The Internet- great until the masses join in?

gumbald said:
I always used to have to patch it to remove the visual rubbish. Started using Pidgin recently, much better. Just wish I could have Adium on PC as well as Mac.
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Yeah I used to use APatch (I think it was called that) when it started getting really bad.

Not heard of Pidgin, Googling for it now... if it's not full of carp I may give it a whirl.

Thanks
 
It's what used to be 'gaim' on Linux (and indeed in Windows). You'll also want the Guifications plugin from a link somewhere on the site, for toasts to tell you when people log in and such.
 
Cool cheers for that gumbald.

Just finished installing Pidgin now.

Just notice you share the same annoyance for people putting a capital letter for the start of your name as I do :p Hate it when people type Nikebee :o (waits for 1,000's of people to type that now).
 
Guifications might be hard to find, let us know if you're stuck for anything else in it if you've never used it before, Nikebee ;)
 
I wish I could remember my ICQ number :( I think it was better than MSN.
Messenger has gone a bit pap lately I think.

RE: the OP, I agree, I think that services do generally decline once they become 'mainstream' either by being dumbed down or providers trying to pander to everyone.

OT: Is there a way of recovering your ICQ number?
 
To the OP. Go look up 'the September that never ended' (in fact it's still going on :) )

And yes, I had ICQ 7 digit number, my mate had a 6 digit number, I can still remeber mine, although I haven't logged in for years. No time for this instant message crap anymore. It's like having a mobile, everyone keeps phoning you.

I'm sure it used to be about a 5 meg d/l and that took 30 mins on my trusty 14.4K Zoom modem...
 
NokkonWud said:
I always hated MSN, I thought it was inferior to both AOL IM (AIM) or IRC, unfortunately it was MSN who seemingly won the battle of the chat messengers, though for me, IRC is easily the best, unfortunately it's the least accessible.
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Well said, IRC isn't that simple to use although messengers like Trillian help a lot. MSN was always my least favourite messenger as I prefered ICQ to it.
 
I can't get into my old ICQ account, don't have access to the e-mail address it would have been set up with. Also can't seem to find myself in the directory, maybe I used a pseudonym.
 
SiD the Turtle said:
suddenly it becomes popular with the masses, it becomes the new cool thing and then of course, it goes down hill.
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MSN is essentially just a chat client, I don't really see how it gaining in popularity can make it that much worse.

IRC (or more specifically, the Quakenet network) is a bit different as in the 90s it was just that, a network for Quake players. However it has now become the most IRC popular network in the world and seems to have all sorts of different gamers inhabiting it. It also didn't help that around the turn of the century, the main german ISP (Telekom online) got banned from ircnet so they all flooded across to Quakenet.
 
My comments about MSN were more down to the fact that it used to be a simple chat client and then slowly it became more bloated, with animated smilies, 'WeeMees', nudges and lots of other detestable rubbish.

Similarly Facebook was clean, simple and quite refreshing to use and then applications turned up.
 
I think that the internet was better back around 97 - 02, as back then I was getting some awesome speeds using a 28.8 k modem inside my old 486 DX2 66 with a massive 420 Mb HDD, 16 mb ram fitted with an intel overdrive chip to make it run at pentium 1 speeds (83 Mhz I think it was)

Back then it was pay per minute and speeds were around 15 Kbs, then later I was getting only 4 - 6 kbs on 36.6 k modem. I was using ICQ, MIRC, Netscape Navigator and the web sites were a lot more basic, but more sensible people to chat to and newsgroups were the in-thing.

Also I remember downloading the shareware demo of Quake and downloading it from various sites all 15 parts (around 1.4 Mb in size, to fit on to a floppy disc) Good old days.
 
A2Z said:
how has msn changed at all?

does the same thing, in exactly the same way, it always has :confused:
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It used to give you the IP of the person on the other side of the convo!

Weird, the webcam streaming was a complete joke back in the day of 1999 etc.. even in 2001-2ish when i really got into it, it was still really BAD!!

I ended up usuing Yahoo as they started to move faster then msn.

Arguing with the daft Americans on Yahoo chat was ledgendary. I loved the msn chat aswel, chat rooms, why they closed them ill never know, but when i was like 12-13 i loved that place, was so annoyed when they closed it on Oct 14-15th (one week after my bday) one year.

Didnt really enjoy chavin' it up on the streets so id be on there!

You couldnt play games like you can now, none of this sharing files crap and when 56k was around, i remember when 256k came out :p that was ledgendary, Blueyonder with there huge white modem.

One day this will be like ancient, but those of you who are older and remember the older computers wil think this is nothing.
 
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James07 said:
You couldnt play games like you can now,
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huh?

I was happily playing Doom II over a SLIP connection in 1995 and quake I on the internet between 96-99 - using a 14.4 modem until 1999 when I got a 33.6K and then broadband in 01 and of course Q3 came out in 99 then I never looked back.
 
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