Surprisingly, the telco (at the time called #GTE ) used the same dial-up number, but connections usually completed. And instead of 30-something K, the telco usually got about 50k (out the advertised 56k ... this was the age of K56flex versus X2; I had the K56 version).
I eventually discovered the Yahoo chat rooms. They were almost as good.
#ShowerThoughts we've pushed back against #SPOV (Single Points of Failure) in digital technology for years, and won: * we defeated mainframes with personal computers and #InternetProtocols (TCP/IP) * we defeated the #IBM monopoly on the PC with Windows-compatible generics * we defeated #AOL and #Compuserve with the web protocols * we defeated the #Windows monopoly with the #Linux kernel, which enabled OS diversity on user devices (#GNU, #Android, #Sailfish, and more)
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 03-Feb-2020 17:19:13 UTC
LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864}#Yahoo (now combined with #AOL to form #Oath, a subsidiary of #Verizon) proposes to buy $117.5 million dollars worth of credit monitoring as compensation for people whose information was leaked between 2012 and 2016.
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Credit monitoring is almost useless (because alerts happen after the fact; there are more effective services that basically turn off all credit inquiries, preventing the use of stolen info), and it also lasts for a limited time. If a badguy has your basic info and secret question info (third grade teacher's name, first pet's name, model of first car, mother's maiden name, etc) they can wait a couple of years and _then_ open accounts in your name.
I think for most people who came online for the first time via a mobile device, this has always been their situation. The free internet has only been as accessible to them as the #BBS networks were for #Compuserve and #AOL users, requiring no hardware they didn't have, but knowledge they didn't have and often didn't know they didn't have.
A plea to help keep the older Netscape / Mosaic web browsers from ceasing to function:
"Dear Lazyweb, tell me who inside of Oath / Verizon has the ability to edit the DNS records of the "mcom.com" domain. Or, preferably, just transfer the domain to me."
@LWFlouisa nope. It started with #DotComBubble in the 90s, and the winners of each round of the Survivor Startup have become the next generation of #VultureCapitalists. Eg. take #AndreesonHorowitz. Andreeson co-founded #Netscape and Horowitz worked there too, before #AOL acquired it. Then they co-founded #LoudCloud, made it to #IPO, then sold its customers to #EDS, and pivoted to #Opsware, which was acquired by #HP in 2007 for US$1.6 billion. @z428@pootz
@thatbrickster @kzimmermann Maybe, but ad-supported services have a long history. Juno's "free" ad-supported e-mail service debuted sometime in the 1990s with the slogan "e-mail is supposed to be free" By 1997, AOL's explosive growth had started. #AOL had ads everywhere. When I would go to close down the program, there would be several windows behind other windows (within the application's main window), most of which were ads or DMs from someone wanting to sell something or recruit MLM downlines.
@delores @deadsuperhero #AOL was big in the late #1990s and into the early #2000s. I think I stopped hearing tem mentioned frequently sometime in the 2005-2009 timeframe.