Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers
by bsder on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @04:33PM
(#31007911)
Lucky. You had another provider.
In the US, one of the key things that Prodigy (remember them?), AOL and some other providers had was that they had a lot of "local" phone numbers instead of "long distance". This meant that your connection was a single charge and didn't rack up with time. That was a BIG deal.
In addition, email addresses were still sufficiently uncommon and hard enough to get hold of that people were using "unmentionable" means to get them even up to about 1994 or so.
Re:What hacking AOL taught a generation of programmers
by anthk on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @03:36AM
(#31012092)
Outside the US there was Infovia from the Telefonica ISP which was pretty much the same as AOL.
Local, isolated nets and no flat rates until 1999 or 2000.
In the US, one of the key things that Prodigy (remember them?), AOL and some other providers had was that they had a lot of "local" phone numbers instead of "long distance". This meant that your connection was a single charge and didn't rack up with time. That was a BIG deal.
In addition, email addresses were still sufficiently uncommon and hard enough to get hold of that people were using "unmentionable" means to get them even up to about 1994 or so.