A webcomic that started back when mid-sized US/Canadian towns really did have one-stop ISPs that employed both experienced sysadmins, the new web designers doing sites for local businesses, and students just getting started in IT - and were places where all of the above could actually advance or at
least enjoy their careers, not just languish as call center drones.
I was lucky enough to spend a couple of summers in high school then after my freshman year of college working at a similar outfit in my hometown. It had about 1500 subscribers paying about $20-30/mo for dialup around 1997-99.
Anyway, that’s where I was introduced to User Friendly, and we’d laugh together over the funnier ones.
I started my career, kinda, as an unpaid admin (I was 14) for Panix.com, one of the oldest ISPs anywhere. Coincidentally, my wife started hers at Software Tool & Die / The World - the actual first ISP!
Yup. I remember having issues as a teenager getting ISP service in Australia in the 90s. I hopped on a train and a bus to their office, handed over an envelope with a few months payments in cash, and they walked me back to a rack, jumped on a Linux console and 'adduser'ed me.
In the mid-90s, Toronto used to have two(!) free computer-centric newspapers. One of those papers used to reprint these comics, but can’t remember which one.
I still remember reading one of the news blurbs in one issue that Linux 2.4.8 was out of beta. This was such a bizarre way to get updates about Linux.
Hosting providers such as OVH, Hetzner, etc still have old-school sysadmin work.
ISPs are hit & miss. If you can get into an early-stage (W?)ISP you will get interesting work, but avoid the big established ones like the plague - there it's all about outsourcing to the lowest bidder and providing the lowest level of service they can legally get away with.
HEADS UP: We're Going Dark by Illiad 2022-02-24 11:04:32
Hello all, long time.
We'll be shutting down the website in the coming days. It may be at the end of this month. If not, it won't be much later than that.
Many UF community members have moved over to Hedgehog, which is run by Klaranth. You can find the site here.
Taken a copy - thank you! I'll probably throw up a mirror of the strips on my site at some point.
For others, this archive is 1997 to 2013 and is images of the strip only. I stopped reading UF around that time I think. Like many things on the web, it's only really relatable to a person for a certain period of time, before you move on (XKCD was the same, used to regularly read it, now I hardly do.)
I still have my "lifetime" User Friendly membership card signed by Illiad and "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell, a User Friendly Guide to World Domination" from O'Reilly. I wish I had found a copy of the first UF compilation book, and that my copy of "Ten Years of UserFriendly.org" hadn't been destroyed in a move.
For those of us who have been doing this for a very long time, User Friendly was the salve to the dry business side of Dilbert. Think the xkcd tech support cheat sheet (https://xkcd.com/627/) but with far more snark and characters.
Agreed. Dilbert was for if you worked in an office building doing pretty much anything. User Friendly was for a very specific niche of people who either worked at mid-sized ISPs (like MandieD wrote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30593421) or who supporter or empathized with people who worked at mid-sized ISPs.
"Thank you for calling Columbia Internet, this is Miranda."
The discussion on that last thread is interesting. Somebody put together a list of all of the marriages that came from people who met on that forum, and it was not a short list.
From a quick flick through based on that link, the issue seems to be that the forum code is bespoke and written in perl, and the environment (apache & mod_perl, nothing great, nothing terrible) is obsolete and nobody who's volunteered to port it in the past actually followed through.
One of my first bits of code I shared online was a scraper for userfriendly.org that would download every comic since the beginning of time.
It was incredibly bad and inefficient (I didn't sleep between calls and just brute forced the image name which led to 90% 404s). Within a few days, UF announced that anyone doing wget scraping would get IP banned.
I was just a kid, but it was so jarring to see something I did cause problems. I learned a ton about being a good netizen. Thanks UF and sorry for the trouble!
There were a number of early webcomics, with UF being among the more prominant.
Others I recall:
- "Cafe Hugo", I believe. Tagline included "vague enneui", possibly also "coffee, puns, ..." or something like that. Mostly college students / recent graduates and their life at a cafe. All traces seem lost.
- "Westward Ho!" was a very short-lived, and I think intentionally limited, comic about a young woman engaged in finding mutually-beneficial relationship and/or fighting for justice on the fronteir. Well executed and largely in good taste given the premise.
It was drawn relatively realistically, had a very short run, maybe a dozen strips or fewer. I think there were two main characters, both female. One the eponymous Ho, the other something of a Robin Hood-ish / Lone-Ranger-ish character.
Shenanigans ensued ... for a brief but glorious time.
Part of the good old web for me: userfriendly, slashdot, zophar's domain, crackstore, fosi.da.ru, fravia, gamasutra... among several others. Those were amazing times.
While looking for the OS/2 site that would have hosted User Friendly, I found OS/2 e-Zine! whose first issue is still online, with the exact same HTML as in 1995:
I heard this was coming a couple weeks ago. I don't know why you'd shut the entire website down, rather than just put it into hibernation?
I mean I don't know what is hosting situation is, but I can't imagine there's a ton of traffic on a comic that hasn't had a new post in years. Seems like it would be worth keeping it up just for old time sake.
It would be reasonable enough to host the entire thing for probably a couple bucks a year on s3.
Because he's been posting reruns for approximately ever in internet time and the community has been the soul of the site for even longer. To be frank, it wasn't a webcomic you stuck with for either the art or the humor. Every now and then, there was a funny strip or storyline, but it's not something that needs to be endlessly rehashed.
It seems the community has moved to another forum, so there's no real reason to keep posting reruns on some more-or-less static hibernation mode site.
I hung out there sporadically for a few years and moved on. It was a small-ish community that was by and large friendly and supportive (I mean, like almost 20 years ago, can't speak for what it's like today). At that time, the regulars knew each other, at least digitally, and sometimes IRL.
People may have come for the comic, but those that stayed stayed for the forum.
I know people that worked for the company that inspired Columbia Internet (which was located on Columbia Street in New Westminster and indeed I also worked at the company they became (unrelated to the ISP stuff) for while.
There are a Mike that was on the team I was and suspect it's the same guy as 'Myke'. The person hosting ufies.org is a friend and former colleague from the same company as well.
User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium, as opposed to being adapted from another source (newspapers) or intellectual property. It started in 1997 which was really early in Internet time, around the peak of the dial-up era (and the setting is a workplace of a dial-up ISP.) It may not have quite been the first web-comic, but it was the one that first reached a critical mass of general notability in geek culture.
> User Friendly was the first big web-comic, the first to establish the idea of a web-comic as a primary medium [...] in 1997
"The first" might be overselling it. For example, Kevin and Kell started in 1995. This TvTropes listing [1] has some more, but oddly enough UF isn't on there so perhaps others are missing also.
As someone who got dial-up in the mid-90s, I remember regularly reading so many of the comics on these lists and it makes me feel old... Some of them are still in my bookmarks...
It was often hilarious if you happened to work at a local ISP in the era the comic was started (late 90s), back when $20-30/mo for dialup was a good deal, and customers could drop their computers off to have their modems and Netscape installed and Windows configured to dial in. Or for $40 extra, have some high school kid working there drop by :)
Let's just say it was hilarious if you had anything to do with computers - I could totally relate to the story of an intelligent being emerging from the "primordial soup" of dust collected over the years in an old PC. Or that running gag about the guy who always managed to kill himself by falling into lava in any multiplayer FPS game (even those that didn't have lava).
I've never really frequented Slashdot, I've taken a short look at it right now. What's going on with it that's so sad to look at? I feel like I'm missing context...
Among other things, almost all stories used to have at least a couple hundred comments. Today there are stories on the front page with less than 10.
The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments. Not stuff like "I voted for someone different than you did", but bullshit like https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11756830&cid=561389... (CW: extreme antisemitism). I spent a lot of time on Slashdot over the years, and had a 4-digit UID that I'd bust on the inevitable "who's been here longer?" comment chains. But while they have the right to allow the comments section to fill with horrid stuff, I don't want anything to do with that.
Definitely. Given how much smaller the Internet was at the time, a lot of the people actually making the Internet -- Linux developers, webmasters, hardware designers, network protocol authors, etc. -- were packed into that one amazing forum and debating what to do next. It was amazing in its heyday.
> The last nail in the coffin for me was their utter refusal to remove absolutely abhorrent comments.
Slashdot was the first site that I frequented where I had to take a hard look at it and say, "I don't like what this place has become and I don't want to be a part of it." Sadly, it wasn't the last.
That filth you linked to is scored 0, which I think means it is not visible by default. I think it is preferable to leave stuff like that available-but-hidden rather than to delete it altogether. Free speech is a virtue.
Hard disagree. That comment isn't contributing to dialog, even of the heated variety. It's hatred for the sake of hatred, and I don't think there's a place for it.
I'm happy to debate with earnest people I disagree with. That's interesting, and done well, we can both learn from it. There's no value in repulsiveness for the sake of repulsiveness. I don't expect a forum mod to be on top of every single comment ever made, but when things like what I linked are reported but stay up, the moderators are saying, yeah, we're fine with spending server resources to host that.
Slashdot has always had firm political leanings that include opposition to censorship. And stupid conspiracy theories always claim they’re being suppressed, which thrives when they can point to it actually happening.
To the contrary, there's a lot of evidence that deplatforming actually works. In this case, it's not about getting rid of uncivil users, but dropping blatant trash. There are any number of website willing to host that filth. Why give them an additional platform out of a misguided sense of ideological purity, saying that horridly racist trolling is just as valid as any other content?
You've kinda lost track of object reality there: "Only logged in users who are deliberately un-hiding this content" is hardly "as valid as any other content".
Slashdot's attitude is that things which are "removed" (voted to zero) ought to be auditable. This means everyone knows what the rules REALLY are (as opposed to what people SAY they are), and it also prevents the system from being abused (since you can trivially link to examples of that abuse)
I really don't think an auditable record of moderation decisions is that bad, and you have to understand that this is NOT "content that is presented to regular users." I don't remember my login anymore, so I can't even figure out how to see the comment you linked - I'm sure if I logged in and reset myself to view negative scores I COULD see it, since I've used the site before, but it is distinctly non-trivial to do so.
It looks like there's a slider at the head of the comments section controlling which comments are displayed with their text, which comments are "abbreviated", and which aren't visible at all. The line between abbreviated and hidden is defaulting to a position just less than 1, so a comment with a score of 0 has no representation on the page other than an indicator somewhere in the comment thread saying "[n] hidden comment(s)".
The comment will become visible (in abbreviated form) if you drag that slider over to just less than 0 (and load all the comments).
kstrauser is definitely choosing to see the comment.
I’m definitely not. I copied and pasted that link into a freshly cleared out Duck Duck Go browser window on my phone and saw the comment. I can’t reproduce not seeing it in any browser I’ve tried, except where I had an ad blocker installed that hides website comments.
Oh the irony. You've dug up a truly horrible comment that Slashdot's own moderation system hid and then shared it to a far larger audience than even unflagged content on Slashdot threads get by posting its direct link to a higher traffic site.
And apparently you've done this out of a belief that such comments shouldn't be discoverable, even by those observing a record of moderation decisions.
Are you similarly upset by HN's "showdead" option? Will you be sharing some truly objectionable comments from here on a large social media account?
You're linking to the comment's own page. Of course it's visible there. It's the entire content. Navigating to that URL is an explicit request to see that comment and nothing else.
But it's not visible in the comment thread where it was made. How would you see it if you weren't specifically trying to?
Turns out I did, but I still know that when browsing a Slashdot thread, it will auto-hide Score 0 comments. I'm also noticing that thread is from four years ago (2018), and has hundreds of comments (605!) so you'd have really had to dig for that example.
In its heyday, Slashdot was often (but not always) really timely with tech news, and was reasonably well-curated. The comments were generally numerous, and had a lot of genuine insight since the site tended to be frequented by actual IT/development professionals. Even the political discussion was fairly sincere. It also had an early user-driven moderation system, which while flawed, was enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. It anticipated Web 2.0 in a lot of ways.
I used to click on big posts, set the filter for Score: 3 or higher, and read through EVERYTHING. It'd take hours sometimes, and I'd learn a ton about all kinds of stuff. These were discussions, not just comments, and I think people took more pride in the quality of their contribution.
Like everything from back then, Slashdot got whittled down. It went through multiple acquisitions, and eventually became disconnected from all the original people behind it. Subsequent owners seemed to have no vision or connection with the community. There were some attempted changes that never seemed to go anywhere, but I think the most important thing about the acquisitions is just how bland the site became.
And of course, even if Slashdot had all those same people, everything else changed too... the industry, the people, the culture, the Internet, the whole world.
HN is the closest thing I know today to /. -- I'd say imagine an HN where editors curated the content, and with a lot more whimsy in its culture, and a lot more optimism. I don't expect to find any of that today on Slashdot, and when I do click through to the comments I find them to be very one-dimensional and tired.
The comment count is sad; the reposting of links from HN instead of breaking new stuff is sad; the lack of the unique editorial voice of the Slashdot OG crew is sad.
There is literally no reason to visit Slashdot anymore other than inertia. You will not find anything new or interesting. There will be no insightful commentary beneath an article. There will never be a new meme that originates from the comment section.
It's somewhat similar to finding out that DeLorean was making his living by selling DeLorean-branded watches or whatever.
It's a sad day. Truly the "end of an era". Although really, I guess the original "era" ended when Illiad stopped writing new UF episodes. But still, for the site to go down really puts the exclamation point on it.
RIP User Friendly.
But hey, at least Sluggy Freelance seems to still be alive and kicking. I really need to go back and catch up on that series. Maybe time to start over from the beginning and re-read the entire thing. What an adventure that would be!
This gives me a chance to ask about a different webcomic that I read in the early 2000s, but have totally forgotten. It also took place at a small development company or ISP. There was a dog who was a system administrator, and he might have been in love with a cat? All the characters were animals, I think, and there were the usual 90s-early 00s Linux/Microsoft jokes.
By the way, if you liked the old-school "ISP shenenigans and Unix jokes" web-comic genre, make sure to check out https://www.gpf-comics.com/
It's still going, IMO still not stale (without going into spoilers: the setting really helps), even though it is also scheduled to wind down (tying up all loose threads) in the next 1-2 years.
As a teen I read web-comics like GPF, Userfriendly, Sluggy Freelance religiously, which really helped my English and my nerd career. Finding out about all those big web comics dying is the first time that I genuinely feel in my core that I am getting older... :(
Could you be thinking of Kevin and Kell (https://www.kevinandkell.com/)? The species don't quite match up, but the general description and the time period do. (And it's still running daily strips, making it the longest-running web comic!)
That's not it, as far as I can tell. The art in the comic I'm thinking of had something of an MS-Paint quality, and wasn't nearly as developed. But thanks for the guess! I've never heard of this one before.
Why now? I think there hasn't been any fresh non-forum content on the site for at least 12 years. Just didn't feel like paying hosting costs, or something else?
The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update the code base.
Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a big deal.
Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on Apache 1.3 here.
Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for several weeks, and start... pretty much now."
User Friendly is why i am where i am today. It's why i got the degree i did, why i have the career i have, why i have the viewpoints on that career i had today.
I owe my career to User Friendly. It's a really sad day for me.
Freshmeat nostalgia and Userfriendly going dark on the same day.
I'm so damn old...
I just found out today that Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda rebooted Geeks in Space (a while back, it seems). Rob, Jeff and CowboyNeal's original run of GIS was one the first podcasts I ever listened to and it was glorious.
I loved that webcomic back then, also have one of his books. Sad to see it go away, although there have been no new submission for some time.
Some cartoons were quite hilarious; I had this one on the wall above my desk.
https://teddit.net/pics/w:720_5tenj3387my51.png
I was lucky enough to spend a couple of summers in high school then after my freshman year of college working at a similar outfit in my hometown. It had about 1500 subscribers paying about $20-30/mo for dialup around 1997-99.
Anyway, that’s where I was introduced to User Friendly, and we’d laugh together over the funnier ones.
Go to “Storylines” to find the ones you remember: https://web.archive.org/web/20220225091648/http://www.userfr...