History of AOL
Jhi Ng
I am a newby in your forum. Is it true that every body thinks that
AoL sucks. Why do they say that. It is so unfair
Jay
Bill Marcum
Why should you care, your headers show that you are not really using AOL.
Could a new user get a name like "jay" and not "jay10234"?
TimC
Shhh, you spoil the trolling fun for the rest of us!
Of course, this was my frst thought, and indeed the headers were
pretty clear about this, but there have been a bunch of people around
here lately that have very quickly bit at the opportunaty to show
their superiority about Linux vs MS etc.
You probably ruined the opportunatey to have a big flame fest like
those other threads hanging around here :)
--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
Anyone seeking the "Relativistic Quantum Mechanics" soft option
course, may wish to leave now. -- Intro lecture to RQM
Joel Gallun
> I am a newby in your forum. Is it true that every body thinks that
> AoL sucks. Why do they say that. It is so unfair
AOL has always marketed itself to unsophisticated computer users
(advertising slogan: "So easy to use, no wonder its #1"). When AOL
connected to the internet in the early 90s these unsophisticated users
were introduced to the relatively clueful internet users of that era en
masse. I believe the "AOL sux" attitude is a result of that. I would
say that today the average customer of an average ISP is no more or
only barely more clueful than the average AOL customer. But the
attitude persists.
For a complete history of AOL see "AOL.com" by Kara Swisher.
Joel
Michael J. Albanese
> When AOL
> connected to the internet in the early 90s these unsophisticated users
> were introduced to the relatively clueful internet users of that era en
> masse.
I recall the calm, rational reaction of that time being something akin
to: "Look out! They've opened the floodgates! Run for your lives!" :-)
The attitude of disdain persists for WebTV (now MSN TV?) folks, too.
CompuServe users seemed to fare better, possibly due to many of those
users having a more technical background, and CompuServe being held in
higher regard as an online services pioneer.
Mike
--
(remove 'revoke-my-' from address for email)
Foobar T. Clown
>
> I recall the calm, rational reaction of that time being something akin
> to: "Look out! They've opened the floodgates! Run for your lives!" :-)
>
> The attitude of disdain persists for WebTV (now MSN TV?) folks, too.
> CompuServe users seemed to fare better, possibly due to many of those
> users having a more technical background, and CompuServe being held in
> higher regard as an online services pioneer.
I'm pretty sure that AOL was the first nation-wide "on-line service
provider" that gave its customers access to the internet. Compuserve
was doing business years before AOL was even conceived, but they kept
their customers locked up in their own little Compuserve world.
Part of what made AOL so bad is that they turned their hordes loose on
the internet without ever telling them what an "Internet" was or, that
they were on one. As an AOL customer, all of your access was filtered
through AOL proxy servers and a single, monolithic AOL client app. I
don't know if it was intentional or accidental, but they did a very
good job of making USENET and the web *LOOK* like they were just parts
of a little, isolated AOL world.
Web-TV, of course, lowered the bar even further by being the first
provider to put people on the net who lacked even the basic skills
needed to switch on a computer.
-- Foo!
Michael J. Albanese
> I'm pretty sure that AOL was the first nation-wide "on-line service
> provider" that gave its customers access to the internet.
ISTR that honor going to the old Delphi online service, around 1992 or so.
"Arargh (CircleAroundAnA NOSPAMarargh decimal NOSPAMcom)"
wrote:
>"Michael J. Albanese" wrote:
>>
>> I recall the calm, rational reaction of that time being something akin
>> to: "Look out! They've opened the floodgates! Run for your lives!" :-)
>>
>> The attitude of disdain persists for WebTV (now MSN TV?) folks, too.
>> CompuServe users seemed to fare better, possibly due to many of those
>> users having a more technical background, and CompuServe being held in
>> higher regard as an online services pioneer.
>
>I'm pretty sure that AOL was the first nation-wide "on-line service
>provider" that gave its customers access to the internet. Compuserve
>was doing business years before AOL was even conceived, but they kept
>their customers locked up in their own little Compuserve world.
ISTR that Compuserve had Internet Email back in 1989-90, maybe a
little sooner, but they charged per message or some such. This was
shortly before I dropped them and signed up with my first ISP.
<snip>
--
Arargh (at arargh dot com) http://www.arargh.com
To reply by email, change the bogus reply address.
Richard Steiner
"Foobar T. Clown" <fu...@gazonk.del> spake unto us, saying:
>I'm pretty sure that AOL was the first nation-wide "on-line service
>provider" that gave its customers access to the internet.
We had access to things like gopher on Delphi before AOL had anything
besides e-mail, and I remember being able to do some text-based web
surfing as well.
--
-Rich Steiner >>>---> http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner >>>---> Eden Prairie, MN
OS/2 + BeOS + Linux + Win95 + DOS + PC/GEOS = PC Hobbyist Heaven! :-)
Applications analyst/designer/developer (13 yrs) seeking employment.
See web site in my signature for current resume and background.
Q
<mjalb...@revoke-my-charter.net> wrote:
>ISTR that honor going to the old Delphi online service, around 1992 or so.
Wow. I forgot that one even existed. Nothing suprising about
forgetting something, but I actually used this one for a short time.
Also used a service called Genie -- a service of US General Electric
company. One of these services seemed to push users into 'off hours'
by charging more for 'business hours.'
Q
Michael J. Albanese
> Wow. I forgot that one even existed. Nothing suprising about
> forgetting something, but I actually used this one for a short time.
I tried Delphi for a while, too, mostly out of curiosity. They did
provide internet access, but the interface was rather quirky and
difficult, at least for the new (i.e. "clueless") user. AOL, with their
"GUI pretty face" on everything, began bringing in the masses, for
better or worse. As someone mentioned, many of these poor souls had no
idea they were venturing out onto the internet. To them, it was just
another AOL screen, and they couldn't fathom why everybody was suddenly
beating them up :-)
> Also used a service called Genie -- a service of US General Electric
> company. One of these services seemed to push users into 'off hours'
> by charging more for 'business hours.'
GEnie was operated by GEISCO (GE Information Services Co.) of Rockville,
MD, still around today as GXS (GE Global Exchange Services). In the
early 80's, during the waning days of commercial timesharing, I visited
that site for a job interview. I knew I was underqualified for the
advertised opening, but couldn't resist a chance to visit one of the big
GE datacenters. My programming teeth had been cut on the old GE-200
series, so it was a pilgrimage of sorts to "hallowed ground". By then,
of course, GE was using a combination of Honeywell and IBM hardware.
Nearly all the online services back then charged substantially more (at
least double the rate) for "prime time" access, to minimize impact on
commercial customers. You were billed for each and every excruciating
minute (no affordable flat rate plans), and rates were structured to
strongly encourage home users to connect during off-peak hours, when
excess capacity was available.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> Nearly all the online services back then charged substantially more (at
> least double the rate) for "prime time" access, to minimize impact on
> commercial customers. You were billed for each and every excruciating
> minute (no affordable flat rate plans), and rates were structured to
> strongly encourage home users to connect during off-peak hours, when
> excess capacity was available.
i remember a story of one of the large commercial time-sharing
offerings (late 70s or early 80s) about an executive who first heard
about clients playing games on their computers. the reaction was
supposedly to remove all such offending programs and try and make it
impossible for such things to crop up again. he was then told that 30
percent of the services revenue was now coming from people playing
games. when he heard that ... he allowed that maybe it wasn't all bad
after all.
flat rate supposedly sprouted when a large clientele developed that
used possibly five percent or less of their monthly flat rate. This
created a bi-model distribution with huge number of users effectively
subsidizing the heavy use of a small number of users (aka nothing is
free .... there is always somebody paying for it some way).
The profile of the large clientele population (that made it possible
for a few to enjoy large amounts of computer use) ... was supposedly
business oriented people that would connect a couple times a week
(later a couple times a day) and do email exchange (upload/download)
and then disconnect. They believed that they were getting value for
their money ... even though there actual computer use never came close
to consuming the resources that their payments underwrote.
It is sort of analogous to insurance .... if everybody consumed more
than they were paying for ... insurance wouldn't work. In general, low
insurance premiums indicate either 1) that they aren't getting any
service or 2) a huge number of people utilize significantly less than
they pay for. The early days of flat rate tended to be heavily skewed
towards #2.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Q
<ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
>i remember a story of one of the large commercial time-sharing
>offerings (late 70s or early 80s) about an executive who first heard
>about clients playing games on their computers. the reaction was
>supposedly to remove all such offending programs and try and make it
>impossible for such things to crop up again.
Back in the '70s the shop I was at converted from 96 col cards to
tubes (as we called them then.) At the training center, we met a
programming supervisor at a shop that had already made the switch.
He was very bored with the class (had learned all the beginners 'crap'
on his own).
At lunch one day he related the story of his programmers misadventures
in the world of computer gaming. There were some very crude Invader,
Star Trek etc games making the rounds. The IT manager was perusing
the logs and did not like what he saw -- 3 hours of games being played
daily. He instructed the staff to cease-and-desist.
These were not the average 'RealSmartBozoProgrammers" however.
They were instead the dreaded 'SuperSmartSuperBozoProgrammers."
They hid the games in with the payroll programs, and continued having
fun. Hell, no manager would ever wonder why payroll programs were
being run so often!!
My boss and I were so astounded that we neglected to ask if anyone was
sacked!!!
Q
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> They hid the games in with the payroll programs, and continued having
> fun. Hell, no manager would ever wonder why payroll programs were
> being run so often!!
there was also the observation somewhere that if things like this were
banned ... then hundreds of customers might hide their own copies
unnecessarily using scarce disk space. that having a single copy of
each publicly available would save enormous amounts of disk space.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Foobar T. Clown
>
> Foobar T. Clown wrote:
>
> > I'm pretty sure that AOL was the first nation-wide "on-line service
> > provider" that gave its customers access to the internet.
>
> ISTR that honor going to the old Delphi online service, around 1992
> or so.
I stand corrected. 1992, you say? Around that time I was connected to
the Internet via a cheapernet cable dropped down the elevator shaft to
the company on floor below. We paid half the rent on their phone line
in exchange for a port on their router. Can't rightly remember if it
was full T1 or frame relay.
-- Foo!
jmfb...@aol.com
>Nearly all the online services back then charged substantially more (at
>least double the rate) for "prime time" access, to minimize impact on
>commercial customers. You were billed for each and every excruciating
>minute (no affordable flat rate plans), and rates were structured to
>strongly encourage home users to connect during off-peak hours, when
>excess capacity was available.
Most computing services did this even when the only way to input
anything was via cards. The 360 at U. of Mich. charged less to
non-U.of M. people after hours. So my boss would have the guy
who needed the computing power of a 360 (vs. a 1620) drive all
the way to Ann Arbor so that he'd get there at night. He'd hand
the deck to the operator; the computer went <zip> <burb> and
the output was handed back. This was for a job that required
more than 24 hours of dedicated 1620 time. When the guy came
back, he was very humbled. He thought he had had a huge number
cruncher. :-)
One of the reason I did my USAGE accounting project was so
our customers who used the timesharing OSes could play
funny money games and cross-charge based on shift.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> Most computing services did this even when the only way to input
> anything was via cards. The 360 at U. of Mich. charged less to
> non-U.of M. people after hours. So my boss would have the guy
> who needed the computing power of a 360 (vs. a 1620) drive all
> the way to Ann Arbor so that he'd get there at night. He'd hand
> the deck to the operator; the computer went <zip> <burb> and
> the output was handed back. This was for a job that required
> more than 24 hours of dedicated 1620 time. When the guy came
> back, he was very humbled. He thought he had had a huge number
> cruncher. :-)
note also on ibm mainframes the lease costs could be for first shift
only operation, two shift operation, three/four shift operation and
the incremental delta for three/four shift operation was small (ten
percent of first shift sticks in my mind). note that this was based on
"meter" running when something was going on.
two things credited with turning some of the early time-sharing
services (in house or commercial) into 24x7 operaton was (csc
started leaving machine up round the clock).
1) prepare command
2) unattended operation
the meter ran when processor was executing and/or doing i/o transfer.
the terminal control unit normal was considered in the middle of doing
somthing if there was an "active" operation on the controller
... whether or not actual keystrokes were happening at the moment. The
prepare CCW command put the terminal controller in a state that
effectively didn't active the cpu meter but still ready to accept
keystroke.
w/o an off-shift operator and the prepare command ... it was easy to
leave the machine up 7x24 and have very little off-shift bills ... the
meter only running when somebody was actually doing something. If nobody
was one ... or on and not doing something
random refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#86 1401 Wordmark?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#107 Computer History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#27 HELP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#24 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
Michael J. Albanese
> 1992, you say? Around that time I was connected to
> the Internet via a cheapernet cable dropped down the elevator shaft to
> the company on floor below. We paid half the rent on their phone line
> in exchange for a port on their router. Can't rightly remember if it
> was full T1 or frame relay.
1992 would have been when Delphi first provided *consumer* access to the
internet via an online service. Delphi Internet eventually was purchased
by Rupert Murdoch, but now lives on as part of Prospero Technologies,
along with portions of another former online community, The Well.
Simon
>
> Jhi Ng <j...@aol.com> writes:
>
> > I am a newby in your forum. Is it true that every body thinks that
> > AoL sucks. Why do they say that. It is so unfair
>
> AOL has always marketed itself to unsophisticated computer users
If AOL is so easy to use, why does 'The Official AOL UK Handbook'
run to 656 pages?
Simon
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Simon J. Harris email: s.j.h...@ic.ac.uk
Mechatronics in Medicine Laboratory, tel: 020 7589-5111 x 57068
Department of Mechanical Engineering, http://www.me.ic.ac.uk/case/mim
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine,
Exhibition Road, London SW7 2BX
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carlton Dramatic Society web site: http://come.to/carltondrama
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eugene Miya
>along with portions of another former online community, The Well.
Former?
I believe The Well is still there and functioning. I still send email
to at least a dozen people there. Mandel might have passed on, but
The Well goes on.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> Former?
> I believe The Well is still there and functioning. I still send email
> to at least a dozen people there. Mandel might have passed on, but
> The Well goes on.
they also have web site .... and i periodically get hits on my garlic pages
from some web page hosted at the well.
Michael J. Albanese
> Former?
> I believe The Well is still there and functioning.
By gum, you're right. The portion of The Well that merged with Delphi
was a services spinoff named Wellengaged, however The Well itself
continues on. It most definitely is not "former".
Eugene Miya
>> Former?
>> I believe The Well is still there and functioning.
>
>By gum, you're right. The portion of The Well that merged with Delphi
>was a services spinoff named Wellengaged, however The Well itself
>continues on. It most definitely is not "former".
I had to come to the Well's defense for Tom, whom I knew in the last
years of his life, for Stewart for the Conferences he runs, and my
friend Elaine who's photo appears in the Nerds 2.0.1 book unidentified
(backuping the then Well Sequent), and to Katie who wrote a difficult
book about Well culture. Even though, I don't have an account on it.
I need to get Rheingold's book for work, even though I can't stand
Howard's writing.
"You own your words."
TimC
> Joel Gallun wrote:
>>
>> Jhi Ng <j...@aol.com> writes:
>>
>> > I am a newby in your forum. Is it true that every body thinks that
>> > AoL sucks. Why do they say that. It is so unfair
>>
>> AOL has always marketed itself to unsophisticated computer users
>> (advertising slogan: "So easy to use, no wonder its #1")...
>
> If AOL is so easy to use, why does 'The Official AOL UK Handbook'
> run to 656 pages?
Dammit! Why couldn't they fit another 10 pages?
--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
cat ~/.signature
Electromagnetic pulse received (core dumped)
Tony (the plonque.com guy)
news:umlok8p...@corp.supernews.com...
We used PCMagNet (part of Compuserve) back in the mid 1980s and used it
to download varius DOS shareware programs for our PC-XTs and brand new 286s.
I recall being told much later that Compuserve actually predated the
Internet.
Presumably 'the tennybopper network' wasn't even yet a gleam in Case's
eye...
Michael J. Albanese
> I recall being told much later that Compuserve actually predated the
> Internet.
CompuServe was founded in 1969, the same year the first four nodes of
ARPANET came up. But I think they were only doing work for Golden United
Life Insurance, with timesharing for outside customers coming later. A
letter by Sandy Trevor seems to indicate that their first KA-10 wouldn't
have been fully operational until sometime in 1970:
http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/compuserve.txt
The MicroNET service, initially for small business customers, was made
available to home users in 1979.
Michael Hyman
become AOL. It was designed as a way for non-Apple employees to get
AppleLink access.
Things have changed. I can still remember my Compuserve account number,
before even UUCP style addresses existed.
Someone mentioned that CS had an Internet gateway...that is true and they
charged by the messages. They also had an MCIMail gateway, same charging.
"Giles Todd" <g...@localhost.at-dot.org> wrote in message
news:arilmukn1bgasu3sv...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 25 Aug 2002 21:47:40 -0500, Jhi Ng <j...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > I am a newby in your forum. Is it true that every body thinks that
> > AoL sucks. Why do they say that. It is so unfair
>
> Hi, Kevin.
>
> Life is not fair. Now go to bed as you were told so unfairly at least
> half an hour ago.
>
> Giles.
-----------== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Uncensored Usenet News ==----------
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----= Over 100,000 Newsgroups - Unlimited Fast Downloads - 19 Servers =-----
rfgdxm/Robert F. Golaszewski
>>
>> I am a newby in your forum. Is it true that every body thinks that
>> AoL sucks. Why do they say that. It is so unfair
>>
>
> Why should you care, your headers show that you are not really using
> AOL. Could a new user get a name like "jay" and not "jay10234"?
Probably a troll, but his headers do NOT show that he isn't using
AOL. He is posting through the indi Usenet provider Newsguy. AOL's
implementation of Usenet is so broken that nobody with AOL who has half
a clue actually uses that, and they use real news servers run by others.
--
http://www.dextromethorphan.ws/. My "Beginner's Guide to DXM",
and other DXM related material can be accessed from there.
Another reason Coricidin abuse may be bad:
http://www.coricidin.org/coricidin-murder.htm
jmfb...@aol.com
>prepare CCW command put the terminal controller in a state that
>effectively didn't active the cpu meter but still ready to accept
>keystroke.
>
>w/o an off-shift operator and the prepare command ... it was easy to
>leave the machine up 7x24 and have very little off-shift bills ... the
>meter only running when somebody was actually doing something. If nobody
>was one ... or on and not doing something
I hadn't realized that computer usage charges were "real". :-)
Computer usage data capture was always my sideline at every
job I had (with one exception). Nobody wants to talk about it
but everybody wants to use it. My USAGE project was lonely. ;-)
Jeff Jonas
> 1992 would have been when Delphi first provided *consumer* access
> to the internet via an online service. Delphi Internet eventually was
> Prospero Technologies,
*sigh* I was on GEnie around 1990 then switched to Delphi
when their 20/20 plan was considered a good deal
($20 for 20 hours of non-prime-time access).
AOL and others "low balled" customers with artificially low fees
("unlimited for $19/month", forget all the busy signals, keep trying).
Delphi apparently never went for lowballing customers and could not compete.
Now AOL's increasing their fees and others that WERE FREE (such as NetZero)
are advertising on TV as "a cheaper alternative to AOL"
(even MSN is advertising as cheaper than AOL).
Delphiforums still exist, but many forums were closed, destroyed
or abandoned in favor of Yahoo groups. Yet Prospero's insistent on making
lemonade of their lemons and pestering users with
advertising and begware to subscribe to their mostly useless service.
>> along with portions of another
>> former online community, The Well.
>Former?
>I believe The Well is still there and functioning. I still send email
>to at least a dozen people there. Mandel might have passed on,
>but The Well goes on.
Ah, so the Well didn't run dry? :">
Perhaps you can correct a misconception I have:
I thought the Well was mostly a California DeadHead thing.
PS: I once tried IBM/Sears Prodigy and I'm kinda surprised that AOL
overtook them since they seem to have pioneered the glitzy, flashy
low-content GUI look with tiny text screens
to make long messages hard to read and harder to compose!
GEnie used plain 24 line 80 character screens,
sheer luxury compared to Prodigy's postage-stamp text area!
--
Jeffrey Jonas
jeffj@panix(dot)com
The original Dr. JCL and Mr .hide
Joel Gallun
> AOL and others "low balled" customers with artificially low fees
> ("unlimited for $19/month", forget all the busy signals, keep trying).
Who was the first ISP to go flat rate? It wasn't AOL or MCI. Both of
them went flat rate as a reaction to someone else but I can't recall
who.
Joel
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> Who was the first ISP to go flat rate? It wasn't AOL or MCI. Both of
> them went flat rate as a reaction to someone else but I can't recall
> who.
i had well account for a number of years and then added netcom (very
early on in netcom's life, i was able to still get "lynn" as my shell
account) which was flat rate (I don't know if it was earliest) ...
misc. postings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#20 Most Embarrasing Misposting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#21 Too much data on an actuator (was: 3.5 inch *9GB* )
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@garlic.com - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Brian Inglis
<ro...@localhost.localdomain> wrote:
Compuserve has had flat rate access plans since at least early
1980s when I signed up and internet mail (initially surcharged --
not flat rate) since late 1980s -- didn't add web access until
early 1990s. Depends somewhat on what exactly you mean by ISP and
what kind of flat rate -- limited or unlimited?
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--
Brian....@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
fake address use address above to reply
ab...@aol.com tos...@aol.com ab...@att.com ab...@earthlink.com
ab...@hotmail.com ab...@mci.com ab...@msn.com ab...@sprint.com
ab...@yahoo.com ab...@cadvision.com ab...@shaw.ca ab...@telus.com
ab...@ibsystems.com u...@ftc.gov spam traps
Joel Gallun
> Depends somewhat on what exactly you mean by ISP and what kind of
> flat rate -- limited or unlimited?
Sorry about that. I meant unlimited.
I had just finished implementing a usage based billing system for
Internet MCI about the time the "all you can eat" craze swept the ISP
world. IIRC we ran it for a while in a kind of a "dry mode" but never
actually used it to bill customers. No idea what became of it when
Internet MCI went to Cable & Wireless as I went elsewhere.
Another poster may have come up with the answer I was looking for:
Netcom. Again, IIRC, MCI went flat rate unlimited use in reaction to
them. AOL was the last (or nearly so) big "ISP" to go flat rate for
unlimited access.
Joel
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> In the UK, Demon Internet was flat-rate from the day the service
> started -- 1 June 1992.
>
> Giles.
doing search on older google newsgroup entries for
flat rate online netcom
came up with old posting
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=flat+rate+online+netcom&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1988&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=6&as_maxy=1990&selm=6966%40cbnewsh.ATT.COM&rnum=6
that had:
02/89 408-997-9119^ netcom San Jose CA 3/12/24/96 24 Unix System V --
Shell Access [Bourne, Korn, C-Shell], BBS, USENET, Languages: C, Lisp,
Prolog, Clips, (Ada soon), $10 / month, login as 'guest' no password.
Contact netcom!bobr.
as well as:
11/89 415-332-6106^ well Sausalito CA 12/24 24 6-processor Sequent
Balance (32032); UUCP and USENET access; multiple lines; access via
CPN; PICOSPAN BBS; $3/hour. Contact (415) 332-4335
Peter Ibbotson
> On Tue, 01 Oct 2002 02:50:16 GMT, Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:
>
> > 02/89 408-997-9119^ netcom San Jose CA 3/12/24/96 24 Unix System V --
> > Shell Access [Bourne, Korn, C-Shell], BBS, USENET, Languages: C, Lisp,
> > Prolog, Clips, (Ada soon), $10 / month, login as 'guest' no password.
> > Contact netcom!bobr.
>
> service was Internet access via SLIP or PPP only. You ran your own
> host. No shell accounts or BBS gubbins.
>
<PEDANT>Apart from the download the software shell account.</PEDANT>
It's also debatable if you call it flat rate access, from demons POV this is
true however from the users they still had BT phone bills to contend with
(Unless in Kingston but thats a different story).
--
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Peter Ibbotson
> On Tue, 1 Oct 2002 11:42:13 +0100, "Peter Ibbotson"
> <spa...@ibbotson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > (Unless in Kingston but thats a different story).
>
> willing to be corrected -- I've learned my lesson about relying solely
> on my memory).
>
Strictly speaking before my time on demon. However it sounds about right as
I seem to remember the fuss (via cix) at the time.
greymaus
> On Tue, 1 Oct 2002 11:42:13 +0100, "Peter Ibbotson"
><spa...@ibbotson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> SLIP or PPP software appropriate to your host. There was nothing else
> you could do with that shell.
>
>> It's also debatable if you call it flat rate access, from demons POV this is
>> true however from the users they still had BT phone bills to contend with
>
> PoP coverage. Anyone know?
>
> For what it's worth, the way I got Internet access prior to Demon's
> start-up was by dialling from the UK to a shell account at
> world.std.com. That was a tad expensive, so I didn't do it often.
>
>> (Unless in Kingston but thats a different story).
>
> willing to be corrected -- I've learned my lesson about relying solely
> on my memory).
>
There was a semi-warez BBS in Germany operated by someone with a
gateway to the Internet, X25, Sven Ecternect or something.
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Greymaus;
Follow up, don't e-mail, my killfile is savage;
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Giles Todd <g...@localhost.at-dot.org> wrote:
GT> In the UK, Demon Internet was flat-rate from the day the service
GT> started -- 1 June 1992.
ISTR Pipex having a flat rate dial up, although flat in this
case meant "flat out of reach".
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