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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."
A) Most reader programs can understand the code you have to enter by the fourth try.
B) Make an account, we don't have to enter any code unless we have horrible Karma.
C) It's being done to try to stop the crapflooding, but because of A it doesn't work very well.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Bulletin Board System. It's how people communicated before the internet became popular. It was usually between locals
telnet velvet.ath.cx
tHe sHacK! bBS (telnet://velvet.ath.cx)
OMG, shoot me. It was the internet for us poor kids that didn't go to college (or weren't old enough) to get on the real internet.
BBS is an acronym for Bulletin Board System. It was a server with modems that people would dial into. It ran special software that served up files, forums, and even email gateways to real internet in some cases.
Since you had to call into them and pay toll charges (to access the really good BBS'es that were Long Distance [or LD if you're nasty]), Beige Boxes, Blue Boxes, and Red Boxes were popular.
Besides, when you jacked into your neighbors phone line, you didn't have to worry about your parents getting pissed 'In case someone has to call the house in an emergency'.
Fun times, yessiree! Ah, the memories (and 8-bit mammaries).
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
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.
But not the last. The Telnet BBS Guide lists about 100 active dial-up, and 400 Telnet BBS services.
It'd be fun to watch for the nostalgia value. Hordes of 80's greasy, long haired geeks with huge glasses (myself included :)) freaking out about how much faster 1200 baud is over the old 110/300.
That's a tired and inaccurate stereotype. And there were no 1200 baud modems, just 300 baud modems that many users incorrectly identified as such because they thought bit rate and baud rate synonymous. But I've been interrupted while posting this so there are likely twenty posts pointing that out already, eh? ;-)
The only thing I really miss about the BBS days is hobbyist network messaging. FidoNet netmail and echomail had a far better signal to noise ratio -and probably still do- than anything I've yet seen on the 'net.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
This documentary was released under the Creative Commons! That means that it's not only legal, but ENCOURAGED to redistribute the video for free in any way you wish. It's like downloading a GPL application -- there is absolutely no moral argument whereby you should feel guilted into paying money.
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'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.
It is a Creative Commons Attribute-Sharealike 2.0 license.
Actually, Bell 202s were true 1200 baud, and Bell 201 2400 bps modems used a 1200 baud encoding system as well. V.26 (ITU 2400 bps spec) is 1200 baud too.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)