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Blizzard Births BBS

Foundryman writes "Nice bit of history at ZDNet about how the blizzard of 1978 led to the creation of the BBS."

19 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. why in my day... by faeryman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why, in my day, when it was a blizzard we didn't have no fancy BBS. We had to walk 15 miles (uphill bothways, of course) to the nearest house to trade our warez. All we could afford was one piece of paper though, and we had to write the zeros and ones on it. Bah, kids. Zzzzzzz....

    --


    ,
    faeryman
    1. Re:why in my day... by UniverseIsADoughnut · · Score: 4, Funny

      >>You had zeros? We had to use the letter 'o'.

      yeah but 'o' is smaller then '0' so you had more compact code.

      anyone ever think printing out something like windows or FreeBSD in 1's and 0's on 3 foot wide paper and making wallpaper of it would be neat.

    2. Re:why in my day... by Troll_Kamikaze · · Score: 4, Funny

      All we could afford was one piece of paper though, and we had to write the zeros and ones on it. Bah, kids. Zzzzzzz....

      Sheit, kid. When I was growin up we didn't have no paper... had to smear the ones and zeroes on birch bark with the bloody stumps of our fingers.

    3. Re:why in my day... by Jason1729 · · Score: 4, Funny

      We had to punch one hole in it to double-side it.

    4. Re:why in my day... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm confused by this article. Do we like or hate Blizzard this round?

  2. Snow day... by vspazv · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if the internet would even exist if those guys had had girlfriends during that week snowed in.

  3. Re:Out of Curiosity by yppiz · · Score: 5, Funny
    Few know this, but CBBS, running on its original hardware, is the comments server for slashdot.org.

    --Pat

  4. Damn Blizzard!! by Nyktos · · Score: 4, Funny

    First BBS's, and then Warcraft!!! What next?? Some sort of fancy persistant universe?? CRAZY!!

  5. Slow News Day? by Quaoar · · Score: 4, Funny

    Two stories from three decades ago...I guess Linux can only have so many kernel updates to report about...

    --
    I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
  6. Ahh Those were the days by Saoi · · Score: 5, Funny

    single character commands, harsh bootings, sounds like my kinda system, pity I wasn't born yet :(

    1. Re:Ahh Those were the days by antiprime · · Score: 5, Funny

      Get drunk to simulate the slow response time, then try to navigate through your favorite modern windowing shell without using a mouse, tie the power cord to your ankle to simulate random rebooting that you somehow blame yourself for: exactly the same effect. For advanced nostalgia, futz with your monitor and display settings so everything's a shade of green and black.

  7. 5 million solders? I dont think so. by DaPhoenix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "The answer was two weeks later, when the Computerized Bulletin Board System first spun its disk, picked up the line and took a message."

    "Christensen wrote the BIOS and all the drivers (as well as the small matter of the bulletin board code itself), while Suess took care of five million solder joints and the odd unforeseen problem."

    Okay time for quick math.

    60 secs a min * 60 mins a hour * 24 hours a day * 14 days (a fortnight) = 1209600 seconds.

    5 million solders / 1209600 seconds = ~4.13 solders per second.

    Aint no way in hell he did that by hand.

    --
    -- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
    1. Re:5 million solders? I dont think so. by Mike1024 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey,

      Suess took care of five million solder joints and the odd unforeseen problem... 4.13 solders per second.

      Aint no way in hell he did that by hand.


      He did not do it all by hand,
      he did not do it with Ayn Rand,
      he did not do it for a band,
      he did not do it to command.

      He could have used a solder bath,
      that could have worked with your math,
      or may have used another path,
      for the figures which cause your wrath.

      Michael

      --
      "Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
  8. Re:my heroes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Think "meta" - route around the Internet.

    Work with your neighbors. Build a wireless network using the common pool of equipment. You're not allowed to let other people on the Internet through your connection (check your AUP - many ISPs say something like this), but nothing says you can't let them get to things on your own network!

    Start creating content that only exists on the 'wireless' side of your network. Get other people to do the same. When enough compelling content exists on the "other" net, people will find their own way to get to it.

    Incidentally, this also sidesteps another problem that many people face on their home connections: "no servers". You're serving inward, not outward, so that never becomes a problem.

    I ran a BBS from 1990 to 1999 and shut it down due to a lack of interest. The fundamental concept of a bulletin board where people post about stuff is still needed - stare at your monitor for awhile if you don't believe it. Bring it back at a neighborhood level and you'll find the community that's been waiting all this time.

  9. Never would have known... by cabra771 · · Score: 5, Funny

    that those damn people at Blizzard not only killed all my social skills by releasing Diablo and Diablo II, but now I learn that they got me hooked even earlier! Damn all those BBS's I used to visit!!!

    --

    -my other sig is your mom
  10. Re:One slow day in the news world... by jericho4.0 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'll back you on this.
    This is a dupe. From what? Three or four days ago. Yesterday we saw a multiple dupe about some interview Bill Gates gave 8 years ago.
    I realize I'm not paying anyone for the right to post this, but someone is paying the editors, no? Christ, start _trying_ to look like pros, at least. Take a fucking journalisim class and discover the concept of journalistic responsibility. I, for one, am tired of seeing dupes that anyone who actually reads the damn site could recognize.

    IMHO, slashdot needs to produce a mission statement that clearly states what slashdot is. Are you news? A gossip site? A bunch of kids playing in Mom's basement?

    I realize that 'go start you're own site if you don't like it' is a valid response to this post, but I simply don't understand the lack of professionalism I see here. We are talking about 20 posts a day kids, get with it.

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  11. Kids and Doors (True Story!) by romper · · Score: 5, Funny

    In the late 80's my parents took away the monitor to "ground" me from playing Tradewars 2002 on the local BBS.

    Of course I could blindly launch telemate from DOS and knew how to turn on the printer log and start the dial-up.

    The printer didn't even have ink! We had to read the carbon copy.

    You kids now with your fancy monitors and colors.

    --
    Right is wrong when left is right.
  12. It was GREAT! by xchino · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh man, I remember how great those days were. Sitting for hours on end chatting away, playing door games, downloading shareware, adn :)(&(& )_& (*
    *&_(P&*
    (*()*+ *A+S)(*D+)( *

    I(_A)SD*_)Id
    +++
    NO CARRIER

    --
    Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
  13. Usenet Born at the Same Time - Synchronicity by Futurian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The impetus to electronically intercommunicate was strong. Usenet was born in 1979, one year after the creation of the CBBS. I was an undergraduate at Duke at that time, and recall being shown a prototype of the project by Tom Truscott. The early messages included arcane comments about operating system programming for "Unix wizards". I told Tom it was excellent, but with my limited horizons I internally felt that the early games "adventure" and "Zork" were more exciting. In retrospect, Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis and the other creators captured the zeitgeist and deserve lavish praise. A full Usenet feed topped 500 gigabytes in 2002, a mind-boggling size circa 1979, and the leviathan keeps growing.

    Tom and Jim were great people. They were enthusiastic, friendly, and helpful even to a "lowly" undergraduate. They were always trying to improve Usenet and spoke extensively about how the data structures of the news program had to be redone. Even in 1979 more sophisticated structures were needed to scale up and handle the growing number of news articles. The Duke graduate school did not have a budget item for long distance telephone calls to swap Usenet news items. Luckily, Bell Labs charitably became a hub of the early network and subsidized the long distance calls.

    Jim Ellis enjoyed reading SF and his programming skill helped make one positive SF scenario, inexpensive fast electronic communication, come true. I never had a chance to thank him for all his help and for suggesting I read "Shockwave Rider" and "Forever War". Thanks - via the celestial internet.