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ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

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Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#51
smacks forehead

I seek you. I don't think I ever got that. And it was my primary messaging platform for a long time - I grudgingly made the move to AIM sometime around 2002. I felt that ICQ allowed more in-depth conversations; IM was much more call-and-response.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#53
post #25
post #9

Around 2000 I got annoyed with the ads and crap in ICQ, so I wrote Miranda ICQ, now called Miranda IM ( http://www.miranda-im.org/ ) based on libicq. One of my main inspirations to write the app was I wanted to connect a chatbot to ICQ to harass my friends, but the standard API wouldn't allow sending messages. So I added a plugin API, connected the MegaHAL chatbot and good times ensued. I lost interest in Miranda sho…

Wow, let me be the first to say Thanks! I still use Miranda daily, both at my desktop computer at home and at my computer at work. Just chat, no fuzz.. Just the way I like it. It seems that Miranda has forked into Miranda IM and Miranda NG, what are your thoughts about those two? Personally, I use Miranda NG because the Facebook plugin worked better in NG last time I compared the two.

I'm out of the loop. Not even sure what the differences are. But as long as people are still interested in developing it and using it, I think that's good. Hopefully the fork will rejoin sometime in the future.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are perhaps not aware of Grindr.

Forgive me if this is incredibly ignorant, but I thought this was targeted at the gay community?

Well, on this side of the fence it pretty much still works as OP described. Nothing has changed and you don't even need to be drunk!

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#57
post #6

I thought ICQ died off long ago - much like MSN Messenger faded away years ago. Does anyone still use it?

ICQ was huge in Germany and I was actively using it until 2011 or so, even to communicate with my supervisor at Uni. One year ago, there were still four people left in my list. Also, a good friend that I haven't talked to in 10 years used it to reconnect with me just last year. I wouldn't have her in my life today if ICQ shut down.

It has died down almost completely by now though, thanks to whatsapp, skype and hangouts. I still log on with pidgin and there is at least one person in my list that does the same.

I will never forget my ICQ number, it is burned into my brain forever.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#58
post #35

Did anyone else used to "hack" people on ICQ? If I recall correctly, ICQ would expose users IP address if they didn't intentionally hide it. My friend and I would get to chatting with strangers and then exchange photos... Only ours wasn't a photo, it was something that opened a backdoor into their computer that would allow us to take over their PC. We never did anything harmful but might have gotten a few people in t…

Ummm I didn't but I knew people who did ;) ;)

Your description matches "my friends" experience 100%

Back when hacking was more about pranking and fun.

Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit

#59
post #35

Did anyone else used to "hack" people on ICQ? If I recall correctly, ICQ would expose users IP address if they didn't intentionally hide it. My friend and I would get to chatting with strangers and then exchange photos... Only ours wasn't a photo, it was something that opened a backdoor into their computer that would allow us to take over their PC. We never did anything harmful but might have gotten a few people in t…

We renamed the BackOrifice server to picture.bmp and used /whois to get the IP address on IRC channels.
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