Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/e...
K Man
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.
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.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
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.
We here at dice plan to mine your data but it's an awful hassle to analyze said data. Please do that for us.
Long time AOLers have been promoted to 'tech dinosaur' from 'king of the chumps'.
AOL always sucked, There were always better alternatives. Always.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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'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.
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".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
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.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If by "early adopter" you mean "drooling, clueless moron", then yes, your translation is correct.
Because anyone who deserves the label tech knows better, it does however suggest you're an idiot.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
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.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
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.
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.
Corporatism != Free Market
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?
71541.3346@compuserve.com :P
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
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.
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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.
Early adopters or Eternal September?
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
Run their own email server.
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.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
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.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Go back to dialup? Can't you get cellular or something else?
It has a warm, true sound that you just can't get from today's CD's and digital music.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
That is nuts. I had high speed internet in Oklahoma 15 years ago, you'd think the home of Microsoft would have good connectivity.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I have an aol.com address ironically.
So my CompuServe email address shows that I am old?
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.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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.
.
(and, no, my email address is not @aol.com, and never has been)
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.
ceres!rlp ;-)
[Insert pithy quote here]
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.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Um, that's not a very far distance, seeing as they're part of the same conglomerate.
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.
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." and this is a clear exception to that rule.
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.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
(apologies to the "you just might be a red neck" guy)
...... < i could go on >....
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.
If you have an AOL email address..... you are definately not a digital native.
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.
AOL was a _lame_ internet gateway, it was also head and shoulders more expensive then the alternatives.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
Be seeing you...
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
DOOOTTTT COOOMMMMMMM
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
No, bangpaths show that you're old.
{well known host}!mcnc!unc!scotte
https://groups.google.com/foru...
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
Actually I switched to AOL because it was cheaper and easier than Prodigy.
And that's all it says about you. Next question..
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Of course it does. Is this even a question worth asking?
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?
I rock MAILBOX.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
From 71234.56789@compuserve.com:
That reminds me, I must get one of those new v.92 mod^D
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?
please flush after dropping a stinker
"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.
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?
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.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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.
The real path to male liberation
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.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
200+ comments and not even one mention of someone running their own postfix servers.. What has become of Slashdot?
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.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Mod parent funny.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not.
You mean the kids aren't using AOL accounts ironically these days?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
What?
As if installing ad blocker makes goolgle not scan your email content...
omg lol
What does this say about my delphi.com email address from the old text based BBS days?
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.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Not a tech dinosaur.
A tech prokaryote-like organism from the Archean.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
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?
Be seeing you...
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.
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.
. .
> 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.
Be seeing you...
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.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I means you are a cartoonist!
I supposed remembering old Dilbert references probably marks me as a tech dinosaur.
I still use @Hotmale.com ... what does that say about me!?
Are hipsters using it to be ironic yet?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I always thought .aol.com, .yahoo.com and .hotmail.com where definite signs of a scammer?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How about if they showed up wearing a T-shirt with "EBOA (Elite Bastard of Alt.Irc)" printed on it ?
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?
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.
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.
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.
AOL was the only company that had local dial-up numbers in the 90's for me.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No, but using an unencrypted email address suggests you are a tech dinosaur.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
That fails on functionality. An AOL email address, AFAIK, functions like any other.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Personally, an aol address gives me a brief giggle but no judgement beyond that.
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).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
An email address that ended in notaol.com
if they would offer FREE email with secure web AND imap interfaces then i'd go for one or a few.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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?
Netcom? Never heard of them. Must have been some local outfit. AOL was national. From day one.
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. :-)
Mod parent unadulterated shit. He isn't full of it. He is it.
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..."
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.
I have a few users who have AOL addresses. Not one is under 65. Or what one might call "computer literate"
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.
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.
What isn't good about AOL? Have you used it in the past 20 years?
I did not have ISP floppies, so I used Windows 95 floppies! They seemed rather good and the original content was just as useless.
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 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.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Everybody was _never_ $/hour. Liar.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
/join #Internet
Chanbot sets mode: +b *!*@*.aol.com
* You were kicked by Chanbot (AOL lamer!)
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
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.
Learn to love Alaska
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!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
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......
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-{
... 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.