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Quantum Link Reverse Engineered
JeffLedger writes "A group of retro-geeks have rebuilt the old Quantum Link system to allow both emulated and real c64's to sign in over the Internet using the original software. Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."
Apple usesr and Windows users couldn't even communicate at first.
Insert witty sig here.
"Before it was called, America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."
Should be:
"Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users."
The nostalgia factor is clearly off the charts. That only should be reason enough.
Impossible! Reverse engineering would destroy the quantum coherance. I just got one and$@^V4545FSBfbffgf+++ATH NO CARRIER
I always wanted to try out Qlink, maybe this is my chance. :)
At some point all the ways to hook up to the internet w/o using MSFT software increases the chance that people will move away from Windows/Vista /etc.
Too bad MSFT comes with most computers - already, by now the monopoly would be over.
virses, none
I could be wrong.
You think I might catch them on a blue light special?
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
How they managed to provide a pre-Internet online service to commodore 64 users? Was the Commodore 64 around in 1971?
damn it, I have to get this retro computer nerd a girlfriend before I can leap out!
Call me when you reverse engineer Quantum Leap.
ScuttleMonkey, is really, William Shatner, and I claim my $10!
To people who haven't called you yet?
"...why?"
for the sheer irony that people will post to slashdot about it being a waste of time.
thank you for coming. you'll be here all week.
Somebody call the DMCA police!
What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
Might as well ask, "Why do people go to Renaissance Fairs?" or "Why do people go to see the Rolling Stones in concert?" or even, "Why go look at all those old paintings and stuff in the museum?"
They think its fun... they like the nostalgia of it... they have money and time to waste for a hobby they enjoy... they think that maybe they can learn something from it...
Don't knock going back to something old, because sometimes if you go back to the past, you can gain new insight into the here and now.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
If we reverse engineer the Quantum Link, we might get enough power to emit a tachyon beam to disrupt the neutrino field the Cardassians are emitting.
Oh, oops, thought this sounded like some Star Trek technobabble.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Back in the day, we complained bitterly about how inadequate Quantum Link was compared to the real Internet. Now, 10 years after the service was discontinued, we are willing to setup emulators to allow us to play with a reconstruction. Lol.
I still have my Qlink coffee mug. Gets a lot of "What's that?" questions.
I certainly hope so. I still have my SuperQ disk around here. I know what I'm doing this weekend :)
I also wonder how many members of the old Q'mmunity will try this out. I'd love to get back in touch with some of my old Q-Link friends.
I'll also note that I submitted a story last year on the 10-year anniversary of the Q-Link shutdown. It was sadly rejected. I'll give a basic rehash here...
After several months of system degradation, overflows which allowed AOL and Q-Link members to converse, complete UNDERhauls of the Q-Link system to be per^H^H^Hconverted for use within AOL, and the incesant "Come to AOL" emails, Q-Link was unceremoniously shut down at the normal off time. Nobody from AOL showed up to say "Thank you for a spectacularly fun and eventful decade." Nothing. At the bottom of the screen:
THE SYSTEM HAS SHUT DOWN
This was the normal message you saw at shut down, but probably most fitting on this particular morning.
::applause:: :]
agreed. When did living in the past become chic? It's like the scrawny little 80's virgin nerds have grown into scrawny virgin "men", (with cashflow++), and are trying to posthumously relive their crappy childhood through reinventing 20 year old wheels. I deeply pitty the fool who thinks this is a good idea.
Stuff that matters? jesus people, grow up.
the TV show.
Never mind.
Any of you familiar with Tandy 1000 TL, running DeskMate? Anyone remember PC-Link? Is there a connection?
I first subscribed to QuantumLink in 1986 when I was 8 years old. Anyhoo, I was asked to join the "User Advisory Board." In exchange for 240 free "plus" minutes per month, I spent about 30 minutes in a People Connection room with several employees of QLink, one of whom had the screen name "SteveCase"
:-)
I wonder if they've reverse engineered Puzzler or Club Caribe...
This seems pretty cool. Being from England though, I was a user of the great Compunet network. I wonder if anyone will do a similar thing to bring that network alive again (log on to the live one). Compunet really made an impact on the demo scene with the C64, and must have started the programming careers of quite a few kids (myself included).
-James.
OK, now post a list of your hobbies. I'm sure appropriate ridicule will be easy to whip up.
I kept in touch with some Q-Link friends for a few years after the shut down. It was kinda funny as every so often we'd ask each other "did you try again last night?" "yeah..." "me, too. Oh, well."
heheheheheh
Anyone reading this remember me, BungeeJmp ?? I had a couple before then, but this was the main one I used in SuperQ/People Connection.
ok heres another question what?? sry im slow these days
Nothing of content to add. I just want to say that this is very, very righteous.
8-bits are still fun to use!
Wicked Friday night in the 8-bit era:
7-8pm Q-Link
8-9pm Play Airborne Ranger
9-10pm break for new Kids in the Hall episode
10-11:50pm Q-Link
11:50pm-12:00am Call local BBSs, make moves in Space Empire to initiate attack another system. Buddy/ally does same. (as do your slave accounts)
12:01am-12:10am Use fresh Space Empire turns for the new day to complete sneak attack. Double fists of fury!
12:10am-1:00am Play Test Drive
1:00am-2:00am Play California Games
2:01 turn on wardialer and go to bed
Any other Canadians use QuantumLink? As a young person without much of a concept of money and how usage fees can multiply, I was blown away by the first month's bill we received for QuantumLink. 20 hours of use -- after some bizarre internal long distance charges, access fees, and currency conversion -- worked out to about $200. Club Caribe was fun, but the bill (and my parents' reaction at the time) made it a service that I disconnected from quickly.
Like another poster above asked, has anyone been able to connect to the server and see if Club Caribe worked?
I spend my time parroting apple and trolling slashdot you insensitve clod!
What, did you think I had a life?
For some of us "Dork" is a genetic predisposition and we can't do any thing about it.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
All these "pixel art" sites and work you see are nothing more than a rip off of Habitat. AFAIK that's one of the oldest programs/systems using avatars.
The way you hook up an actual C64 to this is via a null modem connection to a PC that acts as an Internet gateway. There software you install on the PC side to make the connection. Even when you are connecting through an emulator you need to configure a modem device and "dial".
This wouldn't work with a C64 Ethernet card as far as I can tell.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
All you spoiled c64 kids. All I had was a vic20 :( I did have a sweet 8k memory expansion cartridge though.
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
Wow, that's what I call a cool hack. C64s used to be the funnest things to play around with. Years ago I built a servo control circuit board for a friend to plug into the back slot of a C64, to control exhibits in a coin-operated art gallery (later known as The Church of Elvis, Portland Oregon). Writing the control software in Commodore Basic and seeing the whole thing work was one of the coolest things I ever did.
OK, NOT Quantum Link, but rather the web.
A grad student that the University of Michigan did a web browser for the Apple Newton that used a Mac-in-the-middle approach very similar to this.
This was in 1993-1995.
I think it's documented somewhere, probably in the technical-reports archives in the EECS department.
So then somewhere along the line, it became AppleLink: Personal Edition, and THEN it became AOL Online later. Oh, I remember those magazine ads of AppleLink vaguely well.
So were Commodores cut out of the network somewhere?
After version 2.0, even the Apple II people that helped maintain, and fund the early years were cut out the network through interface 'updates'.
How much you want to bet that because they reversed engineered something the DMCA disciples will run after them with lawsuits?
Fallout 3 will suck.
How many Q-Link Lifetime members got royally screwed when Q-Link transferred their memberships to the new AOL system that wouldn't even support their hardware? Curiously none of the systems supported by Q-Link (C64, C128, and Amiga AFAIR) were supported by AOL.
years old and have no idea WTF any of this stuff is.
:) jk
Damn kids, with their Rock and Roll music, long hair, and Athlon 64 CPUs. Well in my day_______ and we liked it!!!
Fill in the blank.
I'm scared to think what I will be like it 20 years. No offense to you old folks out there
Does this mean I hove to run WinVICE inside WINE on my Linux box just to use TCPSER? God I hope not. Google found some tarballs for TCPSER here http://www.jbrain.com/pub/linux/serial/ has anyone tried using it with VICE compiled for Linux?
Can they at least stablize it so that after leaping Sam can go back to his wife and kids and not his childhood? Or worse yet, someone elses childhood?
Seriously, with todays technology you wouldn't even need that weird controller that Al used, you could just use the Nintendo Revolution contoller.
ascii porn.
The Chronic *WHAT* les of Narnia!
if it didnt so closely match so many people I know.
Its up, and it works, but a lot of stuff is still missing.
/.
Its a work in process - I doubt Jim wouldve wanted this posted to
You can connect using a real c64/128 using a userport null modem adapter and a linux/windows box to handle the rs232->telnet translation, or you can use Vice on windows/linux.
Just dont jump on and expect it to be 100%. Especially dont flood the guys with your problems connecting. Its not ready for prime-time.
OK, why DO people go to Renaissance fairs?
I've been involved in the beta testing of the server for the past month so I know what kind of questions everybody has (since I've been asking most of them myself already).
Q: Will/Does the implantation support Super-Q, Rabbit Jacks Casino, Club Caribe, etc?
A: Right now, only the basic (Q-link 4.0) games work such as Hangman, Battleship, Chess, etc.. Since the hard part (the q-link & x.25 pad stuff) has been pretty much conquered, the rest of the lot should come with time. The only real exception to that rule is Club Caribe--it's not impossible that it can be supported, but it certainly is the hardest thing to implement and also last on the developers' list. Rabbit Jack Casino is on the top of that list I think. One of the developers has gotten Puzzler to work (part of super Q) but only independently since the server itself doesn't support Super-Q....but progress is being made.
Q: How many users does the system support? (Since the old service ran on a Stratus 200 with 8 12Mhz
68010's)
A: Well, we'll see after the slashdoting I suppose. I should be able to handle much more on modern hardware. Keep in mind when you automatically join the People Connection you are dumped into the lobby--the Lobby supports (as all rooms in the PC) up to 23 users, and when the limit is reached it creates a new lobby and dumps new users into it.
Q: What works so far? What works and what will cause the client to freeze?
A: Pretty much all of the People connection (that includes email, IM's, panels, and games that don't require super-q or cc), The Commodore Connection (only one download is available right now for testing), Customer Service (message boards are at about 90%). Most of the other areas 'work' but haven't been populated with content yet. Any old timer Q-linkers that may have saved stuff from these areas are encouraged to help us out. Oh yah, the "Let Q-Link pick my partners" when starting a game option will most certainly freeze your client.
Q: Does it work under Linux?
A: Sure does, although it's a bit more involved that doing it through Windows with our specially patched Winvice 1.6, or even just running TCPserve and connecting with a real C64/C128 via a RS232 adapter and null-modem cable. If your using Mac OS X (Like I am) your kind of screwed though.. unless you have the genius to compile the latest Vice with RS232 emulation for Mac OS X. Otherwise, the site has all of the tools you'll need, assuming it doesn't get Slashdoted.
Q: Got a mirror? (In case the main site get's slashdotted)
A: Sort of. http://www.circleofthunder.com/downloads.html
I have the Q-link v4 disk up there along with some extra goodies (games discs 1/2 + CC & Super-Q). I don't have the patched version of WinVICE 1.6 though.
Those are the biggies I can think of off the top of my head. If you have anymore questions (not spelling or grammar related), post em here.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
I suddenly feel quite young again. And to think, I saw the 10th Anniversary Edition of Toy Story the other day.
Just wait till we reconstruct our early years when the bully use to beat us up, and take our lunch money. Ah! Those were the days.
Currently there is no Internet worms for the C64, therefore it is a more secure and hence better platform than Windows.
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
-- Molly Ivins
Corsets are hot!
it would really be news if they reverse engineered a quantum computer....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Life was easier when you only had a choice of 4 of 16 colors, and then only a 320x200 bitmap to put those colors on.
I'll say it again: *sigh*
The CB App. What's your 20?
Great, Al, now I can finally leap back and..... What? Quantum LINK? Damn it, so close this time.
And this looks like it's actually an appropriate time to ask. I've heard that the Tandy "PC-LINK" service was also a predecessor of AOL. Anyone with some real knowledge want to enlighten me on the connection (if any) between Quantum Link and PC-LINK?
What this article fails to mention is AppleLink's part in becoming America Online http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applelink/ I remember playing gold box D&D Neverwinter Nights on it and the $1200 bill we got the first month it came out (And my butt still twinges in memory of when my dad got the bill!)
I wail on my axe (hard) and pork all the hot babes I can find.
Quantum link between two computers reverse engineered and message decrypted (thus violating Schrodinger's principle?)
Is P3 your baby? Yep, as far as I can recall P3 is still supported for some of those older clients. I remember in the late 90s there was work to talk to some clients via L2TP instead, and of course servers never send the whole input packet around to each other anymore; it gets abstracted much closer to the edge. But at some level, I suspect vestiges of P3 are still in daily use; the two-character routing token the most obvious one.
I am pretty sure I have a file or two around here that uses 0x7F as a line feed (or was it FF?)
I remember the 1000's of hours me and my friend spent hacking into Qlink. For it's time there was nothing even close.
And to think, now it free....
The C64 rocked...
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
heh.. he got slashdotted and changed his DNS to 127.0.0.1
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
Now i can effectively download my linux ISO's with my C64 to save download time! :D
*rubs hands with excitement*
or the irony of wasting time posting about the irony of wasting time posting about the... oh no i've gone cross-eyed.
[my friend-who-is-a-girl]: kilts are hawt!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Quantum Link was America Online?
Oh god. I feel so dirty now.
First Star Wars and now this. You people just won't be satisfied until my whole childhood is ripped to shreds, will you?
Technoli
And some of us wouldn't want to even if we could.
Technoli
"Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore user."
Okay, it was a dark time for Commodore. But momentum really picked up later with that critical second sale. (It was the CFO's wife, she was an early adopter. Boy was he hot when he found out.)
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
It's like Homo neanderthalensis, recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast.
Sorry to be nitpicky, but you chose completely the wrong example to use as an analogy.
Homo Neanderthalensis . . . yeah, they used to be seen as a precursor to "humankind", but that was due in a large part to the fact that scientists, unfortunately for the accuracy of results and theories, are human . . . archaeologists and paleontologists inherited from their cultures a huge burden of preconceptions about what "human" is, and combined with some of the initial findings of the Neanderthals being actually terribly diseased and atypical examples, along with the misclassification of any artifacts left behind as instead being left behind by Homo Sapiens . . . well, it's only recently (relatively speaking) that the scientific community has started to wake up to the rather non-linear relationship of "us to them".
Now, naturally, conclusions are far from certain. At some point the Neanderthals diverged; but it's hard to argue that then the human race continued on and left them behind, the actual demise of the Neanderthals is a trickier business. Arguments range from interbreeding (we're all Neanderthals!) to ourbreeding (as in, humans moved into Neanderthal territory as climates changed, and like rabbits we just outpopulated them, pushing them away), to war (stone age style), combinations of all the above, and more. What is at least certain, though, is that the Neanderthals weren't, uhh, of the nature that you describe them as being.
Some random sources for cross-reference:
Descent of Man - Neanderthal
Even a random religous tract from 1998 notes that Neanderthals are "no longer thought to be lineal ancestors of Homo Sapiens".
There's also some in-depth information here and here, and etc.
Not sure why I spent that brief period of time dredging all that up, I'll probably either be ignored or modded (probably rightfully, though unfortunately it's a policy that squashes interesting tangential discussion) off-topic. Oh well!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
12:33AM Central, and server is handling the load OK. Thanks /. for the stress test. Pics appear to be back up, but they are not on the QLink server anyway, so they are expendable.
I've been so hard at work on the code, I don't have much docs, but you can ask away.
You can also email me (looks pretty easy to Google and find my email, so I'll let that be the test) if you are having connect issues.
Jim
I asked testers to hold on on posting on /. for a few weeks, while the server was in heavy development. Then, when I gave the OK to submit, I knew there would be a post about "Why?" if it made /. It's almost like the poster knows it's a dumb question to ask, but can't keep from doing it anyway...
Jim
1) The Commodore community has always wanted the service back. It was more than a service, it was a community. 2) The exercise was worth more than years of classes in software development and error/runtime diagnosis. In my current vocation, I am often relied on to diagnose issues that are surprisingly like trying to decipher a communication between two parties I have little knowledge of. 3) It was a nice brain (pun not intended, for those who know who this is) exercise, trying to carry on a conversation with a piece of software when you only know one half of the verbs and nouns. At work, I do things in an insulated world of HTTP, SOAP, XML, etc., and one has to have a challenge to keep the brain cells working well. 4) It was there. So be it. 5) I wanted to be on /. (well, not really, but that's what everyone may think...)
Jim
My wife doesn't think I am scrawny, and my two children appears to dispute your other theory. Nice that you have time enough to pity me. I realize I'm feeding the trolls, but I love how cowards only have black and white views of the universe. I assume you pity vintage car owners and those that fix up old homes. Sir/Madam, I pity you for having such a limited view of the world and your life. have fun, though.
Jim
I want to play some Madmaze!!
Anyone remember Legs/MommyLegs?
Your friend then should obviously come to CMU and join the Kiltie Band
It's not a troll...it's discussion bait...
why? I guess for the sense of achievement, and want to immerse oneself in an exclusive community where people who pursue the obscure, like you, have something in common...to share an smaller internet not full of corporate websites & casual users, who feel no excitement from the internet, or the wonder of international broadcasting, or space exploration, because they're so acclimatized to it...it's rewarding to do hard things with your computer. That's why so many of us waste time configuring/discovering retro unix based operating systems, but consequently get more satisfaction from computer use...
(& that's why it's 7am, and my eyes hurt)
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Is the innocence. :)
:)
The social makeup of the online community 20 years ago was so much different than it is now. Even those of us who are left are 20 years older and different from whom we were then. It's a time and a 'place' that will never again be repeated, although seeing the UI again has sparked some very distant and pleasant memories.
Thanks for bringing it back, and it was interesting to read in the thread what hardware the service originally ran on, I had always wondered. If there are any more details I'd like to know. (how many dial in lines, how were they physically situated...any PHOTOS of the hardware?)
FOr those of you who are wondering about the AOL connection - Quantumlink was run by Quantum Computer Services in Vienna, Virginia. They later started a service for PC and Mac users called America Online, and that later became their entire business and business name. As mentioned earlier, they shut down Qlink and encouraged migration to AOL, and that was the end of that.
This coincided with the general decline of C=64s and 128s in lieu of newer machines. But yes it would have been nice to have Amiga support for it, because for the next 5 or 6 years I owned probably every single model of Amiga ever made at one time or another.
Before getting a shell account with a UUCP newsfeed in '91 or so, I was visiting local multi-line BBSs. (MajorBBS with lots of lines - 16 to 32 lines) and that's where I met pretty much everyone I knew at the time. Local boards are great, because you get to meet everyone eventually at local gatherings. Oh well, that's all gone too. Back to IRC where anyone you don't know is either a pedophile or a cop.
a reason to drag out my C64
Wish I could find my C64 power supply, though..
Oh god!! The memories!! They come flooding back...
...six years old, and no money. The horror of it all...
I remember being friggin' ADDICTED to...
OOH! JUMPMAN! AHH. I only had the shareware version, and I was horrified when I reached the "end", because I was finally so good, and it STOPPED ME...
I want choplifter and jumpman back.
please?
Time to dust off my C64 and relive the glory days of home computing!
Why? Because they can. Is another reason really needed for enthusiasts of anything?
Some beautiful person has done some great work putting Jumpman on the modern PC. I love this man. http://www.oldskool.org/pc/jumpman
I remember her complaining about them abusing their credit card. Anybody else had this experience?
I can get free gold, wheat and salt over the network?! Sign me up!!
God you people are old.
So, these guys are actually nostalgic about a time when they were given wedgies by the people that actually got laid?
That's moronic. There is no pre-alpha. It's just alpha you dumbassess.
I can't remember now whether it was Quantum Link or The Source (anyone remember them?) that had a great game that I spent way too many hours playing. I think it was called "Dor Sageth". It was a huge inter-galactic spaceship and the goal was to get to the command room and take control. Love that game! Wonder if anyone else recalls it.
Part of it is that it's debatable whether they ever entirely diverged; the two "species" might have interbred and reintegrated, thus breaking the definition of species. In that case, certainly not "a completely different beast". And of course there's dozens of different takes on the theories, each of them different but nearly all disagreeing with the "recognisable as a precursor to ourselves, but a completely different beast" statement. The specifics of why that statement is wrong, and/or which specific parts are wrong, depends on which hypothesis you follow.
Anyways, to assuage your guilt, I have to note that I honestly wasn't using reverse psychology; I truly believed I'd be modded off-topic, I didn't and don't expect my comment to that effect to change much in that department; indeed, so far I'm somewhat surprised (but things can change). Going off on a tangent can get you punished on Slashdot, indeed it quite regularly does, and I figured if I was already deviating from the original subject matter, I might as well go for the gusto. I would hate myself if I had been trying to trick people into modding me a certain way; moderation is a defence that Slashdot has had to resort to for signal-to-noise reasons and so forth, it's an unfortunate sidenote but one that should be merely the foundation supporting the weight of actual informed discussion. If I was going to play games for points, I might as well just turn to a video game . . .
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Doc: Matry! You have to come back with my to 1985 to reverse engineer Quantum Link. I've wired the flux capacitor to an old Commodore 64, and we only have until the data cassette tape reaches the end!
Marty: But why must we reverse engineer Quantum Link, Doc?
Doc: Because Marty, when we originally time travelled, a young man saw us fly into the ether, and it inspired him to create what would become America Online. Then, years later, your granddaughter will proclaim in one of their commercials that she is a "chat queen".
Marty: So does it kill her or something?
Doc: No, Marty! I just hate that #$%damn commercial!
I8-D
Oh Boy....
Thank you. You're right, my question was not intended as a troll and I have received some very interesting answers. I can remember the excitement of logging onto a BBS for the first time or, God forbid, the first time I used Prodigy (gag) or AOL (choke).
Bradley Holt
I desperately wanted to dial into QuantumLink, but my desire was vetoed by my parents, and I can understand why. The costs would have bankrupted them.
The nearest dial up to QuantumLink was in Toronto, and from my parents' suburban home in Newmarket, this meant a long distance call.
Of course, during the mid 1980s, Bell Canada was the only phone company around, and if you did not like their rates, tough. Bell's non-peak rates were high (somewhere between 40 cents and less than a dollar) for one minute of connection time to Toronto, which was less than 50 kilometers to the south of my home.
I remember wishing my parents had decided to live one town closer to the city: In Aurora, a call to Toronto was priced as a local call, which meant you could dial Toronto all day for free, so long as you paid your monthly bill.
If the CRTC had allowed for telecom competition in my youth, I would have had QuantumLink. I sometimes wonder just how different a person I would have become if I had had that opportunity.
Canada is like the U.S. only without the stupid half of the population that keeps voting for Dubya.
Canada is like the U.S. only all its citizens can read and write.
Canada is like the U.S. except for the fact that Christian evangelicals are completely ignored politically.
Quantum Link had the worst customer service I have ever seen (but then again, I've never tried AOL). I had several problems with them, and as a result tried to drop them. Had the same difficulties doing that as people today do with AOHell. Why anyone would want to raise that particular dead body, I don't know. Same folks that are into self-mutilation, I suppose.
Hey, I know, let's bring back Fido Net and command-line BBS systems.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
HUZZAH!!!
Anyone else remember the Pod People episode of MST3K with the ren fair guy?
I recieved a free month (or whatever the deal was) of QLINK with the purchase of my C64C, but I had to mow lawns the whole summer that year just to pay for the $250 dollars that free month cost me.
spend money here
|| Before it was called America Online, Quantum Link provided a pre-Internet online service to Commodore users. ||
AND it sold life memberships to users and dumped them with nothing. Then, with the money they scammed from C64 users, they opened as AOL.
Bastards
Astro
Time to break out the old 300 baud modem.
Also in the news, some hobbyist auto enthusiasts have succeeded in adding regenerative braking to the Model T.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
You can't call it "pre-Internet" because the Internet was around long before Quantum Link. The Internet as it was known at that time (no longer strictly ARPANET) just wasn't widely available to non-military and non-research users.
since C64 was dying, quantum got a deal with apple to create a consumer service (applelink) - which complemnted the corporate network service apple commissioned from GE.
this arrangement didnt work out, but it did later grow into apple's 3D/avatar-driven network platform - called eworld; which was so well designed that quantum kept it and turned in into aol (after teh appropriate amount of de-mac, dumbing-down).
which justified quantum killing its C64 network service, qlink.
check out the full quantum/apple/AOL timeline: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall2000/
more details about the server side would be really interesting (lucious Tandem beasts, as i recall).
cheers:dlf
Didja mean the Quantum LeapPad? Because that would be very cool.
But hacking the Leapster would be even better. Nice screen, indestructable pen interface, etc. The problems are largly the same as the C64 issues: limited ports, no concept of networking, but the payoff is (or would be) tons of fun.
I look forward to -- and fear -- the day my 3yo pulls up a command prompt on his Leapster.
J
...as it adds the first Commodore system to its list of sites it has personally knocked offline.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
My mom and I moved to California from Washington so she could marry a guy she met on Q-Link. She was doing this before it was cool.
Son, wearin' a kilt around here would get you kilt in a big hurry.
Fidonet & command-line BBSs aren't actually gone yet, although it's certainly true that there are a lot fewer systems around than there used to be...
It's more about the complete downplaying of the Neanderthals, and the chronology; 40 years ago they thought that they were predecessors, earlier forms of mankind. And alot of the evidence we use to show otherwise still existed back then; it was just ignored or differently classified ("Complex tools? Hmm, well, there's some Neanderthal remains nearby, but they were too damn stupid to make these. Only true humans make tools").
Furthermore the cranial capacity was glossed over, no attempt was made to discern the actual complexity of the brains within, etc etc etc. It's less a story of lack of evidence and more a story of lack of willingness to look at the evidence, due mainly to chauvanistic views of humanity. (Huh, I'm sounding like a zealot here; maybe a "Neanderthalist").
My point is that maybe superfically they would have given the possibilities that we've discussed; but they would have extensively argued that they were quite sure the Neanderthals were beneath us. As far as the scientific community believes now, they could only claim at most that they were a bit beneath us; most evidence (and I do speak often of artifacts re-examined in more modern light) points to the Neanderthals inventing technology that humans later stole, and an all-around equal level of intelligence.
40 years ago: "Yeah, maybe they were a different species, maybe they were part of Homo sapiens. But they belong way down on the ladder from where Homo sapiens sapiens fits. They went extinct because they sucked."
Now: "They were about on par with us, evolving contiguously, and disappeared relatively recently for reasons we, uhh, dunno really. No, don't leave yet, we can make educated guesses!"
Even just reading the difference in tone over the last few decades in Anthopology on the subject, there is a tremendous revolution in the conception of the Neanderthals.
The problem sometimes in science is that people get attached to their models; they cling to the simple model (even if there are simpler ones now, or more intuitive or logical ones) with the kind of posessiveness of a kid with a favorite old toy. Hell, they become almost religious beliefs. When you spend a professional career contantly thinking about things with a particular take on it, when so many of your waking thoughts make the same underlying presumptions . . . it's hard to let go. That's why there's still so many apologists for the Newtonian model of Physics; I even know a professor with a Physics degree that refuses to admit any innacuracy (though that's a bit of an extreme example).
Sure, science can't just leap to the correct conclusions automatically. In theory I completely agree with you on all of that, but I'd argue that, just like actual evolution, science is not a well-oiled constantly upwards-moving machine. There are fits and bursts and throwbacks and etc etc etc.
(And the especially tricky part is when one sticks to the "simplist model" which is only simplist because it agrees the most with current societal beliefs and is the easiest to explain in the common vernacular . . . this may seem to fit the kind of Occam's Razor test of credibility, while in reality it really just subverts it).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
...when they reverse engineer Q*Bert. I never could get past level 4.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
FUCK U SUFFOCATE