The internet was higher quality pre-2012 when the takedowns of the masses of free stuff started. It was the beginning of the end of the "Wild West" internet. Expect eventually everything will get locked down and people will be bonded to their real names like serfs online, because that way google etc. can spam them better or that way the govt. can prevent Paedogeddon. Because as we all know, all criminal activity funds drugs and people trafficking in the end, and men cannot be trusted in case they're paedos- in case you haven't read the papers recently.
Have a nice day.
I was really lucky for the time because I had a dual bonded ISDN line running into my house so I got a speed of 128Kbps. It was expensive, but having a mid-band connection was essential for me because a lot of the stuff I was downloading was work related, so I needed the speed. Having said that, I had an 80MB file that I needed to download one night (a copy of a clients entire website that had been tarballed) and it still took me about 2.5 hours.
Something that has come about due to broadband coming to the masses is websites being made pointlessly uneconomical. I went on the CNN American website the other day to read an article, and every page had video that automatically started playing. I don't want that. I just want to read an article because then I can either take my time or skim-read which means I'm not fast forwarding or rewinding. It's almost as bad as when everyone and their dog started doing their own websites, and you ended up with your PC freezing because they had several hundred animated gifs, with snowflakes or love hearts floating down the screen, a graphic that turned your cursor into a crosshair, a horribly pixelated graphic as a huge background, lurid colour clashing and everything written in Comic MS (the most hideous font ever designed).
I would say it is of a higher quality now in terms of what is on offer and speeds etc , the downside is that you have so many idiots who use social media and twitter to talk crap, harass and abuse others and behave like armchair detectives and spread rumour , in that sense there has been an increase in far lower quality users .
I preferred having a wide range of search engines depending on what you were looking for Lycos, Webcrawler, Magellan and especially AltaVista.
I always avoided Google as it was way too commercial with paid for rankings.
YouTube was also great before it was bought out and commercialised.
On the usenet newsgroups you could get detailed daily updates on the space shuttle missions which was very exciting.
Like in the late 90s and early 00s when most of us still used 56k modems and you had to pay per minute you were online?
1. The slow speed caused us to really think about what we were posting, spellcheck and ensure it's complete and accurate, On Usenet (early forums) we would often write offline before connecting to post and make sure it's relevant before posting it.... download a bunch of messages and reply to them all. There were no hundreds of useless videos of people doing inane things; that one video of someone "twerking" would take 2 hours to upload. Instead, the content that was available was of higher value.
Likewise, you found yourself doing more worthwhile things online, instead of wasting three hours on Facebook and Youtube you really had to weigh the pros and cons of committing 30 minutes of time and money to an exclusive download. Since getting on the web wasn't cheap or consistent you made the most of it while you were there.
2. Cool Site of the Day. The internet was so small that we looked to this one DJ-like site to tell us what was new and noteworthy! It was exciting, surprising and sometimes amazing. There were a lot more personal homepages with all kinds of creativity. Now the internet is a lot more corporate. It all revolves around Twitter, Google, Facebook and YouTube.
3. Instead of forums, chat rooms were much more popular and you could chat live to people from different communities all around the world. It was interesting and felt more lifelike than the forums. I remember when you would go in a new room and they'd all know you were a new person and stop chatting, LOL...... then they would ask you "ASL?" We used to make friends all around world back then rather than just chatting to your friends you see in real life on Facebook. The Yahoo! voice chat rooms were fascinating. I could go to a room in Texas, America and chat to a bunch of rednecks!
4. Because the internet was more exclusive, most of the people who had it were rather geeeky and of higher intelligence so there was generally less stupid people online. I know it sounds elitist but it's true.
5. Websites would have cheesy Midi synthesiser music in the background. Ok that wasn't so high quality, but it was so tacky/camp it was hilarious.
Feel free to share your early internet memories.
I used to do that too, brilliant times, I was considered 'exotic' in American chat rooms purely because I wasn't American.
There was always at least one chatter though, that would look to find anything in your posts that was anti American, even if it was a bit of a stretch and have a good go at you again purely because you weren't American.
spot on boyard! digitalspy in its infancy was even better! i know just pop in and out! yrs back i loved the site and like many other site's the actual type of viewer is know diluted as such that it can be so frustrating with them littered with people that just wouldnt have been there yrs back!
It was the Wild West back then. DS had the rep. as a place not for the faint of heart. It was very enjoyable, highly confrontational and lightly moderated.
.....
More deals around on the net in those early days. I got thousands of DVDs/CDs delivered from the States at 25% of the list price with free shipping and no customs charges. And that was everyday, ongoing stuff not just occasional deals - Back then you rarely had to buy from Amazon.com without a $10 or $15 coupon freely available. Was regularly getting 2-3 sackfuls of packages per day from America stuffed with good stuff - Happy times.
The downside to all of this of course was the insane pay-by-minute connection charges. I still bear the scars from paying some eye-watering BT bills from the late nineties/very early 2000.
It's a toughie. Being one of the first batch of folk to go online with a screechy warbling 56k modem, where you could raise a family whilst waiting for anything more complex than the Google homepage to finally load.. vs my present 152 meg unlimited Virgin service that delivers results almost instantaneously
It's a toughie. Being one of the first batch of folk to go online with a screechy warbling 56k modem, where you could raise a family whilst waiting for anything more complex than the Google homepage to finally load.. vs my present 152 meg unlimited Virgin service that delivers results almost instantaneously
I used to like using BBS, that was before the Internet was at a price we could afford.
I used to love writing fidomail and waiting for the reply the next day for the reply. Like a letter be quicker.
I did get connect to the net with my Amiga, but dropped it after a couple of months, BBS was better at the time and I met more people.
I liked AOL years ago they had a community feel, something that is not around anymore.
Of cause with more speed we can do more, but the net is now too commercialised.
Facebook ruined the internet. It has made the web "shrink" so much and every site tries to copy it's layout and features now so you don't get any individuality or fun looking sites anymore. The "like" button being introduced to the internet has killed so much discussion/potential discussion and I resent feeling almost forced to login with Facebook on what feels like every site. I don't have a Facebook account anymore and never will again.
So yes, the internet isn't as quality as it was and I blame Facebook almost entirely for that.
I used to like using BBS, that was before the Internet was at a price we could afford.
I used to love writing fidomail and waiting for the reply the next day for the reply. Like a letter be quicker.
I did get connect to the net with my Amiga, but dropped it after a couple of months, BBS was better at the time and I met more people.
I liked AOL years ago they had a community feel, something that is not around anymore.
Of cause with more speed we can do more, but the net is now too commercialised.
It was always going to happen. When advertising companies started to realise that the internet was probably attracting more viewers than TV, they then started placing adverts in web pages that proved to be very popular with people. I don't mind adverts at all, as long as the advert/s doesn't make navigating up and down the page difficult.
There were a lot less stupid people on it and less geoblocking of content. Now everything is regionalised and blocked outside of certain countries unless you use VPNs or other *ahem* methods to get around it ;-) It's also become way too corporate, with the likes of Facebook becoming dominant.
Another thing I hate about the internet now - websites catering exclusively to tablet users so that rather than having a nice long article or picture gallery to sink my teeth into, I have to click through sometimes fifty pages to view each thing individually. SO ANNOYING.
The downside to all of this of course was the insane pay-by-minute connection charges. I still bear the scars from paying some eye-watering BT bills from the late nineties/very early 2000.
It was a lot worse if you were on Compuserve (which thankfully I wasn't). They had this thing where you had to pay per minute, as well as a subscription fee and phonebill. The amount I was online (approximately 12 hours per night) meant I was better with my UNet subscription which was ~£10 a month and I only had to pay the phone call.
Something else I miss these days is static IP addresses for my connection. The last time I had one of these was with Pipex in 2007, and these days when you ask does an ISP do static IP addresses you're lucky if they even know what you're on about (according to a bloke on Sky static IP addresses have never existed).
I used to like using BBS, that was before the Internet was at a price we could afford.
I used to love writing fidomail and waiting for the reply the next day for the reply. Like a letter be quicker.
I did get connect to the net with my Amiga, but dropped it after a couple of months, BBS was better at the time and I met more people.
I liked AOL years ago they had a community feel, something that is not around anymore.
Of cause with more speed we can do more, but the net is now too commercialised.
Yes, you have hit the nail on the head.
All that you say about FB is true, added to which companies no longer need to talk to you because of FB, they create an FB page so you can 'speak' to them, so that they appear to be customer aware, but if you ever post on their page in response, you get the reply that is on message and entirely irrelevant to the point/complaint you are making or nothing at all.
FB has also enabled them to do away with any meaningful contact links, so that in order to speak to them you have to invest a serious amount of time and effort to do so.
Comments
I would be inclined to say it was best around 2000s for me. Less idiots on it.
Have a nice day.
Something that has come about due to broadband coming to the masses is websites being made pointlessly uneconomical. I went on the CNN American website the other day to read an article, and every page had video that automatically started playing. I don't want that. I just want to read an article because then I can either take my time or skim-read which means I'm not fast forwarding or rewinding. It's almost as bad as when everyone and their dog started doing their own websites, and you ended up with your PC freezing because they had several hundred animated gifs, with snowflakes or love hearts floating down the screen, a graphic that turned your cursor into a crosshair, a horribly pixelated graphic as a huge background, lurid colour clashing and everything written in Comic MS (the most hideous font ever designed).
I always avoided Google as it was way too commercial with paid for rankings.
YouTube was also great before it was bought out and commercialised.
On the usenet newsgroups you could get detailed daily updates on the space shuttle missions which was very exciting.
Yep its shite now.
There was always at least one chatter though, that would look to find anything in your posts that was anti American, even if it was a bit of a stretch and have a good go at you again purely because you weren't American.
Happy days.
It was the Wild West back then. DS had the rep. as a place not for the faint of heart. It was very enjoyable, highly confrontational and lightly moderated.
.....
More deals around on the net in those early days. I got thousands of DVDs/CDs delivered from the States at 25% of the list price with free shipping and no customs charges. And that was everyday, ongoing stuff not just occasional deals - Back then you rarely had to buy from Amazon.com without a $10 or $15 coupon freely available. Was regularly getting 2-3 sackfuls of packages per day from America stuffed with good stuff - Happy times.
The downside to all of this of course was the insane pay-by-minute connection charges. I still bear the scars from paying some eye-watering BT bills from the late nineties/very early 2000.
Hard one to call
Had to chuckle at that. Those were the days eh.
I used to love writing fidomail and waiting for the reply the next day for the reply. Like a letter be quicker.
I did get connect to the net with my Amiga, but dropped it after a couple of months, BBS was better at the time and I met more people.
I liked AOL years ago they had a community feel, something that is not around anymore.
Of cause with more speed we can do more, but the net is now too commercialised.
So yes, the internet isn't as quality as it was and I blame Facebook almost entirely for that.
I never bothered with the sites underlined. I sometimes visited Alta Vista. The very odd time I visited GeoCities.
It was always going to happen. When advertising companies started to realise that the internet was probably attracting more viewers than TV, they then started placing adverts in web pages that proved to be very popular with people. I don't mind adverts at all, as long as the advert/s doesn't make navigating up and down the page difficult.
Something else I miss these days is static IP addresses for my connection. The last time I had one of these was with Pipex in 2007, and these days when you ask does an ISP do static IP addresses you're lucky if they even know what you're on about (according to a bloke on Sky static IP addresses have never existed).
Remember Eternal September?
All that you say about FB is true, added to which companies no longer need to talk to you because of FB, they create an FB page so you can 'speak' to them, so that they appear to be customer aware, but if you ever post on their page in response, you get the reply that is on message and entirely irrelevant to the point/complaint you are making or nothing at all.
FB has also enabled them to do away with any meaningful contact links, so that in order to speak to them you have to invest a serious amount of time and effort to do so.