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The glory days of the Internet
| 5% | 18 votes |
| 41% | 148 votes |
| 27% | 98 votes |
| 1% | 6 votes |
| 14% | 52 votes |
| 9% | 34 votes |
| 0% | 3 votes |
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- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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(1)
(1)
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of sense to know
how to lie well.
-- Samuel Butler
(Score: 4, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday August 13 2023, @09:48AM (4 children)
Personally, it was when I got broadband/cable for the first time. I went from a 56k modem (approx. 4kB/s max) to 600k cable and downloaded a Slackware CD image!
The fastest connection I've ever had at home was 70-80Mbit/s and now I'm down to about 10 due to living a long way from the fibre cabinet.
As for content, I remember the days when you could get your OS images on BitTorrent (the ports weren't blocked by the ISP) and you could give back simply by participating.
The Web has got progressively worse. It used to be simple. I had a Palm m100 which had a web browser that could use my mobile phone as a modem and I could browse my source repositories in the pub much to the astonishment of various people. The connection ran at 9600 baud. How big is a web page these days? What about all that Javascript? All those flashing, scrolling pop-ups and other rubbish mean ad-blockers are mandatory and there's an arms race.
Then there's the surveillance. Here, every connection you make is logged and stored for a year and is available to "law enforcement" should they wish to see what you're up to. This has coincided with huge erosion of our rights, freedoms and civil liberties. We're still "not as bad as China" so that must be fine, right?
On the other hand, we have things like Signal and Jitsi so we can keep in touch with people relatively easily, for free, and in relative safety.
The Internet is a great piece of infrastructure, but it's clear that we at the grass roots need to protect it, to stand up for our rights and to ensure that we are not completely exploited and controlled by greedy corporations and governments. In recent years, I've been able to contribute to organisations that stand up for our rights, and I'm proud of it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday August 13 2023, @02:00PM (1 child)
I will just add here that those who think "things are getting worse now due to trolls and spam and other bad behavior" don't know the history of that problem. As in, back in the days of Usenet and BBS's there were tons of major problems with both of those, and a constant arms race between the bad actors and the admins trying to stop them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2023, @08:08AM
People complain about the Eternal September because they are only human and most people only remember the good times. They forget all the other Septembers. And Octobers, and all the other months.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Sunday August 27 2023, @10:17AM (1 child)
It's not the Javascript. The JS is just static files that are cached by browser and are loaded on demand. A single page application, which relies wholly on JS, can be snappy and fast to load. Actually, it can be much more dynamic and easier on bandwidth. The bloat is mostly thanks to the ads... once again. And laziness. Remember geocities websites that took forever to load because they had 1MB gifs? yeah, like that.
There you go. Another problem. Though adblockers tend to block the JS too ;) Also, don't go to these websites.
The problem is ads. Hundreds of websites exist solely to serve ads. It's even worse than cable TV (which supposedly was created to have TV without need for ads ;). But Top 100 of XYZ seem to draw the clicks.
Where is "here"? I know that "here", this is illegal.
Secondly, you don't need to log any connection. You can just ask for logs from certain providers after the fact via a warrant to get insights into things, like people "search for how to XYZ" before the XYZ happens.. This is mostly to demonstrate premeditation. But each connection is not logged since it's quite impossible. For example, I use wireguard for my personal IPv6 tunnel since local ISP is rich in IPv4. Any IPv6 connection cannot be tracked from my home for that reason as I do not log myself. But that doesn't prevent someone from figuring this out after the fact.
You could talk about phone calls, but those were always logged, even if just for billing reasons.
Need actual proof here not hand-waving. And yes, I know, in the 70-80s there was this big bruhaha about losing your freedoms because of that relatively new law to wear seat belts. Lots of conspiracies and anecdotal evidence about it too like how people got tangled in them and burned or drowned while ones that didn't were safely thrown out of the wreck and survives. How seat belts were just another useless thing to make more money for the manufacturers.
This type of erosion of freedoms?
Or that whole groups of people can now enjoy having civil liberties. Remember the giant Republican movement in US against gay marriage, how they are going to cancel it as soon as they got elected? What happened to that? Right ... one groups freedoms doesn't mean another is somehow forced to have less freedoms (except, you know, to infringe on freedoms of another).
Alcohol was legal. Then some places made it illegal. Then legal again.... Things don't go to hell in a handbasket unless you let them go to hell. As long as people remain rational somewhat and engaged ....
I'm not 100% sure but it's mostly because most people are lazy and not just because someone else is greedy. Lazy people hand over power to the a little less lazy but greedy *and* lucky. That's how entire capitalism works. Same for authoritarianism -- "why I need to vote? nothing ever changes... until you can't vote anymore"
Same here. EFF does good job since we still enjoy rule of law.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Monday August 28 2023, @08:55PM
"Here" is the UK for me, and the erosion of our rights and liberties is well documented. Unfortunately for the people of England/Wales, peaceful protest is effectively illegal now. Us lucky people in Scotland have a separate legal system.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Sunday August 13 2023, @02:39PM (6 children)
In 1989-1990 i used Windows to check out linux. Then bought a box set of RedHat. Then used RedHat and Mandrake to download other distros (finally discovered wget -c)
Thank you MS for allowing me to get off MS products.
Resistance was easier than i expected!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2023, @04:07PM (4 children)
Linux's first release was in Sept 1991. How did you get it so much earlier?
Did you mean 1999-2000?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday August 14 2023, @04:14PM (3 children)
Yup.
[Hangs head]
Getting old sucks.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday August 16 2023, @06:20PM
Better than the alternative!
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2023, @05:08AM
Gaark used Dark Matter. It is a thing with him.
No. Just, no. Because Dark Matter.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 26 2023, @07:38PM
Youngster, in 1989 I was checking out Minix!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 06 2023, @09:32PM
I was pretty impressed the first time I used my (sucking hard) ISP to research other ISPs and execute the switch.
I bought the Slackware box set, maybe two back in the day - it wasn't ready for prime-time back then (dialup connections were poorly supported) - I didn't really make the switch off of Windows until 2006 with OS-X on a MacBook, after than moving to Ubuntu (desktops) / Debian (servers) was a no-brainer. I suppose I _did_ run Gentoo on my home system from 2004 forward, but that was more of an exercise in stubbornness - it did give me access to 64 bit memory addressing years before it was practically available elsewhere.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday August 13 2023, @08:24PM (3 children)
A story about a garden that we built. It was beautiful. Sure, we only had a few hand tools that required you to know a lot about gardening, and what we planted... well, let's be honest here, it wasn't exactly what you can now get from plantations, it was less for sure, and it was probably not as marketable, but it was home grown and tasty. And we saw that people peeked into our gardens and we thought, wouldn't it be great if all the world came and planted some fruits? We could all grow plants, raise new breeds and share the seeds with each other, it would be awesome! I mean, think about it, if the few of us could already come together and grow such nice fruits, could you imagine what it was like if the whole world did it?
So we invited these people in, and they saw our gardens and they marveled, and I would have to lie if I said I wasn't even a bit proud of it, and that their praises flattered me. So of course, when they asked for some seeds, I gladly handed them to them. Helped them plant them, even. And their plants grew and they were happy... ok, it wasn't exactly the new breed of plants that we hoped for, mostly what they did was to take our seedlings and water them, some grew, most didn't, but hey, it was cool, ok? They were happy with their gardens.
Of course, some came in and trampled through our patches because, well, they could. We didn't exactly post signs that they shouldn't because, hey, why would we expect that? We were kinda naive, sure, but why the hell would someone wantonly go to someone else's garden and trample all over his plants. Of course we knew a lot more about gardening than these vandals and we spanked them left and right, teaching them a lesson, ya know? We hoped that would get them to fall in line.
Instead these Karens came back with the police and turned them on us! As if we were the bad guys for tanning their hides after they destroyed our gardens. Worse, for some weird reason their hides were more important than our gardens, at least to the law. We didn't quite understand the world, but it only got worse, because now these people who acted more and more like invaders rather than people who we allowed into our gardens acted as if they owned the place, and they demanded laws that reined us, the original owners and planters of the fields, in. Because it would be "lawless" if we made the rules for what we created.
And the state was all too happy to oblige.
We had another reason that we didn't really want any interference. We had ... erhm... well, some of the plants, the ones under the camo net over there, yeah, you know the kind, entertainment gardening. We shared that stuff among each other and had a lot of entertainment at our disposal, for free to boot, and yeah, we allowed others to come in and share along. We should've taken it as a warning that more and more of those that came didn't just pick and choose some of the plants they wanted to enjoy for some entertainment, they just grabbed them all and put them up in their own garden. With, let's say, less than stellar camo. Of course the big entertainment pharmacies came in and proclaimed that they're stealing from them, because they of course wanted to sell them those plants, and if they just shared them about, that would cut into their bottom line.
And we had a new enemy.
But that was not the end. Corporations came in and saw that the masses are now in the gardens, and of course they wanted in. At first, we were delighted. Hey, that's like free money! These corps would pump the big bucks into our gardens and we'd have tons of new farming plots. And they also handed us money to build better gardening tools! These corps were really awesome. Well, until they suddenly weren't anymore, and decided that our crops and seeds are their property now. That we were the thieves if we tried to continue using the tools we had for ages, the tools that we built and used long before they showed up. They even tried to outlaw the tools that they couldn't just buy.
And that's the situation today. A garden that is pretty much owned by some huge corps, you can rent a parcel here or there, but only as long as you use it in a way that a big corp likes. Making your own garden is virtually impossible now. And even if you manage, just planting what you like will probably land you in hot water because those small gardens are something the police watches closely, because it's pretty much the only places it still has jurisdiction, the large corporate farming plots are out of their reach anyway.
So we moved on. Created a new garden. Far, far away from the old one. It's kinda like a subterran farming now. And we start over.
Only this time, we won't make the mistake of allowing the masses in.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kell on Monday August 14 2023, @09:49AM (2 children)
Gemini.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2023, @05:54PM (1 child)
Crockett.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2023, @09:46PM
Wild front ear?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday August 14 2023, @08:40PM (4 children)
How I remember the daze of Telnet, Email, FTP and Usenet. Those seemed like the four staple applications everyone needed. Then came ways of compressing, text encoding and splitting files for posting on Usenet. Automatic software downloaded all of the portions of a post and reconstructed the original binary file. This new capability layered on top of Usenet was used for high level intellectual purposes no doubt.
Remember Gopher? Short lived prior to Mosaic.
Having personally watched what happened to Usenet when AOL connected the vast unwashed hoardes to Usenet, I knew better than to ever subscribe to anti-social media once web sites like Digg, MySpace and Friendster came along. What a train wreck.
I remember when my company had Sun workstations at the West coast, and got us a NeXT box in the midwest. That was fun. It was on Usenet that I first read of the early news of the development of this thing that wasn't yet named, but became what we know today as "Java".
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2023, @07:57AM (3 children)
Gopher wasn't short lived the way you imply. Mosaic didn't lead to the end of gopher. The whole point of Mosaic was that it supported a number of application protocols, including gopher. In fact, that is the whole point of the name "Mosaic" was the combination of protocols and file formats it supported. And, gopher was expanding quite quickly compared to HTTP at the time with no clear winner yet.
But in early 1994 after the use of Minnesota's server implementation stagnated the prior year due to the decision to charge license fees, people hosting gopher servers using other implementations began getting nervous that Minnesota would come after them due to certain chatter. This uncertainty lead to gopher's stagnation for a couple of years until it was sorted out. Which was just long enough for HTTP to gain popularity. HTML started catching on to the point where item type h was added to gopher. Thus, HTML became even more popular even within the gopher community. Then in late 1995, forms were added in HTML 2.0. So this is the perfect storm at the start of 1996: the lingering uncertainty about gopher servers, the interactivity of HTML forms, the interactivity of HTTP, the flexibility of HTML, the flexibility of HTTP servers, and low friction to change since most of the widely-used user agents supported both. No real surprise who would win in that situation.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 18 2023, @02:29PM (2 children)
Thank you for that interesting information I was not aware of. I remember the rise and decline of gopher, along with the rise of the Web. At the time it seemed like the hyperlinked web was a much better gopher.
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Saturday August 19 2023, @07:21AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Sunday August 20 2023, @12:10PM
Mosaic was developed on the very NeXT system you mentioned. I believe that this browser experience was crucial to the success of html. Nothing was new really about http/html otherwise. I wasn't aware of the gopher bits mentioned and it might as well be that other factors were involved.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2023, @06:34AM (2 children)
I await a plethora of off-topic postings, since this is the only venue that "staff" (AKA, janrinok) has left open to us. If you have any comments on a front page article, and cannot post it there, post it here. We will continue until the cabal that thinks it is the community, the "staff", relinquishes control and allows SoylentNews to revert to a democratic website. Until then, janrinok is a tyrant, and a subject of the King.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 20 2023, @08:52AM
The Front Page story on the age of Debian is as tone-deaf about linux as I have ever seen it here. Seriously, with stories like this, and no ability of ACs to correct the record, the death of SoylentNews is timely and well-deserved.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2023, @09:08AM
Are we being telegraphed messages via the Front Page by remaining able-bodied staff? I cannot but help notice a trend, what with the "Lack of trust with Zoom meetings" and "College Boards denies keeping IP hashes" stories. Am I reading too much into this? Might help if there were comments by any remaining soylentils, if there are any.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2023, @08:09AM
Best to keep the comments to a minimum, to show that the current Staff regime is not supported.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2023, @09:10AM (13 children)
Editor Hubie has a Methanol article on the front page asking what it would take for more people to comment, re story frequency. I have a suggestion. Rescind the asinine banning of ACs. Then I would be posting THIS comment on the front page and not here.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2023, @05:13AM (12 children)
Oh, are we deleting comments, now? I have long advocated this. But mostly wanted to say, I have something to say about the Tyrants Meeting (the Magament Group committee) tomorrow, but have no voice as part of the Soylent community. So, I guess, I am just not part of the Soylent Community. Another AC fades away, never to be herd from again. Well done, Magament Gruppe!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2023, @06:57AM (11 children)
Give me a link to a janrinok post. The bastard has gone rogue. Pure ACs should not be banned from participation on the Goverance Committee. Janrinok has been engaged in a pogrom of banning, and shadow-banning, any and all ACs, and then banning new members on the alleged grounds of being sockpuppets. What if the sockpuppets are the real Soylentils? After today's meeting, I can clearly see the only way forward is one without janrinok. The man is toxic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2023, @04:51PM (7 children)
So is the fake aristarchus filled with bile and hate, jani gets some slack for having to deal with that shitfest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2023, @07:03AM (6 children)
Bile? Bad liver, have we? Janrinok has stood forth and made his own bed, and now has to lie in it, or at least lie in general. Aristarchus did nothing wrong, even if the snap of the fingers (janrinok's, not aristarchus'!) deleted 75% of Soylentils. Place was overpopulated, anyway? Or at least overpopulated with alt-wrong Horse De-wormer selling ignorant morons. Poor janrinok! To end in ignonomy, like this!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2023, @02:55PM (5 children)
Fuck you apk/runaway, only your fellow klanners like you.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @12:03PM (4 children)
Runaway1956 is NOT apk.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @12:26PM
Uh huh, very astute observation from someone that is never ever ever wrong. Ack I mean the opposite, you are often wrong. Thought you wefen't into real identities, how else could you possibly know?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @01:46PM (2 children)
Because the person behind the apk (note lowercase) account on this site is known.
The real APK (note uppercase) has not posted in a long time.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:35AM (1 child)
But janrinok knows who he is, as well, and only does not reveal it or purposes of extortion. Pay up, lowercase apk! Do you want your employer to know what you post on SN? (Fortunately, Runaway is now immune from this kind of outing, first because everyone he knows in real life already knows he is an asshole, especially his family, and he is retired, sucking down the socialist funds of Social Security and Medicare.) But janrinok has the goods on the APK, and the apk, and probably several other sketchy soylentils, who could not withstand a doxxing. Like, Dalek? Separatix? Kolie? Chromas. It always was chromas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:13AM
TMB said, in the depths of the alt-right mod bombfest, that chromas was the most conservative staph member. Ich!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 23 2023, @10:53AM (2 children)
1. ACs are not banned from participating in the governance discussions- they are free to join in the discussion on #meeting-discuss as is every single community member.
2. The #meeting channel is reserved for those on the committee. You have not got a place on that committee. I did not choose who was invited to join that committee. If we cannot identify you we cannot give you voice on that channel. You choose to be Anonymous. Your problem, you fix it.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2023, @07:05AM (1 child)
I will have my say on the governance committee. I am aristarchus, husband to a murdered account name, father to a murdered sub-post, general of legions of ACs, and I will have my vengeance. OK,
ComitusJanrinok, the ball is in your court.(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:23AM
Of course, in real life, the "governance" committee has failed to garner a quorum for the past two weeks. I feel that the Radio-active Staph will continue to obfuscate and delay, and attempt to keep the actual owners from shutting the site down outright, so they can smear the good names of NCommander and the other guy a bit longer. No nose of my skin, I say. Carry on, and don't panic. No new members can be admitted to correct the suck-fest that is the current SoylentNews.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Wednesday August 16 2023, @04:45PM (3 children)
The 90s was the glory years of the internet. Everything was growing and the soul-sucking hadn't kicked in, yet. Though, we did have the idiots that thought flashing text was cool.
By 2005 Google had already bastardized their search page with iGoogle and had boat loads of junk/clutter beyond. In the late 90s/early 2000s I was still stuck on dial-up, so image searching was a very stupid concept. Load an entire page of useless images? No Thanks. Give me a simple clean interface to search from and all is well. I switched over to DuckDuckGo a long while ago. Possibly before I ever found reasonable uses for image search.
Back when PC gaming really started to take off, people played the likes of Half-Life + Mods, Age of Empires II, Diablo II, etc. Due to the fact that they were some of the games that defined their genre and people found playing with friends (or just anyone) from a distance was cool. Yes, Counterstrike was a Mod, before it was an official part of Valve. Also, LAN parties, because what else are a bunch of young Computer Science majors going to do. Other than play on MUDs.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 17 2023, @05:10PM
The '90s internet so inspired the money hoarders of the world that they briefly opened their troves and pumped the economy like no government ever could.
We were taking sat-phone calls from guys on their yachts in the South Pacific to pitch to them how our .com widget was going to make them richer (as if they needed more...)
We even entertained a British Earl (or some such royal appurtenance) who wanted to be able to talk at parties about how his investments were helping people's lives... but his co-investors shortly shut him down and told him in no uncertain terms: "We are a prisoner control company, that's where we make our best profits, and that's where we will stay."
Money does indeed talk, with the internet the whole planet can hear it at once.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by istartedi on Thursday August 17 2023, @05:42PM (1 child)
The iPhone was the beginning of the end. From that point forward, the 'net was being geared almost entirely for *consumers* using walled-garden mobile devices. The Eternal September was one end of a golden age. The Vast White Space on our PC screens represents the ending of another. Pages with only a handful of icons or a single "hamburger" are the direct result of this--mobile devices require these constraints. PC's don't, but PCs are not considered. This world also introduced infinite scrolling, and other features of social media designed to be addictive and maximize dopamine hits. Interesting new things like WatchDuty that are crippled on a PC because only "apps" matter. This is the world that mobility has wrought. Mobility isn't necessarily bad; but catering exclusively to it is.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2023, @06:52PM
Ooh I need that new APP! Ugh, when software became apps I became sad.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday August 16 2023, @06:24PM (3 children)
I would say the early 2000's, before enshittification really started to take hold.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday August 16 2023, @06:35PM (2 children)
Depending on what is considered glory I would agree. There is probably a time-span of say mid-late 90's to early-mid 2000's when things was interesting, new things was tried out and such. Then as time progressed things just got worse and worse by each passing year. More trivial and shallow. Here we are now, knee deep in digital shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Tuesday August 22 2023, @08:44AM (1 child)
I was going to come here and say this. It was really hard for me to pick between "90s" and "00s" for the glory days.
I feel the internet of the 90s was better overall, but for me the poor and expensive connectivity blemishes it a bit.
The days of expensive phone bills, slow modems, busy lines on the ISP, random disconnects and nobody able to call you because you've hogged the phone line (back then we had no mobile phones, there was one phone line/number for the entire household) for the internet I really don't miss.
Things got better in the late 90s when ISDN came around, it was still expensive but at least you did not tie up the phone line while connected to the internet (and 128KB symmetric bandwidth was an improvement).
For me the glory days started in the early 2000's, when the first "always-on" ADSL/broadband became available. Suddenly the internet was not a place "you went to" by connecting. It was always there, just an extension of your home network, and all for a fixed monthly cost..
You still had the goodness of the 90s net, but without high pay-per-minute bills and without needing to connect, you just became part of it, you could even host your own services, which was not realistic on a modem (unless you handled store-and-forward type protocols like usenet or BBS-es).
This resulted in an explosion in new technologies, specifically around Peer-to-Peer and decentralised services. Anyone could become a peer and share whatever they wanted. Around that time MP3 came on the scene, and you could actually store and play hours of music on your PC! With CD burners the "MP3 CD" became a thing. You could store days worth of music on a single CD. Then hobbyists starting putting entire PC's in cars or building mp3 hi-fi separates so they could enjoy this in their cars or living rooms.
Thanks to Nullsoft and Shoutcast, online mp3 radio streaming became a thing and suddenly I was not limited to the 10 FM stations I listened to all my life. I remember the first time I listened to radio stations in Brazil from the comfort of my own home. At the time this was amazing. Even people who came to visit were amazed at the concept.
Audiogalaxy came around, Then Gnutella/Edonkey/Kazaa P2P systems, all the way to bittorrent. Progression from Audio to video came about with the "DivX" codec (Realplayer was first, but they were too far ahead of the bandwidth available, so they just got a negative reputation for always "buffering")
Saying that, it went to crap by the mid 00's I would say, and it has been getting worse ever since. Looking back, I think it happened roughly when DVD CSS was cracked and when the RIAA/MPAA started noticing the internet and fighting it. I think that brief explosion of freedom scared those who were currently in power.
Ever since then the powers that be have been trying to stuff the internet back into a "producer/consumer" type relationship, where they remain the gatekeepers of what you can see/hear/post, and bill you for the privilege.
Unfortunately, they mostly succeeded in that endeavor. The internet has regressed towards a collection of a few big "walled gardens", who generally collaborate with each other but lock others out. It is the AOL model, but moved up into web-apps. P2P has pretty much become a niche (interestingly, edonkey/gnutella is still alive and kicking, but probably not much new stuff on there), and bittorrent is no longer used much outside of tech nerds.
Instead everyone streams from a central provider (like Youtube) and as noted in a recent SN article, are complaining about censorship, advertising and spying/tracking.
I mean, we have reached the point where you can't even run your own mail server without worrying whether your e-mail will be blocked by one of the big tech companies. You can't even visit web pages unless you have javascript enabled and then jump through a bunch of hoops to "prove you are not a bot", many of which is just you giving free work training other companies AI models.
Many require logins, and are not interoperable between them. We once again have an effective browser monopoly with Chrome, who has enough clout to force what they want on people. With the push to cloud computing, even the programs you run become tied to a walled garden, and the whims of that gardens owners.
All in all things are going downhill, but it is still impressive what has been achieved. I can still listen to radio worldwide, on even more devices, even when I am outside on my phone. And I can keep in touch cheaply with friends and family worldwide, even video call them and chat for hours. Not everything has gotten worse :-)
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday September 06 2023, @12:47AM
It was the success of Napster (1999-2000) that started the downfall of things. There were highlights in that era, Firefox was a vastly better alternative to IE for one, but Napster brought the internet to the attention of entrenched corporations, and they immediately started efforts to rein it in. We are still fighting that battle today, on an increasing number of fronts it seems. I am glad I discovered how easy Linux was in 2004, so I can avoid some of it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Vocal Minority on Thursday August 17 2023, @05:01AM
Bring on the personally tailored AI generated porn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs [youtube.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2023, @06:40AM (4 children)
Best years of the internets, was before janrinok discovered it, and attempted to control the discussion. Disruptive comments, Bad posting from nefarious IPs, and, of course, the evil aristarchus, hiding behind it all! Ha Ha! He has now destroyed SN, by pissing off dalek, separatix, and kolie. Not to mention his dismemberment of aristarchus, and protection of Runaway1956. Fascist. Wanker. Pollytod!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2023, @02:49PM
A lawyer fren told him stuff so he could use teh law as excuse for banning while runsaway did his shtick
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2023, @09:45PM (2 children)
Have you considered therapy? Seriously, this obsession can't be healthy for you. Just the time you spend on it must be significant, not to mention the strain on your mind.
Talk to a professional about it. Tell them everything about your fixation and see if they can help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2023, @11:04PM
He is a dimwit who gets off from trolling one of the only sites that can't ban him completely. May his mental health continue to deteriorate unabated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @09:02PM
I concur! Don't they have free mental health benefits in France, where janrinok resides?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2023, @01:30AM (1 child)
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=57164&page=1&cid=1320878#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
That is all
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2023, @05:31AM
The man does love his bigotry.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Saturday August 19 2023, @10:58AM (2 children)
Thinking of when the Internet might be 'most glorious' means you need to define what you mean by glorious. That varies by interest group. For some, the glory days are long gone, for others, they are yet to be. You also need to define what you mean by 'the Internet', as different folks have different views. For many, it is the World Wide Web, but these days, the heaviest use could be via video streaming (in volume) and by mobile phone (social media) apps (in interactions).
From my own point of view, having started with (personal) IP connectivity via a 9.6 kilobit/s dial-up modem, the early days of information sharing and accessibility were exciting. It's now taken for granted, and rent-seeking has taken over. It could well play out like Citizens Band radios - insanely popular for a while, and now a niche. I can well imagine that in the future, playing with the Internet for it's own sake will become a niche activity, if it has not already, and 'the Internet' will be part of day-to-day background, like having any other utility like water supply, electrical power, and sewerage.
I miss the excitement, and regret the choices of how to use the Internet that society has made. The idealist in me thinks things could have been so much better,
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2023, @02:44PM (1 child)
As is usually pointed out with comments like yours, the internet is not ruined yet and there are small niche communities everywhere. The problem is the big tech monopolies sucking everyone's attention with search engines thay make it extremely difficult to find the interesting niche sites. More collaboration and info sharing than ever, but you gotta sift through and ignore the trash heaps to find them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Saturday August 19 2023, @06:02PM
Moderated you 'Insightful'. There are some gems of sites out there, often lovingly produced by website amateurs with a genuine and deep care for and knowledge of whatever they are sharing. And not just pornography (joke).
The are some really interesting blogs, and sites talking about old technology, so it's almost a rule 34 that whatever you are interested in, there are some inspiring niche sites out there to look at- and I don't mean YouTube channels. I have hundreds of bookmarks and not enough time.
But you have to sift an awful lot of dross.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2023, @08:53PM (44 children)
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=57195&page=1&cid=1321246#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Freeman and I don't agree on a whole lot, religious conservative vs agnostic liberal, but wtf with this troll mod? Is SN just infested with fascists that don't like anyone criticizing their methods? The dystopian march seems to be accelerating without any real threat to justify it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2023, @09:37PM (3 children)
One bad moderation is somehow representative of the whole site? Are you really this stupid?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2023, @04:54PM (2 children)
When the pattern of behaviour continues happening yes it is a problem for the site. Community moderation is always required since some users are malicious. Are you really so clueless?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2023, @07:10PM (1 child)
The troll mod was counteracted by an underrated mod and an insightful mod. The comment is at +3. What is the problem here? How can even you be certain that someone didn't select troll by mistake? Also, one moderation is not a pattern of behavior.
I agree that we need community moderation to weed out malicious users. Someone has to spam mod your shitposts, after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2023, @09:04PM
Nothing like ignorance pushed as wisdom to show what an idiot you are. Every AC is aristarchus, even the one I replied to, shirley the schizos are everywjere! Bah, fuckin degens
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2023, @06:31AM (39 children)
Seems that some think that Freeman is an aristarchus sockpuppet, which, except for the demonology and young earthing, could actually be the case.
Downmods are now flung at random, with great abandon, like human feces on the fly!
More's for them to land on, while janrinok eats his humble pie.
Bye, bye, Miss SoylentNews pie! Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the water was dry. For nine long years, I wanted to cry, saying this is how alt-right fascists lie, oh, this is how the fascists lie.
Did I err?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 23 2023, @11:02AM (38 children)
Why do you post comments that contain false IPID and SubnetID? It doesn't make your claim any more credible.
"Due to excessive bad posting". The answer to your question was there in the part that you quoted. But from our point of view is does indicate that we are on-target and disrupting your efforts.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2023, @11:29AM (33 children)
Really, janrinok? You are checking the hashes? Oh, right, of course you are.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday August 23 2023, @03:26PM (32 children)
You gave me the hashes - I was trying to find out who or what was causing the block. I now know.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2023, @07:09AM (3 children)
Are you claiming that Freeman is not an aristarchus sockpuppet? Really, very often I have know idea what you are saying, janrinok, and even less understanding of your grounds for saying it. Speak clearer, and with less obfuscation. Please.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 24 2023, @08:45AM (2 children)
I have nothing to suggest that Freeman is a sockpuppet. He has a valid email address, he contributes to the site, he has been with us since well before aristarchus appeared, so he cannot be a sock-puppet. aristarchus can be though.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @08:11AM (1 child)
Never have found a SN policy statement, or a definition, of what "bad posting" was, is, or could be. Used to think it was stuff the TMB did not like, but more an more I think it is janrinok's sensibilities that we are seen reflected in some sort of shadow-banning of IP addresses. Personal attack? Outing a redneck hillbilly co-op member? Or, pointing out that khallow is an idiot. All these, and more, are crimes against the janrinok. Time for SoylentNews to cease to exist. Active staff need to be made inactive. Sorry it has to be this way. But all the "bad posting", with no definition of what that is, has made it inevitable.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:45AM
I gots some "bad posting" right 'chere! On garde, janrinok the tyrant!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2023, @09:27AM (2 children)
Hashes. So Freeman is an aristarchus sockpuppet? Seems legit. Explains a lot. Always suspected as much. Nostyle, too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2023, @02:43PM (1 child)
-nostyle, here [soylentnews.org], here [soylentnews.org], and here [soylentnews.org].
Ari wishes he could be nostyle.
--
-DJT
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2023, @01:05AM
Everyone wishes they could be nostyle. Alas, there can only be One. [Highlander]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2023, @02:52PM (23 children)
The frequently incorrect assessment of hashes you are well known for? Sad part is some users need to experience you, uh, wisdom for themselves to believe it.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 25 2023, @04:11PM (22 children)
I wasn't trying to identify the person - I was trying to find what had caused the block. I found my answer.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2023, @04:25PM (3 children)
"Why do you post comments that contain false IPID and SubnetID? It doesn't make your claim any more credible."
Do you just need a nap? So much for site reform, may you enjoy your boys' club, you'll be happy to know you've driven almost all my interest in this site deep into the ground. Curious what will happen with your reorganization but not much hope left.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 25 2023, @05:52PM (2 children)
It is not my club. I just give some time as an editor when I can. A few other jobs here and there, maybe, but not many now.
I take it that you will be leaving then?
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2023, @05:38PM (1 child)
Nah, until the site reforms or dies I'll be around to point out your lies and bias in favor of fascists. Really wish the site could hold to its idealism, but that requires you telling off the alt-right anti-science nutjobs that ruin everything they touch. It is a sad state of hypocrisy and I hope ignorance that you occupy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:25AM
The parent comment needs to modded up, a lot. Because it is true. Does anyone care about truth, anymore?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @08:19AM (14 children)
Of course you weren't! Not like you wanted to expose the username that was posting as an AC, in order to stop them from "controlling the discourse". You are pathetic, jan. Time to resign.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 31 2023, @09:41AM (13 children)
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @06:32PM (12 children)
And, what do these seemingly randomly selected post have to do with anything, janrinok? You tyrant, oligarch, scumsucking lime lizard! Come out an say it! You know who it is! You are engaged in abuse and harrassment, and such aggression will not stand, man!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @07:08AM (11 children)
We all know who the first 2 were - the account was logged in and posted as himself.
You seem to be making a connection with the next 3 posts although I have made no such claim, but if it were true, how would you know that? Don't bother, it is rhetorical.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @08:02AM (10 children)
Really? Who is "arustarchus"? Are you seriously suggesting that a certain someone cannot even properly spell his own username? Are you sure this isn't Runaway, running a sockpuppet, in order to make it appear that he is being persecuted, and even doxxed? Curious, how did that certain someone knew so much about the other someone, unless they were one and the same?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @12:00PM (9 children)
Yes - that is not what I am suggesting, but it is what I am stating.
Just like:
and 44 other nicknames that have been registered.
It is not Runaway1956.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @02:01PM (7 children)
OG aristarchus was very much against racism so any username with racial slurs sounds like an impersonator. Plus, we have all heard about your false accusations so pretending like you are all knowing is not ok.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @02:16PM (6 children)
If somebody wants to emulate aristarchus they will be treated as aristarchus.
aristarchus was NOT banned for sock puppets - he was banned for doxing. Something that he is still doing recently. He is more subtle about it and we are not flagging it up because that would only confirm or discard certain claims. It is very similar to phishing, and we are not biting.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @05:39PM (2 children)
I feel so much better that we have someone like janrinok in charge, to not take the bait of oblivious doxxing trolls! But, did you ever stop to think, that maybe there is no actual aristarchus, only copycats and imposters?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @06:26PM (1 child)
In which case they will all be treated the same. But aristarchus is still here...
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:28AM
Kilroy was here, and as a quasi-European, you should know that. aristarchus is not here. Only his memory haunting you, with tons of script-bois faking you out, janrinok. Are you too old to recognize the meme? Perhaps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:50AM (2 children)
If aristarchus is not banned for sockpuppets, and aristarchus is banned, how can you justify banning sockpuppets on the suspicion that they are aristarchus? The entire pogrom makes no sense, other than your hatred, janrinok. Time to resign, for real this time?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday September 02 2023, @08:42AM (1 child)
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @10:50AM
Wait, I have to go ask Runaway about this.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:47AM
Hmm, how many of those are aristarchus, and how many Runaway and janrinok sockpuppets? There is really no way for a normal soylentil to tell.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:38AM (2 children)
All users on Proton VPN are banned, or only those using this one particular IP? You need to share, janrinok. Let us know the 5 neat tricks you use to control the discourse on SN. We can handle the truth! Or, do you not trust us? Oh, janny! I am hurt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:30AM (1 child)
I have moved to Nord, which janrinok seems to be totally oblivious about. I have faked him out multiple times, just in the last couple weeks. He thinks I am a real user! Ha! What a fucking looser!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @04:48PM
If you really want to fool Janrinok, you could always get a job instead of trolling this site 24/7. That will really confuse him more than abusing a new VPN service ever could.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2023, @11:12AM
Now janrinok knows, but that knowledge will remain secret, OpSec, you know, military classification system, were everyone is known, friend or foe, but knowing that is above your pay grade, or your Soylent Security Clearence Level.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2023, @07:22AM (3 children)
The posting was not bad, it just pissed off our reigning tyrant, janrinok. So who controls this? I notice after I post a few posts contra janrinok, my IP gets banned. Coincidence? I think not. Admit it, janrinok, you are trying to silence criticism, much like Putin downs airplanes.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 24 2023, @08:46AM (2 children)
Personal attack again.... Plus it is best that you remain anonymous, which you have failed to do on this occasion.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2023, @09:29AM
We put a spell on you! Attack, attack, attack! Janrinok, you really need to lighten up! We are just having fun with you! Why so serious? Bloody Pom!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2023, @07:36AM
King of the Wild Front Ear! Had to do with the Coonskin Cap, fashioned of a (dead) raccoon, with wild front ears, for reasons we will never fathom. Unless it be White superacy mythology about wearing certain dead mammals on your head. See Turning Point Beavers USA, or Guliani Beaver Drip Hair Color. Quack! The whole thing is too perverted to go through. Consult aristarchus, he knows.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 22 2023, @07:33PM (10 children)
The best is yet to come.
I wouldn't trade anything for my late nights dialing into BBS, hoarding phreaking text files, and watching download progress bars while scouring Computer Shopper magazines. I had to wake up in the middle of the night so I wouldn't get up in trouble for tying up our only phone line. One of my formative experiences with AI was falling asleep, mid-download, pulling down the example code for a neural network I read about in a book. That BBS was two states away, a long-distance phone call, and I got in huge trouble for that.
I giggle thinking about the many hundreds of hours of free trials I liberated from AOL. My brother-in-law (RIP) had a Packard Bell 386 that was an absolute speed demon compared to my Grid laptop. I scavenged a library of ?ogg? files that would play low-quality audio through my PC speaker. Aol got their revenge; In hindsight I see that ironically keeping my aol email address probably hurt my career. Oops. Double-edged sword there.
When I moved out, I scavenged an ancient IBM PC and played Legend of the Red Dragon and Tradewars for hours. The BBS world was dying, but even then I kept going back. I delighted in the freedom of that. It would even play my OGG files!
When I worked at a CompUSA, they had a CABLE MODEM. It was insanely fast, and the heyday of peer-to-peer file sharing. My old hoarding instinct nearly drowned me in ebooks and textbooks. For the first time in my life, I could acquire data faster than I could consume it. It was nirvana. I met my spouse, got a bunch of printer and PC repair certifications, argued valiantly for Open Source, got an MCSE, and bootstrapped my career.
It has been thirty years since my first ATDT. The speed and interface have changed, but the connection to people and knowledge are still the same. They're the best part, and it's only getting better.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Sunday August 27 2023, @10:42AM (8 children)
This somehow looks like my past too. Last BBS died in the early 2000s in my area. But BBS are still around online, for fun, just like in the past.
And about nostalgia, it's nothing new. I had a neighbour that lived next door since 1978. She's now 95ish and has moved few years ago down the street to assisted living. At some point she said "in the past people used to introduce themselves when they moved in, but now people keep mostly to themselves. Life was easier back then". I've replied that while people keep more to themselves because their neighbours are not their friends so much anymore. But it doesn't prevent us from saying hello to them ;) Also, I said, life is much easier today. Back when you were little, there was no washing machines in every house and public transportation was more of a challenge -- to that she agreed. "Yes, washing machine made my life easier".
As people we forget the bad and remember the good.
I remember that I worked a paper route to buy a C++ compiler so I could teach myself programming. Today, these tools are free! Heck, even on a regular phone you can have these things for free. Paradise by my standards.
I could complain that politics are shit these days and that the world was much more sane in the past... but which past? 1990s in America? or 1950s in America with Red Scare [wikipedia.org]?
So, I'll have a drink to the future since that is the only hope we have.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday August 28 2023, @02:37AM (4 children)
My favorite ride/show at Disney/Florida is the Carousel of Progress. It has this same vibe, showing how each generation is swaddled by modern (to them) technology. The "Great big beautiful tomorrow ' song is an optimistic earworm too. :)
Speaking of, we just had some new neighbors move in. I should introduce myself I guess. Maybe I'll take them a pie? Is that still a thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2023, @04:59AM
I gave our neighbors a gift certificate to our nearby bakery. With food allergies such as they are and having one myself, I didn't feel comfortable giving food to strangers. Good thing I did too because they ordered a dairy-free and gluten-free butter pecan cheesecake but what I originally thought to give them had both of those and didn't have their favorite food group: nuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2023, @01:08PM (1 child)
give the neighbour a pie, they will eat for a day, teach them to pi they will eat for a lifetime.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:52AM
I gave janrinok a pie. He banned me. Be careful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2023, @11:04AM
I haven't seen the Carousel of Progress since they redid it. I recall it being stuck in its original incarnation for a very long time. I've been told it has been updated, but I never visited it since.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday August 30 2023, @06:35PM (2 children)
Oh yah... and now you can find videos on-line to teach you practically anything. I'm self-taught in my field, back then that was a BFD because just finding training materials was a bitch and a half. Example: I nearly laid out $500 to purchase a DVD set with tens of hours of shit to go through. That was more than my rent with no guarantees that a. I'd glean anything that'd help me become employable and b. That I'd even get off my lazy ass and watch it.
Oh and the software I used was prohibitively expensive. Back then if you had it it was because you pirated it. Today I can point to multiple OSS alternatives. People can get practical experience without having to leave the house for it.
I totally agree with you, dude. Now I'm a supervisor and part of my role is hiring people for my team, and hey they new-hires are already trained! Paradise!! Now I could just find a fucking streaming TV solution that's either no ads period or ads but no subscription fee.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @09:54AM (1 child)
For streaming services, I usually use free ones with ads. I don't need the cutting-edge for new programming, so those work fine. I usually use FreeVee or Tubi. There is also a service by my local library where I can "check out" videos from some online services (I forget the names offhand). If someone else from your library is watching it you have to wait your turn, but that isn't usually a problem since there is so much to choose from. You can also look for shows on a couple websites online, (JustWatch and Reelgood are the most accurate I've found), and they will tell you what services offer it for free or with ads. YouTube has a surprisingly large amount of movies to watch that are free with ads, but their search is horrendous so good luck finding them on purpose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @03:04AM
I looked it up. They are Kanopy and Hoopla. If what we want isn't on there, they can "interlibrary loan" a copy on a number of other services but you have to let them know in advance and pay the loan fee.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 31 2023, @02:43PM
I think it was in 1997 when I woke with a start from a dream (that I recall nothing about) but I do remember sitting up in bed and virtually shouting "It's on the internet!" Clearly, something in my subconscious felt that big things were afoot.
Around 1999 we bought some riverfront land in the middle of nowhere - with a massive fiber backbone being installed less than 2 miles away - thinking that we (and lots of other people) would be leaving the cities to live in more rural settings where they could work remotely. Sadly, it took another 21 years and a once in a century global pandemic to get that ball rolling, and due to multiple life circumstances we never finished that cabin and sold the land.
Now, I sit at home with my 2nd round of COVID, not having to take a sick day from work... not quite what I envisioned 25 years ago, but not bad either.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2023, @07:39AM
From the front page, but equally apropos here, apparently. Fucking janrinok.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday August 30 2023, @06:20PM
Fast forward to 2020 and my living room looks like the bridge of the enterprise. Now I'm exaggerating a little but I'm no longer dragging a huge heavy box of DVDs to my next apartment. I'm working from home. I'm in touch with friends and family via audio and even video. I've attended an overseas funeral via video-link for the passing of an internet-friend. In general I have a better work-life balance thanks to improvements with the internet.
I don't fantasize about going back in time to the 'old days' of the net because a. I'd lose stuff I value today and b. It was NOT that great. Ads were still a problem. To get the content I wanted I had to pirate it. (I was NOT going to wait six fucking months to watch Doctor Who.) Any tech I had was a cludge in some form or another. I remember having to format and reinstall because I was stupid in where I went to get the DivX codec. Oh... and I had to do everything at my desk and not, you know, the big comfy chair in my living room where I watch TV with my wife.
The one thing I will say is I *did* warn you all that we weren't enough to keep streaming TV from being just cableTV without the cable. STILL dealing with overpriced service that demands I pick the corn out of a turd.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2023, @07:32PM (10 children)
Why is that happening?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @08:29AM
Some comments are more equal than others. Ask janrinok.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 31 2023, @09:33AM (7 children)
Can you give me more details please - this is not normal behaviour.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @03:10PM (5 children)
Is it possible that there's an age limit for moderating comments, and that the oldest comments on the poll were posted long enough ago that they can't be moderated any longer?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 31 2023, @04:45PM (4 children)
As I understand it, all stories and journals time out after 30 days approximately. After that they cannot accept further comments or moderations.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @08:05AM (2 children)
Seems not to be the case, I can still comment on the oldest comments on this poll. Something else is going on. And by the pricking of my thumbs, . . .
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 01 2023, @11:53AM (1 child)
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @07:41AM
So it must be a case of admin interference, again? Shadow-not-allowing-moderation? Something like that.
[Oh, I have probably hit my limit of five posts from this IP before janrinok blocks me, and anyone else, from posting from it. So, good day, all! ]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @11:04AM
You can comment on journals forever, possibly polls. You can't moderate comments older than 30 days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2023, @04:31PM
Don't know how.. I just saw some comments on the page that could not be moderated. Maybe, like the other AC said, it's about the age of the comment.. No biggie
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2023, @01:27PM
No, no - just no. You are not allowed to moderate your own posts. Even when you pretend to be AC.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday September 01 2023, @02:35PM
Sometimes I think "Living in the future is awesome." Other days I have to fix a DHCP conflict between a lightswitch and my TV. Those days I think "The future is dumb." Working from home is definitely in the former category. 10/10.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2023, @11:19AM (2 children)
We have a young Earth article on the front page? Holey Crap! Wholly Roller shit on the front page? Fundie (not too bright) Christians have taken over SoylentNews? Well, that fucks it for everybody. Gonna visit my bud, Satan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2023, @04:23PM (1 child)
Are you really so desperate for things to complain about? There are plenty of real things you could focus on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2023, @09:33AM
Yes! Good point! Real things like khallow's disinformation machine he bought for much less than $400.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2023, @04:21PM
Yes it is!
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=57392&page=1&cid=1322964#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Runaway pushing more slurs while trying to spin it on to liberals. I am so sorry, so very sorry, to point out such depravity. I do wish it wasn't so needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 06 2023, @11:39PM (4 children)
I mean, how in the hell does stuff like this:
make it onto the front page, especially in a headline?
Truly, this is the End of SN. Requiat in Pacem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:35AM (3 children)
And, the typo slides off the front page, as Glaciars are known to do. If there were any such thing as Glaciars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @03:50PM
Old news. Laura Trevelyan already told us that one day all the glass ears would be gone (melted). Then again she seems to have gone full blown woke [deadline.com]. Good on her and best wishes!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @05:06PM (1 child)
If you had time to spam about the typo here, you had time to email the editors and let them know, so that they could fix the typo.
How's the weather in New York, APK? A bit stormy later today?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @09:15PM
1. Not my job.
2. Every time I have emailed staff, it has not gone well. They do not seem to want any help, interpreting it as criticism.
3. You keep using that word (spam). I do not think it means what you think it means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2023, @06:57AM (1 child)
Comment count on Poll is now 123. Just not to long ago, it was 129? Six comments have been deleted? Deep-sixed? Censored! Did they interfere with discussion, or were they really, really, offtopic?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @02:10PM
Bbbut censorship never happens here! Lawl
Moar racism! Anti-vaxx morons unite!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2023, @07:33AM
The front page video gaming posts have really got to stop. Do we really want to be a Kotaku with six commenters?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2023, @05:31AM
Wot! Eds have picked up an aristarchus submission? What the hay? Dartmouth study. Worth a read. If only we had more aristarchus submissions.