The Hotline client/server
package was once a wonderful group of programs. With it you could easily
transfer files between multiple
platforms, create a
public discussion forum, gather your
friends for
chatting session... there were (and still are, I suppose) tons of uses.
Now, however, the creator of Hotline (Adam Hinkley, knowns as 'hinks' on Hotline) is banned from working on Hotline, banned from making anything resembling Hotline and, indeed, banned from making anything that uses TCP/IP or the Internet (not totally sure about this last point). I do not know the full story, and I would love for someone who did to write it up, but from what I understand, hinks signed into an agreement with the people he gathered to help him creating Hotline, and they screwed him over with legal documents, etc.
Hotline, as it is now, is mainly a porn servers and warez servers. Very little of interest is on there now. There is nothing wrong, really, with porn or warez servers, but they're mostly scams now. Almost all of them require you to go through a complicated series of banner ads, and more and more are requiring you to sign up for porn mailing lists or ezines. The client itself has changed greatly since the days when Hotline was young. The toolbar, which has been vertical since Hotline began, where you select things like connect to server and show users, is now horizontal, and includes with it a fucking banner ad, which is even badly implemented. Some banners will get graphical errors and glitches if they're animated.
Even all that, though, I could live with, but having been around Hotline since the beta days, it's the small things that get me. The error windows that pop up have a very formal look and feel to them now, unlike the informal and personal messages you got when hinks was running the show. How it automatically connects you to the official Hotline server when you first open it up. How you have to scroll all the way down the agreement to click 'agree', instead of just hitting it when you first log on.
Argh. I shouldn't go on, as I'll probably be downvoted like mad for turning this into a personal and long rant, but it feels good to get it all out.