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Newbies. My account on mono.org is over 20 years old! Before IP was widespread I used X.25 to connect. It pre-dated a lot of web phenomena and was the first, or nearly first to use forums, diaries, voting, talk/IM ...

Interesting - I was exposed to Nomic via Monochrome, it can be quite fun for a while, but then I started to get bored with it as the game progressed. It's a good intellectual challenge, with more than a fair share of game theory sprinkled in for good effect - for example if someone is close to winning, then it is in the interest of other players to change the winning condition, whilst ensuring that they maintain their own position.

I think it's a game best played online with decent records available to people to ensure that the game can be followed and tracked. I can't imagine trying to play Nomic in a real life setting!

-- Pete.

one thing about the text BBS's - they are so much faster and easier to use than modern forum websites...

rd

I think that having the .NET Framework on Linux is a good thing; that means there will be less need for WINE. The project that is making this happen is http://www.mono.org/. (I think that having a boycot on Novell is some what stupid.) Infact have more Windows application that run on Linux is not all a bad thing. If you are Linux purest then you would have an issue with the whole thing of having Microsoft on Linux. Then this means that Microsoft has to think about how deal with the whole open source thing. And by have Sliver running on Linux would make easier to run multimedia content on Linux.

monochrome in the UK has been running since late 1990 and continues to do so today. Started out before the UK had a widespread IP based network, then it moved to telnet and now most people log in over ssh. It still looks the same as it did 15 years ago - which is a very good thing.

the other Sinclair formats and clones include the QL, SAM Coupe, Timex/Sinclair, ZX81, Z88 etc

Just to be pedantic, the Sam Coupé wasn't manufactured by Sinclair, nor was it exactly a clone as it had many capabilities in excess of what the Spectrum could do. Some links:

The Sam Coupé Scrapbook - all-round comprehensive information

Shameless plugging of my own site - mostly software rather than hardware information

SimCoupe - a free and legal Sam emulator for Windows, Linux, MacOS X etc.

To anyone not involved in the scene, it probably seems very odd to be holding a show for such old computers. But I spent very nearly ten years using that old 8-bit computer, which means it lasted longer than any other computer I've bought since at many times the price, and in that time I've met a lot of people who also used it, and who have had much influence on me in various ways. Most obviously, my interest - and now my job - in programming can be traced back to the days I spent trying to squeeze every drop of performance out of the Z80 that I could possibly get (and back then, every t-state counted!)

Obviously it's interesting to go to these shows and see what new things people can still do with the old technology. But even more than that, I'm hoping just to have another friendly chat with a few of the people I've known for about the last decade and a half.

before all of us old farts who cut our teeth on 300bps BBSes die off.

Well, BBSs aren't dead yet...even if you aren't running at 300bps! :)

-- Pete.

What else besides Microsoft stuff have you developed in? What does .Net provide that say Java doesn't that gives you more productivity?

I've worked with pretty much every web platform, from Livewire, and CFM, to some JSP, PHP, ASP (vbs, & js), and ASP.Net ... to be honest, I prefer ASP .Net over all of them, and my fav. language is probably tossed between JavaScript, and C#, both have things I like, JS I like more for scripting... C# more for controlled environments...

I do most of my .Net work in a plain text editor, and use the command line compilers... I prefer the platform over Java, it is easier to get ASP.Net running than it is to get any JSP platform I have tried... Tomcat was pretty easy, but a pain to reset things sometimes...

I am being serious about these questions because every time I hear someone say what you just typed they have not worked with anything but Microsoft development tools. Yes they may have had a college class or two with some other language, but no real development. I continue to talk to "developers" who think that Java web development is still servlets. They have no clue about JSP's let alone custom tags.

JSP is burrowed from ASP Classic, and CFM imho, and ASP.Net does this a little better imo.

Does that mean I think .net, well specifically c# is bad? No, but there will always be that one limitation... only runs on Microsoft servers.... Don't fool yourself in to thinking you will run any serious app on anything but Windows.

the mono project brings .Net to other platforms, ala linux. I know there is a lot of badmouthing against .Net, and mono, or dot-gnu because MS is the one that developed(extended) the platform... MS has some pretty bright people they paid to develop this.. shouldn't count that down. C# + GTK# are a pretty decent cross platform gui toolset... I know both are fairly new, but can be used pretty well.

I was a later convert to .Net, I admit that I didn't "get it" for a bit, but after working with it for a while, I find I like it more and more.. it makes sense.

actually a lot of non-geek people have to use telnet for mail or even net BBSes (such as monochrome so for the sake of a few K i think such a tool is a good idea on this CD.

Another BBS system that's survived since way back then is Monochrome. It used to run over the UK academic network JANET even before JANET had TCP/IP, but it migrated to an independent system a few years ago. It's classified into sections covering a whole load of different topics (news, technology, lifestyle, user diaries, music, humour [always worth a read], and so on), each with section moderators, and just like in the Elder Days, none of the files have threading.

(PS: I have nothing to do with Mono other than being a satisfied user.)

So are there any public BBS's left?

See http://www.mono.org
Telnet to electron.mono.org to log in.

Still going strong - grab your telnet client and have a look, or go here to connect via a Java client.

Cheers,
Ian

Still going strong - grab your telnet client and have a look, or go here to connect via a Java client.

Cheers,
Ian

I use a telnet based BBS (located in the UK) - called Monochrome. It's 10 years old now, and still going strong, although the population seems to remain roughly constant (but aging). It used to primarily made up of a user-base of students, but it has now evolved into a BBS for young adults, and hopefully it'll continue to evolve as time goes on.

I don't know how the admin would choose to try and boost the population however if it started stuttering into serious decline - there seems to be a resistance these days to anything without a web interface or a custom client. Trying to explain telnet to someone who has never used it before can be quite difficult - especially when they try and click on the screen to activate options. The BBS has a java client on the website, but I don't think this really offers the best solution.

The main attraction for people though is the community itself - there are files on virtually every topic anyone would want to discuss, but the files are nothing without the community. People KNOW each other there - in a current vote at least a third of the users claim to know (in real life) 20 or more other users. This is a real life community, not just a virtual one - and a perfect example of how the virtual world need not be entirely divorced from the real world.

-- Pete.

indeed, and one BBS thats very much alive is Monochrome. i've been there since my poly days (thats 1991) and its still going strong. check out here. and no i am not a staff member, well anymore ;)

My favorite game was VTTrek, which was a first-person 3D space fighting game played on a VT-100 terminal. No, there were no bitmap graphics. It used the wonky 8-bit ANSI character graphics combined with ANSI escape sequences for bold, flashing, etc. to make it more animated. And you had to play on a 9600 baud terminal connection, or else you would lag and be blown away by those high-baud bastards.

DECWAR was another favorite. It was only 2-D, but was realtime [not turn based] and you could play it on either a CRT terminal [i.e. a monitor] or, you could also play using a line printer terminal [paper]. You could enter lots of cryptic command lines and dump your view every so often if you needed it. Wow, that was fun. Sort of like keyboarders versus mousers in Quake. [Update: that DECWAR page linked to above has a link to a version running on a BSD box. Oh yes...]

sitwar was another fun realtime wargame [maybe it was spelled 'citwar'?]. But I think it required a monitor, so we didn't play it as much [monitors -- or "CRTs" as they were called then -- were in low supply and high demand].

When it came to instant messaging, we used something called "FORUM", which I think was written by my friend Yoram at UofT. Actually, it was closer to IRC, except that there you could see a history of the last N lines. It was great -- you could log in at noon, do a "/lastlog" and the previous 20 lines of conversation, complete with timestamps, would be printed out for you. Good for leaving messages.

I know of many peopel who have met peopel over a BBS, would you believe.
Try logging on to Monochrome and you'll find loads of ppl on there who have met someone else and gone out with them even though there was quite a few miles between them.
I've never gone in for that, but it is interesting to watch those that have.
Some you can pin down to a stereotype but others you can't because they do have a real life outside of the BBS.
It certainly is not an evil, I can be sure of that because one or two people have gotten married after meeting people on Monochrome. Then again several have got together, done stuff together and then fallen out again in a big way.
To make one a success it demands that a) both are sensible mature adults who understand what is going on, b) that it is possible to actually meet or at least phone regularly, c)that no-one pins too much on anything and takes it as it comes and d)that you're the right people for each other in the first place!
I guess I've always found on-line relationships to be somewhat cold until you hear a person's voice on the other end of a phone line or meet them in person.
At the end of the day you have to remember you're talking to a person who will be a bit like you with their own thoughts, feelings and so on.
If you can't inject a vital spark of humanity in there then it will neverget past the initial stages without a lapse into formula and predictability.
Just my thoughts, anyway.

You're quite right. Monochrome is a much more cohesive system but that is because it is a BBS with nice additions. Slashdot's community is so much more likely to be comprised of fleeting visitors rather than people who will spend all day logged in.

Remember, this is outsourced. It's a WorldOfWonder programme. So, what other magnificent programmes have this company been responsible for?

• The Adam & Joe Show - puerile comedy.
• 101 Rent Boys - need I say more?
• The RuPaul Show - and I thought I hated Ruby Wax
• Takeover TV - this is the best thing they've done, and they didn't actually do any of it; it's viewer-contributed stuff like American open-access cable channels.

I've sent them an exploratory mail about Monochrome to see if they're genuinely interested in real internet communities, or if they just want to cover "well-known" websites and pretend, once again, that Web == Internet.