Slashdot Mirror
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.
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,
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?
It remains to be seen if uuencoded pirated versions will be seen on fidonet...
I can't wait to get my BitTorrent copy!
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 know you meant that as a joke, but if you do download it somewhere and enjoy it, do the right thing a buy a copy on disc. This guy has done something really gutsy making his own documentary (it's not easy or cheap), and we should all be supporting his effort with our wallets. If we don't support the artists in our own community, they won't go out on a limb for us anymore.
</preaching>
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to search through wachovia.csv for a new credit card number.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
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
But not the last. The Telnet BBS Guide lists about 100 active dial-up, and 400 Telnet BBS services.
Absolutely, but just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you SHOULD. If you watch the first hour and say "this isn't for me", then that's fine... but if you spend five hours of your time enjoying it... freely-distributable or not, you should consider paying for it. You're thinking of the "enforced" morals that Hollywood pushes... these are your basic citizen's morals, where you pay for what you enjoy because it's the right thing to do.
I'm not saying you NEED to pay for it, I'm saying you need to clear your mind of all the push-and-pull nonsense you're used to with movies and DVDs, and think of it as "you and this guy's documentary". Evaluate and proceed.
Most of us here are relatively well-off (we can afford video games and Sith screenings at midnight). If we don't start really supporting our own community (both in entertainment and software) we're going to relegate ourselves to hobbyist producers, rather than a professional alternative market. Here's someone who put his money where his mouth is, and we should strongly consider following suit.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
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.