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7 hour BBS Documentary Nearly Ready
spyrochaete writes "Jason Scott, proprietor of textfiles.com, is nearing completion of his 3-DVD, 7 hour documentary on the history of the BBS. This documentary is 3 years in the making and is a patchwork of nearly 250 interviews spanning hundreds of hours. Trailers and samples are available for download (also available in low quality for you 300 BAUDers out there). Pre-order before Nov. 10 and you can submit a paragraph to be included on a file on one of the DVDs."
Awww yeah! Let me dust off my terminex and dialup some RENEGADE BBS. Remember how systems would brag about having a 14.4Kbps modem like it was the greatest thing. Remember leaving your phone off the hook so you could use your own computer that you were hosting a bbs off of? Everyone thought you had the most popular board. What ever happened to insane utopia in the 703??
What about Tradewars!!! The Star-Trek ripoff was the greatest game ever! I used to play every single minute I could on every BBS that I could!
Find Nearby Indie Events
RIP graphics did that (worked with galacticomm's majorbbs -- i dont know if other systems had it).
It didn't take off too well, though.
I was in high school at the time when the author was "beta-testing" it on the local board I called. I bashed it pretty hard as it didn't add any functionality and was fairly bloated.
I felt bad about that when I found out the guy (Tim Stryker) later killed himself.
The author of this video has said he'll release the complete, unedited interviews of I believe everyone to Archive.org about a year after the DVD is released. Now, if only the authors of Revolution OS would do the same thing.
I'm Scruffy.
BBS's are not dead. Dialup is dead, but the BBS lives on. BBS's have moved to the Internet, where they are still some of the most close-knit online communities you can find. What some people don't seem to realize about online communications is that it's the people that matter. Not files, not banner ads, not warez, not even most of what passes for "content" on most big commercial sites these days.
No other environment is quite as "folksy" as a BBS. Why do people post in the comments section on Slashdot? Because it's people reaching out and connecting with other people. We in the BBS community have never lost sight of that basic tenet, and that's why we log on to our favorite boards, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. To talk to real people.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Steven Hawkings A Brief History of time
Technically it's: Errol Morris's "A Brief History of Time" which is about Stephen Hawking.
Stephen Hawking didn't make the documentary. He wrote the book, certainly, but typically the director not the writer gets the credit.
I highly recommend all of Errol Morris's documentaries. My favorites are Fog of War, Mr. Death, Brief History of Time, and Gates of Heaven. I haven't seen the others.
Well, BBSs aren't dead yet...even if you aren't running at 300bps! :)
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
Hello,
I am a bit surprised to see all of the comments treating Bulletin Board Systems as if they no longer existed or were a thing of the past.
While they heyday of the BBS is over, they definitely do still exist. The USBBS list documents hundreds (thousands?) of BBS systems, most of which are available by telnet access these days.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
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
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Bit rate is the number of bits transmitted per second (duh). Baud rate is the number of symbols transmitted per second (also called the symbol rate).
When one bit is transmitted per symbol (ie, BPSK), then the bitrate is the same as the baudrate. When two or more bits are transmitted per symbol (ie, QPSK, QAM, etc), then the baudrate is slower than the bitrate.
All of the digicomm engineers I have worked with avoid the term baudrate, and use symbol rate instead, to avoice confusion.
The Bell 103 modems (110 and 300 baud modems) used FSK, where two tones are used (one for 0 and one for 1), so the baudrate was the same as the bitrate.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
There was no Internet, but there was a loyal Fido serving us.
:)
Still remember logging on to BBS, receiving the first New Year Celebration message on 9 AM, new year's eve. The guy sent it from Australia, already at night !
I replied to the message, and it arrived at his BBS 6 hours later, and he was STILL awake !
Yep, at least 2 guys hadn't had anything better to do during New Year's Day (in Australia) and New Year's Eve (in America) !
The feeling is gone now. No comeraderie anymore in the Net age.
One time I was pushed to become the temporary moderator for the FLAME group, and oh yeah, I was flamed to crisp ! For whatever's worth, it was fun, Fun, FUN !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Jason Scott appears to have done a very good job with this documentary. Don't let the 7 hour number scare you, it is broken into 7 different parts that cover different things... For instance, there is 1 hour devoted to the underground scene and ansi art scene..
Once I saw the preview it did dawn on me how much there really was to cover. It seemed well presented, and probably STILL not complete!
From those that were around in the BBS days... Do you remember the Dual Standard HST craze? Telegard 2.5 and 2.7, FidoNet and crashmail... OOFNet and THG, ACiD and iCE, that horrible RIP graphics garbage... and of course the true community the local BBSes provided that is generally lacking with the global internet?
I saw the preview of the film @ Defcon, and also saw Jason speak @ 5th Hope about preserving media. It is interesting, as the project I tried to deliver to 5th hope was a video archive system --- collecting as much video content related to the underground computer world as possible, and delivering it on demand. Good news is the archive is growing -- bad news is there is still millions of news casts and other "reports" that I don't have... if anyone has old VHS/Beta tapes related to anything involving computers or telecom, please let me know. My last big milestone was the Whiz Kids tv series from 84! Also found Hack Attack, aired on Disc in 94... Very interesting stuff. Whiz Kids floored me, as the technologies exploited in this 1984 tv series were so ahead of their time, including Motorola MDT and DOT signs!! Crazy stuff.
Where was I, oh yes-- 7 x 1 hour documentaries , each covering a different aspect/portion of the BBS scene! Watching the preview, I wanted to immediately see the whole thing. I can't speak for everyone, but I personally have been eager for the release of his work. He also stated that in a year or two the cuts that hit the floor during editing will be given to the archive.org folks. Very very cool!
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Baud is not an acronym. iirc
That is correct, baud is named after the inventor of Baudot Code, Émile Baudot.
ironicly thats how its presented
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+