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No, you are all wrong. The only correct answer to this question is BBS: The Documentary.

Same here. IIRC, I started with local BBSes when I was a teen(ager) with internal 2400 dial-up modems (ZOOM and Hayes). It got so addicting that I got in trouble with long distance calls (didn't know same area codes can be toll calls based on the phone service), prank calls for being a r0d3nt/n00b, etc. :/

Don't forget that rad(ical) old BBS Documentary -- Watch it for free on The Archive. Even old /. has a few old stories about this documentary:

• A Documentary About Bulletin Board Systems
• The BBS Documentary: A One Year Report
• 7 hour BBS Documentary Nearly Ready
• BBS Documentary Now Shipping
• Hundreds of Hours of BBS Documentary Interviews

Good memories. I'd like to see an updated version!

For nostalgia, check out http://bbsdocumentary.com/ even though it is over a decade old or whatever.

I had a friend who managed the network for Bechtel, set my BBS up to pull in usenet that many said it wasn't possible; my setup was his proof.

What year? Didn't many BBSes do this with (non-UNIX) implementations of the UUCP protocol? I also thought some FidoNET systems had gateways to Usenet (I saw a brief mention on the wikipedia article but not sure how long back that went).

There were always gateways but at 10 a minute it was spendy, newsgroups weren't a priority for me
I was a chat board (8 lines). I did use PC prusuit for my personal files http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONCEPTS/SERVICES/PCPURSUIT/

I ran an AmigA 3000, Cnet software and was part of the FidoNet. Cnet was getting ready for the Internet; we had a cookie file
which was a text file of his wife's recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but a cookie file was required so he added one.
FidoNet does connect to the Usenet, but just as another group. From the Usenet you can read FidoNet, but not the other way around

I can't tell you how it was done as my friend set it up (UUCP protocol and all the supporting files for the Amiga and Cnet) which was easy for him.
His system was a Sparc workstation, we were worlds apart in computer systems

I pulled my messages from him who was pulling them from across the state. I'd pay him a bit for my feed (a couple Amiga text groups)
but his largest group was for the NeXTstation, so most likely around 1990-91.

LOL! I had to Google because I was hoping for pictures. I found this.

I almost completely forgot about the Church of the Subgenius.

Not to mention all the crackers and hackers with BBSs came before and spawned the Demoscene to one up eachother's cracked intro screens, and coined the competitive term N-Day, eg: 3-day or 0-Day (three day or zero day -- meaning a software (or game) that had its copy protection (DRM) cracked on 3rd day or 0th day (release), thus devs didn't know about the hole and it needed to be patched immediately) all originally in the pursuit of sharing files...

Will a torrent server operator wake to the beeping terminal alarm "Archive Not Present" and search frantically to swap in a different disk/drive just so you can access the warez or porn you're looking for before you log off the BBS at 2:00am? Now THAT is a service; For what compensation? Just to meet folks and share common interests -- You're browsing the files when suddenly: Your screen splits in two "Sysop Wants To Chat" and you chat about some rare games / demos / warez for a bit, seeing each keypress as they're typed, much more personal than today's revisionable chat progs... Ah good times.

File sharing has been around since files. Torrents, eMule, Usenet, etc. are just the latest incarnations. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to join them and leverage the "pirates" (who are the biggest fans) as word of mouth advertising, I mean, considering that "you can't beat 'em". That's what we're seeing in some new-media, e.g., Indiegame the Movie uploaded their film to TPB with a scroller that appears ~3 times at the bottom asking you to buy a copy if you like it so they can keep making films... That's smart, but the scroller text could have been more wobbly and colorful IMO... kids these days...

I get your post is specifically about torrents, but if you're just picking some arbitrary point in the past to say "these sharers came before", if you ask me. To say they're the "last man standing" is laughable at best. File sharing evolves, they're just another notable part of its history, more relevant due to being more recent and powered by a global network, not limited by local calling area codes, you know, like the warez rooms on IRC w/ direct transfer requests... I feel that so many people get caught up in the present day struggles that they forget sharing files is something that has always been a part of digital culture.

You can't win the war on sharing information -- That's what makes us human. Making laws against human nature is how you create a police state...

If you haven't watched BBS Documentary series, then do so!

for some reason this thread reminded me of this:
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/ETYMOLOGY/WORDS/KRAD/cursehist.txt

I didn't really know Incognito, but I knew BBS's based on the Curse, including Proving Grounds (and spent a lot of my early BBS days on the Safehouse, completely clueless that it was run by Apple Bandit).

Then he was found dead April 14, Phil Katz was slumped against a nightstand in a south side hotel, cradling an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps. The genius who built a multimillion-dollar software company known worldwide for its pioneering "zip" files had died of acute pancreatic bleeding caused by chronic alcoholism.

I was online with many BBS' with during dial-up modems days before they died because of the Internet. /. has a few old stories about this awesome documentary from years ago:

• A Documentary About Bulletin Board Systems
• The BBS Documentary: A One Year Report
• 7 hour BBS Documentary Nearly Ready
• BBS Documentary Now Shipping
• Hundreds of Hours of BBS Documentary Interviews

Google Video has all the parts online:
1: Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.
2: Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.
3: Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980's and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.
4: Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.
5: Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.
6: HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of "underground" BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.
7: Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.
8: No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.

There is a DVD version that can be ordered, or downloaded for free and legally (hurray for Creative Commons) with less contents.

I was online with many BBS' with during dial-up modems days before they died because of the Internet. /. has a few old stories about this awesome documentary from years ago:

• A Documentary About Bulletin Board Systems
• The BBS Documentary: A One Year Report
• 7 hour BBS Documentary Nearly Ready
• BBS Documentary Now Shipping
• Hundreds of Hours of BBS Documentary Interviews

Google Video has all the parts online:
1: Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.
2: Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.
3: Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980's and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.
4: Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.
5: Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.
6: HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of "underground" BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.
7: Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.
8: No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.

There is a DVD version that can be ordered, or downloaded for free and legally (hurray for Creative Commons) with less contents.

Take a documentary like Who Killed the Electric Car, which IMDB estimates to have cost circa $1m. I am ready to believe that estimate. Equipment rental needs to be paid .....

(Snip very long, interesting list of expensive "requirements" to make a film)

..... If you thought going all-digital was going to save you money and you did all your movie in HD video, the day you want to show it in a real theater the first filmout is going to run you more than $1 a *frame*. 24 frames per second.

That's all very impressive that it takes a village to raise a child and stuff, makes me wonder how my wife makes a home movie of my kid eating birthday cake without a home mortgage loan of expenses, and its all very impossible for a mere mortal individual to make a movie, but how come, relative to the electric car movie, "The BBS Documentary" by Jason Scott is better, longer, more interesting, better packaged, had more "actors" and better graphics, better sound, better DVD mastering (w/ easter eggs and stuff) probably has a higher ROI (although admittedly probably lower total dollar amount of profit) and was done by one dude in his basement? Don't get me wrong here, for an agit-prop documentary, "who killed the electric car" is pretty good and I mostly enjoyed it. Its just the BBS documentary is better, yet was immensely cheaper than your description. Could Jason Scott have blown, say $20 million on his much more complicated documentary? Maybe, but he didn't, as far as I know.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

Let's put it this way, some guy comes to you and says he wants to make a documentary about the electric car. You don't know the guy. Says he needs a million bucks. I'm sure you wouldn't give him even one hundred bucks.

Didn't slow down Jason Scott, he just did his movie anyway. Doing his next video on text adventures all in HD, according to his blog. Very impressive. Interestingly, he asked for people to front him a small amount of money to buy HD gear, and plenty of people did in a very short amount of time. I would have, but didn't have time before he collected all the cash he needed.

"New media" isn't just a cheaper copy of old media, it's a whole different way of doing things. Your description is not why old media deserves big bucks, but why old media is going away.

There's a link for binaries at the same site as the review. I haven't tried them, but it's a place to start.

Does anyone else remember Roboterm? It was a graphical BBS terminal client (which would show downloaded graphics when talking to a roboterm board). Neat but proprietary:

If you want to know more about bulletin boards and the related subculture I would strongly recommend watching The BBS Documentary. It's quite good and will give you an idea of how things worked back in the day.

As others have replied, there were once LOTS of programs for autmatically scanning uploads within BBSes. I would search for "BBS file processor" or "upload processor" or "upload door". Essentially every major BBS system (and there dozens or majors and hundreds of minors) had an upload processor for it that would scan all files uploaded. They would even unzip the archives up to N levels deep to scan it all.

The almost religious fervor which sysops applied to scanning uploads was a response to the popular press' typical characterization of BBSes as the absolute easiest way of getting computer viruses, the precursor to the current stereotype that the 'Net is basically one giant computer virus distribution system that incidentally has some porn and a couple dozen useful web sites. I think BBSes were deliberately given a bad rap because the media folks tended to use extremely expensive pay services like CompuServe, GEnie, and Prodigy, and so they heavily promoted those over the often-100%-free BBSes available. Add the fact that the virus creators often used BBSes to communicate amongst themselves and the meme that BBSes were the preferred vehicle for criminals to prey on folks just would not die.

The result is that the ability to automatically scan incoming files was old hat back in the late 80's.

I miss the days of the BBS era also. Anyone remember forum hacks, like VisionX? If anyone is interested, below is a coupled of good links.

Remember ACiD and iCE ANSI groups? http://www.acid.org/ http://www.ice.org/index.php?display=pack&packID=1 99207

I am not trying to promote or anything, but I got a great movie called BBS: The Documentary. It is a great 4 disc set documenting the history of the BBS scene. Their link is below. http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

All of you people need to check out the BBS Documentary. They sell a DVD of it (actually 3 DVD's). It's around $40 and it's really quite good, they have interviews with a lot of Sysops, some programmers, the creator of Fidonet, Ansi artists, etc. It takes you back, and it's a good way to put the wife to sleep ;)

He just barely mentions it in TFA, but the documentary DVD set that Jason Scott produced is incredibly interesting and everything you'd want if you lived through those days. I was a classic lurker back then, not really into the scene, but certainly racked up my hours on BBSs. I found all 5 and half hours fascinating. The material is under a CC license -- heck, he'll even sell you the printed package for 10 bucks into which you can place your copied disks. I split the price of a purchase copy with a friend. Very cool, very authentic, very fun.

I just finished watching the BBS Documentary and it reminded me about why BBS's were so cool. I mean, besides bringing the power of global communications to the common man at a low expense, it brought about this whole new online community.

Many of the interviews talk about how impersonal the internet is, the fact that you might be one in 50,000 people on a newsgroup versus one of 100 or 200 on a BBS. The fact is, before myspace-type sites, it was pretty difficult to create a small online community of your friends without some decent computer skills. Sure, there was IRC, but it was difficult to create static content there. Sure, there were search sites like Classmates.com but no one ever went to them.

Myspace is really quite primitive, as everyone knows. It's just a simple database blog. Where it shines is the search feature in combination with the ease of custom publishing. You can search for old friends, search by hometown, etc. And with the inclusion of music and video clips, it's a whole multimedia experience. I think that it's the closest thing to the old personal community feeling the BBS had than anything else.

Sure, there's a lot missing, but I think that if someone were to look at the sucessful old BBS' and modeled a new "Social Networking" site after them (real time chat, files, message boards, multi-player games based on login, just more areas and features), it could be real successful in a hurry. MySpace just doesn't do enough. It's all anyone has right now, of course.

(formerly 1@16850)

Yeah man, I totally love joe. I've been using that editor since when I first downloaded Linux (Slackware) over a BBS in the late nineties. It bridged the gap between my experiences with vi (which were the result of running the Waffle BBS software package) and my power-user status with that old workhorse for MS-DOS, QEdit, which was just starting to get crappy while Semware took their little tight shareware app and tricked it out to be a commercial product (which apparently is keeping them in business??)

Joe has the simplicity of MS-DOS EDIT.COM/EXE with much, much more power, and is a nice way to get used to using a *NIX-based system; luckily it's managed to stick around in the cut-throat unix text editor marketplace *ahem*...

The extremely controversial debacle mentioned on wikipedia is also discused in Jason Scott's BBS documentary.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.

I wouldn't say PKZIP is like opensource tarballs using gzip or bzip2.

Infozip comes to mind.

Also check out textfiles.com creator Jason Scott's BBS documentary if you haven't yet!

# Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.

http://bbsdocumentary.com/

The fact that it has failed can easily be demonstrated by the fact that there is no major work released under the CC

Whoops, also forgot the BBS: Documentary.


-Colin

Along those lines, link to look at if you download the documentary:

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/warez/

Link to pay for the documentary.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/order/

just remember to buy it if you like it

the future of Media is exactly this, support the artist and he will support you

Just for the record, my 5 and a half hour documentary (8 episodes, 3 DVDs) on Dial Up Bulletin Board Systems, which is here and can be ordered here was licensed Creative Commons. Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike, even. And it's done me very well indeed. Financially, personally, and socially.

I'll gladly speak to any group about how I turned a profit in less than a few weeks by doing this.

In fact, just feel free to read the massive essay I wrote about why Creative Commons worked for me.

Dvorak can suck an egg.

Just for the record, my 5 and a half hour documentary (8 episodes, 3 DVDs) on Dial Up Bulletin Board Systems, which is here and can be ordered here was licensed Creative Commons. Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike, even. And it's done me very well indeed. Financially, personally, and socially.

I'll gladly speak to any group about how I turned a profit in less than a few weeks by doing this.

In fact, just feel free to read the massive essay I wrote about why Creative Commons worked for me.

Dvorak can suck an egg.

Hi, everyone. I find the best thing to do with Slashdot discussions if something you've done is the center of it is to wait out the initial wave, find the general questions people are asking about that they can be told without visiting the site, and answer as best I can. Obviously, the website itself has answers in more detail.

So here we go.

As most people figured out, it's a multi-episode collection, not a single documentary. That would be insane and pretty unwatchable. There are 8 episodes, covering everything from Fidonet to ANSI to hacking/phreaking BBSes to the BBS Industry (think Boardwatch, Mustang, Galacticomm, PC-Board, and so on). Each of these are of varying length from 20 to 40 minutes, and go into their own subjects with slightly different styles.

The documentary is subtitled. All of it. All episodes, all bonus footage, all easter eggs, you name it. Subtitled, period. I don't think it's right to put out a DVD that isn't. Some of these episodes have second or third subtitle tracks with 'non-technical' subtitles.

There are commentary or statements on pretty much all the episodes. There are easter eggs, as mentioned. There is a DVD-ROM with thousands of photographs and a few speeches I've given on history. There is a lot of stuff.

$50 is steep for some people, and not steep for others. I've now spent 10 percent of my life so far making this film, interviewed 205 people, travelled thousands of miles over years, and spent a year editing the resulting 250 hours down to the works on the DVD. I am asking, in return, $50.

Releasing the DVD as a Creative Commons work is less about encouraging people to "not pay" and more about treating my audience with respect. The thought of threatening people with jail because they shared copies of my movies absolutely revulses me. People will watch and pay or not watch and pay but it's a lot more important to me that they WATCH than anything else. If my story of making the production, my willingness to autograph any copies you buy, and the hard work I put into designing the packaging isn't sufficient to make it worth buying for you, so be it. I'd rather you at least heard what it had to say. Additionally, I encourage people who think I did the documentary "wrong" to use the documentary as source material and make a new one.

By the way, a lot of the raw footage will be released to the public under the same license. That will result in a body of work well into the dozens (and perhaps hundreds) of hours.

It was a nice surprise to see this documentary slashdotted by someone else before I had a chance to mention it. I am very touched. And a big thanks to everyone who has bought or is buying a copy. I appreciate that very much.

Sounds like the start of Grand Theft Auto or something.

Robobard was important as it was the first BBS software on the DOS
> platform to implement Windows style graphics into its design. In an
> age where its competitors were operating in ANSI, Robo was designed to
> be displayed in SVGA, with all the graphics, buttons, sliders and
> other GUI features users were beginning to expect from Windows 3.xx.
> Unlike RIP, Robo had a decidedly Windows look and feel.
>
> Robo had great page design software and was implemented by permanently
> saving graphical data on the user's local hard drive so it only had to
> be downloaded once. It could send identifying tags which sat on the
> users hard drive and alerted the BBS software as to who you were and
> what access you had on the page (and so it was that the "cookie" was
> born).
>
> Even at 2400 baud, after the graphics were initially downloaded for
> the first time, users could click/navigate their way through BBS
> "pages" in a flash. Without doubt, Robo was on to something and it
> was financially successful almost overnight, transforming Seth
> Hamilton from a geeky kid to a BBS software mogul.

Well you had NAPLPS (more info & pics) which practically no one used (at least in the US) but did get some support from a few BBS packages and terminal programs.

Then there was RIP (aka RIPscript, pics) which got the most implementation, although the tools and actual BBS support were far behind what ANSI was capable of.

Then towards the end of the BBS era, you had Syncronet appear on the scene, which IIRC had ANSI and RIPScript support first, then added a custom terminal program with SVGA graphics. (not sure based on what presentation protocol, but I'm pretty sure it was proprietary) What's really interesting is it's been open sourced and is still in active development.

As a long time BBS operator (Xenogenesis BBS, Sysop HEX, 313 area, first running TAG software then Oblivion/2 which I'm listed as an author for although I never put out an "official release") I'd definately say ANSI was the standard. I still miss my Obv/2 setup and it's tight ANSI menu sets (all produced personally, I'd check out the scenes packs but made my own in TheDraw of course) and I'm hoping to put it up on the Internet someday from my backups.

Jonah Hex

Well you had NAPLPS (more info & pics) which practically no one used (at least in the US) but did get some support from a few BBS packages and terminal programs.

Then there was RIP (aka RIPscript, pics) which got the most implementation, although the tools and actual BBS support were far behind what ANSI was capable of.

Then towards the end of the BBS era, you had Syncronet appear on the scene, which IIRC had ANSI and RIPScript support first, then added a custom terminal program with SVGA graphics. (not sure based on what presentation protocol, but I'm pretty sure it was proprietary) What's really interesting is it's been open sourced and is still in active development.

As a long time BBS operator (Xenogenesis BBS, Sysop HEX, 313 area, first running TAG software then Oblivion/2 which I'm listed as an author for although I never put out an "official release") I'd definately say ANSI was the standard. I still miss my Obv/2 setup and it's tight ANSI menu sets (all produced personally, I'd check out the scenes packs but made my own in TheDraw of course) and I'm hoping to put it up on the Internet someday from my backups.

Jonah Hex

Well you had NAPLPS (more info & pics) which practically no one used (at least in the US) but did get some support from a few BBS packages and terminal programs.

Then there was RIP (aka RIPscript, pics) which got the most implementation, although the tools and actual BBS support were far behind what ANSI was capable of.

Then towards the end of the BBS era, you had Syncronet appear on the scene, which IIRC had ANSI and RIPScript support first, then added a custom terminal program with SVGA graphics. (not sure based on what presentation protocol, but I'm pretty sure it was proprietary) What's really interesting is it's been open sourced and is still in active development.

As a long time BBS operator (Xenogenesis BBS, Sysop HEX, 313 area, first running TAG software then Oblivion/2 which I'm listed as an author for although I never put out an "official release") I'd definately say ANSI was the standard. I still miss my Obv/2 setup and it's tight ANSI menu sets (all produced personally, I'd check out the scenes packs but made my own in TheDraw of course) and I'm hoping to put it up on the Internet someday from my backups.

Jonah Hex

In case you guys don't understand the significance of RaD Man posting this story, he leads the ACiD artwork group. ACiD was the biggest, and best, ansi art group back in the day. They had distro's all over the world at one point, and if you had original ACiD art on your board, you were leet.

I miss the BBS days. There was something appealing to me about playing B.R.E, L.O.R.D, Barneysplat, posting FIDOnet messages, and trying to figure out ways to scam the upload/download credit system. Bulletin boards definately helped inspire some of the basic fundamental utilities we have on the internet today - message boards, games, file transfers, we had it all.

It really was some of the best times i've ever had with a computer, period. I'm only 24 and this is literally part of my childhood. I urge any old sysops, or anyone who is curious to check out the BBS Documentary website for more nostalgia & information.

708/312 repruhzent.

Tying into the underlying BBS theme this year, VCF will be hosting the first and only public screening of the long anticipated BBS Documentary which is due out on DVD late this year.

Tying into the underlying BBS theme this year, VCF will be hosting the first and only public screening of the long anticipated BBS Documentary which is due out on DVD late this year.

Congratulations, they invented the BBS !

Interestingly, I've been trying to find time to start an IBM Domino based BBS for my neighborhood. Yes, I started an i-neighbors thingy, but it would still be cool to have our own local site. (rembering the good 'ol days of 300 baud dialup :)

Bah, if you were really l33t, you'd know that there's only one word to describe this: k-rad.

*waits to be moderated offtopic if at all because no one remembers k-rad, k-kool, etc. any more*

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com

Maybe this will be more up your alley. Rather than watching wannabe nerds trying to be cool, you can just watch real nerds being real nerds.

Jason Scott has been working on it for quite a while, see this.

When I heard that Sinclair was teaming up with Timex to sell the ZX-81 with a new name (and a double the memory - upping it to a whopping 2K) I remember thinking it could make computers more popular.. :)

Don't forget, lots of nostalgia like this is discussed by many in the BBS Documentary that's in the works.

Ahh, the good 'ol days.. Imagine a typical slashdot post loading at 300 baud? Eugh..

I used to host with a fine place, but disagreements over costs and bandwidth usage charges inspired me (along with the purchase of my home) to host in my own basement. I have 3-4 customers, and we'll keep it at that. Bandwidth is a T-1. And I think the place looks pretty sharp. This is also where textfiles.com and bbsdocumentary.com are hosted, so it works for me.

It's been covered on slashdot many times so I'm sure people will remember, but there is a BBS Documentary in the works.

The history of such revolutions should be documented for future generations to learn from.

Did we just see the same documentary?

The production quality was really good: good audio recording, good cinematography, good lighting, and a clear presentation of the information. I came away from this documentary with an idea of how gaming competitions work, and I thought the in-the-trenches video portion of the battle, including the blow-by-blow commentary of what we were seeing, gave some real insight into the event.

Following the single team was a good idea; it gave you an easy way to get back to the "spine" of the story when you travelled around throwing in a number of interviews and shots from surrounding locations. There's some amount of strangeness in the fact the event takes place in Texas and you and the main interviewees all have British accents, but hey, I like British accents so I'm fine with that.

Simon, if you had stuck a BBC or TechTV logo in the bottom right corner of the documentary, I would have been hard-pressed to think I wasn't just watching a regular documentary bought by the network. Kudos to you, especially for making this content available for free for people to download. That's a real nice gift, and people will use this as a reference material in the future. And bonus on snagging the Romero interview.

All I can say is that if you don't like how this documentary looks and sounds, give my BBS Documentary a wide berth when it comes out next year, because I doubt my production will outstrip his. This is great work for a one-man crew, and I can't wait for the next film from you.

SEA found themselves utterly and totally alienated by the BBS community, especially when they started throwing around shit like "We've trademarked the .ARC extension" and saying anyone writing ANY program that manipulated the .ARC format in ANY way owed them money. SEA insisted the file format was copyrighted.

Phil went on to develop a new, better compression file format (Our loyal friend this many years, ZIP). Not simply different compression but the file structure itself was more robust then .ARC, with deliberate room for future additions. And of course Phil went out of his way to make the format of ZIP archives widely and freely available and anyone could make ZIP-compatible programs without owing him anything.

Remember PKZIP 0.91? BBS sysops the world over rapidly switched to that beta from SEA's ARC format/programs and never looked back. ARC died a quick and silent death... SEA did not, unfortunately.

Here's the full story...

The computing community the world over lost a good friend when Phil passed away. :(

Rip Script overview

Specification (zip file)

And this version (there are earlier) dates from July 19th 1993.

RIPScrip appears to allow the transfer of scripts to the client, including template information, field handling, and autonomous response code.

Sounds like there is indeed prior art for this.

Simon