90's internet vs modern internet

Van Hellseek

Van Hellseek

Van Hellseek

Soldato
Joined
2 Jun 2004
Posts
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So which do you prefer?

- The days of angelfire websites, guestbooks, HTML chatrooms, Lycos/altavista, noisey modems

or

- Troll-culture, commercial websites, awesome web software, blogs, facebook etc...


I miss the old days tbh. Despite the limitations it was just basically more fun.
 
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I dunno (I get the old man 'bah humbug' attitude) I think the interwebs is what you make it - it has diversity, art, culture and the world at your fingertips. That there are a few morons around only makes is a facsimile of real life, and much like in real life, if you don't like the content, go elsewhere.
 
Hmmm, nah, lots of crappy little self-made websites. All of that has been rather streamlined into blogs and/or facebook with improved quality (on average). I'd say the modern net is ok.
 
90s by far, except you had to pay by the minute.

AOHell
AOL massmailer warez rooms
IRC
Back Orifice
Sub7
Credit Master (aol/compuserve/netcom/porno/etc used to only check the algorithm of CCs, not if they were actually valid)
0800 war dialling
etc/passwd files with the actual pw hashses in them lol

Brilliant.
 
These days it feels like everyone's huddled around huge social networking sites, and message boards like these are becoming less active/important.
 
Aside from this forum, IRC is the last place I really hang out on the internet. I kinda feel like IRC is the Israel of the internet and it's being surrounded on all sides by belligerent social networks.
 
LOL I remember in computer class someone replicated the NT login screen in visual basic, and ran it on the guest account and it would save the username/password to a text file, then give an error message. Got the teacher's admin password and created a bunch of secret admin accounts.

Also there was a prog called l0pthcrack that was ridiculously easy to get the admin password with. Used it to install warez FTPs on a bunch of workstations and linked them together with scripts. The school was on JANET so they were fast as ****.
 
Youtube has been incredibly useful to me though. The number of how-tos and product reviews and things on there.
 
Old internet was rubbish, in the same way that you go back and play old retro games and realise that once the novelty value wears off, that they are often a bit rubbish too.
 
I don't see why IRC is being used as an example of what the Internet was like 'back in the day', it's still very popular. If you don't use it then that's your choice. Rose tinted specs i presume, there's always been 'trolls', no matter what you called them. Advances in technology may have brought about some content that you'd rather not experience, yes. But nobody's forcing you to experience it. Thing is, it's also brought about a lot of great content. Online videos as entertainment, to the point where it's starting to threaten traditional television. Live streaming of important events. Some thought and decent graphic design theory being put into web design. Quite possibly most importantly - Wikipedia and the development of good online education. I know i wouldn't go back.

One thing i will say for limited technology is that it forces developers to be less lazy, but what can you do.
 
I miss comic sans and crazily contrasting colours of backgrounds and text being acceptable. Now every site wants to look like facebook, the most boring looking site ever devised :(
 
Modern internet:

Wikipedia
Youtube
Amazon
A few technical forums.
And Google to take me to the relevant page I need at the above sites.

Twitter only when their is some breaking news going on. That's the only time it's useful - to get info before the news channels. Otherwise it's a complete waste of time.

The rest of the internet is frivolous stuff I never use.

Oh and Google Maps of course.
 
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