Somewhat in this same vein, it's a shame that clients and networks like Hotline/Curaco/BigRedH went under. I think it would be very popular today. People are still on KDX and preterhuman still has a tracker, but the experience these days is not the same. I still wonder sometimes what hinks is up to these days.
This makes me miss my earliest internet friends from the EFNet mac underground (#macfiles, #macwarez, #macdev, et c). The internet was a different place then.
(If you were a regular in any of those places, write me - my email's in my profile.)
There were also a number of really cool FirstClass BBSes around in that era, though cracking and configuring FirstClass was a bit of an involved process at the time. (IIRC the Hotline server was free?)
Ah yes FirstClass!! Spent sooooooo much time using it as my local Macintosh User Group was mostly based around it. I even remember meeting with one of their reps (at a conference..? it's been too long ago) and bringing a list of grievances / bugs that we found, mostly on the server side.
And yes, FirstClass had a convoluted-ish serial number / activation? process as far as I remember, while Hotline server was either free or could easily be found around.
I miss Hotline [0] and spent many years running a small community server & making friends on other servers (some which I found by running nmap on port 5500...!) Thanks for the reminder, and I'm always happy to give it / its developer Adam Hinkley a shout out.
Speaking of which, as someone was asking here in 2013 [1], whatever happened to him?
as far as I can remember, he got in some shit for encrypting source code [0] and then absconding, then 9/11 happened and not sure after that. The most recent things I can find are defunct [1], but there is a LinkedIn listing (that I cant see). Maybe someone with a LinkedIn account can post their findings. [2] The comments in the slashdot thread and the court papers [3] sure are interesting.
p.s. Do you think one of us should make another Ask HN post and see if anybody has contact with him? The site is kind of big these days, and I doubt anybody would vote it up unless they recognized the name, but it could be worth a shot. I don't even know what I'd ask or say if we did find him though. Probably thanks for the memories, and wanting to know what he's up to these days.
Hotline was awesome. In the mid to late 90s, it might have been my primary online activity besides AIM. I used to get all kinds of electronic music samples from various servers. It was a great way to discover random music as well.
I have JPEGView installed on most of my vintage Mac collection (that can display colors, anyway)
I'm pretty sure I wasn't even born when that software was the latest and greatest!
I wondered, too, so I went digging and discovered [0] that he took an opportunity to work at CERN and thereafter refers to "we" and the page ends with the birth of their son.
That reminded me that I have a lifetime Premium Subscription to your wallpapers I bought in 2009 (which already is many many years after first discovering your wallpapers). I still love your artwork. Now to figure out which wallpaper to use... :)
You might like my post, “How to Lose Money with 25 Years of Failed Businesses” where I talk about a couple of my old shareware programs and the things that lead to their demise.
