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BBS Documentary Now Shipping
Prophetic_Truth writes "Jason Scott is now shipping his BBS Documentary, which consists of five and a half hours of episodes outlining the history of Bulletin Board Systems. On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS."
Oh come on, they weren't that bad...
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
We've hit a new low when a BBS documentary is more anticipated than Hollywood's best. No, wait...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It'd be fun to watch for the nostalgia value. Hordes of 80's greasy, long haired geeks with huge glasses (myself included
Trolling is a art,
Well the guy said it was licensed under Creative Commons so who's ponying up the $50 so we can mooch it?
I used to co-run a small local board using QuickBBS. Those were the days!!! We used to play some multiplayer game...Trade Wars? Galaxy Wars? Galaxy Trade wars? Whatever it was, I would log in every night at midnight to play my turns. It was early nerd-dom...
Yay, Jason!
This flies in the face of science.
Can we download the torrent using kermet?
BBS's were my life. Most of my interaction with other people outside of school was using them.
Too bad that as of Monday Slashdot no longer allows the blind to post without the help of someone that can see, or we might hear from more of us. Fortunately I had a relative that was over that could type-in that damn code from the image.
Just why is Slashdot so anti-blind? Did some blind girl dump Taco?
Is there really that much story there? Or did he just throw in as much stuff as he could find for fear of leaving something out? Not that a long movie doesn't have benefits, but the kitchen sink approach usually ends up feeling more like an academic lecture than an interesting film.
or make a website about. but a five and a half hour documentary? Pass the No-Doz
I'd no idea. I'd download it if it were free.
It remains to be seen if uuencoded pirated versions will be seen on fidonet...
As a sysop of one of the oldest BBSes in the world, I spoke with Jason early on regarding the project. Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it down to interview me but I think it's great that this project has finally come to fruitition and wish him all the best. I also want to say Hey to everyone who hit the Dungeon BBS in the early days.
A BBC documentary about what? I don't get it. There not even a title, or anyth. . .
Oh, nevermind.
I can't wait to get my BitTorrent copy!
I ran a BBS on a commodore 64 with 4 1541's (which I had to crack open and solder to change the drive number) and an SFD drive which held an amazing 4066 blocks! I ran the BBS with C-Net software. All this and more before I was 15.. those were the days.
P.S. I had to Phreak with MCI codes to get the best cracked games from across the country to lure in users.
I figure any chick would be horny out of her mind after 45 minutes of 300 baud delight. This thing is good for six or seven hookups.
Whats a BBS?
I ran a WWiV and Emulex/2 board from my parent's house back in the day. I think the # was 407-259-5286.
.GIF (or jif).
Anyway, those were the days. G-Files and waiting 30 minutes for a [hopefully] good X-rated
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Who remembers firing up the CCGMS term program on a C64 and waiting 30 mins to see some chick deficate in some other dudes mouth? Oh man, those were the days!!!
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
I really wish I had been old enough to actually use the BBS's. It would have been pretty fun to start out that way.
Instead, I had to start out with Compuserve, and then moved to AOL.
I figure its time to order the pizza and beer and get down to that basement.
One of the last remaining BBSes: SDF-1
I'm a member. I'm seventeen years old. I missed the golden age of the BBS. I must watch this documentary.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
Lessee...
*lists the users he had a crush on*
Diamond, Suicidal Heaven, Corky, Sassy.
Where are they now? Hm. Diamond married Deek. According to her bio page, SH is moving to Vegas. Corky is 20 years older than me.
Sassy broke up with me due to a three-year age difference. But she still lets me take her and her friends to movies. Yeah, that'll work. Wait...she still doesn't like computers.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I had been running BBS's back when I was like 14 years old.. had a Tradewars board called "Rebel Space" that ran Remote Access.. That later graduated into "Realm of Terror" and "Inquisition" running Renegade.. which turned into a discussion forum for all the Hackers, Phreakers and Pirates in the Portland area (it was primarily a message board with some online door games). Hell, I remember when leet speak was first damn invented! It was on my message board, I swear (ok maybe not)! I remember it vividly; someone started talking in wierd characters (forum post) and everyone else was trying to figure out what they was saying.. then someone else came on and knew what he was saying, then another.. then it cascaded from there.. this was back in the early to mid 90's.. Met a lot of cool guys.. went to a lot of parties, learned how to make free phone calls, got on all the hot Warez BBS's due to my "references" of all these "elite" people on my BBS... smoked a lot of pot.. met my first g/f (which still to date, was the best one I ever had, a cute geek girl - I'm such a FOOL!!) -Xlipse, AKA: Genocide
I ran Maximus first and then RABBS and played with many others. At first I did straight DOS but then with WFWG 3.11 I could run the bbs in a dos window and do other things.
I also was a Fidonet hub for my small town and there were a lot of people who subscribed to that. I think I had nearly 300 users at it's peak.
Sometimes I think of putting one together on a old box.. Really cool if I had my old Tandy 486SX 25mhz PC to run it all off of it's 14.4 modem.
Ahhh, FidoNet, and all those other networks that I can't even remember the names of.. Door games...
:)
Of course, this was before I was into *nix (Hmmm, just about the time Linus had the Linux twinkle in his eye).. I used DesqView, on my 486/33 packed with a whopping 4Mb ram (that cost about $150 per meg), and had 3 nodes. One was on a nice US Robotics Courier Dual Standard, and a couple cheapie ones.
I considered setting one back up, but then was like "why?".
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Yes, you should.
If she's into that, it might actually be worth the time you spend with her.
(Many women shy away from geeks. When they do, they're doing you a favor.)
Yeah most of those old BBS's have long since died a painful death due to the net. But some BBS's are still operating including our little pet BBS project at telnet://velvet.ath.cx. It's a C Based BBS running on OpenBSD. So for those of you missing the good old days telnet to velvet.ath.cx for your new home.
.. meetings.
Gonna be a film maker!
I thought blind people could see the code that underlies the real world.
Back when I used my older brothers ATARI 1200XL and 1200baud modem my friend Matt posted my home phone number on a bunch of BBS reviews saying that I ran an awesome BBS that had 50+ MB of pirated games. My phone rang all day and at all hours of the night for a week. Everytime we picked up the phone it would give us the piercing modem squawk! My Mom was so pissed!
On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS.
Does this make him more geeky or less geeky?
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Being a typical nerd/geek/whatever type guy, I was into BBS's in a big way in the 80's and early 90's. Things like fidonet and the other 'home grown' systems developed were way ahead of their time IMHO. But I have to say - 5 1/2 hours of documentary? I fully accept my place in the very minority of people who like the technology. In the whole of Australia there would have been what - 10,000 bbs users? Maybe less, out of a population of 20M. I imagine the ratios would be the same in other countries. Hey, the doco will interest me (if it ever airs here), but 19,990,000 people are going to watch some other channel for those hours.
which used off-hours capacity on Telenet to tunnel your session to a modem bank in the same city as the BBS. It was a clever idea with a reasonable flat fee, promptly taken advantage of by Usenet sites transferring multi-megabyte news feeds.
(This is all back when long distance still cost money).
You're joking, but I heard this guy speak at HOPE and apart from his choice of shirts it was a great talk. He really knows what he's talking about and he's dedicated to the project; he mentioned having to use a flashbulb to read dot-matrix printouts of the first few months of posts on the first BBS because the ink had faded by now.
The talk ("Preserving Digital History") is availible here.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
I remember being at a party with my geek friends, getting off our face and checking out pr0n. Took about 15 - 20 mins to download a single jpg on the 2400bps modem. Half-way through the night, a mate drove home and brought his shiny 9600bps modem back... We were then able to download our pr0n in about 5 mins !!! We were stoked !!!!
I've been following (from a distance) the progress of this documentary, and look forward to seeing the final product. 5 1/2 hours is a lot, but at least you get the chance to pick and choose what you want to see. I believe the guy had an unbelievable amount of source material - to trim it down to a just an 80 minute DVD would have been a waste.
:)
Time to reminisce: I grew up on a diet of BBSes - my first venture online was to a system run by BT (well, the Post Office back then) called Prestel (Micronet 800 or Viewfax 258 anyone?). I had a V23 modem - a full 1200bps downstream and 75bps upstream. Yes, 75bps. About a character per second. Type too fast, and you had to wait for it to catch up with you. Went through a slew of different modems (Hayes, Supra etc), and different BBSes, though I never ran my own. And it was through a BBS that I had my first taste of the Internet... many years ago. There was a whole generation of people (albeit on a much smaller scale than the Internet) addicted to being online - seeing the sign-on for WildCat! scrolling across you screen was like a good fix
Oh, for the curious amongst you, the subject of this comment is the FidoNet address my old local BBS...
Back in the BBS days I used to play a game on an old Apple II BBS that involved running around space trading stuff for credits. Unfortunately, I can't remember its name. Anybody out there know it?
Posted from the wireless couch.
Just out of curiousity, any other CBBS old timers read ./?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I remember setting up Pup BBS from Tom of FIDONet fame, Here in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) internet was non existant for the masses, so BBS was huge and most of them were free ratio based ones... then after that I moved to RA (could not configurate the damn thing) and moved to PCBoard. Heck those days were more fun than the internet will ever be! Stealing time from other users in the time bank, playing BRE... heck if someone setup a Telnet old school bbs or a dial-up one near me I'd sure move in!
-- Por mais que eu ande no vale das trevas e da morte, meu PowerMac G4 Não Travará!!!
Get it up on Amazon and I'll gladly buy a copy. Sorry, but it's too much of a pain to sign up for all these different e-stores, give them your credit card number, and keep track of all that.
But one thing that is lost from those old days is being part of a much more exclusive group. In the early 80s, NOBODY knew about computers 'cept us geeks. It was a tiny community and everyone knew (or knew of) everyone. All those names in the teaser trailer? Yup, I heard of 'em all, just about. So the one thing we don't have today is the small community. But that's OK. It just means the cool tech we discovered early is now being enjoyed by everyone.
Still, I do miss seeing the ASCII-art Fido dog...
Honestly, that sold me.
FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec
But not the last. The Telnet BBS Guide lists about 100 active dial-up, and 400 Telnet BBS services.
gfsdfsdg fdsfa sdaf fdsafsdafsd
In some ways, I preferred the days of the BBS to the modern internet. It was easier to get together with the local geeks and freaks, and to have something of a social life based around the nerdvana of computers, comics, and sci-fi.
Back then, tho, I'd have given my eyeteeth for Usenet access... it was available at $95 for a dial-up shell across the state, out of reach broke-ass art student. Then a local ISP opened up, with shell accounts for $25/month. Woo! Usenet was almost everything I had hoped it would be, and then the Long September came and burned it all to the ground. By then all the local BBS's were out of the game, because the sysops used their extra line for internet access rather than running the BBS.
No point to all this, really. Just waxing nostalgic.
SoupIsGood Food
Wow, havn't even thought of BBS systems in some years. I used to run a BBS system from my Apple //e running GBBS "Pro". It was a very, very nice environment for an Apple //e (ran on ProDOS, and the software was pretty much BASIC with additional commands to handle the modem I/O interface, message board database, etc. - it was also compiled into a form of pseudo-code which ran really fast too). I was never able to find out much about the author/company though.
// hardware died, then migrated across to DLG on my Amiga 500. Unfortunately the hardware (SCSI interface) on the 500 was a bit flaky which didn't help that the machine locked-up occasionally, but I ran the system for another couple of years on that.
Ran that until my Apple
The GBBS days were by far the most popular though - the phone was busy nearly 24hrs a day every day, the most popular online "hangout" in the city at the time.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
When I was in high school, I ran my first BBS, originally on an Apple using Net-works (circa 1979), then later under TRSDOS I wrote my own custom BBS software.. it used to call me in the morning on the modem to wake me up to go to school. From there I went to the IBM PC when it became available and cycled through a bunch of software including various home-brew systems, then hooked into Fidonet and got into using echos (the predecessor to usenet).
Anyone remember Hell in NYC? The original hacker system?
How about Penn & Tellers early BBS? When you connected the first message you got was something like "click here to re-format your hard drive".
Big props to Wes Mier of Walnut Creek... one of the early major sources for great software, and a major distribution point for the shareware I wrote which ultimately ended up giving me a means by which I could support myself independently.
Too many people to thank or recognize... but it's great to know that the BBS days are not forgotten. I ran my BBS from 1979 until about 1990. Kids these days don't know how cool it used to be. It wasn't so easy in the early days to be "wired."
I'd bet a heap of Slashdotters have a spare land line that they don't use. It'd be great if people started using them for BBSes again -- not all virtual communities need to be connected to the Interweb.
1)I would pay up to $30, $50-60 is way to much. Star Wars movies are $10 a piece and are much harder to make (millions of $ spent, a lot of time, etc)
2)DVDs purchased from Amazon are usually cheaper than in other places. In this case Amazon charges $10 more ($60) Why?
1. Starting out BBSing on a TI-99/4A in 1989. It was even then outdated to use, but it worked in 40 column glory.
2. Using it as an outlet to meet girls, and it actually worked out.
Ah those were the days.
wonder if this show is captioned for the deaf and those who work out in the gym? Would be neat if this is captioned as there were a lot of us deaf people running bbs back then as well.
What is a BBS?
It's a bulletin board system.
To put it in perspective for the younger kids...
It's like a computer without a graphical interface.
It's like Unreal Tournament, except instead of fragging people, you interact with them and learn things.
BZZT! Wrong!
Elite BBS
0-day warez only
1200+ BPS Only
Invite Only
Greetz go out to FBR, TRIAD, Eaglesoft Inc, FAIRLIGHT...
b%$^&#%@...+++NO CARRIER
My god, what has the world come to? LOL was fine. ROFLMAO...I could tolerate. But now we're on ROTS and HHGTG?!
No! I will not stand for this!
(out of curiosity, what does HHGTG stand for?)
BBSes are not dead. Actually there has been a resurge as of late with telnet BBSes resurfacing. These are actual Commodore/Apple/Atari systems running the BBS software us Old Timers know and love (Ivory, CNet, CGBBS, etc)via telnet instead of dialup. You can get more information including petscii client software to use for Commodore color BBSes at http://www.telbbs.com/ Enjoy
Jason's been working on the documentary for four years.
This is an interview with Jason Scott at the beginning where he explains the goals and the reasons why he did it.
It has sliding windows. Just remember to ARJ it first and turn off modem compression.
+++ATH0
OK
ATDT teh.intarweb
NO CARRIER
wtf???!! Hey Mom, get off the phone!
It's not quite the same, but for what it's worth there are still some BBS's operating that are available via Telnet. Check out here for a listing.
* hands over pocket protector shaped trophy *
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Out of all the stories I've posted in, I think this is the most appropriate.
I decided to set my BBS back up after I saw a segment on AoTS on G4 (which I won't be watching too much longer now that K.Rose is going away).
telnet://sinep.gotdns.com
If someone has a copy of OS/2 4 in english they don't want any longer, I'll be happy to pay shipping for it! (just had to do a major repair to my car and then buy a new lawn mower so I can't afford the prices going on eBay)
Once I get my hands on a copy of OS/2, I can put the BBS on the hardware it was meant for -- a Dual PPro @ 200mhz I've got sitting in my spare room/storage area.
Read muh journal!
bork bork bork!
I have had the privilege of seeing about half of this documentary in workprint form, and I was impressed by how riveting it actually is. I am 31, was weaned on the BBS era, and I do think this documentary will have particular appeal to those for whom there is the nostalgia factor. For them, I guarantee multiple moments of slack jawed "oh my god, I remember that person!" For the younger crowd interested enough to be reading this thread, I still wholeheartedly recommend it. The interviewed subjects are animated, opinionated, and visibly emotional. As others have said, this truly was a labor of love for Jason Scott. He has plenty of philanthropic acts planned for the raw footage, and it's hard to put a price tag on his passion and time spent. If you can afford it, it's one for the library.
I ran citadel-86 for several years... I've still got that hard drive, but I have no idea how to get it going again... Any ideas for at least copying data from an old MFM hard drive?
I'll definitely be purchasing a copy. You could say that I have an obligation to
It may be a part of history, but I dare say that the BBS lives on. There are still quite a number of bulletin boards, both traditional dial-up and telnet, alive and well in the world. My mailbox is flooded with:
As further proof, the crew at G4's Attack of the Show have started their own multi-node dial-up WWIV bulletin board. I donated a set of doorgame registrations (though they only had a few installed at the time the show aired) to get them started.
Though, I'm sure it's nowhere near as extensive as the documentary mentioned here,
I could just imagine the pre-teens sitting on the other side of the tube thinking: "That's lame, the graphics are way to pixelated!"
I'm probably going to regret this (or rather, my server will), but I encoded the segment and stuck it online if anyone is interested in seeing it:
http://johndaileysoftware.com/other/g4aots/
Now it's time I get back to working on those door games.
I've noticed a few here want to Torrent this BBS documentary. Before you do, check out the directors (Jason Scott) web site (bbsdocumentary.com) and consider purchasing a nice brand spankin' new copy! It looks like he's personally put in at least 3 years and a whack of dough making this film. I'm sure he would appreciate the support as much as we will likely appreciate his efforts on this project (I haven't seen it yet!) No, I don't work for the RIAA or the MPAA, I'm not a cop and I'm not a priest. And as far as BitTorrent, I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I haven't donated to the BT project as of yet! Just check out his site before you leech the film, that's my 0000 0010 cents.
I was one of the people interviewed in this documentary. One of the things Jason always found interesting was that I was the one who at every phase of production was constantly reminding him that BBS's are not in any way a thing of the past. Dialup is dead, but BBS's live on. I haven't seen the final product yet, but I hope he's managed to convey this message successfully.
Those of us who still frequent BBS's know that it's still the best way to stay in touch with groups of people. BBS's are still home to some of the best online communities on the Internet, and now the BBS tradition is even providing an unconventional but surprisingly effective solution for groupware applications.
For those of you who aren't currently part of a BBS community, I'd strongly urge you to go out there, find one that you like, and make some friends. Log in every day. Keep the discussions going. The "modern" Internet has been trying (unsuccessfully) to re-create for a decade what the BBS has always provided. It's the people that matter most, and nothing connects people to each other better than a BBS.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I'm looking for a BBS on which I can play me some Trade Wars Gold or standard Trade Wars 2002. Does anyone know of a good telnet BBS to which I can connect my poor self?
I never used BBSes back in their heyday, because I was a youngin. But I am wondering, to what extent are they like current forum systems, did people post messages and so on or were they more like usenet?
Jason
http://www.virtualvillagesquare.com/ Online Communities: The Next Generation
Yay, I've been waiting patiently for my copy which is over five and a half months late, but I know it will be worth it. Jason Scott is to be commended; he has put his heart and soul into this documentary and I hope he sure makes a profit on it.
Sounds like the start of Grand Theft Auto or something.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
test et set set
http://www.textfiles.com/apple/PIRACY/bye.mnlghtn
#34 x The Bronze Rider 04/20/89 NJ Sysop: Hard Rock Cafe
I would imagine not, since you never paid to educate yourself on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. If you are cheap enough to allow yourself to come across as a blithering idiot because you won't take your sorry ass to the community college...Why would anyone expect you to pay for entertainment?
Welcome to geekdom--where all things are measured against that singular barometer of joy which is Star Wars.
gtfo
Hot damn, how long will that take to download with kermit at 75 baud over an acoustic coupler on a phone handset?
Oh well, what the hell...
Jason Scott is on the Telephreak voice bridge right now. http://www.telephreak.org/ At the IVR press #2
My setup was an IBM XT Clone, with 640k of ram, dual 5 1/4 inch 360k floppies, 2400bps modem, CGA (Crap Graphics Adapter), and about DOS3.1 to 3.3 in my heyday. I lived in a large city, and we had many local high-quality BBSes around, I was even a co-sysop for one of them. At the time, most BBSes could only handle one caller at a time, and they were often busy. A BBS session consisted of the terminal software going through the various BBS numbers and dialing them all over and over again until it got through.
Once you got on, you would check and respond to your messages, take your turn at any multiplayer games, and then download and upload files. Most had ratios - so you had to contribute as well - this was stricly enforced, so even before BBSes got sophisticated and called each other at night to sync up, files spread like wildfire.
I remember some kind of phone-scam system as well, where you could dial into a special BBS and it would allow you to dial long distance for free - it connected the call for you. I used it just a few times to check it out, using it to call BBSes in LA, I think...
Most BBSes had time limits as well, and some even had time banks - if you signed off early, you could deposit your time in a bank, where it would accumulate interest, allowing you to manage your time wisely and stay on longer.
I started off using Procom+, but switched to Telix. Telix was DesqView-aware, meaning it could actually multitask well. Most DOS console apps wrote directly to the "screen" for speed, but this would wreck the more primitive multitasking tools such as DoubleDos. Alternatively, some featured a "BIOS call" option, meaning they played nice with the screen at the expense of severe slowness. Telix was able to do both - being aware of the environment it was running in, it was able to write directly to the screen, while being aware of DesqView - hence, no botched up display and near full speed.
In those single-user days, if you were on a BBS or trying to get onto one, your PC was totally busy. DesqView changed all that for me.
I could actually download files with Telix while I played graphical games, though DesqView did suspend graphical apps when you switched out of them, at least the primitive ancient version I had...
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Am I the only guy that can't help but read "ROTS" as "Rolling on the Sith"?
That quote is pretty blatant astroturf if I ever saw it.
I've met Jason Scott at a slashdot "meetup" (when they first started, haven't been to a single one since) and I kid you not- the guy monopolized the conversation, steering it at every chance he could to his favorite topic. Guess what that is? He is deeply in love with himself (hence the link to the "director" in the story itself, just in case you couldn't find it on your own), and he's been a Slashdot user for years- not Some Joe who just happened to get his project mentioned on Slashdot.
Jason, I hope you read this. I wouldn't have anything to complain about if the story had read "I've just completed my documentary about BBS's, here's more info, it's available for purchase starting..." Don't try and pull a fast one, because you're very bad at it.
Please help metamoderate.
>slashdot I can't wait!
Yup, Slashdot is in a lineage of threaded discussion forums - including BBSes, Fidonet, CompuServe and Usenet - where, for better or worse, I've hung out for almost 20 years. The obvious downside is the timesink. But on the upside, I've learned a lot, I've often been entertained, and I've had a soapbox from which to make remarks that I sometimes felt were appreciated by others.
One advantage the old BBS forums had was their sense of community. The communities were often local, and even when they were international (as on CompuServe's forums) the number of active participants was small enough that you got to know many of the members' personalities, and to feel that you were known to others. On Slashdot, I must admit I don't have that awareness of individual identities, except for a couple editors. There are so many participants here, and so many articles I don't read, I just haven't noticed who "the regulars" are, and I don't feel like one myself.
On the other hand, the huge variety of posts on Slashdot produces more gems than the BBSes yielded. Quantity and quality tend to trump community.
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.
It's like an AE line, except with a message base.
PW=KILL
There's still a bit of a Viewdata BBs revival going on - CCl4 still has the ability to log in via a java client (their bit on the revival is here).
Sadly, Heaven isn't running at the moment but maybe it'll be back soon.
Smegma.
Do you really think you can read faster than 1200 baud? What's the point of a faster modem?
I must say that Jason did an excellent job on this documentary. Not only is the content really good, but he actually uses the DVD format to full advantage. 2 subtitle tracks - one with the text of what's being said, but the other one with useful information. At least 2 audio tracks - one with the interview audio, one with Jason's commentary (which is actually very informative). The chapter that I started to watch last night I think had 3 audio tracks, but I haven't quite gotten to that yet.
This DVD set was well worth the wait.
Back in 1994, I was Sysop of a two nodes 14.4 BBS... I ran a BBS with an ANSI interface (Wildcat BBS or something) and a Windows interface (Excalibur BBS).
;-) ).
Olivier
After two years, This BBS was sold to an early ISP. I had to pay a debt owned to a local phone operator. I kept only 50 US$.
They used it to help early internet customers. early customers downloaded softwares like "mosaic", eudora, Winsock stuff, etc.
I was a very bad business (my first) but I was a great personal experience.
I was fascinating to see people chatting on my computer (well no more than two users but hey! It was fantastic
In 1989 I was a Sysop while most of you were still pissing in your pants screaming for your mommy to come help you. Some of you weren't even born.
It was fun back then. It's not fun anymore. What went wrong?
I have good karma, but I have to enter the code. Just because I don't spend all day karma whoring? They need to get a fucking clue. It's not even easy to read the code.
Any torrents for this DVD set?
A moment of silence for CNet Amiga.
I ran a CNet Amiga BBS from the early 90's till 99. It started out with one line on an Amiga 2000 and ended up with 10 lines running on a single Amiga 4000 (which I still have, by the way). Overall it was a really well written software package.
Kallisti Gold BBS
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Is it just me that's annoyed when people talk about baud as it was the speed of the modem? Baud is the modulation, the speed is measured in bits per second.
I.e a 2400bps modem used 1200 baud.
How hard can it be?
//TheToon
There is some footage of the documentary in Infonomicon Tv episode 3. http://infonomicon.org/video.html
Be warned. The first hour and a half is just attempting to get an open line, get connected, get logged-in, and finally get through all the entrance ads.
The comment has already been made. Let's move it along people. Nothing to see here.
I used to run a BBS in Ottawa called the Holodeck. I used the MajorBBS SW from Galacticomm, which cost $$$ "back in the day" (early 90s) but had LOTS of cool crap, kind of the Cadillac of BBSes. I spent weeks with the ANSI editor to get a semi-animated TNG control panel feel to it (I remember propping up one Star Trek fan magazine or another that had semi-decent pictures of different Bridge consoles next to my monitor and then trying to translate those to blocky chunks of ANSI). After a while my internal visual representation of the world began to resemble a Seurat painting, only with just 8 colors.
By far the coolest thing I set up was a 3rd party SW module (I'd have to go spelunking in my basement to find the name of it) that would allow you to coordinate multiple simultaneous DOOM clients (and games), up to the limit of how many phone lines you had coming in. I vaguely recall that each game could have an associated lounge to hook up & talk trash. My brain exploded with possibilities and possession lust when word of this first hit the Galacticomm scene.
Why? If you were a DOOM junkie, you had already played 2-way games via modem (null or otherwise). If you were really lucky, you also ran your company's Novell IPX-based network at the time and got to enjoy 4-way super-speedy DOOM Deathmatch, until you realized that the early DOOM releases used broadcast for client communication and you killed your network during business hours so then you had to explain how the Novell server "glitched" but you fixed it with your |-rad skillz and it probably wouldn't happen again. And then you had to play only after hours. All this is hypothetically speaking in reference to a hypothetical DOOM junkie.
So with that desperate, craving DOOM junkie background in mind, you can imagine how cool it was to discover the means to hook up with a 4-player game FROM YOUR COMPUTER AT HOME. Not only to discover the means, but to PROVIDE IT. I was micturating with borderline grand mal seizure glee the moment I got the BBS multiplayer SW set up and had some friends dial in to test it. It worked! A little choppy compared to the LAN (duh) but still...4 of us!!!
After that, the BBS kind of transcended "classic" BBSness. It went from being a fairly cool-themed message/sw/FIDO site (Z-modem! Wooo!) to the local oasis, and I mean oasis in the sense of a scarce resource over which competitors (metaphorically) tried to obliterate each other in attempts for possession. There were only 4 lines (best I could afford) and it was fascinating to watch the mechanisms to obtain and keep control evolve. First, it started with semi-amicable timeslot booking in the message areas. As word spread and the user count grew, this fell apart quickly since people deep into the blood lust weren't going to quit a game on schedule. Then the subterfuges began. Fake time booking. Getting your friends to call in (even without a computer) to try and hold lines open (that didn't last long as a tactic, for obvious reasons). Leaving computers logged in all day. Strobing the lines in the off chance that someone would lose carrier and you could get a toe-hold onto the system (the idea being that as more people fell out of a game, eventually the last little Big-Endian would get cheesed and split and the others could kick off THEIR game). At some point I remember checking the server logs and seeing constant activity even through the stupid hours of the morning. I wondered how much was gameplay and how much was holding action.
It was great, reverting-to-feral-cats kind of fun. Thinking back, I coulda got a psych or sociology paper out of it. But the best thing of all...was getting the urge for some deathmatch and bouncing the online players so my buds could dial in...and then reading the messages the next day. But they still kept coming back...
All things are possible with everything.
Um... It was a parody on the spelling of parity. Yeah. That's the ticket.
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-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
ahh, Telix, bi directional transfers, ansi, 0day warez.
Physical Graffiti anyone ?
Flying Teapot ?
(uk)
No, the trolls didn't do it, unless the logged into Slashdot and changed the code or held a gun to Taco's head. He is responsible for this. He is the one that hates the blind.
Normally I'd say $50 is a fucking rip off, blah blah... But in this case, it's quite fair. Jason has spent the past several YEARS of his life doing this on his own dime, with his own car, own equipment, etc. and with what has to be a very forgiving employer... This guy was nuts enough to come out and interview about 250 of us crackpots who made the BBS scene what it was (and probably had a hand in propelling the internet to what it is today). Then he stuck with it, and compiled all the BULLSHIT that we talked about down to about 7 hours of real stuff...
That this guy could make any sort of sense out of what we've all said and put it into something coherent that the public could understand deserves a fucking award of some sort in my book.
If you read the news portion of his site, he worked his ass off day and night to keep his commitment to the community to produce this thing. Yes it was several months late, but at least it wasn't VAPORWARE...
I just finished watching the whole thing, and it's engrossing to say the least. If you can't afford $50 for the cool custom DVD case, 3 DVD's, autograph, and creative commons-licensed video and open source audio, then drop him a note and offer to pay what you can - after you download the thing...
But I'm serious here - if you've lived thru the BBS era, this is one of those gotta have's that will bring back loads of memories, and perhaps even help to explain to friends and family what you were doing all those late nights...