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LHC Repair To Cost At Least $21 Million
ThanatosMinor writes "September's quench at the Large Hadron Collider is going to cost CERN at least $21 million and delay future collisions until June of 2009 at the earliest. Enjoy your last few months outside of an event horizon."
What ever happened to real bulletin-board systems?
First off, I'd like to make it perfectly clear that I cannot ... who's become a boyish programmer
be objective in these notes. These are observations, but they
are from 1) a Sysop
2) a user of 8BBS, the greatest BBS ever evolved
3) a boy
4) an old timer....1977 was when I first started
using BBS systems.
5) the author of a BBS system
If you're expecting objectivity, then don't bother reading on. I have a
rather unique perspective on the entire BBS scene. I've been around since close
to the beginning, and I'm wondering what has happened. Have BBS's gone the way
of CB? Is the entire system in a slump? Is there anything wrong at all?
I'm going to try to present these questions and show how things have
changed...for the better, and for the worst.
HISTORY:
A long time ago, in a city far-far away, two men had an insight. Ward
Christensen and Randy Suess wanted a way to leave notes and messages to their
programmer/engineer friends. Back then, modems were used by field-engineers and
some high-level executives to talk to their companies computers. A 300 baud
modem was extremely fast, as most people were using 110 baud TeleTypes. Ward
and Randy devloped the concept of the BBS. They called it CBBS, for "Computer
Bulletin Board System." CBBS was the first of its kind. It was an enormous
program written in 8080 assmebly language. By our standards today, it was
kludgy and bug-ridden, but back then it was heavenly. Users could enter
messages and read messages... that was about it.
CBBS was a wonderful concept, but it was localized to the Chicago area. Ward
and Randy were the only ones who were running the program. Then Bill Blue came
along and wrote ABBS, which was designed to "emulate" the CBBS system. I feel
it was ABBS, rather than CBBS which made the real breakthrough. While ABBS was
much less powerful, and more difficult to use, it could be run on a "universal"
machine: --The Apple ][--
Anyone with an Apple ][ and a D.C. Hayes MM][ modem could run ABBS. This
program could be installed in a matter of minutes, and anyone could have their
own bulletin board system. Soon after the release of ABBS, several other BBS
programs (for various computers) soon followed. ABBS was the king for many
years, just because there were more ABBS systems than any other BBS program
available.
It is this time that I would like to refer to as the "Golden age of the BBS."
It wasn't as golden as you might think. Most Sysops would come home every
evening from work to find that their BBS had crashed because of yet another bug.
Even back then, user's logged in under false names and left obscene messages.
The one point that made that age golden was the users. Without users, a BBS
is just a program. With users, it gains a personality, and if I may be
metaphysical, a soul. The users MAKE the BBS. A Sysop may have the greatest
BBS program in the world, but without active users, he just has a computer
wasting line-current.
LIFE IN THE "GOLDEN AGE"
A user would think nothing of spending his Saturday helping "The Sysop" find
an intermittant bug in the BBS program.
A user would not only answer his or HER mail, but also butt into other
people's conversations and throw in his/her two cents worth.
A user would suggest improvements to make the system easier to use.
A Sysop would care for his BBS like a baby. He'd spend 2 hours each ni
> And Higgs is known as the God particle
Yeah, someone gave it that name and now we can't get rid of it. I find the whole thing rather annoying, it is a just a particle and no more 'divine' than a potato. The media seem to love the name, though. People want to believe.
The guy who modded you interesing must be one of those idiots.