Ooh it's close; I used IRC back then too. It's Usenet. It was

Ooh it's close; I used IRC back then too. It's Usenet. It was
the Facebook of its time. It's still around but it's VERY
archaic. == Yeah, I used mIRC too. Never liked the others. I use
FB like IRC most of the time. It's the closest thing to 'chat'
we have nowadays, unless I want to dive into gaming chat rooms
or Twitch which I don't tongue emoticon == I remember Yahoo
chat. Had voice too. That stuff is all still around but it's
hiding in the gaming networks. Now you have mumblechat and one
or two others, and one of most popular places for a similar
experience is Steam. They have a pretty sophisticated and
easy-to-use system. The main difference is that it's tied to
gaming rather than standing by itself. = Google plus *had*
public hangouts when they first started. They were pretty
awesome. I met hundreds of random ppl face to face, 9 in a room.
Made lots of friends I still have. But of course, there's
problems - always problems, and they slowly dropped the public
hangouts and now it's a little more 'friends only' type of
thing. My early era was PC-Link in 1989-1995. It turned into AOL
at some point [same company, different names]. I went to two
conventions for PC-Link, one of them in Allentown PA. Met a few
hundred ppl.. back in 1991 I think. One dude had Cerebral Palsy
- never even knew it 'til we met him. But yeah - I think you
were in the heyday of trolling. == But yeah, I don't worry about
it. Kids of today will be saying, "Remember Google? Why you kids
don't know what it was like before your fancy neural implants.
Why back in my day..." == ikr. the way I look at it: if your
modem ever made noises and tied up your phone lines, you MIGHT
be one of the early ones. I started with PC-Link and dialup BBS'
but to me, the whole 1990s upto about the mid 00s are a good
range for ppl who will understand the same kind of stuff. =
Same here. My first was half duplex 300 bps, then 2400, then
14.4, then 56.7 and I WAITED SO LONG for something better. So
much better today tbh. Internet is still too slow for me tongue
emoticon == 571ll c4n'7 b3l13v3 y0u 607 4 50n6 - all I got was
this documentary [1]http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ ... one of
the guys working on it wanted me to be a part of it but I hated
the idea of cameras and stuff... I just ran a few dumb bbs'....
I never actually saw the documentary. I'd much rather have had a
song to represent that time-frame. == Yeah it's true. I remember
the first fidonet/internet email gateways. I had internet at
college already (1990) and used IRC even then... but it wasn't
'til... umm.. Galacticomm came out with this MEGA multiline
(very expensive) BBS software that you started to see IRC leave
the exclusive Internet only world and enter into the BBS' as
well. It was a nice linkup. Now the DOS folks could chat with
the college folks... and then the Windows mIRC folks joined in..
then the BBS began to fade away as Windows 95 turned to
Windows98 ...and all of the Windows telecom programs were really
crappy. That kinda killed it really, but the newer Internet
software like the browsers, mIRC, wsFTP, etc available for
Windows was *much* easier to use and could do a lot more than
the old DOS stuff. == Oh you gotta go ipv6-only to find anything
interesting. It's in such a primitive state still that hardly
anybody's on it. I hardly ever go on it 'cause I have to
reconfigure stuff but when I do, there's all sorts of
interesting gems hiding around there. == Also, look through the
Internet Archive. They REALLY don't care about copyright and
they're trying to archive EVERYTHING despite copyright stuff, so
you can find all kinda of stuff on there. ==
[2]https://archive.org/details/software They also got some good
emulators going for some REALLY old school stuff. Also, some guy
in Germany has Win95 working in a browser that you can go to.
It's not the same of course - but I think it's pretty awesome
that people are trying to bring the past into the present as
much as they can. == yeah, I lost interest in tor really quickly
too. I'm glad it's there for ppl who need it but I have all the
software I need right now to do whatever I want for now and Open
source usually has something for me. ah yeah Twitter. I wrote
one of the first interfaces for Twitter - the only console based
one I think - back in 2007.
[3]https://simplify3.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/hello-world/ I was
pretty proud of it. Worked great for a few years, but it was
mostly a programming project 'cause I wanted to get on board
with the 'new thing'. VMWare is awesome. I have a bunch of stuff
on an external hard drive I plug in sometimes. Once I ran an
ancient BBS through the Internet via DOSBox running on a VMWare
Win98. It was a pain in the ass to set up but it finally worked
and I had a few friends telnet into it. Did that, hm, last year
about this time. My internet connection is DSL still. I'm cheap
and it's serving a 12 person house full of computers, phones,
gaming devices and stuff just fine. We could go cable but the
difference isn't worth it yet. One day it will be. == THAT'S
freakin amazing and no, I didn't know that about the ping. It
makes a LOT of sense though thinking about how it works,
especially if it's going through matrix transforms within the
video card but even without it, yeah - I can see why. THat's my
mind-blown moment of the day! I always liked setting up meeting
places for ppl. Last big project in that
was[4]*http://www.planetminecraft.com/server/kens-142-creative-server/
running a Minecraft server (from 2012-2014). I started it for my
nephew but really, I was enjoying it more. 24/7, ended up with
27,000 unique users which wasn't bad for a 33-user at a time max
in the game, and it was always pretty full. I made it creative
and THEY made it roleplaying too... so it was kinda cool having
this whole mini society on my $400 laptop on Wifi on my back
porch over DSL. The thing ended up almost etching my HD, so I
had to shut it down. They still ask me about it sometimes..
tracking me down on social networks. I make vague promises of
'someday', but yeah, I'm kind of like the dad in the Lego Movie.
Oh well tongue emoticon Maybe one day I'll set it up again for
them. == ooo looks like transhumanism. I try to stay away from
transhuman stuff. I get WAY too into it when I have. I gotta
keep my head clear for my own future predictions - but yeah, I
could easily get hooked on that. [I'm careful with my
addictions: I get obsessed. A MC server for my 7 yr old nephew
turned into a huge project that lasted 2 yrs.... a couple of
Vines one day has grown into 14,000 Vines over 2.5 yrs and
counting... so yeah, I can see why that site has the pull it
does!] ==

References

Visible links
1. http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbsdocumentary.com%2F&h=SAQHLjTRN
2. https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Fsoftware&h=5AQGbyB4S
3. https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsimplify3.wordpress.com%2F2006%2F12%2F10%2Fhello-world%2F&h=AAQElgW7f
4. http://www.planetminecraft.com/server/kens-142-creative-server/