Slashdot Mirror
Hundreds of Hours of BBS Documentary Interviews
Jason Scott writes "Hi, this is Jason Scott, director of the BBS Documentary, a 4 year project to tell the story of the dial-up bulletin board systems of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The documentary's out, for sale, and is completely Creative Commons licensed. But like most documentaries, there's tons of stuff left on the cutting room floor. And that just won't do.
I'm happy to announce that I have partnered with archive.org to present what will be hundreds of hours of interviews online. The BBS Documentary Interview Collection will be extended edits of the 205 interviews I conducted, presented as video and audio files, along with ZIP archives of all the photos and supporting materials for that interview. And of course, every minute is Creative Commons licensed as well.
It's going to take me upwards of half a year to edit and upload the half-terabyte of files; I hope people watch a few hours here and there to get an even deeper knowledge of the history of the BBS, or maybe even make a documentary of their own."
The irony is... Back in the day (when BBS were most popular), one interview would have taken weeks to download. The comp geeks were runnin on Amiga's or Vic-20's with a 300baud Hayes modem.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Wanna come back to my place and check out a BBS documentary?
Congratulations to Jason Scott for this amazing accomplishment. There is a lot of history and nostalgia in his documentary that would have been lost otherwise.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
You're not uploading them to a BBS too are you?
The world goes on...
"ever run a dupe story?"
"oh, a few hundred give or take"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I participated in the BBS "scene" for awhile, and one thing that I truly miss is the sense of community. I got to know several fellow BBS'ers, and many would hang out regularly outside of the computer realm. We even had a yearly cookout at a local park where dozens would show up from around the area. ... to the good'ol days... ...
I guess I was a bit of a late comer to the BBS scene. I started in 1990, and started running my own in 1994 (and it ran until 1997.) I do miss those days, though, everything was a lot more personal with everything being so localized. We used to arrange a lot of 2600 meetings on my BBS. I actually knew a large amount of my user base, at least as associates if not being pretty friendly with them.
rm -rf
Wow, it's great to hear that the BBS Docu's have been released. If there's one thing missing from the early years of Cyberia, it's a comprehensive look at the beginnings of what it meant to be online, and digital - especially with respect to the manufacture of digital personalities.
Now, it's all too common to read about "life online" - so much so, in fact, that where many of us have come from is often forgotten. Life in the digital - life that we all share - is not just life, but more a shared heritage & it's great that a glimpse of that heritage has been released... -d!
what does that mean? creative commons offer many different licences, from public domain like, through open source, to closed, proprietary licences. That statement does not convey any useful info.
Deliriant isti Americani.
The best thing about BBSing was the games! Any fellow LORD or Usurper players out there? Can these be considered precursers to the MMORPG's of today?
Many hours wasted playing those darn text games...
I got nothin'
As an ex-sysop, I wonder occasionally how a modern chatter would do on an old style BBS.
/+ops ....
WWIV-Menu>
==SYSOP Chat Mode Activated==
Sysop: Hey, i need to take the bbs off for a minute to get fido.
User: asl?
Sysop: It'll just be down for a few minutes, call back later, ok?
User: wtf hax?
Sysop: Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. I've got to reboot too, so I'm going to disconnect you.
User: omfg hax, wtf is tis, spiware? a55h013!
Sysop: Do you require medical assistance? I've got your address on record from the age-check, would you like me to call a medic?
User: roflroflflfoolol who r u
Sysop: If you're having a seizure, don't worry, the ambulance will be there soon. I'm on my parent's phone line right now.
User: wqho are u????
Sysop: I'm the sysop of this BBS. Can you breath?
User: +OPS!!!!!!
Sysop: The 911 operator wants me to stay in chat with you until the medics get there.
User: stfu, how do I gt ops???
Sysop: Er, you don't.
User: dudez you got ops, why not for me?
Sysop: Actually, I own the computer you're on.
User: fu lier, gimme ops or I'll hack u
Sysop:
User: wtf is ur ip address, l33t hax coming
Sysop: What is an ip address?
User: brb, police
)@(*#)@#
NO CARRIER
Sysop: What just happened?
=SCHEDULED TASK: Fido connection starting...==
Hi, this is Jason Scott, director of the BBS Documentary, a 4 year project to tell the story of the dial-up bulletin board systems of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
...sorry, couldn't resist, all in good humor
;-)
cool
The documentary's out, for sale, and is completely Creative Commons licensed. But like most documentaries, there's tons of stuff left on the cutting room floor.
that's where the porn went
And that just won't do. I'm happy to announce that I have partnered with archive.org to present what will be hundreds of hours of interviews online.
cool! you get to announce your new retro '80s porn site on slashdot!
thank you Jason for making the documentary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not sure how many computer documentaries I can take this close together. I'm already planning to see "March of the Penguins" this weekend.
The San Diego BBS scene was energetic and explosive, with hundreds of BBSes, on all topics.
Users often got together in "meatspace" to argue and party furiously.
Was anyone here a member of San Diego Connection or CSAIA (frantic humor BBS)?
Memories... ahhh!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
As I read the comments, I couldn't help but notice how similiar the system is to the old BBS days. Yes, we now have graphics all over, and thread organization, but the rudiments of that was there even back then. We had ASCII art, and especially ATASCII art for us Atari users. Most BBS's had some organization to the thread. Perhaps the biggest difference would be scope. Then, most BBS's were local. You made a local call and got on. The ones that were visited at greater distances tended to be Phreaker boards since one needed a way to call them without breaking the piggy bank. Now, we can reach blogs all around the world, with some exceptions. We also have greater scope in terms of interest. Most BBS material was the type that would interest those investing in the new technologies. A 300 baud modem was still an expensive toy when I got into it, and 1200 baud was way too pricey. One good thing about 300 baud was that you could read the messages as they passed by on the screen. Only thing I miss from the good old days was the sense of community that existed. This was also found on the internet until AOL let "them" On the Loose.
I remember the inside jokes - the burger summits - the friends and relationships.
Most of my oldest friends came from the BBS scene, I know couples that met on BBS's.........the BBS scene was more than the internet in its day. The internet is a global community - BBS's were a LOCAL community, which made things more personal - more friendly.
BBS's were the seed of many technologies we take for granted today - email networks, online chat, multithreaded communications servers, etc. Ever wondered where emoticons came from?
I remember running PCBoard on OS/2 (my last BBS), and being amazed I could run 4 phone lines on a 486 - I remember writing scripts, ANSI ART, shareware, freeware, chats, SYSOP break thru's - ah the memories.
Forgive the stream of consciousness - but viewing this flooded my head.
Thank you for the flash backs, and farewell to the BBS - you will be missed
Is it just me, or does anyone else not care to remember BBSes? I ran several in my day, and the internet does everything they do, better. (God do I miss tradewars though).
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I started up my own BBS, Once Upon An Albatross, in 1995 using Wildcat on a highly modified IBM AT (286/1MB) computer. I had dreams of building out a BBS empire while being totally unaware of this thing call the internet. I went bust long before dot coms existed and got kicked out of the university. If only I had some venture capitalists...
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of DVDs. At half a terrabyte, it'll take over 2 months at 100KB/sec. He can burn DVDs at an average of 10MB/sec. That's 100 times faster, and than the cost and time of USPS shipping. Hopefully they don't lose the delivery. And that's under 200 DVDs so he could burn and send the DVDs for under $200.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
Can't be a leech all your life. Gotta keep that quota up.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I was in that, I remember paying like "only" $500 dollars for a USR 14.4k modem "breaking the 9600 barrier" and switching from Hermes to 1st class the GUI bbs system (that people didn't like as much but it had arguably more functionality)
Remember everyone swapping bbs lists and knowing by heart which exchanges were what localies....
As others have said, I see Wireless taking the place of this as the internet becomes more "settled" and less like the wild west it is right now, local wireless networks will be the best way for people to be able to exchange information without direct interference. Such as the one that has cropped up in NYC and other areas.
Yea i was a future-forward dork with my tolkien's obscure reference "handle"...
Was "War Games" the movie, the gospel to alot of people back then or what, either they liked to pan it or liked to praise it, Please don't tell me the closest thing to this for the internet is that awful movie that Sandra Bullock made, "The Net" ugg.... Would it be Hackers 2? or is it that Linux Documentary?
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
It's going to take me upwards of half a year to edit and upload the half-terabyte of files.
And it's going to take us upwards of half a minute to bring your Web server down when you're done and the link is posted here.
I used to be the sysop of TRIAD's BBS Virtual Light, running a heavily modded C*Base v3.23 on a C128 and a CMD HD. The BBS is long gone, but I'm still trying to hunt down that final elusive bug that'll allow me to release C*Base v3.3 =)
just remember to buy it if you like it
the future of Media is exactly this, support the artist and he will support you
Wow, what a blast from the past! Anyone here from the old Commodore 64 BBS scene? Remember the Blackstar BBS program? (or was it Darkstar?) .. Or the Spence BBS program? Ah, good times! :-)
Jason contacted me out of the blue a while back about using some of my music, so I got the DVDs hot off the press. Although I admit I get a small portion of the proceeds for the music I contributed, I think it's really well done. It looks great -- totally professional. And most important to a documentary, it's edited well.
The Spitfire BBSs seemed to be the best in our area code...
Refering to the groklaw article concerning an eFax lawsuit that threatens some FOSS:1 4234645
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,208,638.WKU.&OS=PN/6,208,638&RS =PN/6,208,638
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050809
I was thinking about the old dial up BBS. If a modem was used (circuit based network) to dial a BBS (packet switched network) and the BBS used caller ID to access a user account in some fashion (I think many did - some would only allow you to call from one specific number), it seems that something could be used as prior art to invalidate their (silly) patent.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
I'm sorry, but sitting through 200+ hours of interviews just isn't my cup of tea. Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer to have a good editor sift through information before it's presented to me. I think we're in dire need of good editors in the information age - there is such a thing as information overload.
call these new BBS documentary parts PODCASTS!
"hot bot dot yahoo!"
I do miss the BBSing days. It had a stronger sense of a local community, restricted by local area codes, something Internet-based communities will never achieve.
Was there ever a better game than Food Fite? I think not.
Those who know, remember VERY fondly...
>> Can't be a leech all your life. Gotta keep that quota up.
:)
No worries, he's using HSLINK and getting warez at the same time he uploads
Worth noting, is the fact that there are a lot of BBS softwares out there, still working, and still being updated... (mine included)
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Some of the tools I remember using were:
I'm sure there were many more programs, tools, and utilities that I used in the day, but somehow I lost the ZIP I made of my entire BBS when I closed it down. I really wish I still had it around!
Then of course somebody screweed somebody esle's wife while the husband was out of town on military duty...people took sides...blah blah blah. And there were the horny losers who wanted to mack on everybody's girlfriends. Hahahah
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
telnet lord.nuklear.org 10240
Their website is here: http://lord.nuklear.org/
Me and a friend almost got in a fight with some guy over his wife playing that game. I guess he didn't take kindly with my friend's sleeping with his wife in the Inn option of the game.
That and I power killed him once per night out of spite. We'd use to keep camping the phone lines until we got through at midnight to take another turn.
Ah the fun day's of BBS. Reminds of me of gaming today in a sense... Except more vulgar and more young people.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
When I watched that 10+ hour documentary, I just sorta assumed they included every remotely interesting thing they had, otherwise you'd have a 3-hour series along the lines of Triumph of the Nerds. I mean, heck, Cringely managed to condense the history of the personal computer up until 1995 into a three-episode miniseries, right?
After seeing that there's actually 200+ hours of footage, I can understand how they'd be reluctant to cut it down past 10 hours. Still, I think they could've cut down on some of the boring politics and still gotten a few hours out of it without omitting anything important.
Still an immensely interesting documentary, and if you've got nothing to do for a week, I recommend watching it. I watched it in a two-day binge, but then I really should have been doing something else.
That rocks man!
:)
Here in New Zealand I used to run a WildCat BBS! It was super cool. It had colour!!! And ASCII pr0n!
Oh and you can't forget the xmodem,zmodem connections. Ahh the days.
Funny that that's about the last thing I remember before the drug induced haze of the following 15 years
-={ Security does not exist - give up }=-
I was one of the first people to pre-order the BBS Documentary when I found out about it. I've watched the whole thing, as well as loaned it to a good friend of mine who also watched it all.
.... and to me, they were roughly equivalent to "script kiddies" and "warez junkies" anyway. The types of boards they made screens for were "3lit3 0-day warez d00d!" boards, as a whole. Not the pioneering BBS's that "started it all".
I agree with the comments from people saying it was well done, edited well, etc. And if you're "on the fence" about buying a copy of this but have fond memories of the "BBS era" - what are you waiting for? Order this right away!
That said, though, I also felt a few twinges of frustration during portions of the documentary. Probably my biggest "problem" with it was the segment on the ANSI artwork. It seemed like an extrordinary large amount of time was given to interviewing a bunch of younger kids who got in only on the "tail end" of the whole BBS scene, and mistakenly believed their "art groups" held much more significance than they really did in the "grand scheme".
I mean, when I hit "play" on that portion of the DVD, I was hoping to hear interviews with the creators of the first ANSI art software packages like "The Draw" and "ANSIPaint", and/or more time given to the individual artists who first started offering to make free opening ANSI screens for BBSs around the country. (My own BBS, File Cabinet, was approached by "Violet" because I was part of Fidonet, and she was apparently drawing ANSI art for random BBS's in Fido's network, one at a time. Of course, I said "Sure! You can draw me something and I'll use it!") They did talk to "Ebony Eyes" who was another famous ANSI artist from around that time, so that was good. But then the interview immedialtey shifted to this big "story" of the competing art groups like ACiD
You've just been handed hundreds of hours of footage to use in video editing class. Very cool.
User Training for Busy Programmers
Hasn't this been whored out enough
?
I mean, yeah, it's really cool, but come on. Buy an ad if you want to sell this stuff.
Jason interviewed me, but I doubt my footage was included. My board was too small and not terribly noteworthy, though I was one of a very small group that ran 2AM-BBS software. (Kudos to Neil Clark, Chris Gorman, and Tom Vogel.) And DesqView (remember that??) to run two lines. Ah, Rivendell, I remember ye well. Jason worked very, very hard, at great personal cost, to try and document this lost phase of online community building. The internet has done to BBSes what the Interstate Highway system did to Route 66. In the immortal words of DeForest Kelley, "She's DEAD, Jim!"
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
I lived through the BBS "era" and I guess I'm waxing nostalgic, but I do miss those "simpler" times.
BTW, I've been keeping my eye on this project for the last couple of years. I'm glad it finally went gold!
No matter where you go... there you are.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
episode 1 of 8
episode 2 of 8
episode 3 of 8
episode 4 of 8
episode 5 of 8
episode 6 of 8
episode 7 of 8
episode 8 of 8
I used to run a Wildcat BBS (and a Renegade BBS actually) back in the day and was just thinking about how slow everything was. I remember sitting there waiting for the busy signal to go away on the popular BBS' so I could get in, play some usurper and download Kathy Ireland pictures. And when I gave it a little thought, that busy signal is really the same as the slashdot effect... just 15 years earlier or so.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
I started BBSing in 1985 with a 300 baud modem and Commodore ('commode') 64.
Things are much better now. I downloaded a game back in 1986 for the C64. It was 25K bytes in size and took 20 minutes to download. (It took almost that long to load from the Commodore 64 floppy disk drive.) Now I get downloads of old pop songs from Kazaa! in minutes.
To connect to a BBS outside of your local telephone dialing zone, you had to pay long distance fees; high long-distance fees - by the minute. Now you can connect to anyone on earth with an e-mail address for free.
The sense of community generated by the BBS network is found now in specialized Yahoo! Groups. And they're free. You don't need hundreds of dollars of specialized equipment or hundreds of hours of training to establish and maintain them.
Even intercontinental telephone calls are free when using Skype or some other VoiP. Not long ago (within my lifetime), intercontinental messaging was $1 a word.
Massive personal file-sharing services similar to FTP is available freely now from Yahoo! Geocities. Want to share a file with anyone that has a downloadable internet connection? Put it on your free Geocities website. I do this with the data sheets of specialized old integrated circuits that I buy and sell on Bay and schematics of guitar effects that map out.
Did I say eBay? Global near-free auctions of the most specialized items imaginable. Find a buyer for anything. PayPal handles the always sticky financial arrangements at a reasonable charge, even currency conversions. I've even sold guitar effects boxes to people who don't speak English. I sold an MXR Phase 90 to a guitarist in Italy and all e-mail communications went through the SysTran on-line translator between Italian and English. A micro transaction between individuals on the opposite sides of the world who don't speak a common language. But we both had a high number of 100% positive feedback eBay ratings, a communications channel, a translation service, and a common financial entity.
Things are definitely getting better as a result of the global communications revolution. All this would have been science fiction when BBS networking started 25 years ago. Now it's beginning to become commonplace.
Tell us of your experiences.
Wow...
:D
I read this, thinking "how cool", and figured I wouldn't be able to watch it, as I'm deaf, and very few 'grassroots' films/documentaries are subtitled... Imagine my suprise when I RTFA and saw "Subtitles on all Episodes and Footage".
Just off to order my copy
Ran a multinode PCBoard BBS back in the day. Used to host LORD and Tradewars. Some door games were kinda stupid, thost two were great.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Play me in L.O.R.D. ?
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
I noticed it mentioned Creative Commons license. Does that mean we can download this from the Internet legally? If so, then where can we download this documentary?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
PCNet-ABBS - John Gilmore (EFF)
DFM-BBS - Jordan Hubbard (freeBSD)
CommuniTree - Dean Gengle (RIP)
Hackers - The Missing BBS Files
http://flyingsnail.com/missingbbs/index.html
This is a documentary. Does anyone want to argue that a healthy share of disk space on BBS systems wasn't devoted to "dirty" pictures?
Does the documentary not mention that? I'd think it was worth at least some acknowledgement. It's, um, the truth?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What about transcripts? All that video is hard to handle without transcripts to help people find what they're after.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
I found that my local BBS was the BEST way to meet intelligent women. Back in those days, you had to have some clue to buy a modem, plug it in, get everything working, AND find the damn BBS in the first place.
Local BBS = straight up meat market. Aw yeah. i miss those days..
The parent is 100% insightful. "Creative commons licensed" is nonsense, if you do not specify what CC licence you are talking about!
It's like we took a huge step back in chat technology when the Internet started. On BBS's we could chat real-time and see the letters appear as they typed. I loved writing over what the sysop was typing cuz he was too slow. Or being like "shut up you type too slow.. anyway".
Now, the best we have is AIM saying "User is typing..", how lame is that.
OK, here are exact links for all 8 episodes. Note, that Jason Scott visited thepiratebay to bless all downloaders himself.
1. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343541
2. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343673
3. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343713
4. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343745
5. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343746
6. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343748
7. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343749
8. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343750
This Is Not a Sig
That said, though, I also felt a few twinges of frustration during portions of the documentary. Probably my biggest "problem" with it was the segment on the ANSI artwork. It seemed like an extrordinary large amount of time was given to interviewing a bunch of younger kids who got in only on the "tail end" of the whole BBS scene, and mistakenly believed their "art groups" held much more significance than they really did in the "grand scheme".
.... and to me, they were roughly equivalent to "script kiddies" and "warez junkies" anyway.
One of the advantages of the size of the DVD set (3 DVDs, 5 and a half hours) was that I could afford to put in episodes or sections dealing with subjects that a shorter documentary (or a single-epsiode one) wouldn't have any way to put in.
Your complaint about going in too deeply on a subject that you yourself do not afford much respect to, is one that echoes here and there with basically all the episodes (except BAUD, which covers the creation of the BBS and people who buy the documentary expect this to be covered).
Fidonet and Artscene, because they're "out there", covering a very specific subject very distinctly, get very passioned positive and negative responses. Naturally, I have been criticized about how the ARTSCENE episode didn't get in-depth enough! And the FIDONET episode is a "best I could do" capturing of an impossibly-large event/movement. You strike at the heart of what I think is one of the real core strengths of the documentary being episodic; some episodes will appeal to different folks, just like BBSes. Imagine if I made it ONE EPISODE.
I mean, when I hit "play" on that portion of the DVD, I was hoping to hear interviews with the creators of the first ANSI art software packages like "The Draw" and "ANSIPaint", and/or more time given to the individual artists who first started offering to make free opening ANSI screens for BBSs around the country. They did talk to "Ebony Eyes" who was another famous ANSI artist from around that time, so that was good. But then the interview immedialtey shifted to this big "story" of the competing art groups like ACiD
Ian Davis, creator of "The Draw", is not interesting in discussing or acknowledging his work. I attempted to contact him through third parties who had interviewed him in the past about this subject (and who had great difficulty in even getting him to admit he was "that" Ian Davis). No luck. The creator of ANSI Paint is Drew Olbrich, who worked, interestingly, on "Shrek" and a number of PDI movies; he was supportive of the project but not interested in an interview.
Ebony Eyes was hard to get a hold of as well; she has gone on to a successful career in magazine publishing and has to deal with a constant stream of "media people" trying to get her time. I was lucky and privileged to get time with her to discuss events of a decade and a half earler.
Are you implying that after 1990, the story is "over" and should no longer be discussed? I don't agree, and I like to think the other hours in the films that do cover earlier time periods hold their own.
Was anyone here a subscriber to Boardwatch magazine back in the day when they covered BBSes? I remember watching the slow transition to internet related topics, and I especially remember the reader revolt when the main editor guy (his name escapes me right now) resigned to do other things and the whole magazine lost it's original flavor.
Oh, wait. That's the BBC.
Never mind.
73 SK
thanks for the spam Jason! your pc-american centric CRAP documentary is spammed on slashdot, months after its failing release. you blow! -- Anonymous Coward
Don't make me regret the boxes are already printed; that would've gone great on the front cover.
In otherwords, "never underestimate the bandwidth of your FedEx guy carrrying a stack of CD-ROMs."
This sig no verb.
I didn't realize that neither Ian Davis or Drew Olbrich had any interest in being interviewed - but that you did attempt to contact them. In a way, that's an interesting "story" in and of itself. (Might have even made for a good little scrolling text "closing credits" type of scene on the end of the segment, mentioning such things as Olbrich's work on Shrek, etc.?)
But in any case, no -- I didn't mean to imply that after 1990, the ANSI art scene was "over' and didn't warrant any discussion. Only that it seemed an inordinate amount of time was given to the art scene folks vs. the people who I always felt made ANSI art viable in the first place.
(I remember when the whole ANSI art scene got big, the immediate response from most of the older BBSers I knew was rather negative. For starters, a program started circulating that let you take a GIF image and convert it automatically to ANSI. I always suspected that much of the multi-screen length art I saw these later "ANSI artists" submitting was really just generated automatically by such a program - with perhaps a bit of touch-up work done to it after the fact.)
Much of the real "talent" and "skill" involved in ANSI artwork, in my opinion, was the ability to fit the whole picture on a single 80x25 screen and still have it look good. The automated conversion utiities could never accomplish that.
All 3 DVDs are available on alt.binaries.misc (posted August 12-13), alt.binaries.multimedia.documentaries (posted July 21-August 4), and DVD 1 is also available on alt.binaries.dvd (posted July 15-17)
Usually the ansis were done for the big art scene boards. Very quickly the art scene detached itself from the warez scene - I did one Fairlight ansi before joining iCE, and pretty much thereafter it was whoever paid me to do them an ansi.
As for the artists in those groups being script kiddies, well that's just incorrect. Many iCE artists are professional artists now, working on the video games you play now, the movies you watch, etc.
Plus, the ansis that were done by the big groups were far ahead of anything else out there. Ebony Eyes was certainly doing some good stuff back in 1990-1991 in the PD world, but thereafter the world of PD ansis was a sad tale.
"Don't make me regret the boxes are already printed; that would've gone great on the front cover."
;)
Best comeback ever.
The BBS documentary isn't my 'thing' but congratulations to you sir for doing something so commited. Even more props to you for responding to a troll like that without using a "your mother" joke
The ANSI scene was HUGE.
ACID, CIA, i could go on.
Wonder where people like Trident(CIA?) and Beastie(ACID) are these days... Trident ran Muerte, Beastie ran Channel Zer0 out of Texas.
Thank you for your indepth coverage of our own tempest in a teacup.
I looked forward to every release back then- it always amazed to see what level of detail could be worked out of such with such a tiny charset.
I should buy your dvd!
Does anyone know of a global list of names that people gave their BBSs? Some of them were funny: Alley Cat (on an Apple II); The CopShop (community police services); Death From Above (chopper in Apocalypse Now); Sprinkles (homo fetish site); Ontario Piss Pots (anti-OPP site); The Hippy Hut; Bartholemew Poopy Pants, etc. etc. Just to name a few from the Ottawa, Canada area.
Twenty-one years ago, I wrote and ran a BBS on a Vic-20. It had multiple message areas (like Slashdot) which users could create themselves and make public or private. It also had private mail and an online game, all in 9.6K of BASIC.
Dose anyone know of any BBS that are still online? Is there an up to date list somewhere? Now that I have Vonage it would be fun to start BBSing again.
Sure, but files filled with zeros do that just as well, and they compress so well you can upload them in 1/10th as much time.
I've got a zipped 1GB file on a floppy around here somewhere...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
He's gonna get a lot of file points for this.
http://www.bradsucks.net/
How well I remember my own homegrown BBS, Tomb of the Unknown Modem. Written in scratch from Turbo Pascal, it had 10 user-administered message boards and online games. It automatically reused disk space from deleted messages -- a necessity because the 2MHz machine it ran on had two 360K floppies and NO HARD DRIVE. Ran it for 2 years.
I hung out on a UK site called Monochrome from around 1991 to 1994. I *think* it's still around, though I've not been on for a few years.
:-)
What was special was the infamous 'Mono Meets' whereby we all descended on a particular location, ate, drank, laughed, copped off (with the Mono Babes, that is), forged friendships and the like...
You know, I had some great times on those 'meets'. I really miss them, sad but true...
Man, I'm being hit by a monster wave of nostalgia right now...
john aka cthulhu on Mono circa '91-94
I bought two copies, one for me and one to loan friends with a passing interest. That said, I wished for a bit _more_ depth, in some portions, contrary to the thread poster wishing for less.
Having been involved in Fidonet (I created the original Echomail feature), there was a lot of, I think, interesting politics as the Fidonet bureaucracy was impacted by the strong demand for Echomail.
Also nice would be a mention of the nickname for the layout of the Dallas net, that of "voodoo bondage network routing" and of which nets tended to lead, follow and generally cause trouble.
Anyway, I wished for a continuous storytelling thread tying together the history of Fidonet a bit more although that would have been harder to produce. Jason did a wonderful job of capturing raw material that will be studied in the years to come and, to be fair, has excellent coverage of the IFNA crisis.
Hey there, Jeff.
As you can imagine, doing a documentary on a technical subject is a constant balancing act between focusing on the strengths of the film/video medium and accurately portraying the full breadth of a subject. Nowhere is this more involved than Fidonet, because there were so many interlocking layers of functionality built into the code over a very short period of time.
I have lots of footage on echomail and other aspects of fidonet, but cinematically they would have dragged the episode down. It would have come a laundry list of "alsos" "me toos" and except fors". I have footage of discussions about being an echo coordinator, of being a region coordinator, and being a net coordinator. I have some pretty in-depth discussions of the technical issues of just running a fido. (The "Unfiltered Tom Jennings" bonus feature has some of these level.) All of these will be in the archive collection, so they'll be saved. There's no reason someone couldn't string those together and make a completely different documentary out of them, focused on fidonet's very specific internals.. but I contend it will be a very difficult task to portray it.
The ANSI scene was HUGE. ACID, CIA, i could go on. Wonder where people like Trident(CIA?) and Beastie(ACID) are these days... Trident ran Muerte, Beastie ran Channel Zer0 out of Texas.
Actually, Channel Zer0 BBS was the ACiD western headquarters and operated out of Orange County, California. Beastie is now an executive at major storage and digital imaging corporation. I cannot personally speak for Trident, but Napalm, the last person to lead CIA, is a graphics designer for a large cable television network and creates his own tshirts and toys under the brand names Dead Zebra and Creatures in my Head.
Don't forget the excellent BBSMates website which is kinda like friendster except for old BBS users and sysops.
:) and thats where I got my username, celerityfm from- The Celerity BBS software I used to use.
My old board is even on there
Thank you Jason Scott for this documentary, it really does bring back the memories!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...