That sucks. With Movies and music and whatever they usually wind up on another platform. With games they don't. They're often just gone. Now this doesn't happen very often. I have yet to experience it. But it still sucks.
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This happened with "Real Racing 3", a super-detailed, super-accurate racing game that was available for phones and game consoles. It was one of the few racing games that was actually reasonable to do on a phone. Yet it had perfect replicas of all the F1 tracks, plus endurance races, NASCAR venues, GT and sports car places, and everything. And it literally had thousands of cars, all accurate in their sound, look, and behavior.

After more than 12 years, EA Games stopped supporting it, and took the servers down in March of this year. A lot of people are bumming, including me. But I figured it was time to move on.
 
scotchandcigar said:
This happened with "Real Racing 3"
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scotchandcigar said:
A lot of people are bumming, including me.
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Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see you as some big gamer guy. OMG it sucks that the one F1 game you dug got shut down. Sorry man.

I play a ton of games but as a middle aged man they are pretty much 100% offline, single player games. But even that doesn't matter anymore. I have put over 500 hours into Zelda: Breath of the Wild since it came out in 2017. All single player, offline. However if Nintendo decides one day they don't want people playing it anymore, EVEN THOUGH IT'S AN OFFLINE GAME I PAID $60 TO GET THE CARTRIDGE, they can push some online update to my Switch 2 that I am forced to download that disables my ability to play it.
 
JHDK said:
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see you as some big gamer guy. OMG it sucks that the one F1 game you dug got shut down. Sorry man.
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I wouldn't be able to get through all those hours of HGTV and Bravo if I didn't have something to do. Most of what I did with that game was play against a field of bot cars, so it wasn't real-time online. But all the assets had to be downloaded as the games progressed.
 
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