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A Documentary About Bulletin Board Systems

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fidogram dept.

Windrip writes: "Jason Scott is compiling a history of the BBS. The BBS documentary is a virtual park bench waiting for people who want to reminisce about the good old days of FIDO, 9600 baud, zmodem. /. had an earlier post from Jason about textfiles.com, now he's looking for a few of the million stories in the naked net."

7 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Gee, How Exciting by ksw2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This sounds like an excuse for everybody to tell everyone else how much more leet they are because they remember when most hackers could type faster than their modems could transmit.

    Woo-hoo.

    1. Re:Gee, How Exciting by laslo2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      take a look back at all of the things bulletin board systems offered; nation/world wide email, games, chat, text files, allowing users to post public comments, file transfers (software, text files, pictures). then look at the stuff that has driven the 'internet revolution'. not everyone has a fidonet email address, but everyone has an internet email address. there's irc, icq, yahoo messenger, aol IM. there's lots of news and information sites that have articles to read. people can post topics and discuss things at sites like slashdot. there are lots of sites (freshmeat.net for one) that offer downloads of software. images.google.com lets you (sort of) find images to download.

      you may not be impressed, but most of the concepts that make the internet so popular were invented, implemented, and dreamed up by people using, creating, and running bulletin board systems 15+ years ago.

      woo hoo indeed.

      --
      Karma only matters to me now and zen.
  2. BBSes versus the Internet by Cerlyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to be quite active on the local BBS scene. Operators would get the latest archive CD-ROMs of the day, and then post them online for others to access.

    Nowadays, no one really uses BBSes anymore. Everyone has direct links to the resources BBSes used to offer. Most of Walnut Creek's old content was available from ftp.cdrom.com (now run by simtel.net). Want music from the Hornet Archive? You can't purchase the CD anymore; you go online to hornet.org.

    This extreme centalization of content worries me. Instead of colleges purchasing CD-ROMs of technical abstracts, they now subscribe to an ever-changing online service that provides them. Should said service go under or lose their data, humanity as a whole is at a loss.

    Call me a troll, but one of the biggest reasons we should be against DMCA, SSSCA, and other such acts is because they require all content to be managed from a central authority. Should that authority go bankrupt, millions could lose access to a variety of works.

    While peer-to-peer is one extreme the industry does not like, centralization is another problem. We need to start up the BBS era again; anyone have money for a spare phone line?

    1. Re:BBSes versus the Internet by suss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We need to start up the BBS era again; anyone have money for a spare phone line?

      I used to have a BBS running, now there's just a mailer. Most people stopped calling 3 or 4 years ago and a lot of BBS software has become unusable since 1-1-2000 (like the hudson messagebase). I don't really see the point anymore in running a BBS since you can get an internet account for free from many places. In the end everyone only wanted to download jpg's anyway, that took most of the fun out of it for me.

  3. The good 'ol days by gburgyan · · Score: 3, Insightful
    God, I feel old...

    I remember when I was 12 in '85 and playing around with my Commodore 64. I borrowed a 300 baud (back when a baud was a bit... time flies) and quickly got my own 1200 bps. A little time went by and I managed to talk my mom into getting a second phone line -- thus Ground Zero BBS was born. Working for all of 1 meg online: a 1541 and 1581 floppy drive. Ran the thing off of CNet BBS software if I still remember. Phone number at the time was 216-381-6550. Don't bother calling 'cause it's long dead though.

    Lasted for around 4 years, which was a fairly long time as far as BBSes went. I still remember the first couple of callers. Watching them sign on and leave messages. I got to know everyone on there. It was like a close group of friends -- maybe 30 or so regulars. We had a couple of get-togethers. By Co-sysop started dating one of them too.

    Sigh...

    Times are changing. Back then I knew almost everyone that was online in the 216 are code. Now most everyone is on. Heck, the code split twice because of all the new phone lines being put in.

    It's something that I'm sure to tell my future kids some day. Back when we were on the cusp of something big. Back when computers were as uncommon as rotary phones are now.

  4. A BBS-like era might come back... by DocSnyder · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...once the Internet has become an unusable, proprietary, virus-plagued and outlawed Big Brother hell.

    It might be quite different from the former Fido BBSes as far as technology is concerned, but the users and sysops will have the same spirit: freedom.

  5. And with wireless networking (802.11, Bluetooth) by vik · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Absolutely. And we'll have some nicer tools to play with like 802.11b and Bluetooth. That way your average mug punter won't even need a phoneline - he just uses the card that talks to his digital camera and PDA.

    I hope someone is working out the protocols for this. Very few people realise that the wireless Freenet is going to be as big - if not biger than - the internet we know today.

    Vik :v)