When I read this article, there were these ads:
* A giant top ad for Intel
* Left Column: Hertz banner, fixed with scroll
* Right Column: Various ads that scroll as you scroll down the page
* Far right column: Animated McCafe ad, fix with scroll
* Multiple ads between sections including video
* Ads at the end of the article, including SalonTV
* Center Sidebar: Reese's ad
* Right sidebar: Ad for pharma product, video;
Firefox, no adblock brand new MacBook Pro was unable to smoothly scroll this page.
The more things change, the more they stay the same indeed...
One can only assume that when this article originally appeared on Salon back in February 2000 there were less ads on the site... or maybe the editorial team just had an acutely developed sense of - or an inhuman tolerance for - irony.
Now, why do you expect a page with video ads to ever finish loading? Once it's played the video ads it loaded with, it just moves onto the next ones. By opening the page, you're actually tuning into an all-ads-all-the-time streaming television network!
I turned off uBlock Origin just to have a good laugh, like the other sibling comments and not only did I get a giant top ad from Intel that starts expanded and then oh-so-graciously offers you to minimize it with a broken animation, I got 2 of those right on top of each other, both expanded.
Their UX designers and QA engineers must have Adblock enabled.
You can see the same thing looking at people glued to social media today. Same mentality. I don’t care about Internet, I want [Facebook / Insta / whatever].
It’s scary. If FB was an ISP that offered Facebook-only for $5 a month, I bet a lot of people would ditch their existing internet/data service.
Those freaks probably spend time outdoors!
However, I think GP's point that the open Internet is that vulnerable to people's short-sighted social media desires IS scary. Equally scary that some people spend no time outside.
So I had to point that out despite enjoying your ironic jab.
My parents probably still have some of the floppy disks they used to mail out floating around in their basement.
Nowadays when I get junk mail I put a first-class stamp on it before attempting to bounce it back to the sender. Theoretically this should work, although there's no guarantee the postal workers will cooperate.
A manager heard that and took me aside to let me know that all we had to do was sign up for the thing, then go online and cancel the account, it would wind up getting us the videos for free but at no cost and his store would still get credit for signing us up. Win, win!
A few weeks later, we were at a theater thinking we got rush hour prices. When told I was wrong, and we'd have to pay full price, I said, "AOL sucks!" getting a laugh out of my boys. The lady behind the counter asked me what that was about and then said, "Oh, here. Just take these. I don't care." Free tickets!
So now you know the running joke. For several years, when we'd walk up to a counter somewhere to pay, the first words out of our mouth, "AOL sucks!!"
There were some good reasons. I travelled for work to construction sites, and they had local dial in numbers in many places. I could check email from the construction trailer. They even had a 1-800 modem line (You were very time limited, 3 hours a month or something.)
I thought it worked pretty well.
Ubiquitous Broadband killed it.
Not much later, they changed their technology so that they worked through a conventional IP address, so you could fire up AOL, go online, then open a conventional browser or e-mail program. One of the e-mail programs had a facility for fetching your AOL e-mail, so it was like you were a regular Internet user.
Alternatives for reaching the Internet involved a lot of delving into settings files and setup scripts, which just didn't seem like a good use of my time. My friends who did things the "correct" way seemed to have a lot more trouble and maintenance effort. I listened to their adventures the same way I read Jerry Pournelle's "chaos manor" columns, feeling a mixture of amusement and pity.
Now I have to have an ISP who lets me open any port I want, host what I want (within reason for a home connection) and just stays out of the way.
His wife is still on AOL to this day. Their ISP is Comcast, they all use the newest windows and she has a few applications installed other than AOL. But 95% of her time on the computer is on AOL. She just can't see doing it any other way after using it for over 20 years.
I learned way more than I ever wanted to about AOL under the hood helping her through a few hardware upgrades.
FB will be superseded when a competitor for that niche appears, updated with significantly upgraded tech.
