Comments on: AOL dialup is ending

By: David Foster

David Foster — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 01:30:12 +0000

Dwas…GEnie. The service was introduced by GE Information Services partly to take advantage of slack computing and network capacity at hours when their business customers were less-active. Based on what I’ve heard, the service grew so fast that it ate up all the slack capacity and further growth at the same rate would have required procuring new equipment just for that service..whereas the original business case had been a ‘by-product” argument: we have this capacity sitting there, may as well sll it to somebody. Again based on what I’ve heard, the woman who was running GEIS at the time didn’t see resourcing GEnie at that level as being a good investment.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 01:23:57 +0000

There was a dial-up service introduced way back in 1932…the TWX (teletypewriter exchange) service. As this ad explains the service, it basically provided email and text messaging.

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/61181.html

…you could send a message at any time and the print-out at the other end would wait to be read, similar to today’s email, or type back and forth interactively, similar to text messaging.

Initially, you ‘dialed’ the connection by typing to an operator, who would sent up the connection…in 1962, automatic dial service for twx was introduced.

Multiple twx connections were multiplexed onto a single voice-grade phone channel, I believe about 20 connections per channel.

By: Niketas Choniates

Niketas Choniates — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:56:06 +0000

@physicsguy: For my master’s I wrote code for variational and diffusion Monte Carlo computations, all in Fortran 95. At first I balked, but my advisor said I can write in Fortran 95 or I can learn how to make my C programs call and run Fortran 95 code, so I just went with Fortran 95. Didn’t kill me. I didn’t do anything object-oriented but I was able to write structured programs just fine.

And of course it’s easy to translate formulas into Fortran, which of course is the basis for the name of the language…

No punch cards, obviously, just plain text files passed to a compiler which probably translated it all into C anyway.

By: A_Nonny_Mouse

A_Nonny_Mouse — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:42:17 +0000

I must be the anachronism: I still use AOL dial-up. I’m poor, and it’s –uh, it WAS– cheap. $12 a month, annoying as heck, but it does what I need. And now I’m looking at $25 a month for a replacement dial-up service. Ten bucks a month here, twelve there, all-the-costs for all-the-things going up “just a tiny bit, to keep it affordable” … and eventually all-the-things stop being affordable. Siiigh.

By: Tom Murin

Tom Murin — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 20:50:27 +0000

Rufus,

Ha. Well, I was the first to say “handshake.” You said, “shook hands.”

By: Rufus T. Firefly

Rufus T. Firefly — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 16:39:07 +0000

Tom Murin,

“The sound of the connection is known as ‘the handshake.’ I’m surprised I’m the first to say it.”

About 6 hours prior to your comment I wrote, “… the tones increase to a muddled blur once the modems on both sides shook hands and agreed everything was kosher.”

😉

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 14:05:27 +0000

Niketas ans AesopFan,

Having Fortran as object oriented would have been a miracle back in my day. I still remember the horror on the look of a student as we were walking into the university computing center with our programs. It was a winter day in Boulder. My Fortran program was about 10″ thick and the cards bound with a large rubber band. The other guy was carrying a 2ft long box of cards. He slipped on a patch of ice and the box of cards went flying. The sight traumatized me, I can’t imagine what it did to him.

By: Niketas Choniates

Niketas Choniates — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 13:47:48 +0000

Fortran is still around and is a modern object-oriented computing language that runs on modern computers. You don't have to use GOTO anymore (and shouldn't). It's primarily used for numerical work. There's so much scientific software written in it that it made more sense to keep updating the language rather than abandon it for a different one.

By: Cappy

Cappy — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 13:14:41 +0000

Thank god there’s still CompuServe.

By: Chases Eagles

Chases Eagles — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:33:14 +0000

My grandfather told me as a kid their first car was a model t that was used as a stationary engine for the Kansas wheat farm.

He had a navy contract in WWII to supply piling which he and his partner cut in Oregon and hauled to their mill with horses. After about a year they got 1912 Cat. I have his partner’s double-bit axe. I don’t how I ended up with it. We call it Leo’s axe.

We had a party line in Alabama in 1966. My mother hated it.

I have a Vt100 clone sitting on top of a S-100 bus CP/M machine with 8-inch floppies in my collection. The 1200 baud modem still works.