1998 plea for restraint reveals a lost world where the 'Net was an opt-in experience.

7 points

All these years later, and the ISP president still responds to users like a dick. Classic.

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3 points

yeh, the author didn’t seem to mind his reply but would it have killed the guy to be a little more cordial with his tone?

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3 points

It’s the tone of someone who is THE BOSS and wants to ensure everyone knows he is THE BOSS. Shows how little people change over 25 years. I do not care for it very much.

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3 points
*

I remember working for a small local ISP in the late 90s. We didn’t offer unlimited accounts and charged people overages for any hours over the amount they selected with their account. As an employee I didn’t have these restrictions and even put in a second line in my house so I could use the one modem 24/7 and use the 2nd line to double my bandwidth (to a whopping 67Kbps) overnight. I ended up using more time in a month than there was actual hours. One month as a joke the billing manager sent me the bill that I would have received if I was a normal customer and it was thousands of dollars. I want to say I got the hint and started using less time and resources, but honestly thinking back on it, I doubt that was the case.

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2 points

Dude I love walks through computer history like this and I’m just bummed that the CEO didn’t entertain it even a little. Obv still fit the theme but damn

Loved the article though.

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1 point

CEO sounds like he thinks this guy was getting a hold of him to complain. Or a businessman, and not a technology person.

I love that everyone has collectively decided OS X is still OS X no matter how hard Apple tries to rebrand it.

I’m also a fan of the author bringing a box of disks with him on a family trip.

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retroNET - Vintage Culture/Websites/Software

!retronet@lemmy.sdf.org

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Websites, software, games, fads, memes, or any general happenings that used to occur or had originated on computers 20+ years ago.

This community is software and internet focused. For retro hardware discussion try !retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org

Some Cool Links

Archive.org Software Library

BBS: The Documentary

Classic Websites: Random Page / Search Engine

cool-retro-term: terminal emulator mimicing old cathode displays

Neocities: webhost homage to Geocities

Web Design Museum

Webamp / Webamp Desktop / Skin Library: cross-platform re-implementation of Winamp 2.9

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