AOL 3.0 reverse engineered
g.livejournal.com
g.livejournal.com
I created a new account (old accounts do not work), I made my friends to do the same and we used it for a few hours (sharing emoticons, nudges, etc) but then the novely went away. Software alone cannot capture/reproduce the old days, unfortunately.
I don't miss Windows 98. I miss being a child using that, browsing the old internet, the old terrible "web design" and having my friends on the same page
The only difference is that I'm not a child anymore.
Even if you physically visit, one or more of several things are drastically different.
Change is always happening.
I do miss it - having a Windows 98 (or Windows 95) VM is so useful for running some old beloved games.
1. "Phoenix" a closed-source server reimplementation:
http://iwarg.ddns.net/phoenix/index.php
2. AIM OSCAR protocol project in TypeScript, incomplete but partially working:
Reddit is close to a successor but came much later.
Craigslist personals was a good way to connect to people and of course that’s gone too.
We lost a lot of communities. Instagram, Facebook, dating apps, and just about every other social network evolved while never capturing the original excitement, IMO.
And while that idea didn't pan out, the general idea seems to be roughly what happened. The internet is now mostly a grouping of separate spaces like Facebook, Apple's store, TikTok, IG, etc.
The current situation might be referred to as "windowed gardens". We get to look around and choose the fiefdom we hate the least.
...progress?
It does amuse me that this written up on livejournal.
I remember when AOL was seen as evil that was going to kill the open internet.
It was the original "walled garden."
I wish someone could rescue the whole thing from tape and host it.
on a PDP-10
It effectively was for millions of users who did not venture outside the AOL client.
That wasn't always true. At some point internet access was a "feature" that was added to the walled-garden AOL. They famously added Usenet in September 1993. I can't find a date for web access, but I'd guess 1995.
I was one of those newbies. When my spouse and I were living in different towns after grad school, AOL allowed us to communicate using local phone numbers in our respective locations, using a single account. Later on, they reconfigured their software so that it was running on top of a regular TCP/IP client, and you'd use it by logging in with the AOL software and then switching over to Netscape and an e-mail program that recognized AOL's protocol.
I ran my first side business from an AOL e-mail address.
AOL was the closest thing to "it just works" in the business for quite a while. Plus, their nationwide reach meant that you could access it anywhere without paying for long distance phone service. It took a few more years for the Internet to work that well for everybody.
I predicted to my friends that pretty soon everybody would have access to the Internet! Today we look back on the early Internet with nostalgia.
Eternal September... yeah, bring it on.
Prior to that, no, you couldn't do that. Being dialed into AOL meant you were only connected to AOL. The email did have an internet gateway (since 1992), you could email people at other internet hosts, but you couldn't use regular internet software until that DLL came out.
edit: Also, I'm very pleased to hear someone else talking about "rainman" ;)
Did you know that the original way that AOL checked that you were using a genuine version of AIM was to send a buffer overflow attack to you? It would then execute some code that checked process memory for signs that it was the genuine AIM executable.
Ah yes, I remember the first time I got my family's account shutdown for "punting" a moderator and crashing a bunch of servers. My dad was like "what?" when AOL _called us_.
Funny enough, AOL was the gateway drug. I found things like usenet, irc, and bbs's and graduated to these things. My early teens were spent in those neighborhoods before moving on to LAMP stacks and more productive programming.
I also had the Mad Dog McCree CD-Rom as a kid on my Gateway 2000 Pentium 60mhz. Shooting up that stagecoach!
It was amazing. You'd just subscribe to some bot in the chat room and after that all the pirated software you could imagine would just continuously appear in your inbox.
If that's the programming style that was deemed acceptable for release, I can almost guarantee you that the old, unmaintained client will definitely have some other vulnerabilities left over in its protocol.
[1]: https://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/security/aim/index.htm
Initially AOL's was done (GUI and non-GUI functionality) via their client API called FDO and sent assembled packets out like everything else. AIM on the other hand was a classic simple GUI app using a different protocol and used none of AOL's FDO stuff.
Much later AOL used some OSCAR (AIM) libraries to piggy back the AOL client on-to AIM for buddies and IMs, but even so these were not a part of the exploits that kept popping up for AIM, and long after AIM's drop in popularity as well.
So if you ever wanted to talk to god via AOL, here is the chance. ;)
I had "Christ"
For youngins, 3.5" floppies had a "write protect" switch. If it was a solid plastic bit, you could write, but if the switch showed a hole, it would be treated as read only. Here's the first Google result I found: https://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/Write-Prote...
Reusing the CDs was a little harder. ;)
You also drilled a hole on the other side to make the disk double density.
Those were sooo ubiquitous. But I never saved any, and now I wish I had some.
Luckily, the Smithsonian is on the job: https://www.si.edu/object/nmah_1395721
Portals today are still not as slick or functional. See MS or Google's attempts.
Really wish someone would create something similar in Electron or something.
Is this a RE based on actual server binaries that somebody managed to get copies of? Or is it a RE of the client end of the protocol, just being fed new data?
I used to program for those machines for a bank using TAL (Tandem Application Language) running their Guardian OS.
Ah, LJ, how far you’ve fallen. My lifetime membership lies fallow after you ended up sold to a Russian company that eventually made any mention of The Gay illegal. Once you promised you’d never have ads. But here we are with a pop up begging me to turn off my and blocker.
I miss what LJ was. Perhaps I mostly just miss all my friends having the time in their lives to create longer, thoughtful posts.