Does Using an AOL Email Address Suggest You're a Tech Dinosaur?

Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite years of layoffs and tumbling net worth, AOL seemed to get a new lease on life this week when Verizon bought it for $4.4 billion. But even if AOL's still alive, using an AOL email address has long been seen as a way of signaling that you're stuck in the 1990s. A recent analysis of Dice data found that a mere 1.8 percent of those registering for the site used an AOL address, versus 55 percent for Gmail. For the past several years, Websites from Gizmodo to Lifehacker have all declared that still using an AOL email address is counterproductive, to put it mildly. But is that actually true? Do the people in your life and work actually care whether you use AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, or a custom address, or is the idea of 'email bias' an overblown myth?

Comments

What does it say about you?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Does Using an AOL Email Address Suggest You're a Tech Dinosaur?

Yes, if you're an asshole. "If it ain't broken don't fix it" only applies to popular things.

Re: What does it say about you?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I use it (still), but as an email flophouse.

Re:What does it say about you?

[HornWumpus]

Nothing on the internet says 'I'm a blithering idiot, please abuse me.' as quickly and concisely as @aol.com.

It used to be worse. Now you are just a dinosaur. Before you were king of the chumps.

Re:What does it say about you?

[phantomfive]

Does AOL mail allow POP clients?
Does AOL mail allow more than 5MB of storage space?
Does AOL mail have a reasonably useable UI? (not something made in 1997)?

If not, then why would anyone use AOL mail?

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I gave someone at work an AOL email address as mine, they'd assume it was a joke.

Re:What does it say about you?

[RJFerret]

Maintaining a consistent email address? Good.

Using a service that scans your correspondence to market directly to you? Bad.

People who value their, and my, privacy? Good.

I'd rather communicate with an AOL user than gmail user, and I'm not an overly private individual.

Worse is a company like Google opening up that door encourages other companies to start scanning what was previously considered private.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! A/S/L?

Re:What does it say about you?

[omnichad]

From their marketing:

Unlimited storage, 25 MB of photo and video attachments, advanced spam filters, virus protection

I have no idea if that means 25MB per email or total for your mailbox. I'd hope it was the former. They support POP3 or IMAP.

Their current webmail client seems to be somewhat OK (if not cloned outright from Google and then had banner ads slapped in) - screenshot is over 2 years old:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07...

I don't think it means they're leading edge in any way, but they're not lagging behind nearly as much as I thought they were.

Re:What does it say about you?

[sound vision]

The UIs in 1997 were often better than the latest text-free tablet-oriented junk. Not sure about AOL specifically, since I never used it, but everything from Google maps to Windows to Office to video games have had regressions in UI over the past decade.

Re:What does it say about you?

[countSudoku()]

HA! You dope. I just crafted an AOL address THIS YEAR so I could bypass the other email hosting entities idea that my cellphone number is needed to verify that I'm a human, just so I could create a fake Facebook account so I can play games with my daughter without having to stoop so low as to have a real Facebook account. Mailinator was not an option, this worked out great and now I have an old-school aol.com address. I fucking make websites, I don't consume them. AOL is great if you don't want some free email site hounding you for necessary bullshit info, like your fucking cell phone number.

Re: What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Yahoo address I still use, but it tends to be more of where I direct any stuff that can be spam. If I know the address will be spammed, it gets a mailinator.com addy, or I create an alias for it on Yahoo, then when done with the transaction, delete the address alias.

A good example of what I use Yahoo for is when I ordered some long shelf life food items to stash in my RV in case of an ice storm. I then got inundated with clickbait E-mails. Those just go into a special mailbox and ignored [1]. Since Yahoo tends to be lower priority stuff, I am not worried about checking anything that arrives there as opposed to other addresses.

I also use gmail, but that tends to be not often used, other than for Android related stuff. Similar with mac.com. If it relates to OS X or iOS development, it goes there.

Then there are my private domains and hosted Exchange servers. Those are addresses I use on the resume because I pay for high uptime, and there are a number of websites which will give you the middle finger if you use a "free" provider.

Finally, there is my private, off the record E-mail account that is with a small, secure provider. That only is known to a select few.

Of course, all the above E-mail sites use two factor authentication and application passwords.

[1]: I might just empty the mailboxes out to local storage, but it is such a low priority thing, it isn't worth the bother.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blaming everything on people younger than them isn't at all something a dinosaur would do.

Re: What does it say about you?

[negRo_slim]

That's HoTMaiL for me, it's amazing how much spam is in that thing. It's like getting in a time machine and going back to 2002. Also in reference TFA I have a feeling posts like this are going to motivate people to seek out an aol.com e-mail address ironically. Making anyone the one's thinking 'tech dinosaur' dinosaur's themselves.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I fucking make websites, I don't consume them.

Other than Facebook, and Mailinator, and AOL, and Slashdot, you don't consume them. And this lamp! The ashtray, the paddle game, Facebook, Mailinator, AOL, and Slashdot.. you don't consume any of them at all!

Re:What does it say about you?

[sycodon]

I don't think he was blaming anyone. Seemed like more of a suggestion. One you should consider.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fucking Morons." vs. "fucking morons."?

I'll give a free pass on "Millenials" as MAYBE qualifying as a proper noun/title, but regardless: clearly a button has been pushed and someone's workflow still involves Microsoft Outlook... Obviously the stereotypes can't be too inaccurate.

Re:What does it say about you?

[phantomfive]

but everything from Google maps

Google maps would have had trouble existing in 1997, but more interestingly, how do you think Google maps have declined over the past decade?

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea if that means 25MB per email or total for your mailbox.

I sure as hell hope it is per email. Otherwise, it contradicts the previous point: "Unlimited storage"

Re: What does it say about you?

[R3d M3rcury]

Same here. Anyone that says, "We need your e-mail address and we promise we won't spam you" gets the AOL account. I check it, maybe, once every few months.

Re: What does it say about you?

[rogoshen1]

Yes, pretty soon they'll start a cross promotional campaign with Pabst Blue Ribbon. "Free aol.com email address with every sixer purchased, nice skinny jeans by the way!"

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing on the internet says 'I'm a blithering idiot, please abuse me.' as quickly and concisely as @aol.com.
It used to be worse. Now you are just a dinosaur. Before you were king of the chumps.

An AOL address is second only to juno.com

Re:What does it say about you?

[Jason Levine]

Nothing on the internet says 'I'm a blithering idiot, please abuse me.' as quickly and concisely as @aol.com.

Well, nothing except "My e-mail address is USERNAME.... .... .... .... Oh, I need to add the @aol.com?"

Luckily, there seem to be fewer and fewer of those folks around.

Re:What does it say about you?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

But.. but.. but... iIsaw somebody from AOL say ROFLMFAO a buncha times on IRC, that means AOL'ers are st00pid!!!

Re:What does it say about you?

[Kenshin]

If you make websites, then I assume it would be trivial for you to have a custom domain from which you could make unlimited disposable email addresses?

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geocities does custom domains + email?

Re:What does it say about you?

[gweilo8888]

You'd think that, but the websites he made were all on GeoCities.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, sounds like somebody took an internet comment a little too seriously. Poor baby.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Samantha Wright]

Maybe unlimited storage of email text?

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

It got slower, especially at zoom changes and lower bandwidth (10Mb/s). Also, it needs to redraw more frequently.

 

Re:What does it say about you?

[chipschap]

This is so cool, I just went and got myself an aol email account based on this article!

The point is, sometimes you WANT to look like a non-techie. Great deception value.

Re:What does it say about you?

[aaarrrgggh]

And nothing says "get off my lawn" like 4123.7562@compuserve.com

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Advanced SPAM filter:
This causes me some issues. I have a newsletter on my site. You must explicitly sign up to receive it. AOL started filtering as SPAM. Like most ISPs, they bounce an Email back indicating that it was caught by their SPAM filter and offer a mechanism to get you whitelisted. Unfortunately, the method cannot be followed by me. It assumes that I have full control over a singular dedicated machine on the Internet that runs forward and reverse DNS and Email and that I can configure these systems to meet AOL standards. If you are running on a shared server, that is simply not true and impossible to do.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Macrat]

You're forgetting the frequency at which the AOL mail servers are unreachable and elderly user complain that their computer is broken. Yahoo is #2 on the list with the same annoying mail server problems.

Re:What does it say about you?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yes, you're right. With more effort he can do the same thing. Thanks for bringing that up.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

And nothing says "get off my lawn" like 4123.7562@compuserve.com

Or GEnie, in the late 80s. Mind you, I did have an internet address in the early 80s, but it had too many ! characters for me to remember properly 30+ years later (it ended with lsuc.on.ca, even though I'm not associated in any way with lsuc).

Re:What does it say about you?

[UnknownSoldier]

I remember that old slur ... "America Online Loser"

AOL was the walled garden of the internet for people that didn't know better. i.e. no usenet groups.

How it manages to survive is a mystery.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Macrat]

Google maps would have had trouble existing in 1997, but more interestingly, how do you think Google maps have declined over the past decade?

The thing they broke in the past year was the feature in the web browser to always display traffic.

Now they have decided it is something you have click on every singe you interact with the map.

Re:What does it say about you?

[iONiUM]

Doesn't ICANN now enforce 'real' information on custom domains? It's less anonymous.

Re:What does it say about you?

[danomac]

You forgot to read the fine print. Text only email, no HTML, or it counts against your 25MB limit!

Re:What does it say about you?

[LateArthurDent]

Nothing on the internet says 'I'm a blithering idiot, please abuse me.' as quickly and concisely as @aol.com.

I consider judging people based on irrelevant categories to be far more damning.

Shortly after gmail came out, every other free webmail provider upped their storage amount in order to compete, including aol. Gmail at the time didn't provide imap access. You could access your mail via the web interface or pop. Aol, on the other hand, did provide imap, along with a ton of storage space, which allowed me to check my personal e-mail via my PDA's email client (remember those?), instead of its horrible browser.

I had a perfectly technical reason to switch to an aol address while everybody was switching to gmail.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to use an aol address to bypass such restrictions. I still wouldn't recommend hunting for a tech job on Dice with an AOL address.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the OP, but it does take about 20 clicks to navigate to somewhere now.

Re:What does it say about you?

[HornWumpus]

You'd have a point, if AOL was irrelevant.

AOL was just a the first facebook. A place for all the morons to hang out and hence improve the S/N ratio for the rest of us.

What do you think of people who use Facebook as their primary online contact? That's you.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing on the internet says 'I'm a blithering idiot, please abuse me.' as quickly and concisely as @aol.com.

It's quite true. Although, I kinda feel the same when I walk past a co-worker's cube and they have Slashdot or Fark open.

And yet here I am....

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

And nothing says "get off my lawn" like 4123.7562@compuserve.com

Spoken like a youngster who never experienced UUCP bang paths.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they do but you can still fudge the info if you want, none of the domain registrars I've dealt with require any proof that the contact info for the domain is actually valid. Furthermore some registrars, like Dyn, offer a hidden registration service where they replace your domain contact info with their own offices contact info, requiring any requests for your information to be physical requests to their office. This cuts down on simple whois's but doesn't stop someone actually calling up and requesting the information.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. THIS. I call it the "dumbing down" of interfaces because in an attempt to be "smart" they remove features that let me control how I want them to behave. Many organizations I work with in software design want revamped web sites and they're replacing older simple functional sites with bloated, less functional versions that look like Google or Apple UIs for toddlers & senior citizens.

Last time I checked, form should follow function. Recent design trends have this reversed.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing on the internet says 'I'm a blithering idiot, please abuse me.' as quickly and concisely as @aol.com.

What about typing in all caps and then blaming WebTV for it?

Re:What does it say about you?

[geoskd]

my cellphone number is needed to verify that I'm a human

So like GP said: Dinosaur./p

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except now it does require your cell.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Samantha Wright]

Vigorous!

Re:What does it say about you?

[chr1st1anSoldier]

what about @juno.com?

Re:What does it say about you?

[chr1st1anSoldier]

well replied to the wrong comment. :(

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Going through hundreds of resumes to hire a network engineer, anything with @aol.com email address on top I immediately delete.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. I just went to AOL to duplicate your claimed experience and cannot create an account without providing a cell number.

Re:What does it say about you?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

That says more about you than it does about the engineer. Assuming you're an engineer of any sort you've just displayed a lack of objectivity when solving a problem.

Re:What does it say about you?

[mysidia]

If y'all would RTFM, then you would find the information readily available.

In short: You can use their application, or you can use IMAP or POP3 if you want.

Attachment limit is 25MB, and they say storage is "unlimited".

The major concerns would be.... (1) They are free, but ad-supported, so will you get spammed?, And (2) Will the service still be available and free under substantially similar terms using the same internet domain, a few years from now?

In other words.... basically the same concerns one should have using the free Gmail service.

Re:What does it say about you?

[angel'o'sphere]

Google maps on my iPad has no "scale" indicator.

And it is still useless for navigation in European cities as it does not display pubic transport correctly. (Depends heavily on the zoom factor, very often wrong lines ... that means the "identifiers" of the connecting Buses or Trains are wrong)

No idea why it should have had troubles in 1997 to exist, after all it is just a table of images with JS overlays.

Re:What does it say about you?

[mysidia]

You forgot to read the fine print. Text only email, no HTML, or it counts against your 25MB limit!

Every byte counts against the 25MB per message limit, regardless of whether it is text or HTML, or text with attachments, or HTML with attachments.

Furthermore, that's how it works with all the major providers, in regards to the attachment limit.

Finally, AOL.com advertises unlimited mailbox storage space, not like Gmail where there is a 9GB fixed limit.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because some old contacts still have that address.
Because it is a good throw away address. I have two, one real, one as sa spam magnet.
Because several other e-mail providers (before gmail came along) went out of business. AOL keeps on alive.

Verizon already knows all my shit...I have their cell plan. If I use gmail, Google gets the data.

Re:What does it say about you?

[mysidia]

Assuming you're an engineer of any sort you've just displayed a lack of objectivity when solving a problem.

It is no more legal or appropriate to discard apps with an AOL.com address, than it is to discard apps that have a certain zip code or street name printed on them, which..... by the way, can result in the employer being sued, if this capricious hiring practice is ever discovered.

Such an act would also be showing extreme arrogance as to take intentional action aimed at applying inappropriate personal prejudices to a business process, as there does not seem to be any legitimate basis for analyzing the domain name of an applicant's contact address.

This can also rise to the level of unlawful discrimination through disparate impact: in case certain demographic groups applying are more likely to have an AOL.com e-mail address.

It is most likely to lead to claims of age-based discrimination against individuals older than 25, as a result of popularity of AOL.com e-mail addresses in earlier decades, And early internet users wishing to maintain their old e-mail address.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Bing maps. It looks like Classic Maps, which is way better than Google Maps.

And actually Bing search isn't bad either.

Re: What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, just did it five minutes ago.

Re:What does it say about you?

[unixisc]

I have an address that I got from Netscape's Netcenter service - myname@netscape.net. I use it to this day, along w/ gmail, yahoo, live.com, aol.com and twc.com addresses that I have - often for different purposes (one for family, one for shopping/deals, one for jobs, et al). I never signed on to AOL or CompuServe when they were around in the 90s - those AOL CDs would typically be trashed. But AOL had webmail ever since they bought out Netscape, and one could use either that, or configure their SMTP/IMAP clients for AOL, along w/ the others

Re:What does it say about you?

[recharged95]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Re:What does it say about you?

[arth1]

And nothing says "get off my lawn" like 4123.7562@compuserve.com

Then what does my @well.com account say?

Re:What does it say about you?

[AK Marc]

Yeah, but the recover password doesn't work for me. Perhaps it's because I signed up to claim my name when they first offered free email, and I may have never even logged in.

Re:What does it say about you?

[jrumney]

Get off my lawn! -- jrumney%slashdot.org%uucp.gateway.bitnet%NET.uu.uunet@uk.ac.earn-relay

Re:What does it say about you?

[The Rizz]

I've got an AOL address, so I can answer your questions:

The major concerns would be.... (1) They are free, but ad-supported, so will you get spammed?

I get less spam on my AOL account than my gmail account, my Yahoo account, or my personal domains. Of course, I only use the AOL account for the occasional sign-up, and a few legacy mailing lists I'm on.

(2) Will the service still be available and free under substantially similar terms using the same internet domain, a few years from now?

My AOL address has been active since 1993, and haven't paid for it since I got real internet in '96 or so. So, it probably will ... as long as Verizon doesn't fuck that up.

Oh, shit. Verizon. Nevermind, it's screwed.

Re:What does it say about you?

[narcc]

In 1997, it would have been hell. I don't know if you remember dialup back then, but even a high-end V.34 33.6 would not have been sufficient.

The web, of course, wasn't ready for that kind of application either. You'd have been running IE3 or (if you were leading edge) Netscape Communicator 4. Even on your impressive 166mhz Pentium with 32mb of RAM, javascript performance was absurdly slow. This is to say nothing of the incredible differences between IE and Netscape at the beginning of the great browser wars. If anyone were to have attempted such a thing, it would have undoubtedly been a Java applet simply for speed and compatibility. Let's face it, Java applets were not known for their speed!

A table of images would have taken minutes to load -- no one would dare scroll or zoom. Further, something simple today like "JS overlays" simply wasn't possible. (I'm fairly certain layers and position weren't available until IE4 and a later version of NN4 sometime near the end of 1997). Even then, users would have needed a high-end computer, the latest software, and a lot of patience for something even approaching Google maps.

What did we have in 1997? MapQuest. You typed in your starting location and final destination and got a set of turn-by-turn directions with a few static maps. It was still slow, but far more than sufficient at the time. Something like Google maps would have been significantly slower and, consequently, much less useful.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Hognoxious]

How nice.

Table 6 needs clearing.

Re:What does it say about you?

[someoneOtherThanMe]

... it does not display pubic transport correctly. (Depends heavily on the zoom factor,

Indeed, you have to zoom quite in to see the pubic transport.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Hognoxious]

I wondered what people were grumbling about since I couldn't see anything different. Then I realised they're doing it country by country.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I looked, H.P. had a 500 megabyte limit or its employees email storage. It was a carryover from the days when disc storage used to be expensive. A bunch of inept folks at the top perpetuated this arcane policy.

I suspect there is an ulterior motive for the stupid policy nowadays.

I'll let you guess what it is.

Posted as an AC for a reason.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Whiteox]

Here's a snip of their signup screen:
------
AOL Mail Logo
So many reasons to love AOL Mail
You're covered Unlimited storage, 25 MB of photo and video attachments, advanced spam filters, virus protection - all as part of your Inbox.
AOL Mail icons Stay connected wherever you go
Connect on mail, chat or text using your favorite laptop, tablet or mobile device.
devices images
More than just mail
Right from your Inbox - get direct access to the latest headlines and productivity tools to make life simpler.
------
I'm joining too!
(Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.) lol

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip: Yahoo (at least) also works for that (i.e. if you just need a disposable email address). They do require you to give a phone number, but it doesn't have to be yours ;) Even if you don't do their "confirmation" thing, your newly created email account will work anyway.

Re:What does it say about you?

[TheRaven64]

They need to contain valid WHOIS information, but there's no requirement that every email address on a domain be owned by one person. More importantly, even if they're not anonymous, you can easily create a single email address for each company that you do business with and delete it afterwards (or, better, redirect it to the spam honeypot address on your mail server).

Re:What does it say about you?

[TheRaven64]

So you're saying that it was the Facebook of its day?

Re:What does it say about you?

[Dog-Cow]

When I was at Ford, up until a few years ago, the limit was around 100MB. Disk space isn't actually as cheap as you think it is, especially if there are laws dictating what and when you can delete emails. Additionally, neither Ford nor HP are in the business of providing email service, so there's no reason to offer unlimited storage. The webmail providers data mine the hell out of those emails. The more, the better.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Dog-Cow]

I tried to use it just yesterday on the latest Mac Pro available. It was unusable crap. Bing maps behaved much better.

Re:What does it say about you?

[phantomfive]

More specifically, what was unusable about it?

Re:What does it say about you?

[Dog-Cow]

What messed up country do you live in? No State in the US has anti-discrimination laws that cover any of the examples you list.

Re:What does it say about you?

[gsslay]

Or maybe it's a policy that says "your email folder is not filespace, keep your 150MB powerpoint presentations somewhere else".

Re:What does it say about you?

[mysidia]

In the US. If discriminating based on another criteria personally chosen has the result of disparately affecting members of a protected class, then it is illegal to use the criteria, regardless of the intent for selecting the criteria.

For example: If members of a certain age or sexual orientation are disparately affected by filtering applicants from certain zip codes, then discriminating on zip code is legally considered prohibited discrimination against the protected class, even if the intent was to reject applicants from a high-crime area.

Just because someone found an Ad-Hoc criteria to discriminate against people based on, Does not make the criteria is lawful, just because it isn't listed in the statute as specifically prohibited.

In Washington DC it is specifically prohibited by law for an employer to discriminate based on Location of Residence, Personal Appearance, Political Affiliation, Age (over 18), Marital Status, Sexual Orientation, Enrollment in an educational institution, Gender Identity, Status of Employment, Race, Sex, Color, National Origin, Religion, Genetic Information, and a number of other protected classifications.

In other states, discrimination against Location of Residence might not have a statute on the books, but legal action can still be pursued in federal court, if the result of an employer selecting the criteria negatively affects any protected group more than it negatively affects non-protected groups.

Re:What does it say about you?

[LateArthurDent]

You'd have a point, if AOL was irrelevant.

The aol.com address most certainly is irrelevant to everything else you said. You haven't needed to have AOL as your ISP in order to have an aol.com e-mail address for over a decade. You're the guy that points to every German he meets screaming, "Nazi! Nazi!" World War II is over, and so are the days that you used to spend an usenet dreading that aol.com post that signaled a member of the masses just got access to the net. The masses are now the majority of the net, and they use gmail too.

What do you think of people who use Facebook as their primary online contact?

I don't really give a shit. I don't personally use Facebook, but I'm the weird one, not them. I recognize that I make people's lives more difficult when they ask me to get in touch with them via Facebook, because it really is the default these days, and I apologize while asking for a secondary contact option.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Pieroxy]

I call bullshit. I just went to AOL to duplicate your claimed experience and cannot create an account without providing a cell number.

I just did.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Summitlake]

I know it's a stereotype, but "YES," my personal contacts with an AOL email address all generally seem to be computer illiterates.

Re:What does it say about you?

[HornWumpus]

So what you are saying is AOLers are just bad fits? (That's our story, prove us wrong).

I will continue to bin @aol resumes, also resumes written in crayon and resumes that give facebook contact information.

Re:What does it say about you?

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, and even then stations suddenly vanish again when you zoom deeper.

Not showing public transport in cities makes it close to useless in europe.

Re:What does it say about you?

[iampiti]

+1000. I completely hate the modern UIs made to be usable on anything. They're jack of all trades master of none, and of course, less optimal for desktop use that the previous ones which were tailored for them.
Now every UI is:

1. Flat (no way to know what's clickable and what isn't)
2. simple, flat colors
3. has tons of whitespace

We'd be better off with separate UIs for touch and desktop

Re:What does it say about you?

[UnknownSoldier]

LOL, that's a pretty good analogy / summary !

Re: What does it say about you?

[unixisc]

I use my live.com in the same way that you use gmail - for just my participation in the Windows 10 Preview. Any mails I get from them automatically go there.

Re:What does it say about you?

[sound vision]

how do you think Google maps have declined over the past decade?

(1)There is no longer a clear way to go between Street View and the normal view
, (2) Buttons that used to be clearly labelled with text (like "Link" to get a shortened link URL) are now esoteric icons that give no indication as to what they do until you click them,
(3) Zooming behavior is pretty funky - when zooming, the maps at the new zoom level will load patchily or sometimes not load at all until you move to yet another zoom level.

Re:What does it say about you?

[weweedmaniii]

What does my cousin's @netzero.com account say? I say mine was chucked in 1997...

Re:What does it say about you?

[chipschap]

AOL mail actually has a pretty good API. I found I can read and post AOL mail through GNUS on EMACS. Now that's a kind of ultimate irony.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies. Facebook requires cellphone numbers during sign-up now.

Re: What does it say about you?

[Baloo Uriza]

I'm surprised ever having an @aol.com email address doesn't blacklist you permanently as some kind of gullible retard.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Baloo Uriza]

Facebook... ugh. I switched to Google+ and didn't look back mostly because FB is the network of dinosaurs and high school assholes that forget they're the reason I don't go to reunions.

Re:What does it say about you?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely per email.
Limiting size of emails is very sane, since, well, a lot of servers limit the size they receive.

Re: What does it say about you?

[Radster51]

I have kept my aol email account for more than 10 years. Works fine easy to type and superior spam filtering. My hotmail and yahoo addresses all died under thousands of spam emails. A better topic would be does looking at Slashdot suggest you are a maladjusted basement dweller?

Re: What does it say about you?

[nobodie]

Yeah , that, I first had a netscape.net email address, then, when AOL bought them out they tried to lure me away by giving me an AOL.com email. I didn't bite and continued to use the netscape address. Later they gave me an AIM.com address, I still didn't bite. Then I went to university and got two emails there, which updated to @alumni.virginia.edu when I graduated. Then I got a gmail address, then another one from the website I built for my wife (plus the webmaster, webminion, and random name) then I got one for the australian uni where I got my masters, again with an alumni prefix when I finished there. Then a work email at my current university job. The aol and aim I use for throwaway stuff for sure, the netscape I still use when I want to assert web cred. The gmail is the personal workhorse which I keep completely separated from the work email. It all works out and keeps some order in the world.

The Oatmeal

[alphax45]

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/e...

Re:The Oatmeal

[RavenLrD20k]

Aol users:

Keeping the
"h...t...t...p...colon...slash...slash...slash...dot...dot...com..."
joke alive.

Re:The Oatmeal

[Chris Mattern]

Shouldn't that be "h...t...t..p...colon...slash...slash...slash...dot...dot...org"?

Re:The Oatmeal

[Flavianoep]

Both the addresses work.

"h...t...t...p...colon...slash...slash...slash...dot...dot...com..."

redirects to

"h...t...t...p...colon...slash...slash...slash...dot...dot...org..."

Re:The Oatmeal

[Anonymous Coward]

gmail is the new aol.

If you have your email at an ad broker which sells your privacy and collaborates with the NSA, you're a complete idiot.

So?

[SuricouRaven]

My dentist uses an AOL email address and a website that probably hasn't been updated in a decade. I don't care: He's still a decent enough dentist for the occasional drill-and-fill.

Dentists: Another reason why birds are superior.

Re:So?

[linear a]

Similarly, a lot of contractors I use have ancient email domains. I don't care if a roofer or concrete guy has an outdated email. OTOH - seeing AOL or Hotmail on a Dev's resume would tell me they, to say the least, aren't up to date or are completely tone-deaf.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

My dentist doesn't have a computer.

Bring in a form and they use their photocopier to make a copy and their typewriter to fill in the needed information. Records are in the files on the wall, and safe from all digital hacking.

Re:So?

[DrunkenTerror]

> gay birds can fuck into the same HOLE as the hetero birds.

Another reason why birds are superior.

Re:So?

[Drethon]

So you are saying it is still an excellent indicator that you don't want to hire this person to design the software system on you next car?

Re:So?

[DeBaas]

on a Cobol devs resume however it's a good sign.

Re:So?

[gatkinso]

You are awesome.

Re:So?

[gatkinso]

My gift to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Re:So?

[FlyHelicopters]

My dentist doesn't have a computer.

Bring in a form and they use their photocopier to make a copy and their typewriter to fill in the needed information. Records are in the files on the wall, and safe from all digital hacking.

He/she won't be able to keep doing that for much longer, at least not in most of the first world...

The requirement to maintain digital records is growing... Currently if you take insurance, you more or less have to go digital. If you're an all-cash practice, you can do it the old way for awhile...

But if you honestly think that will be allowed forever, I've got a bridge to sell you. :)

http://www.policymed.com/2009/...

Re:So?

[nightcats]

One of the most underrated of all professions. Consider: must be strong yet gentle; analytic yet intuitive; a scientist and an artist. Must have psy skills to deal with the phobic behavior of all who come into that chair. Must be handy with power tools in very small spaces. I'm always astonished to encounter someone who performs that occupation capably.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

Or that they have had the same email address for 20 years. Have hundreds of clients that have that email address and that sending a spam email to 5000 people saying "here is my new email address" is stupid and likely to cause them to lose business.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

Does AOL's email service allow auto-forwarding?

I have the same email address I've used since before Gmail was around; it's a former Nameplanet email address (now owned by Hover). But I don't actually use their UI, I just forward all the mail to my Gmail account. People think my email address is cool because it's my own name, but I'm not restricted in where the mail goes to.

Surely AOL has forwarding too. In that case, it'd be trivial to get another email address (like Gmail), and then forward the AOL mail to it. Then, you don't need to tell anyone to update that email address; just tell new contacts the new email address.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

So your dentist still uses those old shitty film x-rays instead of the low-power digital xrays?

I wouldn't bother with that dentist. He probably still uses mercury amalgam fillings instead of the modern tooth-colored resin fillings.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

But then you still have two email addresses you are giving out. Why bother? It's not like you wont get email if you use AOL.

Nothing I have seen gives a reason to change away from a service that is working for you. Gmail/other may be better at lots of things, but if you don't care about any other those things why change? This is especially true if your old email address is first.last@aol.com and the gmail suggestions are first793976.last63789534987435987@gmail.com

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

But then you still have two email addresses you are giving out.

No, you're not. You only give out the new one from this point forward. Keeping the old one means that you don't have to bother telling older contacts about the new email address; they can just keep sending email to that, and as far as they know, you're not changing anything. That's the whole point.

Gmail/other may be better at lots of things, but if you don't care about any other those things why change?

Well, one big reason is that you look like a dinosaur if you have an AOL address still. Image is important, like it or not.

This is especially true if your old email address is first.last@aol.com and the gmail suggestions are first793976.last63789534987435987@gmail.com

If you really can't get a better Gmail address than that, you can always get some other address from another provider. The best option is to simply buy your own domain name with a $3/month hosting provider, which includes email addresses. Then you can make up any email address you want, and in fact you can make a whole bunch of them, for different things. If you're some kind of professional (suppose you run your own small business), it looks a LOT better to have an email address like "support@joesplumbing.com" rather than "joesplumbing@aol.com" (or "joesplumbing@gmail.com" for that matter). Then you can set your email addresses to all forward to Gmail so it can handle sorting them, spam blocking, etc.

Re:So?

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually it is the opposite around.
I rather hire a dinosaur for an embedded system then a freshling from university.

Re:So?

[angel'o'sphere]

In the first world is actually the opposite around.
You are required to have paper records and keep them for at least ten years, depending on business.
If you prefer "electronic" reports you have to be able to create papers from them for 10 years.
So it is no problem at all to work completely computer less. As it should be.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

I understand that you are able to do all of these things. I had just never heard the "you look like a dinosaur cause your email address is AOL" before and I work in recruitment.....

To me it seems insane that that would be a consideration.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

I guess you don't work in tech recruitment. It's one thing if some HR drone or whatever has an AOL email address, but it's entirely another if it's someone who claims to be up-to-date with programming or IT technologies.

Re:So?

[mysidia]

No, you're not. You only give out the new one from this point forward. Keeping the old one means that you don't have to bother telling older contacts about the new email address

But you are still having to maintain two e-mail accounts now, and make sure that two accounts keep working forever, and if the old one breaks eventually, then you will have problems.

It's simpler, better, and more convenient if you can just keep the first one in the first place, And never need to change addresses in the first place.

It's even better if you Own the domain name the first e-mail address was on, but that is not very common, But at least don't change from one e-mail address with a free provider on a domain you don't own to a new address on yet a new free provider on a domain you don't own, "Just because"

If you have an AOL.com address, and your needs are met for that e-mail address, then there is really no good reason to change addresses in the first place with "just because" as a reason.

Just because a new service may be better for some or all users: doesn't mean it bears the weight to make it worth switching to that for everyone.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

I do work in tech recruitment. But also I don't provide a persons contact details to a company until they have already had a first stage interview. So a persons email address isn't available to the company as a selection criteria.

When I am determining whether I will represent someone to a company I care about their work experience, what they have done, and who they have done it for. I then interview them to determine whether I think the culture will be a fit.

My experience is that often in technical spaces people can be very unaware of how certain things may portray them. People put photos on their CV, they put their marital status, how many kids they have, where the attend church, whole paragraphs about their hobbies, all sorts of weird things. Quite often the more techie they are the weirder the stuff they put on their CV.

Part of my role is to help people portray their skills and experience in the way that will get them an interview. From where I sit, if having an @aol address is a bad thing, it ranks very very low on the list of things that will cause you a problem.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

My experience is that often in technical spaces people can be very unaware of how certain things may portray them. People put photos on their CV, they put their marital status, how many kids they have, where the attend church, whole paragraphs about their hobbies, all sorts of weird things. Quite often the more techie they are the weirder the stuff they put on their CV.

Huh? Are you serious? I thought it was common knowledge that you don't put all that crap on your resume, and in fact that it's illegal for employers to ask. At least, that's how it is here in the US; you may not be US-based since you keep using the term "CV"; usually we only use that for academic positions. And, if you're not American, I wonder if that's a big culture difference; maybe techies here have much more disdain for AOL than people elsewhere.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

It may be a US centric hatred. I'm in Aus and it is pretty much irrelevant.

As for people putting that stuff on their CV, yeah they really really do (and I get enough US based CVs to know people there do it as well). And like the US in Australia you can't discriminate on age, gender, race, marital status, religion or politics. That doesn't stop me getting a CV with everything from the kids names, to their passport number.

The other thing I see a lot is:
July 2008 to Aug 2013 - Senior Developer
I did blah blah blah blah I have awesome skills.

Reason for leaving: My boss was an absolute cock and one day I had enough and I quit with no notice.

For some reason people don't seem to think this will raise questions about them.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

Reason for leaving: My boss was an absolute cock and one day I had enough and I quit with no notice.

For some reason people don't seem to think this will raise questions about them.

That's really weird that that many applicants don't realize that. I would think that's common sense.

However, since you seem like a good one to ask, what should an applicant do in that situation, when a reason for leaving is demanded and that's their actual reason? Obviously they can't write the text above, but what's a better way to word it?

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

Reason for leaving should NEVER be stated on a CV. It can always be misconstrued no matter what you write. "moved for a better opportunity" "approached by old manager" " poached by agent" no matter what there will be someone who reads that negatively. About the only thing that is ok is "Contract / Project completed"

If you are asked in an interview what the reasons for leaving were then you should treat it exactly the same way you treat the "So what are your weaknesses question" give them an answer which doesn't give them a reason to discount you and if you can manage it spin it into a quasi-positive.

If it was the case that your boss was a wanker and you had to get out, spin it into something like "I had spent a decent length of time there and I believe I accomplished all that I was going to. I felt that it was the right time for me to look for new opportunities and hence here I am. In particular I am keen to work on (whatever they just told you about)."

Nothing there is a lie. If your boss was a jerk you probably weren't going to go any further in that role.

Re:So?

[FlyHelicopters]

In the first world is actually the opposite around.
You are required to have paper records and keep them for at least ten years, depending on business.

Umm, no, you're not...

You're required to keep records, they do not have to be on paper. In fact, many paper records are turned into digital copies and then the paper copies destroyed to save on storage space.

Re:So?

[AK Marc]

Back when free pop servers weren't common, got a free email and used it for years, then they server shut down, taking with it my first Slashdot account, among other things. Didn't even get a warning to point people to another server.

Re:So?

[Hognoxious]

it looks a LOT better to have an email address like "support@joesplumbing.com" rather than "joesplumbing@aol.com" (or "joesplumbing@gmail.com" for that matter).

I couldn't have said it better myself. Anyone who is incapable of following click-n-drool instructions (or paying someone else to do it) is clearly incapable of installing a toilet.

Re:So?

[Hognoxious]

I had just never heard the "you look like a dinosaur cause your email address is AOL" before and I work in recruitment.....

That's because you're looking for people who've been with them for twenty years.

[googles a bit]

Make that thirty years. And get off my lawn.

Re:So?

[Hognoxious]

For some things in Italy paper records are mandatory. You can argue about whether that counts as first world or not...

Re:So?

[TheRaven64]

Most of the time, if someone is using a free webmail email address for business, I'd consider it a warning sign, with AOL not seeming particularly worse than Hotmail or GMail. Builders are probably my main exception to this, because they're one of the few contracting jobs where technological competence is not essential. That said, the last two builders I hired were through a web site that allows you to post jobs, have tradesmen bid for them, and hire them online, so a baseline knowledge is increasingly required for getting work.

Re:So?

[Dog-Cow]

Good old age-ism in the tech world.

Re:So?

[Dog-Cow]

In Israel, it's common to be asked about family and other personal details. Not as a discriminator, but because of the culture. Israel is a very family-friendly culture, even amongst the Chilonim.

Re:So?

[Dog-Cow]

They should not say anything about not giving notice. And if the applicant had any forethought, he would have given notice, and dealt with it for 2 more weeks. That way, it only reflects badly on the employer, and not also the former employee who now needs a job.

By the way, I actually did the same thing with a part time job I had in college. I've regretted it ever since, even though I never put it on a CV, and never mentioned it to anyone, never mind an interviewer.

Re:So?

[Dog-Cow]

I was fired from my last job, and it really was due to a mismatch between management and me. It was the best thing they could have done for me. I gave that reason (though didn't say I was fired) to interviewers. I had a job within the month, with the first company I interviewed with. It wasn't a problem.

Re:So?

[Blaskowicz]

Surely you can attach in some way a printer to a digital X-ray machine?
And use a payment terminal to accept debit/credit smart cards but not bother doing accounting on a PC.
I'm sure the computer-less dentists uses many other computers, running cell phone's firmware, the land line phone, an alarm clock, microwave etc. but these are actual appliances.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

Reason for leaving should NEVER be stated on a CV.

Yeah, I already knew that. The problem is that many jobs require you to fill out an employment application and for each job, they demand a reason for leaving that position.

If it was the case that your boss was a wanker and you had to get out, spin it into something like "I had spent a decent length of time there and I believe I accomplished all that I was going to. I felt that it was the right time for me to look for new opportunities and hence here I am. In particular I am keen to work on (whatever they just told you about)."

Nothing there is a lie. If your boss was a jerk you probably weren't going to go any further in that role.

Sounds good. What if it's a job in the past, and you now have a gap after that job? What would be a good excuse there? TIA

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

Surely you can attach in some way a printer to a digital X-ray machine?

There's no such thing as a "digital x-ray machine". Do you also go to one of these horrible old-school dentists? They have a computer next to the chair, and instead of bite-wing film they use a small sensor that goes in your mouth, and has a cord with a USB connector on the end which plugs into the computer. Their software (one big name is "Dentrix") then does the capture and saves the images. There's two big advantages: the digital sensor requires about 1/10 of the x-ray energy as the old film, so you don't get such a big radiation dose, and the images are all digitally archived, so it's trivial for the dentist to bring them up and refer to them, and also to send them to other dentists in case you move and have to change dentists.

Re:So?

[tehcyder]

Reason for leaving: My boss was an absolute cock and one day I had enough and I quit with no notice.

But then if you lie on your CV, people get all "we've checked and you do not have a Nobel Prize in any field, and in fact there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize for Awesome anyway" on you.

The trouble is that you end up with generic "I decided it was time for a new challenge" bollocks.

Re:So?

[HornWumpus]

Northern or Southern Italy?

Re:So?

[HornWumpus]

I wish I could find a dentist that used old school 30+ year amalgam fillings instead of the 5 year junk they use today.

You get more Mercury exposure from smokestacks.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

I used to have a bunch of mercury fillings. None of them lasted 30 years; they all had to be replaced. The resin fillings I have now are well over 5 years old, more like 10-15 years. The best part is they look exactly like teeth; I can't even distinguish most of them. One of them is actually not really a "filling", but fills in a chipped tooth. It's strong enough to stay on the end of my front incisor, and is completely indistinguishable from real tooth. Try that with amalgam.

You sound like someone pining for cars with points.

Re:So?

[angel'o'sphere]

Does not change the fact that they are first paper :D

Re:So?

[Blaskowicz]

Two kinds of x-ray machine in fact, that small one next to the chair you refer to, and a stand-up one in a different, small room. The stand up machine seems to be networked in some way, in any way pictures are digitally archived indeed as well as whatever database fields say "this tooth sucks" etc.

I do go to a 900-year-old hospital (but it an section that looks 19th century, and quite refurbished), but don't worry about old school dentists. I get to have some wait there and have students working on me. Visits from supervising old farts are rather funny as they spot whatever the thing is within 5 seconds.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

No see following post - Do not put a reason for leaving on your CV. That is something to discuss in interview.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

Assuming you haven't been unemployed for an extended period then the say reason applies with the added. "I decided it was a good time to take a period off. I had a number of personal projects I wanted to complete and am now keen for my next challenge" or some variation of this.

If you have been long term unemployed and desperate to work then this becomes much more difficult.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

You gave the reason in the interview, where you were able to talk it through and answer any questions that came up. (I've been there myself having come into the office with all my stuff in a box).

If that had been written on your CV though it potentially would have cause you problems.

Re:So?

[Grishnakh]

Thanks! That sounds great. I have such a situation like that, and there's a break afterwards, but I got a job after that so it wasn't long-term unemployment, so the "period off" and "personal projects" thing sounds great, and in fact, is exactly what I did in that time as I was working on a side business.

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

No worries. I'm surprised you have to fill out these application forms for each job. I'm guessing the employment market is still not great over there because we don't see those type of things outside of Government jobs. As a general rule people won't fill them in here.

Re:So?

[Cramer]

That he/she has an email address is a very bad omen. (...!some!where!coboldude would be acceptable)

Re:So?

[Harlequin80]

In Europe, North America, Australia and NZ I know that asking about family status, marital status, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, union membership, race or ethnicity is not allowed.

And wow Chilonim, never heard that term before so I had to google it. Interesting concept that there is a grouping for non-religious Jews and that it is a recognised way of considering them. They way you put it "even amongst the Chilonim" could, and I stress could not that I am, be used to imply that non-Chilonim people are more family orientated.

Then if you had two potential employees, 1 Chilonim & 1 not, both equally qualified and experienced and both with families which would you choose if your role had long hours or lots of travel? Do you decide to hire the Chilonim candidate because they are likely to care less about their family?

This is the problem when non technical considerations are used to make a hiring decision. People's stereotypes become too major a factor. You can't stop people using their stereotypes but you can try to reduce its prevalence.

yup

[davester666]

But I don't think I've seen an @aol.com email address in a lot time.

I'm also surprised that Verizon thinks it is worth $4.4 billion.

Re:yup

[tnk1]

I was surprised at the price tag, but not incredibly. They are pretty big players in online advertising, and they do have some content that people look at regularly.

They haven't been a hot company for almost 20 years now, but it is amazing the number of assets and random shit you can pick up quickly which then slowly unravels as you wind down.

Just think of the shit Google is going to have once they start working their way down to irrelevance. Well, assuming they can make a profit on anything but search, that is.

Re:yup

[HornWumpus]

It's a chump list. Chump lists are valuable.

Re:yup

[Anonymous Coward]

You must obviously not be in Seattle. Here, AOL is still very popular. There are other much better ISPs, like copper.net, but they don't advertise enough to get exposure. Many of my friends still use AOL since Comcast doesn't cover much of the city despite their monopoly. I'm moving out of the city because I want ESPN next football season. It sucks not being able to watch video online.

Re:yup

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't seen any? Wow. Nearly a third of my coworkers use @aol.com, and I work for a high-end web dev company. I guess it depends on where you live. Since we don't pay well, most of my coworkers and myself live in some pretty bad areas. That means no access to Comcast cable. I think most of us are still on dial-up. We've lost several employees since they moved out of Seattle because they want fast access at home. Living without ESPN, HBO, Netflix, etc. sucks.

Re:yup

[Cramer]

"@aol.com" isn't worth shit. What AOL, Inc. owns, however, is far from trash.

RE: AOL email addresses

[loadedmind]

I've done a lot of side work for folks needing computer repair and every...single...one of them that had an AOL email were elderly and not technologically savvy. Personally, I don't care if they have an AOL address or not, but professional businesses not having the @mybusiness.com type of domain and having AOL - I personally find it a little harder to take them seriously and, for the most part, they didn't seem to have as much genuine care for the quality of their work. This should be seen as pure conjecture because I'm sure there are those that don't fit this mold. Just talking about personal experience.

AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

I use AOL.com and Yahoo.com email addresses to screen people for job interviews. If you put it on your resume, know that you will not receive a call back for a tech related job.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[__aaclcg7560]

I had my Yahoo email address from the beginning ("Look, ma, no numbers!"), haven't changed my password since then, and still have recruiters calling me for tech jobs in Silicon Valley. Only stupid people discriminate, especially on the basis of email addresses.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably don't allow black sounding names either, right? Someone needs to report your EEO violations to your HR.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

If you judge a technical candidate based on the email address they use, you shouldn't be responsible for hiring technical people.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

My primary personal email address is at yahoo. Of course, that is precisely why I wouldn't use that address if applying for job interviews online. My Gmail account is for one-off stuff like that, so I don't have to deal with all the spam that results from it.

So, do you still think this is a good criteria on which to screen candidates? Or do you think that anyone smart enough to use Gmail *at all* passes this test?

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[HornWumpus]

Been using your method for 20 years now.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you judge a technical candidate based on the email address they use, you shouldn't be responsible for hiring technical people.

Sincerely,
xXyolo420swag69Xx@aol.com

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

With such business savvy, you soon won't being doing any interviews for anybody, as you'll be out of business yourself.

The next time I look for a job, I'm getting a yahoo.com email address to screen out asswipes like you.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Cochonou]

Do not forget to also check their zodiac sign.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[nicoleb_x]

Do you check for @aol.com after race, gender, sexual orientation, age, height, weight or before?

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[__aaclcg7560]

You shouldn't be applying for jobs with your porn email address. Unless, of course, you're looking for porn jobs.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

My yahoo address uses my real name then forwards to my mail server, where I filter it intelligently. Why would anyone care if you had an AOL or Yahoo address? Oh yeah, ignorant hipsters.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Drethon]

Yahoo is the Google of years gone by. Means a person was at least tech savvy at one point. AOL indicates someone who wanted their hand held while wading into the internet.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[snsh]

I think only CompuServe gave out all-numeric email aliases. And post-Heartbleed you might want to change your Yahoo password.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Harlequin80]

Seriously? That is the dumbest criteria I have ever heard.

So someone who decides that consistency in their contact details over extended periods is a good thing doesn't get an interview? So the person who managed to get first.last@yahoo.com but could only get first.last351y6742wety7@gmail.com should use gmail as their preferred professional email address?

Christ they may have gmail auto-getting their yahoo or aol mail anyway, have 250 email addresses pulled into a central gmail location and use an email they think is the best one for a particular circumstance.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Bert64]

That aol email has worked consistently for a long time is luck rather than anything else, and who knows how long it will continue to work now that verizon have taken it over... Many free email providers have come and gone over the years, as have many paid ISPs.
Someone who really cares about consistency in their contact details will have registered their own domain, so that even if they had to switch hosting providers multiple times their address will remain consistent.

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Dog-Cow]

You are a stupid fuck. AOL has been around longer than most. Longer than Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. AOL is the survivor here. All the rest are newbs that could disappear any day now !11!!!!!11!

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

People you like you should die tapped in a car, burning to death. Your pathetic screams of agony as your flesh is rendered into tallow would be music to our ears.

WOw.. Did Paul Walker interview you for a job and turn you down or something?

Re:AOL.com = No Interview

[Anonymous Coward]

A stupid and pointless shibboleth that also thankfully keeps you from subjecting as many people to you limited view of the world. Thank you.

Some people just can't help but get in their own way.

Dear Slashdot Readers

[dullertap]

We here at dice plan to mine your data but it's an awful hassle to analyze said data. Please do that for us.

Usual answer to a headline question

[ITRambo]

If the term "dinosaur" means "early adopter", than yes.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[HornWumpus]

Long time AOLers have been promoted to 'tech dinosaur' from 'king of the chumps'.

AOL always sucked, There were always better alternatives. Always.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[nyet]

If by "early adopter" you mean "drooling, clueless moron", then yes, your translation is correct.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[omnichad]

Early adopters or Eternal September?

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[DarkOx]

AOL always sucked, There were always better alternatives. Always.

Yes, but back in 1993 its not like you could just Google it. If you were not attacked to some organization with access, and your local public library did not offer shell accounts or something the big name BBS services (with internet gateways) AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy were usually the way to go. At least until you could find a local ISP.

Keep in mind most folks were at the time using DOS and Windows. So you also needed to bring some software to the mix, to do PPP etc. That stuff was no on the shelf at your local shop and it was not simple to figure out without online reference materials. The AOL diskette solved both problems.

Once you got online and found an ISP with local access numbers, got the trumpet winsock installed or downloaded Slackware you switched to a real ISP with local dialup numbers. AOL was a first step to something more than a local BBS even for a lot of us techies though, because it as available AND accessible when nothing else way especially if you did not have friends who could help you.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[HornWumpus]

AOL was a _lame_ internet gateway, it was also head and shoulders more expensive then the alternatives.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[jedidiah]

Even back in 1993, AOL was considered a haven for idiots and suckers. Anyone with half a clue went somewhere else. This even includes the "can't be bothered" crowd.

Not that PPP was that difficult to deal with. It came pre-packaged in the same kinds of automated software installers that AOL came with.

AOL really didn't solve any problem.

It was just pervasive. They went that extra mile to SPAM eveyrone.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Back in 1993 you could use Altavista, Gopher and a few others instead of Google. You young whipper snappers think the networked world was created 20 years ago... :)

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Anonymous Coward]

... and now they're all gone ... and AOL is worth billions.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Anonymous Coward]

It solved the problem of making a large number of interactive tools available for Mac using a GUI interface. In the early 90's AOL was heaven compared to the other offerings (like Prodigy).

> AOL was considered a haven for idiots and suckers. Anyone with half a clue went somewhere else.

This is simply revisionist. Everyone technically savvy had access to AOL (if only by the free trial CDs) because it was an incomparable resource for the time.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[blue9steel]

Actually I switched to AOL because it was cheaper and easier than Prodigy.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Anonymous Coward]

Gopher wasn't a search engine. It was an Internet protocol. It was an alternative to HTML.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[JohnFen]

"Yes, but back in 1993 its not like you could just Google it."

No, but you could find local ISPs in the phone book. AOL has always been for two kinds of people: those who live someplace that had no ISPs, and those who wanted their hands to be held when they were doing that scary "online" thing.

It's the latter group that leads to aol.com email addresses being an indicator of someone who is clueless. Those people who started on AOL and actually learned stuff soon migrated to something better than AOL.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Richard Dick Head]

Ditto, AOL was the first to offer unlimited hours for $20/month so it was the best deal out there from like '96-'98. Except for the fact that once they made it unlimited it was a crap shoot to get logged on during peak hours.

I remember having to dial the 2400 baud 800 number (that you use to find your local AOL exchange) a few times just to get on the internet for something because the lines were jammed. For the longest time you didn't even need an AOL subscription to get on the internet, just have the AOL program dial the free number, set your IE proxy to ie3.proxy.aol.com and boom you're on a (slow) internet connection, no account needed.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit.

AOL was forced into the $20/month pricing because their users were a laughing stock for being fools.

Netcom was $20/month from day one. Not that it was a great ISP, just 1000% better then AOL.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[HornWumpus]

Mod parent funny.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[spydink]

I also migrated to AOL from Prodigy - in 1991 I think - when Prodigy raised their prices. I still have that AOL e-mail address although it's only been a spam-sink for 15 years or so.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent troll. His posts are always full of it.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[recharged95]

Well, let's look at today's alternatives:

Hotmail/Live/Outlook: sucks, too slow, html errors
Gmail: sucks, I want a plain list w/o spam and google+
iCloud/.me: Sucks, need an iphone to do anything productive. And productive is a challenge still...
Rackspace: Sucks, no UI, I got pay for it too!
Yahoo!: Sucks, where is my email (layout)?
Facebook: Sucks, just read the life streams, ugh.
Twitter: really?
ISP based email: sucks, but at least I can use thunderbird w/o any issues.
Your own email server: so far the most flexible, but I have to do more work now.

Conclusion: they all suck. Having this discussion is worthless aside from social stereotyping.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[dugancent]

AOL was the only company that had local dial-up numbers in the 90's for me.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Anonymous Coward]

fast.fm

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[AK Marc]

It was also one of the few with lots of local numbers if you traveled a lot. So the $20 bought you an automatic dialer that just worked almost anywhere in the US. Calling LD for Internet was painful, both for the cost, and because speeds often suffered.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Dog-Cow]

You are 100% wrong.

I never used CompuServe, as that was for business-type people. I have experience with Prodigy and AOL. The AOL client was way better than Prodigy. I remember when AOL got their email gateway, when the client started to allow FTP and NNTP access. I remember when HTTP was new and when support was added to AOL's client. I remember being able to use AOL as a PPP connection and run my own TCP/IP clients while connected. I remember the short-lived ISP attempt (can not recall the name all of a sudden), and was a beta user while it was free. For most of that time, there was no such thing as a modern ISP for the home user. CompuServe and Prodigy didn't last. The AOL experience was curated. It was a garden, but it was never a walled garden. It was around when the area outside the garden was overgrown with weeds, and it's still here now that there's a vibrant Internet community to visit.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Dog-Cow]

You are completely wrong. I would say ignorant, but I think you're lying on purpose.

AOL was never more expensive than competing options. When everyone was $/hr, AOL was in the same range. When everyone switched to $$/month, AOL was as cheap or cheaper than most options. AOL also added (after a lawsuit) many non-toll access numbers.

And AOL was free for my family for a good long time because my father was a forum moderator. A customer volunteer getting some form of compensation. How many ISPs would do that in the 90s?

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Dog-Cow]

Netcom? Never heard of them. Must have been some local outfit. AOL was national. From day one.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Dog-Cow]

Mod parent unadulterated shit. He isn't full of it. He is it.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[Dog-Cow]

Sounds like you were as much as anti-social asshole in the early 90s as you are now. AOL had a great community, or rather, lots of great communities. The client provided a PPP stack fairly early on, so you could take advantage of local access numbers, cheap access and a full TCP/IP stack on Windows 3.1 or MacOS. As I wrote to the other shithead, AOL provided a garden. It was a really nice garden in what was originally a wasteland. However, it was never a walled garden. As the Internet grew up and became a home-user option, AOL grew with it. FTP, SMTP, NNTP, HTTP -- AOL provided access to all. Eventually, they migrated to the PPP stack I mentioned earlier.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[HornWumpus]

Everybody was _never_ $/hour. Liar.

Re:Usual answer to a headline question

[HornWumpus]

Fuckwit, just keep using that aol address and I will continue to bin your resume.

Also keep lying. It's always good to double down on idiocy.

Face facts. Everything we assume about AOLers is true about you.

Of course you're a dinosaur...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even bother replying to anyone who send me an email using their ISP's provided email. That email isn't theirs, as soon as they leave the service, the ISP deletes the email. You're a fool for using such an email, especially for a business.

Re:Of course you're a dinosaur...

[Master Moose]

An ISP I joined and left over 10 years, offered free email addresses for life. Although I have moved 3 times and am about to move a 4th, my email address has remained as this same ISP address.

Not at all

[aaaaaaargh!]

what used to be AOL == Gmail now

meaning, only morons and noobs use it

I know this is controversial, so let's start the flamewar and downmodding in 3, 2, 1...

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

what used to be AOL == Gmail now

meaning, only morons and noobs use it

I know this is controversial, so let's start the flamewar and downmodding in 3, 2, 1...

www.fastmail.fm

Thank me later.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL is trash. So is Gmail, for the same reason:

Anyone using PRISMail is naive and a part of the surveillance problem.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that AOL has always sucked. They've never been good at anything. There has never been a reason to use any of their services.

(In fairness, I guess I should give AOL credit for their free drink coasters. They worked reasonably well, and new ones arrived in the mail regularly.)

GMAIL was a competitive EMAIL service when it was introduced. Whether it remains one today is a separate question, that doesn't need to be decided for purposes of the current discussion.

Re:Not at all

[ckatko]

It's fairly easy to tell the early adopter apart from the late bloomers in gmail. They have no numbers on their names, and they don't have to use aliases like wickedhaxor32@gmail.com, they can use their name in the standard form of jsmith@gmail.com.

Re:Not at all

[Hussman32]

I'm not going to flame, but I'm curious why you would think someone stupid for it. I still use gmail for the simple reasons that it always had more free storage than I needed, and now I'm stuck with it because it's been my personal address for almost 10 years. That doesn't make someone a moron (and yes, I'm aware of what they do with it, I put nothing of real value there that wasn't there over five years ago).

My hotmail account would have been it, except a short-sighted MS exec deleted a bunch of e-mails without telling me, losing me forever.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you use Sherlock?

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

+1. And before that it was Yahoo.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL didn't adapt to changing times. Despite their persistence from going under, they still have a user base. What you call 'morons and idiots' , are just those people who have had a long established email address, that those who know them through that address, haven't changed.

I ascribe it in the same way someone who keeps the same care running for 30 years. Despite the better resources out there, what they have works just fine for what they do. Why change, when what you have, isn't broken? It performs a function. What do you care whether or not someone gets rid of AOL and turns to GMail? Oh right. You wouldn't have been able to post a snide +3 remark on /.

Re:Not at all

[Octorian]

AOL has always been the mark of an Internet dunce. There was never a time when it didn't have a negative connotation, among those with a clue. No self-respecting techie would be caught dead with an AOL Email address.

Gmail usually just means you're too lazy to explore your options, or to setup your own domain name. It doesn't really have anywhere near the level of taint.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

startmail.com. There is no substitute.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

That is totally untrue, anyone that has a name as common as jsmith will have numbers even if they were an early adopter. For example my gmail account dates to 2005-02-18 which was less then a year after initial release and well before it was open signups, but i still needed to use numbers in my username.

Re:Not at all

[FranTaylor]

please flush after dropping a stinker

Re:Not at all

[Bert64]

It was better when AOL came on floppies, at least those you could format and use for something else. In school, most of the warez we traded was on free ISP floppies (not just aol, several others did the same thing).

Re:Not at all

[AK Marc]

They've never been good at anything.

Then name someone with more local numbers spread across the US. It was great for travelers. A local number anywhere.

Re:Not at all

[Dog-Cow]

People here hate on AOL the same way they hate on "M$" or Apple. It's just a gut instinct to hate on something they don't understand or have no use for. It's hate for non-techies being enabled to use computers and the Internet.

I would guess 99% of the haters never actually used AOL.

Re:Not at all

[Dog-Cow]

Techies like you will never understand non-techies. A fact which brings into question your supposed intelligence. Non-techies don't give a shit about technical superiority or esoteric features. They don't need a vanity domain. They use(d) AOL because it just plain works.

Basically, you're a fucked-up moron, with no ability to understand simple motivations of average people.

Re:Not at all

[Blaskowicz]

I did not have ISP floppies, so I used Windows 95 floppies! They seemed rather good and the original content was just as useless.

Re:Not at all

[HornWumpus]

You didn't ask. But in the late 90s ibm.net had local access numbers _worldwide_.

I spent too much time on international flights at the time.

Re:Not at all

[HornWumpus]

After all your posting of mental flatulence the truth comes out.

We are using @aol.com to filter out non-techies like yourself. It works great for this. We aren't looking for average people. Any time we spend reading your resume is wasted.

And now we all know you understand this and are just on a rage because of your McJob.

Re:Not at all

[AK Marc]

It's east to hate what you don't understand. Thought it's true that AOL means dumb because they were often the most expensive, and there were even times where a 1-800 ISP was cheaper than AOL. And it's been a long time since AOL was better than anyone at anything, but to say it was never best at anything would be like saying Google was never best at search, because someone will someday surpass them. Changes in the future don't change the past, but do change our perception thereof.

Re:Not at all

[cwsumner]

... I would guess 99% of the haters never actually used AOL.

Actually, they had good reasons. AOL wanted to be the first Google but didn't know how. They wanted to be the IBM of the internet. It was impossible to cancel your account once it was started. They just kept charging you forever. It was years before they got sued enough to finally cancel some accounts.

Plus, they made so much on Dial-Up that they refused to move to highspeed. You had to get a new account with a different ISP for faster connection. So you paid for both!!! 8-(

They straightened up later, after enough competition, but it was too late.

AOL is still popular here in Seattle

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadband isn't available in most of the city so I still run into a lot of people that still use @aol.com email addresses. I can't get DSL or cable in my apartment building so I'm also still on dialup.

Re:AOL is still popular here in Seattle

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can't get DSL or cable in my apartment building

But if you can afford $3k per month, you can move into one of the CondoInternet buildings. It sucks that only the wealthy here have access to faster than dialup.

Re:AOL is still popular here in Seattle

[JohnFen]

Broadband isn't available in most of the city so I still run into a lot of people that still use @aol.com email addresses.

The lack of broadband doesn't explain the use of AOL at all. Why aren't people using a better ISP?

Re:AOL is still popular here in Seattle

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? You're not talking about a small part of Seattle or some unknown small town Seattle in another part of the US? Broadband is not available in most of Seattle, Wa?

Re:AOL is still popular here in Seattle

[Dog-Cow]

What isn't good about AOL? Have you used it in the past 20 years?

It's not Google

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite reason for keeping the AOL address in my email address quiver is that it's not Google.

I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly...

[greenwow]

where you live. I live in Seattle, and despite their government-granted monopoly for most of the city, Comcast typically only offers service in wealthy (read: profitable) areas. In much of the city, faster than dial-up is not available. I had 576 kbps DSL for several years, but it recently quit working so I had to back to dial-up. If you live somewhere with Comcast, then I guess AOL is much more popular in your area.

most techies will perceive it that way

[Coopjust]

I've personally found that the majority of people don't really make any judgment on having an AOL address but people who are tech oriented tend to think the person is backwards for using a really old service that's associated with old times, not as much storage or features as some newer entrants (e.g. Gmail, etc.)..

My parents and grandparents started on the internet for AOL and spend 5+ years regularly using it, signing up for sites, giving out contact info, etc. before getting cable and 9 or more years before Gmail ever existed. My grandparents actually maintain email pretty well (delete what they don't need so smaller storage amount is OK) so they just use AOL via IMAP (switched to iPads as primary internet device).

One of my parents gave up the AOL mail (used another email more) and the other still uses their AOL address - but all email is pulled via POP into Gmail on a 5 minute basis (Greasemonkey script automates the fetch on that interval, clicking the refresh button in gmail will force a check sooner) and that is how she consumes it. This system works pretty well because you can switch even formerly paid AOL accounts to the free plan and not lose anything. This may eventually not become required because all outgoing email goes out via Gmail on the personal domain (Gmail for your Domain), so most people who would care to contact her have the new email address nowadays.

Re:most techies will perceive it that way

[ckatko]

>I've personally found that the majority of people don't really make any judgment on having an AOL address but people who are tech oriented tend to think the person is backwards for using a really old service that's associated with old times, not as much storage or features as some newer entrants (e.g. Gmail, etc.)..

What about all the people that can ONLY get AOL in their rural areas (the Comcast "go fuck yourself" zones)? It seems strange to think less of them for living in the wrong place.

Re:most techies will perceive it that way

[Cro Magnon]

What about all the people that can ONLY get AOL in their rural areas (the Comcast "go fuck yourself" zones)? It seems strange to think less of them for living in the wrong place.

Well, people in the middle of their farms, milking their cow with a pitchfork sticking out their back pocket, aren't usually considered tech-savvy themselves, even if they DON'T use AOL. :)

Re:most techies will perceive it that way

[Chris Mattern]

What about all the people that can ONLY get AOL in their rural areas (the Comcast "go fuck yourself" zones)? It seems strange to think less of them for living in the wrong place.

And AOL service prevents these people from using Google because...? Say what you want, Google usually delivers pretty spare websites. I don't think they'd be much of a problem on dial-up.

Re:most techies will perceive it that way

[JohnFen]

What about all the people that can ONLY get AOL in their rural areas (the Comcast "go fuck yourself" zones)?

I don't believe there exists any place in the nation where your only choice for internet service is AOL. There are many other dialup providers that are a local phone call from pretty much everywhere.

Re:most techies will perceive it that way

[Dog-Cow]

...not as much storage...

This is why ignorant people shouldn't be allowed to breed. Or was that breathe?

AOL offers more storage than Gmail.

personally

[koan]

In the instance of AOL, I am surprised it still exist, and then I begin to picture a little old lady that doesn't know any better than to use it.
When it comes to Hotmail or Yahoo, it's so cluttered I can't see why anyone would bother with it.

That brings us to Gmail, I like clean lines, simplicity, what I don't like is UI churn, so that just as soon as I get it in my head where to go to get something done... it moves somewhere else.

Like some never ending game of "Where's Waldo".

Re:personally

[tnk1]

AOL still reaches people who can't get broadband and need to use modems. Poor sods.

The thing is, unlike with broadband, where AOL was just some walled garden app and some content sites, with modems, they're actually a real ISP. And they're really the only national modem based ISP still in existence worth talking about.

You don't have to be a little old lady to be using AOL. You just have to live far enough off the broadband network to need to use modems still.

And as someone who worked at AOL itself not so long ago, no one was more shocked than I was when the execs announced that they'd come to the realization that while dialup was declining, it wasn't actually doing so in a precipitous fashion any more. When you take away the loss of all of the broadband adopters, AOL still had a substantial business in dialup, and their dialup infrastructure was paid off and/or low maintenance. AOL, due to its size, is the last man standing from the dialup age.

Dialup will eventually end, but it could take decades to finally drive a nail in that coffin.

Re:personally

[mlts]

With all the UI churn of not just Gmail, but every other provider, I've thrown in the towel, and just use a decent MUA (Thunderbird for E-mail, Outlook for calenders/meetings/tasks/contacts.)

A MUA is a lot more resistant against attack than a Web browser, and gives more options when it comes to rulesets (I can move vital E-mails that hit Yahoo to my hosted Exchange server which I actually look at.) Plus, I can use features like PGP or S/MIME quite easily with it.

Re:personally

[koan]

And this because of lobbying by Comcast (and others) to stifle towns "roll your own" internet.
Really, it's a sign of a corrupt system of government more than anything else IMO.

Re:personally

[Dog-Cow]

...doesn't know any better than to use it.

And this is why normal people cringe when you enter a room, or simply leave and hope you don't follow. There's nothing to "know better". AOL is cheap. AOL works. AOL has been around longer than any other dial-up ISP, given that they existed before the advent of the dial-up ISP. Only a fucking moron like you would switch away from something that works perfectly, and has since forever, for a new shiny.

Re:personally

[Dog-Cow]

AOL never provided a walled garden. The client gave access to Internet features, and eventually became a PPP client, allowing use of any TCP/IP software you wanted.

Re:personally

[koan]

Still on AOL are you...

Re:personally

[inline_four]

You can use free email providers without their GUI. Use IMAP and SMTP. Google, Yahoo, and AOL all offer it.

exceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

The kind of person who would be an expert with current technology is probably not the kind of person who would hold onto an AOL email address. Just like I'd expect a developer who's amazing at developing smartphone apps to not have a flip phone. But there are always exceptions.

Quick mailbox hierarchy...

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL -- give them an etch-a-sketch, call it an iPad, and they won't know.

Yahoo -- Someone gives you this, you know you are on their spam bucket email address list.

Gmail -- minimally competent, hard to judge.

mac.com/me.com/icloud.com -- expect the conversation to be on little else but their fixie bike, tattoos, beard oil, or some Apple related topic.

hushmail.com -- give them a thumbs up for at least trying to be secure.

msn.com/outlook.com -- off the beaten track, could be any skill level.

compuserve ID that is in xxxxx.xxxx format. Retro, pure retro.

Custom domain in .co/.info/.mobile/.sucks -- clued hipster.

Custom domain for E-mail that is a .com, .net, or .org -- someone who actually knows their stuff.

Re:Quick mailbox hierarchy...

[Dunbal]

71541.3346@compuserve.com :P

Re:Quick mailbox hierarchy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Custom domain in .co/.info/.mobile/.sucks -- clued hipster.

Custom domain for E-mail that is a .com, .net, or .org -- someone who actually knows their stuff.

Or rather, people who still believe having your own personalized domain means shit about your abilities, when it really means that you're just vain or trying to build a brand.

Or, people who like to tell you how much of a "nerd" they are, as if we weren't all computer nerds when we started in this field in 1995.

Re:Quick mailbox hierarchy...

[gfxguy]

I have my own domain, but I still access via gmail because I get so much free storage. What does that say about me? In fact, I have a bunch of addresses on my domain, and access them all through gmail and filter them into their own labels to keep it all nice and neat.

Re:Quick mailbox hierarchy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Custom domain for E-mail that is a .com, .net, or .org -- someone who actually knows their stuff.

The shorter the better, too. I've had a 3-character .com domain and a 6-character "cool word" .net domain since 2000. Shortly after that, the domain name speculators started squatting every 3-character combination they could get.

I do have email bias

[Sir_Eptishous]

Ever since around 2009-10 my bias has been against those with Gmail accounts.
Like FB, it is another path of least resistance that the tech behemoths have herded Americans into.

Re:I do have email bias

[DarkOx]

Ever since around 2009-10 my bias has been against those with Gmail accounts.

Why because using something different gives you a sense of superiority. AOL was an ad laden mess once it go big. It really was foolish to use it if you did not have to do so.

GMAIL's only real issue is privacy concerns. Which *is* a huge issue, but other services are far from immune to that as well; short of running your own mail server you can't really know and it does matter really because chances are the person you are mailing is using Google anyway.

The reality is GMAIL works well and meets a lot of peoples needs. It also has good IMAP support if you like a local client. So I don't judge GMAIL users to harshly, because I don't know where they could go that would be demonstratively better for them, unlike AOL users back in the day where there usually was clearly superior and obvious choice for anyone's specific use cases.

Re:I do have email bias

[JohnFen]

So I don't judge GMAIL users to harshly

Me either. But those privacy concerns you mention are such a huge deal that I try very hard to never send email to a gmail address. And when I have to send email to one, I say as little as I can possibly get away with.

Re:I do have email bias

[gfxguy]

Gmail is awesome - tons of free space, ability to combine and access all your other old email addresses you didn't want to give up (like AOL? Not me, but why not?), great filtering options, access from anywhere on just about any device...

No, what we have here is a clear case (like the music industry) of a bunch of hipsters who think that anything really popular must suck for no other reason than that it's popular.

Re:I do have email bias

[Anonymous Coward]

short of running your own mail server

Your shit is still floating around in plain text, and you don't control your immediate upstream.

Sure, Google having the NSA's fat cock in its mouth makes it easier, but don't pretend running your own mail server is some magic privacy panacea.

Re:I do have email bias

[TheRaven64]

Because one of the strengths of email is that it is a decentralised, multi-vendor platform. The fact that you use gmail doesn't prevent me from using hotmail, yahoo, or whatever, or rolling my own. And that works fine, until one or two players has a dominant position. See what Google has done with their XMPP support, for example. When they were the underdog, they were happy to federate with everyone in a vendor-neutral network. Now they're increasingly trying to lock users into using their network (I think federating is up at the moment, but you can't add new contacts on non-Google-hosted domains).

The other aspect is privacy. If a certain percentage of my social graph uses gmail, then it doesn't matter that I don't - Google can still get a fairly accurate view of the shape of that graph, which is valuable to them. The other poster claimed that it's a reaction to whatever is popular, and he's right in a sense: email is a more robust network when there are no particularly popular providers and when people are fairly evenly spread between a smaller number.

It doesnt suggest tech anything

[pecosdave]

Because anyone who deserves the label tech knows better, it does however suggest you're an idiot.

Family scorn regularly attempts to shame me out of

[Anonymous Coward]

When I mentioned my AOL address, my son and daughter-in-law laughed scornfully and offered to "show" me how to get a gmail account.

I use them all the time

[Virtucon]

In my role as a professional phisherman and spammer, I find that using AOL and Yahoo e-mails enhances my target audience responses by 90%.

Besides, it's free and I can create hundreds every hour.

While I'm at it would you be interested in Penis Pills? I have a special on them two bottles for $19.99

Also please click on this link because I have important information about your Social Security benefits.

The Comcast fans boys are out in force again

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, posts get buried and the posters attacked if they criticize Comcast. This site is so pro-Comcast.

Horse hockey

[Snotnose]

It means you've had the same email address for 15+ years and don't want to change it.

The only reason I finally got a gmail address was I wanted to be able to keep it through moving, changing ISP providers, changing jobs, etc. Having a consistent email address is a handy thing to have.

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. It means you were a clueless noob 15 years ago, and you have no desire to change it now! :-)

CAPTCHA: bluntly

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of anyone paying 100 USD for AOL let alone more than any other service. Ever.
 
Sounds like you're making crap up just to hear yourself talk.

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally had to get a new email address when the UUCP Mapping Project was shut down. I still miss bangpaths.

Re:Horse hockey

[HornWumpus]

Just because you were shitting green when it happened doesn't make it fiction.

AOL charged by the minute when every other ISP was flat $20/month. They were also a particularly shitty ISP, preferring to herd you to their AOL only content.

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, AOL charged by the minute, but with the CDs, you could get 45000 free minutes per month! (Note that 31 days is 44640 hours.)

Actually, I seem to recall that there was a certain number of hours per month (10?) covered by the regular monthly price, then you got charged for the extra connect time. At some point you could even get AOL service for free if you only used the TCP/IP connection option, because that meant you were no longer using their modem pool.

Re:Horse hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

how long will verizon keep the free services going? they aren't known for giving stuff away, ya know.

@aol.com back in the day

[WCMI92]

Used to indicate that you are a noob idiot with PC's on the internet.

Now it indicates that you are STILL a noob idiot with a PC on the internet with gray hair.

Re:@aol.com back in the day

[Anonymous Coward]

as opposed to a hipster with shit for brains

Re:@aol.com back in the day

[Whiteox]

Don't forget:

From: Joe and Martha Smith
Subject: FWD: FWD: FWD: A Senior Moment
----------

This message has been scanned by Norton

Early adaptors makes you a dinosaur?

[walterbyrd]

If you have an aol address, it probably means that you have been online longer than most, and have no compelling reason to go though the considerable trouble changing your email address.

How does that make you "stuck in the 1990s?" Does an aol address force you use Windows-95?

Re:Early adaptors makes you a dinosaur?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same reason dial-up in Seattle is still so pervasive. We were early adapters. We lead the world in technology. That's why our laws are so out of date, and why so few people have access to access faster than ISDN. Our laws do not require Comcast to offer service to the entire city. Instead, they get to cherry-pick who they sell to. Also, the Director's Rules prevent CenturyLink from upgrading equipment so they can start offering DSL in the entire city. The connections here are so slow, and thus so many people are still using AOL, because we are tech leaders.

Re:Early adaptors makes you a dinosaur?

[silas_moeckel]

AOL users were the unwashed masses back then. An AOL address was a sign you were a dinosaur/technophobe then as well.

Re:Early adaptors makes you a dinosaur?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think changing you email address is "considerable trouble" you are either not tech savvy, or sufficiently lazy as to be indistinguishable from useless.

Re:Early adaptors makes you a dinosaur?

[Anonymous Coward]

> AOL users were the unwashed masses back then

Compuserve was a rather small community linking together some networks that didn't grow very fast. Prodigy tried to link together IRC and larger BBSs in a buggy text-menu hell with constant netsplits and limited services of value. The shareware libraries were dangerous and small. AOL offerings were far more progressive from the start. Their chat rooms weren't special, but the UI, Forums, Libraries, content, and reference sources were very impressive by 1990s standards (cross platform!). Yeah, you could eventually browse through Yahoo or Altavista for questionable information by 1992 (usually ending up with docs from usenet stored on some gopher network) but this concept of AOL being backward is either due to your ignorance or failing memory. These mocking posts about the 90s are laughable when you are talking about your l33t network of choice with a thousand users. Whooptie doo.

sdfsdf

[Anonymous Coward]

sdfsdfsdfsfdsfss!

Fuck Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

I also live in Seattle, and they refuse to sell to my building. Of course the buildings in nicer areas have cable available, but we can't get it here. That leaves DSL as the only other option, and it doesn't work very well because of the distance from CenturyLink's CO. I wish the city would force them to provide service to everyone in their monopoly area. Instead, we're still fucking stuck with dialup. I love copper.net, but I am simply tired of being stuck in 1995. Seattle sucks. The Seattle process that has prevented us from getting access is the problem. Nothing ever gets fixed here.

What is the difference between AOL and Gmail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides negativity associated with the brands, is there actually a difference between AOL and Gmail from a practical perspective?

I don't think so. So this not so much a valid technical question more than it is a question about shallow appearances.

But as has been said below, both AOL and Gmail are poor email options.

And not far behind...

[Anonymous Coward]

hotmail and yahoo.... if you have either of these, I will have problems taking you seriously.

The good old days...

[paulxnuke]

I kind of regret letting my aol email go now. I was a very early adopter (I used to sell shareware out of their ftp site, which did not charge for bandwidth at the time. Not that I used much by modern standards.)

I also made a fair amount of money trading aol stock back in the day. It's one of the few I successfully ran from _before_ things went bad.

I used to have a lot of fun trolling an aol forum called "Why Anne Rice Sucks." She does, actually, as a writer, so posting was easy and truthful; boy, some of her fans have no sense of humor, though.

Hey, I prefer mechanical watches as well.

Re:The good old days...

[gmhowell]

Ok, but how did it become fashionable to tie an onion to your belt?

Re:The good old days...

[cwsumner]

Ok, but how did it become fashionable to tie an onion to your belt?

It keeps insects away. And partly covers up the smell of farts.

Believe it or not, keeping insects away before repellant spray was a big thing. The alternative was something like rancid bear grease, which smelled terrible but worked.

Email has to work that's it

[aepervius]

After that whether it is aol, gmx, or gmail only matter to hipster. Email has to work. It has to support pop3 and imap and whatever. It does not have to be from a specific domain. Stating aol=dinosaur is being blind to the fact that this is only a domain after the @. It does not reflect anything on the user.

Re:Email has to work that's it

[countSudoku()]

Hey, we were having a nice heated discussion about the merits or demerits of using AOL or Gmail for your free email services, then you have to come in with your sensibilities and making a good point, and, well, now everything is ruined!!1!

Re:Email has to work that's it

[Anonymous Coward]

To bring a car analogy, it would be like someone applying for a management position at a company then arriving in a coal-rollin' Dodge 3500 with stacks that could hold four watermelons in, side by side. The guy who has that versus the BMW, all things being equal, the European car driver will get the job.

Re:Email has to work that's it

[HornWumpus]

Nobody has ever asked about what I drove.

I did remove my name from consideration once. Found out an employer was a division of Ford. Somethings I won't do.

Dinosaur? Hipster?

[spaceyhackerlady]

If I saw somebody with an aol.com email I'd wonder if they were a tech dinosaur, a total hipster, or somebody who had simply stuck with something that worked.

I've had my Hotmail email address since 1996, prior to Microsoft taking it over. I've stuck with it because it works. It does exactly what Hotmail promised from the start, providing email that is independent of my ISP or employer.

...laura

Re:Dinosaur? Hipster?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've only had three email addresses since 1994. And two of them still work. If you write me at any email address I've had for the last 19 years, it will still get to me.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I value consistency and reliability over the latest fad any day. I'd much rather hire a guy who still uses his old aol email address than some kid who changes his email address (along with his mailing address) every year because he's unreliable and unstable.

Re:Dinosaur? Hipster?

[ArcadeMan]

I've also had my Hotmail address since before Microsoft bought them (or took them over, or whatever). It's still free, it still works, so I still use it for pointless websites that I'm too lazy to do what I'm about to describe next:

I also have my own domain name where I control the email accounts and I make an alias for each and every company/organisation/etc that asks for my email. Makes it easy to track who's selling my address or has security so bad that other people can get it. It's easy to then redirect all that spam into the trash.

Real men...

[BigDaveyL]

Run their own email server.

Re:Real men...

[FranTaylor]

wrong

real men pay grunts like you to run their email

Re:Real men...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny...I thought it was an elitist presidential candidate that ran her own email server.

Re:Real men...

[cascadingstylesheet]

Run their own email server.

Hey, be nice to Hillary ...

Re:Real men...

[arth1]

She had her own e-mail server, but I bet she did not run it.
Simple as it is, it's beyond the capabilities of any politician I can think of.

Re:Real men...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, exactly?
If you actually host it yourself, it's crazily expensive.

If you use an externally hosted, you get no real benefits from having a decent corporate solution.

There could be an argument for having your own company providing email hosting.

Group interview...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sat in a group interview where the resumes had yahoo, hotmail, or gmail listed for contact info. Candidates with yahoo or hotmail were made fun of and assumed to be old or not up to date technologically for the position. I wouldn't even consider someone with an aol address on their resume. AOL accounts are fine for personal use but if you want to work in a tech field you better have a linkedin account and a gmail account to give a good impression before I meet you. My 2 cents.

gmail address == don't care if Google scans email

[alispguru]

I don't have a gmail address, because Google admits up front they scan the contents of your email for advertising purposes.

No, thank you.

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[danbob999]

Go back to dialup? Can't you get cellular or something else?

I know people here hate you...

[Anonymous Coward]

for saying something negative about Comcast, but you are correct despite the hatred and bias of the moderation here. This site really does love Comcast, but the truth is that they are really holding the Internet back. I've lived in five different places in Seattle, and in not a single one was cable TV or Internet available. I could move to somewhere much more expensive and get their service, but the fact of the matter is they simply do not want to spend one penny to provide service to the average person. They would rather only sell to the people that will buy more.

Seattle shouldn't be granting monopolies and preventing competition. Instead, Comcast should be forced to provide service since they have a monopoly that the city aggressively protects.

I *only* use an aol email address

[NotDrWho]

It has a warm, true sound that you just can't get from today's CD's and digital music.

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Hussman32]

That is nuts. I had high speed internet in Oklahoma 15 years ago, you'd think the home of Microsoft would have good connectivity.

Hipster

[kaizendojo]

I have an aol.com address ironically.

@hellokitty.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I screen out everyone that doesn't have an email address on the @hellokitty.com domain.

Only the elite of the elite will get those.

testing

[Anonymous Coward]

testing

marketing & branding

[Anonymous Coward]

...so image does matter now on /.?
It's just an email service. It should be as relevant as judging someone based on their footwear.

Re:marketing & branding

[TWX]

Image has always mattered on Slashdot, but it has typically been a different set of constraints and perspectives than the rest of the population.

Trouble is, the perspectives of-old are self-limiting by definition, as they cater to a niche audience. Once an organization (in this case, a website) has hit its upper bounds in that niche audience, it needs to branch-out to a wider audience to continue to grow, and in the process of doing that often such organizations will discard whatever core beliefs let them grow to that size in the first place. Sometimes they successfully make the transition, other times they never attract the mainstream audience while they alienate the original participants, and they simply die off.

To the point of AOL though, I think it's actually starting to shed its original "braindead AOLer" image (with apologies to Mr. Yankovic) in the sense that three-letter ubiquitous TLDs are very convenient for giving someone your e-mail address, especially if the user portion of the address is also concise or memorable. It's also the case that if people don't want to change e-mail addresses often (and deal with the ensuing pain in the ass of notifying EVERYONE of the change), sticking with a provider that has proven to be there for the long haul is useful.

We're past the meaning of the original Endless September; most people on the Internet don't even know what that is even if they would have found distain for it. We're arguably getting past the point where the original negative connotations don't mean anything to anyone anymore. If AOL's frontend service is essentially dead but their other services continue to provide value then perhaps it's time we stop our silliness around them.

Re:marketing & branding

[sjames]

If someone showed up for an interview in the tech industry wearing big floppy clown shoes, you wouldn't judge?

How about if they show up for a cross country race wearing stiletto heels?

Re:marketing & branding

[mysidia]

How about if they showed up wearing a T-shirt with "EBOA (Elite Bastard of Alt.Irc)" printed on it ?

Re:marketing & branding

[Hognoxious]

How about if they show up for a cross country race wearing stiletto heels?

That fails on functionality. An AOL email address, AFAIK, functions like any other.

Re:marketing & branding

[sjames]

Personally, an aol address gives me a brief giggle but no judgement beyond that.

Re:marketing & branding

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone showed up for an interview in the tech industry wearing big floppy clown shoes, you wouldn't judge?

How about if they show up for a cross country race wearing stiletto heels?

The person would stand out in my mind as someone willing to take risks and not afraid of what other people think. Heck if the stiletto-heeled shoe-wearing person finished the race they'd have demonstrated commitment and self-motivation. I'd hire them.

Compuserve

[jfdavis668]

So my CompuServe email address shows that I am old?

Re:Compuserve

[macxcool]

I used to use Compuserve and AOL CDs that came in the mail for wheels on racecars for my kids and mobiles in the garden to scare birds away.

Re:Compuserve

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as old as my The Source email addy

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

while I'm not using AOL since I'm not from US, I've been using the same email address for 18 years now. Yeah, spamassasin is taking care of keeping it clean lol. Also ofc I'm a tech dinosaur but that doesn't mean I'm not versed in the modern buzzword ridden bullshittery that's currently going on.
Now get off my lawn!

Retro

[swsuehr]

Actually, I've sort of been waiting for an @aol.com e-mail address to become retro/cool again. Like seeing the hipsters all wanting @aol.com addresses to show their hipster status. Apparently I'll need to keep waiting.

Not a dinosaur... an early adopter

[QuietLagoon]

The @aol.com email address was one of the earliest widely-used email domains. We should be cheering those with @aol.com addresses for blazing the path forward.

.
(and, no, my email address is not @aol.com, and never has been)

Re:Not a dinosaur... an early adopter

[silas_moeckel]

They were not early adopters or anything else back then, the only path they blazed was down the toilet.

Darn new-fangled AOL address

[rlp]

ceres!rlp ;-)

Not hard to switch

[sjbe]

If you have an aol address, it probably means that you have been online longer than most, and have no compelling reason to go though the considerable trouble changing your email address.

"Considerable trouble"? Basically you open a new account (Gmail or whatever) and then have that account check your old AOL account (via POP or IMAP) for a while. Anyone you actively correspond with gets replies from your new account. If you don't correspond with them via email within a year they probably don't really matter to you anyway. Shut down the old account after a year or two - or don't. It's not much trouble at all really.

What astonishes me is people who use AOL or Gmail similar accounts for their business accounts. Pay the $10 a year and set up a domain. It looks really bad to use an AOL account for your job.

Re:Not hard to switch

[walterbyrd]

Yes, it can be considerable trouble to change to a new email address.

I have dozens of web accounts, for which I use my yahoo address. It would be a huge PITA to have to change everything. And besides, what would I gain?

Re:Not hard to switch

[blue9steel]

"Considerable trouble"? Basically you open a new account (Gmail or whatever) and then have that account check your old AOL account (via POP or IMAP) for a while.

Actually the email portion has little to do with the inconvenience. The problem is that thousands of lazy developers decided that your email address should be your unique login ID for their site. Thus changing your email address could make all kinds of services you've registered for much less useful, and if you've been online for over 20 years like I have that is literally thousands of sites. Sure, I have gmail address as well, which I use for resumes since some people use stupid non-job related filters, but so far the switching cost has been too high to make it worth fully migrating.

Re:Not hard to switch

[sjbe]

I have dozens of web accounts, for which I use my yahoo address. It would be a huge PITA to have to change everything. And besides, what would I gain?

You can gain having an email address you control which you forward to whatever back end suits you. Why have a gmail or yahoo address when you can have a forwarding address you control for the rest of time instead? THAT is what you gain. Oh it's a bit of a bother at first but I've done it a few times and it really isn't a big deal looking back. You still can keep your old yahoo or aol address if you want to but you don't have to be tied to it.

Re:Not hard to switch

[sjbe]

hus changing your email address could make all kinds of services you've registered for much less useful, and if you've been online for over 20 years like I have that is literally thousands of sites.

Highly unlikely you actually use logins involving your email on "thousands of sites". Unless you are really unusual you have a few dozen you deal with with any regularity and the rest you can look up or reset if you need to. I've had email addresses for over 20 years myself and have rotated email addresses numerous times. It's really not that big a deal. Furthermore if you want to keep one email address for all time buy a domain, set up a forwarder and use whatever backend suits you. Gmail, yahoo, thunderbird, whatever. Then you aren't tied to some obsolete old email address and you can change backends whenever you like.

Re:Not hard to switch

[blue9steel]

or reset if you need to.

The password reset process for most sites usually involves sending an email to your account address so closing the account would make that unworkable.

AOL emails keeps assh* far of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Only idi***s can discriminate by email domain. That is good, keep doing it. So people smarter than you can keep you out of our world.

AOL and Hotmail addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

When accepting applications for sysadmin/helpdesk positions, if the contact email is @hotmail or @aol, the resume is summarily discarded.

People working with computers have no business using either of these AFAIC.

"from Gizmodo to Lifehacker" ?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Um, that's not a very far distance, seeing as they're part of the same conglomerate.

Re:"from Gizmodo to Lifehacker" ?

[Enry]

This, and they're both competitors to AOL properties (Engadget at least)

What's that say about those judging?

[modi123]

I have an AOL email I still use depending on the need, and use it as a barometer to judge folks I give it to. If someone balks and throws a douche-fit about an email address I really am not interested in dealing with them. It has not caused me to miss out on employment or side work, but the mild concern is there.

It's been my email for about two-dog ages, and I rather not run the issue of changing over everything that goes there.. monitor it for another few months for stragglers.. and then close it.

It's an email address people. I never had the cool Transformer's lunchbox, or nor the best Saved by the Bell TrapperKeeper and I survived.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[Just Some Guy]

It says that they make reasonable inferences based on prior experience. It's just an email address, sure, but one associated with a service designed for "people not smart enough to be on the real Internet". For a long time, AOL didn't have Internet access at all, just keywords that took you to an internally hosted web page-like media view. It was generally understood that no one clever enough to grok the Internet would ever settle for constricting AOL access, so its usage came to connote cluelessness. By the time it opened up to the rest of the web, there were many viable local and national competitors.

OK, you're one of the handful of AOL users who picked it for non-clueless reasons. You can't be surprised that the rest of the world sees you as a tiny minority, though, and automatically assumes that @aol.com implies @i-dont-know-what-an-isp-is.net. I don't begrudge you your right to dig in your heels and resist. Hey, I had an Amiga for years after they stopped being cool - I get it! Shine on, crazy contrarian diamond! Your address may very well eventually come around to be hipster-cool and retro, and if so, congratulations! But if it doesn't, well, understand that you made the decision.

FWIW, Gmail's "Mail Fetcher" can be configured to pull mail out of non-Google accounts and into a Gmail inbox. You could start using Gmail today and not miss a single @aol.com email, then gradually transition over a period of days/weeks/years as the legacy email slows to a trickle. I don't personally use Gmail and I'm not trying to push you onto it. I just wanted to point out that you don't have to pick a flag day to switch from one email provider to another. If you decide to transition, it can be as quick or gradual as you feel like that day.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly my situation...I've had my AOL address since before Internet access was widely available. If someone judges me solely by my email address anyway it's probably a sign that I should not deal with them. Having said that...I also have a gmail address and if unemployed might very well use that to avoid the 'stigma'.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[Eris13]

I too have an AOL address. I inherited it when AOL absorbed my Netscape account. If anyone is filtering job applications based on email address, I'm not sure I want to work for them - they sound lazy.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[HornWumpus]

WTF? My Amiga is _still cool_.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[Just Some Guy]

Son, it's about time we had a talk.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[HornWumpus]

It's cool like my 1960 Saratoga. Sure you don't want to daily drive it, but it turns heads better than a 2 million dollar Veyron.

Re:What's that say about those judging?

[Just Some Guy]

OK, I can go along with that. But I've happened across a few current die-hards, and I lump them in with Blackberry users and "the South will rise again!".

Betteridges law of headlines is wrong!

[dominux]

"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." and this is a clear exception to that rule.

Supports IMAP, why change it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its supports IMAP. Thats everything I need. Why change it.

Hipsters

[Anonymous Coward]

The hipsters will bring back AOL.

I still use my MSN address

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't used MSN or even visited their website in almost 10 years.

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two emails, one is @aim.com (used to be @netscape.net, and before that I used compuserve, et al., or a university address) for a majority of my personal and self-employment work (softdev/webpub), and one through one of my domains/domain registrar that's for special occasions.. I use Thunderbird to access both accounts. The non-aim account seems to get a carpload of spam, as a percentage of emails received.

The main advantage for me is the fact that I don't have to contact thousands of people and organizations with a new spiffy address (laziness?), and "aim" is 2 characters shorter than "gmail" (laziness!). I see no particular disadvantage either. None of my clients has ever complained about having to type "aim.com", nor have they ever asked me if I still use a horse and buggy (which I don't). Well, the goofy "you've got mail!" thing gets a little old, especially if I have my speakers turned up.

When I do sign into my google account, I always feel sort of like I'm talking to a prostitute, or something.

Your a target for fraud if you have an aol address

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really that simple. And it's not just having an address from the 1990s as it was a target for fraud in the 1990s too. You could always identify the population for which your fraud could work against by emailing aol users. Why waste your time emailing people where the is a 1% chance they'll pick up on the fraud when you can garner a 100% positive result from aol'ers?

I guess this ends the Yahoo/AOL merger

[Hussman32]

In January, there was pressure from some activist investors for Yahoo! and AOL to merge. http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I guess not so much anymore.

Like Steve Jobs not dealing with different clothes

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a very prominent engineer (Apple, Pixar, startups) that still uses an aol address. Doesn't care. Its like Steve Jobs wearing the same type of shirt and jeans everyday...he's got way more important things to deal with than some fools impression of him due to an email domain.

That person creates things most of you have used or consumed. Dismissing them for an email domain only demonstrates your lack of vision.

From an earlier /. thread...

[bkmoore]

(apologies to the "you just might be a red neck" guy)

If you remember owning a black and white television... you just might not be a digital native.
If you first learned to drive a stick shift.... you just might not be a digital native.
If you remember when there were only two kinds of coffee... you just might not be a digital native.
If you know what a pencil has to do with a cassette tape.... you just might not be a digital native.
...... < i could go on >....
If you have an AOL email address..... you are definately not a digital native.

Re:From an earlier /. thread...

[blue9steel]

If you remember owning a black and white television...

Which I used to play pong.

If you remember when there were only two kinds of coffee...

Well, I remember when burnt coffee was still considered a bad thing.

If you know what a pencil has to do with a cassette tape....

Then you probably remember loading programs from tape.

If you have an AOL email address.....

That I got before most people had even heard of email.

Re:From an earlier /. thread...

[HornWumpus]

We're not 'natives', we built the place.

These days, there are kids that grew up in it. Most are clueless, but some aren't.

Burnt coffee is _still_ a bad thing. As is @aol.com. Same as in 199?.

This is one of my pet peeves

[Soft Filter]

It suggests whatever it suggests to you, but your opinion doesn't make it so. I've been aware of the tech community's bias against AOL email addresses for nearly as long as I've had one but it's still my primary. Why? It's outlived three .edu accounts, two EarthLink accounts, several that came packaged with ISPs, multiple Gmail accounts, a few from personal websites... you get the idea. So I've had it since 1994, when my dad let me create one under his subscription. Its presence simplifies things for family and old friends get in touch with me. Yes, my old AOL has even outlasted my presence on Facebook and Google+. Frankly, I just view the bias as yet another case of people being lemmings but feel free to reach your wrong conclusions if that's what makes you happy.

If you're a stranger, you get my freemail address

[Anonymous Coward]

I have dozens of email addresses, for various uses. If you get one of my throwaway addresses (not all of which are immediately recognizable as such), then I don't want to hear from you at all, but you insisted on an email address. If I give you my primary freemail address, which has my real name in it, then you already know who I am and I expect that you will send me information that I need, but your mails will not interrupt me: I read them at my leisure. Only good friends and important business partners get an address with my domain, for which I receive instant notifications (incredibly easy to guess address, but amazingly there is no spam).

IMHO @gmail.com vs. @aol.com tells me more about your age than anything else. They're both addresses used by the "unwashed masses" who will eventually regret their decision to lock themselves into someone else's domain. AOL is only a little worse because it used to be an ISP address. Gmail on the other hand arrived at a time when personal domains were not just for techies anymore, so that counts against @gmail.com users. When I see @aol.com on the side of a van, I cringe, but then I remind myself that changing primary contact information for a business is expensive, and that an address like that means the company has been around for at least a decade, so they can't be complete rubbish, and maybe they prioritize their work over following every trend. @gmail.com on a van is much less forgivable.

Real Hipsters

[Anonymous Coward]

Use fidonet

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

OP wasn't talking about Microsoft. His post had nothing to do with Microsoft. Why do you Microsoft fanbois think everything is about Microsoft? You make everything about Microsoft. We are so tired of seeing you people keep mentioning that damn Microsoft name so often. Please stop saying Microsoft.

No, he was talking about how much access here in Seattle sucks. I am tired of using ISDN at home. Damn tired of it. The conservatives that rule here hate the Internet and do not allow us to have fast access. They block every attempted improvement. There's even a name for what the conservatives here do. It is called the Seattle Process. That is why we do not have access faster than dialup or ISDN.

Not taken seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone is contacting me for business related things (ie trying to sell me a product/service) and they have ANY of the free/personal (gmail/hotmail/msa/mac/aol..etc) or an email ending in their ISP system i just disregard.

My feeling is that if you are providing a product or service and engaging in commerce and you use one of the above then you do not even take yourself seriously enough to buy a domain.. then I will not either

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Nyder]

where you live. I live in Seattle, and despite their government-granted monopoly for most of the city, Comcast typically only offers service in wealthy (read: profitable) areas. In much of the city, faster than dial-up is not available. I had 576 kbps DSL for several years, but it recently quit working so I had to back to dial-up. If you live somewhere with Comcast, then I guess AOL is much more popular in your area.

I live in Seattle and I know for a fact that where Comcast doesn't deliver, there are other Cable providers that do. Faster then dialup is available for all of Seattle.

I hate Comcast, but fuck, let's not lie here. Lying isn't necessary because the problem is State/City allowed Monopoly of the Cable/Internet services, not the level of service in Seattle. Lying makes you look like an idiot and then invalidates what you are saying.

Now are you talking about something out of the Seattle city limits and calling it Seattle? Because when I was younger, I used to say I lived in Seattle, but honestly, I didn't because I was miles out of the city limits.

Pretty much

[Karmashock]

I don't know anyone that uses aol mail that is less than 70 years old.

I ran into someone that uses CompuServe email awhile ago... not just the web client either but the actual CompuServe email client that you have to install on the computer. The nostalgia with that is pretty funny. It looks just like it did in the 90s.

What I'd like to see more people moving towards is self hosting. Yes, I know that the ISPs don't want you to run servers on your internet connection but an Email server for ONE person is hardly going to be any stress on their network. And frankly, I just think that given the NSA and the big companies rifling through our emails it might be a good idea to just self host.

Re:Pretty much

[DavidLeeLambert7357]

My dad uses AOL (webmail, not dialup), he's younger than 70 but not by much.

However, my younger brother also uses AOL... about a year ago he got a gmail account, but last time I sent him mail at his gmail address, he didn't respond, and when I called him he said he hadn't seen the message. Then I re-sent the message and CCed his AOL account, he answered from there. So, I haven't seen the UI myself, but I'm sure it's "good enough". He's hardly a tech newbie; has a BS in physics, currently in grad school.

+1 on the self-hosting. For outgoing e-mail there are various "email send" services aimed at transactional e-mail from cloud-hosted applications but that are easy enough to point Exim or whatever at. For incoming I guess it would technically be "running a server", and might be iffy on dialup, but I've never used an ISP that actually blocked incoming port 25.

Re:Pretty much

[Anonymous Coward]

the bigger problem with self hosting is the assumption of privacy that you place on it. are you only sending email from your self-hosted address to other self-hosted addresses? probably not. the lion's share of email by volume now goes to addresses that are either corporate or "free", and they are all potential targets of data mining.

and even if you were sending only to other self-hosted addresses, you still don't know what the person on the other end of the communication might do with the email. they might forward it to a gmail address somewhere. they might check their email using a device with poor security that is already infected by something. they might print the email on a shared printer and forget to pick up the print for a long time.

once you release information somewhere, it is no longer yours. it doesn't matter who you share it with or how, you cannot prevent the person on the other end from doing as they wish with it.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you hire a lawyer or accountant with an aol.com address? I wouldn't.

Even AOL employees shunned it

[erikscott]

AOL employees used to have aol.com addresses. No one took them seriously, figured they were crackpots/frauds/walkoffs. So AOL started giving employees a corp.aol.com address circa 1997. Then folks would start replying to their emails.

I worked at a .com startup and this happened to us - got some interest from some loser with an aol.com address. Ran into him again at a trade show, and he explained he actually worked for AOL. And we didn't get the sale. Go figure. Did have a corp.aol.com address by then, though.

Re:Even AOL employees shunned it

[nite-]

As a former AOL employee - this is false. The corp.aol.com bit came around after 2006 - when company email moved off of aol.com and onto an internal Exchange installation. Those of us on the tech side of the business did often use @aol.net with internally operated smtp servers, however. In fact, it was very difficult internally to *not* use your "Business Screen Name" for official use internally - and that continued until after I quit in 2006.

Re:Even AOL employees shunned it

[cianduffy]

I had similar-ish issues when working for an outsourcer for BT in the early-mid 2000s. They only @bt.com addresses we could get were impossible to read to someone over the phone (containing numeric staff IDs, and some form of sub-domain setup that seemed to refer to your outsourcer), but we had no problem getting @btinternet.com addresses like 95% of the UK's end-users had.

Cue actual BT staff who you were meant to work alongside assuming you were a user when you contacted them with it as the reply-to, and other such fun. You got in trouble if you used your actual, direct outsourcer email address as it was meant to appear seamless internally - when it clearly wasn't.

Re:Even AOL employees shunned it

[erikscott]

Hmmm... I went to work for a bank in mid-1997 and this had already happened. This means one of two things:

1) I'm wrong. In which case, someone mod me down. But how could I have hallucinated this? I haven't even seen those people since I left, this wouldn't have been a "good old days" story.
or
2) Quick searching in google groups shows that corp.aol.com was showing up in usenet messages circa 2002, but was showing up as a URL. Now maybe there was a mail server behind it, or maybe an MX record. I'm not sure how to do DNS Time Travel.

Conundrum. I'm too young for senility, and yet if it didn't happen then how could I...

Well, no corp.aol.com emails in gmane.org before 2007, in fact.

Most likely explanation - perhaps he didn't have a corp.aol.com address, perhaps I just saw one in 06 or 07 or so and thought "well, that would have solved that problem". I can believe that. So, in full view of the entire internet... looks like I was wrong.

yup

[AgNO3]

DOOOTTTT COOOMMMMMMM

UUCP

[erikscott]

No, bangpaths show that you're old.

{well known host}!mcnc!unc!scotte

https://groups.google.com/foru...

Re:UUCP

[jfdavis668]

I used to have FIDONET and BITNET ids, but forgot them long ago and far away.

Re:UUCP

[jschrod]

Well, there are also Bitnet adresses from the same time range.

Joachim <xitijsch@ddath21.bitnet>

Interestingly, Google still has 288 hits on this decades-old and decades-unused email adress.

Does using Facebook....

[gurps_npc]

Mark you as Computer illiterate?

It means:

you can't make your own blog, let alone own website

you can't master the concept of an email list to forward all your important news to all your friends

you can't find free games on the internet

you basically need to pay a ton of private personal information that you can never get back, just to participate in the internet - a task that technically literate people can easily do without paying that very high price.

Re:Does using Facebook....

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for shoehorning in your opinions about FB users in a discussion about AOL.
It means:
 
I don't care if you have a real reason to use it.
 
I don't care if it works for you.
 
I don't care if you're not a total asshat by not putting all your personal information out there.
 
I hatez teh Fazeb00k111!!!!1111

Re:Does using Facebook....

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark you as Computer illiterate?

It means:

you can't make your own blog, let alone own website

you can't master the concept of an email list to forward all your important news to all your friends

you can't find free games on the internet

you basically need to pay a ton of private personal information that you can never get back, just to participate in the internet - a task that technically literate people can easily do without paying that very high price.

Or you just want a continuous stream of cat pictures.

Why I have an AOL email.

[abelenky17]

My primary account is Gmail, however, I still have an AOL address.

First, I was not an AOL user; I was an AOL Employee.
In that regards, it is a bit of my employment history.

When I first signed up for StackOverflow, they supported OpenID, the only site I had at the time that also supported OpenID was AOL.
So I know many people look down on AOL, but remember that they had OpenID before most other sites.
As a result, my StackOverflow account is tied to my AOL address.

And I'm really not ashamed of it.

On a resume

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have a stack of resumes, I'm more likely to trash it if it has an @aol address.

Yes.

[jpellino]

And that's all it says about you. Next question..

Only luddites use email.

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern appers use Apps!

Apps!

aol is actually good for some people

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a recruiter, when I see @aol.com and I am after, for example, a certain skillset/experience then I pause and look more... certainly better than @gmail.com

Yes

[JohnFen]

Of course it does. Is this even a question worth asking?

Yeah, but ... those folks?

[ironduke-particle]

AOL is indeed the ISP of other people's grandparents, and in general an @aol.com email address indicates cluelessness. I got used to that idea a long time ago, and all the evidence at hand very strongly supported it.

Except for a cluster of outliers, significant folks. All of the folks, and it seems all their spouses, that I know that are highly-specialised engineers doing contract work for the government [UK or US? yes, both], and the phrase "developed vetting" comes to mind, have AOL addresses. Not Gmail Hotmail Outlook Yahoo or some pet ISP or other, but AOL. One of these guys allegedly has an RF-shielded room in his house from the CRT days because of concerns about tempesting and the like.

Why are all those folks on AOL?

ISP email address

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point I'd make fun of anyone using an ISP address. Doesn't matter if its Timewarner comcast or AOL. If you lose access to it when you switch providers you're an idiot.

AOL? pffft!

[ToxicBanjo]

I rock MAILBOX.

AOL is NOT oldschool

[JustNiz]

From 71234.56789@compuserve.com:

That reminds me, I must get one of those new v.92 mod^D

Re:AOL is NOT oldschool

[Anonymous Coward]

From 71234.56789@compuserve.com

This is not a valid CompuServe ID / e-mail address. ID numbers are actually derived from PPNs (Project,Programmer Numbers) on the DEC PDP-10. These are restricted to OCTAL digits. I still remember mine, though it went inactive many years ago.

Re:AOL is NOT oldschool

[Anonymous Coward]

From 71234.56789@compuserve.com:

That reminds me, I must get one of those new v.92 mod^D

Those should be octal

Re:AOL is NOT oldschool

[Anonymous Coward]

From 71234.56789@compuserve.com:

That reminds me, I must get one of those new v.92 mod^D

listen sonny, you don't know what "good old days" you are talking about.

if you want the whole story, email me, uucp!att!dmr

Re:gmail address == don't care if Google scans ema

[FranTaylor]

I don't have a gmail address, because Google admits up front they scan the contents of your email for advertising purposes.

No, thank you.

install an ad blocker and your point is moot.

just curious, you seem to be assuming that you would not be able to control your impulses if you were subjected to advertising like this

when you drive on the road, you see billboards for cars, they are targeting you for advertising because you are in your car. are you going to paint over your windows? is your mental consciousness capable of withstanding this onslaught of advertisements directed at you, the automobile driver?

AOL is fine you elitest hipster

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL work just as well as any other free email service. I don't feel the need to switch to the new in service of the day. I wont sign up for the next super awesome hip now mail service either, is still just email.

I will give up my pacbell.net address ....

[sconeu]

When they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

That's also an ancient address, but it's a badge of pride -- from being an early adopter on DSL (circa 2000 -- when they first rolled it out in my area).

Also, a lot of my professional email has been going there for years, so no need to change it.

I imagine a lot of the AOL addresses are inertia as well.

hosted?

[notlisted]

200+ comments and not even one mention of someone running their own postfix servers.. What has become of Slashdot?

Re:hosted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run my own Sendmail server, you insensitive clod!

Re: AOL email addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

I have screened potential new hires based on this!

Two Bad signals

[JimSadler]

It was assumed that anyone using AOL was park of a herd of lesser minds and I suppose it still is. Apple products pretty much were taken as i am a fool type of signal as well.

New coolness?

[smithmc]

You mean the kids aren't using AOL accounts ironically these days?

Re:gmail address == don't care if Google scans ema

[Anonymous Coward]

What?
As if installing ad blocker makes goolgle not scan your email content...
omg lol

Yes and No

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never trust tech advice from someone with an AOL email address, but at the same time I wouldn't hate them for having such an address. It would just be humorous like a puppy trying to run across a slippery floor.

At present, the only people I know with AOL addresses are senior citizen that used dial-up until the cable company convinced them they could still use AOL after upgrading to their cable service.

What does this say about even older email address

[number6x]

What does this say about my delphi.com email address from the old text based BBS days?

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Faster then dialup is available for all of Seattle.

Then dial-up what? You're not making any sense.

The Director's Rules are what is preventing Comcast from serving my block. They can't install a new pedestal with their equipment. Faster than dialup is most certainly not available in all of Seattle. Just Google for "director's rules seattle internet," and you'll see more than a million results about this problem.

I have a dream...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a dream that one day, people will be judged not by their e-mail's domain, but by the content of their usernames.

Really

[g0bshiTe]

declared that still using an AOL email address is counterproductive, to put it mildly. But is that actually true? Do the people in your life and work actually care whether you use AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, or a custom address, or is the idea of 'email bias' an overblown myth?

Anyone online during the 90's and that saw the piece of crap that was the AOHELL interface knows, it's not an overblown myth.

It took me 2 years to get my father to stop paying a monthly fee for AOL service when he got high speed internet at first, he swore he needed to keep AOL for his email.

No.

[fyngyrz]

Not a tech dinosaur.

A tech prokaryote-like organism from the Archean.

1990s?

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who lived through September that never ended, @aol.com was, and still is, a sign you are still stuck in the 1980s.

Re:Like Steve Jobs not dealing with different clot

[Anonymous Coward]

I have something Steve Jobs doesn't and no amount of money can get him...

A pulse!

Too soon?

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

> out of the Seattle city limits

Just because you're a CONservative and don't like gays doesn't mean that Capitol Hill isn't a part of Seattle. It is, and it sucks that Comcast doesn't provide service to much of the neighborhood. We have very little power politically so we can't fight back effectively enough to get Internet access. It sucks.

All developers should use dial-up services

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an AOL dial-up account precisely because it is slow and that helps me test things. More web developers should test their sites over dial-up. It reveals a lot of things that don't work well probably because of race conditions. There are an amazing number of websites which don't work well over dial-up because the developers think that everything happens quickly. Frequently the speed hides errors waiting to happen. Check your website over dial-up and you may find controls that seem to activate before the code to respond to the control is actually running, pages that load part way and then time out and stop loading, and many other strange behaviors. If your site works well over dial-up then it probably works well for everyone. Unfortunately, working well over high speed connections can actually hide serious problems.

Re:gmail address == don't care if Google scans ema

[drooling-dog]

Exactly. The idea of gmail users ridiculing AOL email addresses is giving me a good laugh. "Sure! Please spy on all of my messages and advertise to me in exchange for free email. Sign me up!". Chumps.

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Nyder]

Faster then dialup is available for all of Seattle.

Then dial-up what? You're not making any sense.

The Director's Rules are what is preventing Comcast from serving my block. They can't install a new pedestal with their equipment. Faster than dialup is most certainly not available in all of Seattle. Just Google for "director's rules seattle internet," and you'll see more than a million results about this problem.

Which block?

Old job of mine still does

[EdwardFurlong]

They couldn't understand why it was more professional to have companyname@sales.com, so they still use AOL email. Though I heard stories how they had to fight for a fax machine, credit card machine and so on.

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitol Hill isn't a part of Seattle

Wow, that guy is a nutcase. I know the people that rule this city are conservatives and hate that neighborhood, but claiming it isn't a part of Seattle is insane. That's so typical right-wingnut of them.

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Nyder]

> out of the Seattle city limits

Just because you're a CONservative and don't like gays doesn't mean that Capitol Hill isn't a part of Seattle. It is, and it sucks that Comcast doesn't provide service to much of the neighborhood. We have very little power politically so we can't fight back effectively enough to get Internet access. It sucks.

I live on Capital Hill. I have Comcast, I have had Centuary Link. Both gave me 5Mbps+ (I am getting 50Mbps currently with Comcast).

What is your neighborhood? Because unless you can provide some proof here, I'm saying fuck you, you are lying. I wouldn't take this position, but since you are trying to belittle me by calling me a conservative and claiming I don't like gays, I guess it's only fair I treat you with the same respect you are treating me.

Fucking twat.

For some keeping a email is important

[Anonymous Coward]

I know some people who move a lot and some stay in the same house for their lives. People get attached to different things. Even email addresses, which does not mean they still use AOL special browser or still use a Pentium 2 PC. They simply don't want to give up their email address. I get that for many of us including myself AOL is now synonymous with the internet of old. But if you still use AOL for email more power to you! Maybe what comes around goes around. Who knows, maybe this Verizon deal with AOL will do something for both ?

It Depends

[Gonoff]

Recently, we were looking for a new supplier (DR I think) and one of the possibles had a hotmail adress. It didn't make us reject them because of it but we certainly wondered about them.

No they didn't get the contract but their email wasn't the reason.

It means you are a cartoonist

[MorePower]

I means you are a cartoonist!

I supposed remembering old Dilbert references probably marks me as a tech dinosaur.

Hotmale

[darkain]

I still use @Hotmale.com ... what does that say about me!?

That depends

[istartedi]

Are hipsters using it to be ironic yet?

Scammer

[angel'o'sphere]

I always thought .aol.com, .yahoo.com and .hotmail.com where definite signs of a scammer?

I don't get it sometimes, maybe I'm dense.

[recharged95]

I still have 3 AOL email addresses. Mainly for spam magnets and to throw off business purchases so I'm not in their tracking DB. I use my other email accounts on other services for personal stuff.

And I don't pay for them. Never have since 1998 (sometime then ?). AOL again is another Internet company, they offer paid ISP services (i.e. dial up) and [free] services like any other agg, aka google, yahoo, facebook, microsoft, etc... Never had a problem and the email always worked and only recently changed UI since the time warner split (and the new layout is not that bad). FYI, "conversations" are continuous in time, not discontinuous as most competitor UIs are now laying out their emails as conversations....

Also, you need a stable email system for your adult things, like 401K, some banks, some loans, so gov't contacts. Gmail has changed 3 times already and the google latitude, google buzz, google+ integration stunts really screwed up gmail for some time. Same thing happen with Yahoo, MS (now w/the wacko outlook365, inject characters, cursor jumps, etc...), and Facebook (spam!)... over the last 5 yrs. That's 5 yrs when AOL, Compuserv (back then) were... stable. I guess folks like going to etrade, their 401k, banks, gov't prop tax, car loan acct, and etc... to change their contact email-- from jumping onto the latest email app? At this point gmail looks like it will be around for another 10yrs... but would you count on it 100%? AOL has been around for more than 10yrs (like 25?)... that does say something aside from being a dinosaur... and it still works (only had a security issue back in 2003)...

As for dial up: give some of those guys some slack--they just don't know and deserve to pay, or just have real ISP restrictions--heck why would facebook and google spend billions for dark fiber or drone based wifi service?

AOL still supports my @netscape.net email address

[luvs2code]

I think it's awesome that I can still send and receive email with my original @netscape.net email address. Of course, I have to access it via an aol.com server.

Tech Dinosaur?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Does Using an AOL Email Address Suggest You're a Tech Dinosaur?

What's wrong with AOL? It's way better than Prodigy and Compuserve.

Netscape.net

[Anonymous Coward]

I grabbed a netscape.net email address years ago because it seemed cool. Years later, they were bough by AOL. AOL changed netscape.net to aim.com and now either username@aim.com or username@aol.com works. I still use it, via IMAP, as my personal email address. I never used AOL as a web portal, and I don't care what people think about my email address. I am not a tech dinosaur.

Re:gmail address == don't care if Google scans ema

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want google to scan my email. how is an adblocker going to control what is in my inbox?

fucking idiot

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a "historic" building in downtown Seattle, just a few blocks from Pike Place. No cable company is allowed to install, not that they would serve my block anyway. I get 512kb DSL.

I gave relatives AOL

[rsilvergun]

because AOL wrote their own modem drivers. When the crappy modem in somebody's cheapo dell's driver busted AOL kept right on working, and I didn't have to go over to Aunt so-and-so's house to fix it.

I love AOL /s

[Anonymous Coward]

I was able to recover my lost "not really" password with less than 15 percent correct information in about five minuets of talk time after waiting 30 for a rep. You start treating someone like they're god for helping and they'll want to help you.

I dumped AOL shortly after.

Re:I guess it depends if Comcast has the monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like just a few blocks from Pike Place and the best I can get is 512kb DSL. Why? Because I live in a "historic" building and no one is allowed to install. No cable company serves my block anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Phone lines are old and the phone company won't touch them.

No but

[nashv]

No, but using an unencrypted email address suggests you are a tech dinosaur.

https negative AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

no https when signing up for AOL, let me put my data in this unsecured page

I once had

[kilodelta]

An email address that ended in notaol.com

maybe

[Skapare]

if they would offer FREE email with secure web AND imap interfaces then i'd go for one or a few.

Really old AOL addresses

[frangryphon200]

You can sometimes guess the really old AOL email addresses from the way they leave out vowels or use shortcuts. The original AOL email addresses were limited to 10 characters. I have several email addresses that I use for different things but I will never, ever give up my ancient AOL address. :-)

Socially Seperate From Financial

[osswmi]

I still have an AOL email address. Have had one for quite some years. I only have it for the same reason I have multiple different web browsers on every machine I own. Just like the browsers, use one for goofing off, another for serious stuff and so on. It's not that I am paranoid or anything, I just consider it good practice. Just like I here from the end users of old software I work to replace and make better, "just because it's old doesn't mean it doesn't work..."

My experience says yes.

[sabbede]

I have a few users who have AOL addresses. Not one is under 65. Or what one might call "computer literate"

AOL email

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually makes you a techie. AOL was one of the first to offer email when many people didn't know what email was. I've always stuck with AOL because I didn't want to the trouble of changing my address.

hotmail was the worst

[unami]

i don't know... in ~2004 you knew, if someone had a hotmail account, he/she was pretty much tech-illiterate. and you couldn't send them any attachments, because hotmail attachments were limited to .5 megabytes (a ridiculously low limit, even at the time). at least those days are gone. if you were a real dinosaur, your e-mail address was more likely to read something like 12493921@compuserve.com

I don't mind Google ads - I mind email scanning

[alispguru]

I don't use an ad blocker. I could turn ads off here on Slashdot; I don't because by and large their ads aren't obnoxious.

I don't want to give Google permission to scan my email, so their index will be ready for the NSA to hoover up.

stereotypes, not facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again! Another false stereotype, that will filter down to recruiters/HR/hiring managers, who will use this to reject people for jobs. But hey! The H1B visa holder with the aol address is 100% doubleplusgood!

It doesn't matter, they are now

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if it used to be the case that aol'ers were dinosaurs, now that we know that recruiters and HR people think so, all non-dinosaurs have moved away. Everyone who is still using aol is either a dinosaur or autistic to the point that hiring him would be idiotic.

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Yes it does.

Re:gmail address == don't care if Google scans ema

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you envisioning/worried about, exactly?

"Ok johnson, bring up all the personal communiques that have the word 'jerk-circle' in them, and cross reference with anti-gay propoganda."
"Got it sir! alispguru@gmail.com is the top hit"
"Great, let's read all his emails, then we'll show him ads for astroglide."

An Idiot

[allo]

In ancient times, when AOL were popular, it was a sign for idiots. Now its one for idiots, who are even to stupid to get a gmail adress.

@ChanBot

[CanEHdian]

/join #Internet
Chanbot sets mode: +b *!*@*.aol.com
* You were kicked by Chanbot (AOL lamer!)

Issues with AOL...

[martinfb]

I have had more issues corresponding with AOL users than any other. Random issues of emails simply disappearing or showing up a day or 2 later. Perhaps Verizon can fix AOL. If not, perhaps AOL-ers can be migrated to Verizon accounts!

How lame.

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread shows that Slashdotters themselves are rather low on the "techie food chain." After all, if you weren't a 80yo "perma newb" you'd be on a private forum and not this old "mainstream" site. I kid, but maybe your next post can be about how Apple users are a bunch of faggots or maybe how WOW subscribers are all all just too stupid to know about all the F2P games on Steam.

AOL buys me a new laptop

[NoneYA4542]

AOL offers many services other than just email. I've been a customer for years and benefited greatly from such benefits. I just received a new laptop because just for having an email account with them, I also have computer coverage. I don't mind being called a dinosaur. Sticks and stones baby......

Ha!

[cwsumner]

You think AOL is old? My current email address uses "CompuServe.com"!! I got it before there was AOL and it was Dial-Up and they were the biggest company on the web.

Of course it doesn't go there any more, it was bought by a newer company. ... wait for it ... now it's actually AOL. 8-)

On the other hand, if you go to "compuserve.com" you will see the website, and it is still updated. Nothing on the Internet really dies...

Now you kids get off of my lawn! 8-{