2003 was also littered with browser toolbars, animated gif ads, scam links, popups, adware, viruses and worms, and purple apes. gotta go back another 10 years to get to the 'websites were just websites' era.
Comment on The World’s Oldest Active Torrent Turns 20 Years Old
query@lemmy.world 9 months ago
In 2003, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. Dial-up connections were still the default and YouTube, Facebook, and Gmail had yet to be invented.
I’d argue it had reached its prime. Websites were just websites then, not data harvesting machines.
ares35@kbin.social 9 months ago
snooggums@kbin.social 9 months ago
Oh, so the stuff that is built into the browser and social media apps now instead of requiring you to use an add on bar.
zerbey@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Plenty of people had broadband, I was one of the first to get it in 1998. A whole 512Kbit.
Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com 9 months ago
In 1999, I had a 25mbps asymmetrical static IP for $25/month from a new technology called a cable modem. It rocked. I could download faster than the local school/college that was still using T1 lines.
They clamped down hard on upload speed when torrents became popular. If I recall, my IP was 72.45.27.220 back then. I ran websites, file servers, streamed my music library, and used QuickTime broadcaster to stream TV/VHS so I could watch videos while in class.
zerbey@lemmy.world 9 months ago
No cable modems where I lived. I worked for an ISP and we’d order fire alarm circuits then just put DSL routers on them instead. Up to 2Mbit speeds depending on how far from the exchange you lived, I was only able to get 512Kbit reliably.
bfg9k@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You forget how long sites took to load over 33.6k, and how limited your options were for email before Gmail became popular. Free email plans were measured in megabytes, and you could only send like 200k worth of attachments per message.
deleted@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The bottleneck was your internet speed back then, now it’s your CPU.
HidingCat@kbin.social 9 months ago
Yea, infancy? Been using it for at least 6 years by then, it's hardly infancy.
Were dial-up connections default still? I had been on cable for two years by then.
whynotzoidberg@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Maybe the content reached its peak, but I’d argue we are in a better place now UX-wise.
Full disclosure: I type this from a network running pihole. Flashing banner ads to other people’s blogs were definitely better than todays adverts — and I’m looking at you, most recipe sites.
verysoft@kbin.social 9 months ago
Nononono, UX is fucking terrible at the moment, if you said this somewhere like 10-15 years ago I would probably agree with you, but everything is designed to serve ads and be as functionless as possible these days.
Aux@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You’re just visiting shit sites. It’s on you.