...or is this the weirdest public relations fiasco the 3d card industry has seen in some time?
Seriously. Hands up. How many of you were planning on boycotting the GeForce 3 based on how this issue played out? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Why is this such a fuss? Did they have some big customer survey that said this was an important issue for them?
Microsoft supports BSD licensing?
on
Shared Source?
·
· Score: 4
Q: What is Microsoft's concern with the GNU General Public License?
A: There is no question that the GPL is a complicated license that has led to a great deal of confusion. For the sake of clarity, we wish to reiterate our basic points in regard to the GPL and other OSS licenses.
Some open source licenses are viral, that is, they require that all derivative works be licensed on the same terms as the original program. These licenses are described as viral because they "infect" derivative programs. Viral licenses vary in how infectious they are, depending on how they define which programs are derivative works. However, one of the dominant open source license-the GPL-is the most infectious. It attempts to subject any work that includes GPL-licensed code to the GPL. Thus, if a government or business uses even a few lines of GPL-licensed code in a program, and then re-distributes that program to others, it would be required to provide the program under the GPL. And, under the GPL, the recipient must be given access to the source code and the freedom to redistribute the program on a royalty-free basis.
Open source licenses that are non-viral, on the other hand, permit software developers to integrate the licensed software and its source code into new products, often with much less significant restrictions. A prominent example of this type of license is the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. The BSD license allows programmers to use, modify, and redistribute the source code and binary code of the original software program, with or without modification. Moreover, programs containing code subject to the BSD license are subject to only limited obligations imposed by that license. This type of license gives users freedom to incorporate their own changes and redistribute them, without requiring them to publish the new source code or allow royalty-free redistribution.
Q: We're confused. Does this mean that this is the model that you're going to be using for your own shared source strategies?
A: Ha ha, no. We just wanted to take this opportunity to use certain words like "viral", a word which we unintentionally made popular, against our primary competition.
Q: Oh. So you have no plans to release your source code free for public use for people to take and incorporate into their projects how they please.
A: Of course not! What sort of fools do you take us for?
Q: So your opinion of the GPL and BSD models and licenses is really irrelevent.
It's going on right now. Worse yet, it's international, so whoever among you out there is paranoid that corporations are trying to control the world, well, you're right.
I'm surprised -- talk about a totally unnecessary tactic. They should have taken the conventional hollywood approach to bad press, if they were worried about it.
Before:
"This was an unbelievably bad movie. There was absolutely nothing worthwhile about it. You'd be better off if you don't bother to see this movie and decided upon just staying at home."
After:
"This was...unbelievably...worthwhile...don't bother...staying at home."
Heh, I guess all my karma are belong to your -1, Flamebaits... Please don't take this as a troll, though. I'm genuinely concerned.
KDE has spent a great deal of time building a GUI desktop suite with little to no corporate involvement. KDE is already up to their second generation desktop, working with a toolkit that's at its third generation, has bragging rights on arguably the most esteemed web browser Linux has right now. They've built their own development IDE based on C++ (arguably the most popular development language for large-scale projects). They've even got mindshare in the annoying but effective branding sense -- nobody's going to mistake any of their projects as being from anybody else, thanks to that K at the beginning of everything.
The Gnome foundation can drop a lot of names. They've got a so-so toolkit (and before you tell me otherwise, try programming with it) that was based off a Photoshop clone and has had widgets undergo major (ie: developer's nightmare) changes from 1.0 to 1.2 to the proposed 2.0. They've got many divergent projects, no complete Office Suite, and have a FILE MANAGER as their flagship product. They haven't reached their second generation of desktop yet, and while that might be (and probably everyone's going to argue is) because they have a different set of standards, I don't think anybody can sit there and say with a straight face that the Gnome foundation has been pumping out the software in the same volume that KDE has. Furthermore, they keep changing names (Gnome->Helixcode->Ximian->What Next?).
I hate to say this, but it really looks like the Gnome foundation has been playing open-source politics whereas the folks at KDE have been diligently working on software. I don't want to hear about GUADEC, I don't want to read about Miguel getting political when Linuxplanet criticizes the Foundation, I DO want to see some coding coming out of these boys. They should have a more polished product by now, given the amount of corporate support that they're getting, and it's not like the community hasn't been encouraging.
And another thought, why don't one of these two (or both) take the chance on rolling its own distribution? That could open up revenue streams that neither really has access to. And that's real revenue (sales, support & service contracts, printed documentation), not just investment- or donation-based. Plus, they could tailor aspects of their distribution to match their GUI desktop, and would probably be able to get a user-friendly distro faster than anybody. KLinux? If buying a copy would support those guys, I might just do it. I don't know if I'd bother buying a Gnome Linux, though. They look like they've secured enough funding for now. Let's just hope that something's left when it runs out.
I agree that Scott Bakula was great in Quantum Leap, but that show was largely a success of good writing. Bakula's been in a few movies that are absolute stinkers (Lord of Illusions, Necessary Roughness, etc.). He did well in his brief part of American Beauty and various Murphy Brown episodes, but those were well-written parts.
The quality of writing for Star Trek episodes seems to fluctuate. The first year or so of TNG was pretty lame, and then they started giving the characters meaningful individual plotlines over the course of several episodes, and by the time Picard was saying "I am Locutus of Bord" we were all pretty much hooked.
I never thought much of DS9 until the last few seasons or so. They tried mixing it up and bringing in new blood (eg: Worf, the Dominion), and that was enough to make the show tolerable even amidst the horrible acting of Avery Brooks. Voyager was pretty lame, trying to get by on the Space Noir thing, until 7o9 showed up, but even with a sexy poker-faced borg in there they never really escaped the Gilligan's Island premise, and I don't think there was enough there to inspire some really well-written shows (just mho).
I do think that Bakula has a chance to bring some much-needed charisma and charm back to the franchise, much like Patrick Stewart did, but they're also going to need to bring in some seriously good writing, and avoid horrible decisions (like Neelix-type characters) if this thing's going to fly.
Remarkable guy. He didn't try to sell us anything. Considering he was involved in a project that still exists in a rapidly enhanced form (BASIC), it was neat to see him treat his accomplishment there as historical, and get with the times in terms of modern day alternatives to learning languages (regardless of whether he's right or wrong in his choice of Python...).
Just a thought. It'd work like regular email except that it only accepts email from other registered service members and requires a sign-up method that has a traceable criteria (ie: a phone number).
This way, it'll automatically reject all email that isn't from the service. Furthermore, if you join the service and send spam, you can be traced and prosecuted under spamming legislation.
There are times I think I'd pay for a service like this. It'd take a long time to gather steam, and you'd probably never want to use it for touchy stuff (like discussing illegal activity), but in the end, it could prevent an average person who uses email to make simple arrangements and send friendly notes from getting spammed.
Okay, assuming you can't answer your own question about this, it sounds like any system you're going to implement is probably going to involve a bit of a learning curve. Why not, instead of trying to learn some sort of standard versioning system, implement your own, custom suited for your needs? VB is relatively painless and integrated into all your office aps, you could easily throw in a save macro or a get macro that'll access the versions you want, and differentiate between all the versions out there. Plus, VB coders aren't the most expensive thing to bring in out there, and if you had someone on staff with a little extra time, they could probably figure it out for themselves. It's a joke language, but it's a functional joke language.
At my old office we tended to make versioning transparent -- ie: the file names had version information built into them. It was a choice that got made for the system early on and it worked out pretty well.
I've got the "original" Netscape, Netscape 6, and Mozilla on my machine, and the original is the only one I use regularly. It loads the quickest, renders pages the fastest, and other than the odd "?" instead of apostrophes, works as well for my average needs as any of them. For a while, when Mozilla wouldn't even bring hotmail up without giving me errors of some form or another, I just said screw it and went back to the original.
I guess I'll give Konq a try, but to be honest, I agree with the poster who says it's ridiculous that given we're getting two full CDs of stuff anyway from RedHat that there isn't space for one more standby.
From the article: Rambus Inc. had committed fraud by failing to disclose its synchronous patent applications to the industry JEDEC standards body.
It was bad enough when we only had suspicions that corporations might abuse the patent system in a general sense by using patent chill -- like libel chill, where the threat of a lawsuit discourages actions -- like with what Amazon was doing to internet vendors with their one-click patent. Now it looks like they're willing to try to find exploits within an already unreasonable system.
When I learned to code, LEDs weren't yet in widespread use, and all of the computers used HEDs (heat emitting diodes) for status displays. The only way to tell if a bit was set was to touch a HED and see if your fingers got burned.
Luxury! Back in my day we had to hoist massive stones around and line them up with the stars (which were always moving, mind you) just to figure out what day of the week it was.
I swear, the kids these days... Call themselves coders and they've not even risked a hernia...
Has anyone fixed that bug that automatically gives John Carmack a +5 Informative whenever he talks about anything? Or, at least substituted his name in your string tables with "wrinkledshirt"? Just wondering.
Like, great if we get a standards base, but how is it going to be USED? Will RedHat, Suse, Debian, etc. offer us a bare-bones LSB install, without all the extras? Will people working on important projects offer a special implementation for people with LSB setups? Will it finally be feasible to have an InstallShield-like program for Linux? Will it be easy or a nightmare to go from an LSB install to one of several kinds of rigs (ie: a server box, an internet browsing box, a gamer's box, a development box, etc.)?
Also, how often do they forsee this base being updated? When new killer hardware comes out, how will this affect the LSB? Will the LSB be so concrete that a new killer ap coming along will shake it to the core and require a complete rebuilding? Or will the LSB be so abstract that it won't be really any use to anybody?
But if you don't have 3D drivers installed properly it's going to affect both native and emulated games, so your efforts, though understandably frustrating, don't apply to this argument really.
Heh, I guess that was a bit of a rant. I just wanted to respond to the fact that, from the point of view of an average game developer, the conditions are not entirely in place for true native development.
Having said that, have you got 3D up and running on your system?
Nope. I've tried everything except for a fresh base-bones install and adding things one-by-one, which is what's coming next. I was holding off on this because I have a LOT of things to add one-by-one.
But there are still a few obstacles in place, mainly the fact that getting 3d to work via DRI is currently a son of a bitch for some people. I'm all for getting more games on Linux, and the SDL is great to work with, but the SDL can only do so much when you're stuck with software rendering because you have to do some serious twiddling with the kernel, then XFree, then DRI, then Mesa, then Glide (maybe the fact that I have a Voodoo card is part of the problem), and this is before you write a single line of game code. If you've never done this before, go on the dri lists and look at some of the things you have to do to diagnose a problem, you'd be amazed. There is no way your average gamer is going to want to put this much effort into dealing with problems that Windows handles (unfortunately) pretty effortlessly and has more games as payoff, to boot.
Currently, the SDL is working great. No arguments there. But you really have to get your geek on to get DRI to work, and that's unacceptable if you want Linux to be accepted as a gaming platform. I've been spending over three weeks trying to get a game I'm working on to start working faster (limiting factor is currently blitting), and each time it's the same. Yes, I RTFMed (several different ones, actually), and when you RTFM a manual like DRIs FM and you still can't get hardware acceleration, it's heartbreaking.
Maybe the LSB will help improve things, but it's hard to say.
We send Bruce Willis... with a handpicked suicide crew equipped with drills and nukes, right?
Good god I hope not. If I have to sit through that again, I think I'll welcome the asteroid.
What's holding it back speed-wise?
on
Mozilla 0.9 Out
·
· Score: 1
Er... if you skipped the subject header, what's holding it back speed-wise? Is speed in the area of MS Explorer possible?
I'd assumed certain layers/barriers between the operating system and the browser would need to be eliminated or reduced in order for that to happen, and I also figured that such layers/barriers would only come into play post-1.0...
Okay, some unknown hacker creates his/her foo application and releases the source under GPL. Something occurs that leads him/her to suspect that the foo source has been incorporated into a commercial product that isn't following the terms of the GPL with regards to rereleasing the source. Furthermore, the things that lead him/her to suspect this aren't basic paranoia -- someone with a conscience and access to the suspect source has leaked information about it or whatnot. Or maybe something else -- point is, there is a case that could be made.
From a PRACTICAL standpoint, what sort of things would this unknown hacker have to do to make their case? Would it be possible from a practical point of view under (eg) the United States legal system for this unknown hacker to take the company to court? What sorts of costs would he/she incur? What sort of time-frame would it take to achieve resolution? What sorts of potential rewards or compensation could he/she expect? Are there any precedents that are analogous to this situation?
Why not resurrect the BBSes themselves? Seriously, look at some of the most popular websites out there. They're often community-based. There was a real art to virtual communities that has been lost since the internet was taken over by commercial interests.
I mean, pr0n sharing, ASCII art and muds aside (or maybe even with them), BBSes (BBSen?) often embodied the best of what the internet could be.
And considering how low-end these things often were, can you imagine how fast they'd be?
Just a thought. I guess even though I've become a bit of a karma whore over here, Internet browsing has just become a bit too much of a passive experience for me. I remember many of the BBSes I visited as having been a bit more engaging.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. Hands up. How many of you were planning on boycotting the GeForce 3 based on how this issue played out? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Why is this such a fuss? Did they have some big customer survey that said this was an important issue for them?
Q: What is Microsoft's concern with the GNU General Public License?
A: There is no question that the GPL is a complicated license that has led to a great deal of confusion. For the sake of clarity, we wish to reiterate our basic points in regard to the GPL and other OSS licenses.
Some open source licenses are viral, that is, they require that all derivative works be licensed on the same terms as the original program. These licenses are described as viral because they "infect" derivative programs. Viral licenses vary in how infectious they are, depending on how they define which programs are derivative works. However, one of the dominant open source license-the GPL-is the most infectious. It attempts to subject any work that includes GPL-licensed code to the GPL. Thus, if a government or business uses even a few lines of GPL-licensed code in a program, and then re-distributes that program to others, it would be required to provide the program under the GPL. And, under the GPL, the recipient must be given access to the source code and the freedom to redistribute the program on a royalty-free basis.
Open source licenses that are non-viral, on the other hand, permit software developers to integrate the licensed software and its source code into new products, often with much less significant restrictions. A prominent example of this type of license is the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. The BSD license allows programmers to use, modify, and redistribute the source code and binary code of the original software program, with or without modification. Moreover, programs containing code subject to the BSD license are subject to only limited obligations imposed by that license. This type of license gives users freedom to incorporate their own changes and redistribute them, without requiring them to publish the new source code or allow royalty-free redistribution.
Q: We're confused. Does this mean that this is the model that you're going to be using for your own shared source strategies?
A: Ha ha, no. We just wanted to take this opportunity to use certain words like "viral", a word which we unintentionally made popular, against our primary competition.
Q: Oh. So you have no plans to release your source code free for public use for people to take and incorporate into their projects how they please.
A: Of course not! What sort of fools do you take us for?
Q: So your opinion of the GPL and BSD models and licenses is really irrelevent.
A: Er... yes. But don't tell anyone, 'kay?
Two consecutive articles, two references to pornography. CowboyNeal on the rag or something?
It's going on right now. Worse yet, it's international, so whoever among you out there is paranoid that corporations are trying to control the world, well, you're right.
I can't very well admit that the reason why they keep getting headshots on me has anything to do with SKILL, can I?
...do whatever the hell you want, and then copyright the evidence against you.
I'm surprised -- talk about a totally unnecessary tactic. They should have taken the conventional hollywood approach to bad press, if they were worried about it.
Before:
"This was an unbelievably bad movie. There was absolutely nothing worthwhile about it. You'd be better off if you don't bother to see this movie and decided upon just staying at home."
After:
"This was...unbelievably...worthwhile...don't bother...staying at home."
Heh, I guess all my karma are belong to your -1, Flamebaits... Please don't take this as a troll, though. I'm genuinely concerned.
KDE has spent a great deal of time building a GUI desktop suite with little to no corporate involvement. KDE is already up to their second generation desktop, working with a toolkit that's at its third generation, has bragging rights on arguably the most esteemed web browser Linux has right now. They've built their own development IDE based on C++ (arguably the most popular development language for large-scale projects). They've even got mindshare in the annoying but effective branding sense -- nobody's going to mistake any of their projects as being from anybody else, thanks to that K at the beginning of everything.
The Gnome foundation can drop a lot of names. They've got a so-so toolkit (and before you tell me otherwise, try programming with it) that was based off a Photoshop clone and has had widgets undergo major (ie: developer's nightmare) changes from 1.0 to 1.2 to the proposed 2.0. They've got many divergent projects, no complete Office Suite, and have a FILE MANAGER as their flagship product. They haven't reached their second generation of desktop yet, and while that might be (and probably everyone's going to argue is) because they have a different set of standards, I don't think anybody can sit there and say with a straight face that the Gnome foundation has been pumping out the software in the same volume that KDE has. Furthermore, they keep changing names (Gnome->Helixcode->Ximian->What Next?).
I hate to say this, but it really looks like the Gnome foundation has been playing open-source politics whereas the folks at KDE have been diligently working on software. I don't want to hear about GUADEC, I don't want to read about Miguel getting political when Linuxplanet criticizes the Foundation, I DO want to see some coding coming out of these boys. They should have a more polished product by now, given the amount of corporate support that they're getting, and it's not like the community hasn't been encouraging.
And another thought, why don't one of these two (or both) take the chance on rolling its own distribution? That could open up revenue streams that neither really has access to. And that's real revenue (sales, support & service contracts, printed documentation), not just investment- or donation-based. Plus, they could tailor aspects of their distribution to match their GUI desktop, and would probably be able to get a user-friendly distro faster than anybody. KLinux? If buying a copy would support those guys, I might just do it. I don't know if I'd bother buying a Gnome Linux, though. They look like they've secured enough funding for now. Let's just hope that something's left when it runs out.
I agree that Scott Bakula was great in Quantum Leap, but that show was largely a success of good writing. Bakula's been in a few movies that are absolute stinkers (Lord of Illusions, Necessary Roughness, etc.). He did well in his brief part of American Beauty and various Murphy Brown episodes, but those were well-written parts.
The quality of writing for Star Trek episodes seems to fluctuate. The first year or so of TNG was pretty lame, and then they started giving the characters meaningful individual plotlines over the course of several episodes, and by the time Picard was saying "I am Locutus of Bord" we were all pretty much hooked.
I never thought much of DS9 until the last few seasons or so. They tried mixing it up and bringing in new blood (eg: Worf, the Dominion), and that was enough to make the show tolerable even amidst the horrible acting of Avery Brooks. Voyager was pretty lame, trying to get by on the Space Noir thing, until 7o9 showed up, but even with a sexy poker-faced borg in there they never really escaped the Gilligan's Island premise, and I don't think there was enough there to inspire some really well-written shows (just mho).
I do think that Bakula has a chance to bring some much-needed charisma and charm back to the franchise, much like Patrick Stewart did, but they're also going to need to bring in some seriously good writing, and avoid horrible decisions (like Neelix-type characters) if this thing's going to fly.
Remarkable guy. He didn't try to sell us anything. Considering he was involved in a project that still exists in a rapidly enhanced form (BASIC), it was neat to see him treat his accomplishment there as historical, and get with the times in terms of modern day alternatives to learning languages (regardless of whether he's right or wrong in his choice of Python...).
Just a thought. It'd work like regular email except that it only accepts email from other registered service members and requires a sign-up method that has a traceable criteria (ie: a phone number).
This way, it'll automatically reject all email that isn't from the service. Furthermore, if you join the service and send spam, you can be traced and prosecuted under spamming legislation.
There are times I think I'd pay for a service like this. It'd take a long time to gather steam, and you'd probably never want to use it for touchy stuff (like discussing illegal activity), but in the end, it could prevent an average person who uses email to make simple arrangements and send friendly notes from getting spammed.
Okay, assuming you can't answer your own question about this, it sounds like any system you're going to implement is probably going to involve a bit of a learning curve. Why not, instead of trying to learn some sort of standard versioning system, implement your own, custom suited for your needs? VB is relatively painless and integrated into all your office aps, you could easily throw in a save macro or a get macro that'll access the versions you want, and differentiate between all the versions out there. Plus, VB coders aren't the most expensive thing to bring in out there, and if you had someone on staff with a little extra time, they could probably figure it out for themselves. It's a joke language, but it's a functional joke language.
At my old office we tended to make versioning transparent -- ie: the file names had version information built into them. It was a choice that got made for the system early on and it worked out pretty well.
I don't suppose if anyone heard anything about dual duron mobos coming out at all...? I remember this was in the rumour mill for a while.
I've got the "original" Netscape, Netscape 6, and Mozilla on my machine, and the original is the only one I use regularly. It loads the quickest, renders pages the fastest, and other than the odd "?" instead of apostrophes, works as well for my average needs as any of them. For a while, when Mozilla wouldn't even bring hotmail up without giving me errors of some form or another, I just said screw it and went back to the original.
I guess I'll give Konq a try, but to be honest, I agree with the poster who says it's ridiculous that given we're getting two full CDs of stuff anyway from RedHat that there isn't space for one more standby.
From the article: Rambus Inc. had committed fraud by failing to disclose its synchronous patent applications to the industry JEDEC standards body.
It was bad enough when we only had suspicions that corporations might abuse the patent system in a general sense by using patent chill -- like libel chill, where the threat of a lawsuit discourages actions -- like with what Amazon was doing to internet vendors with their one-click patent. Now it looks like they're willing to try to find exploits within an already unreasonable system.
When I learned to code, LEDs weren't yet in widespread use, and all of the computers used HEDs (heat emitting diodes) for status displays. The only way to tell if a bit was set was to touch a HED and see if your fingers got burned.
Luxury! Back in my day we had to hoist massive stones around and line them up with the stars (which were always moving, mind you) just to figure out what day of the week it was.
I swear, the kids these days... Call themselves coders and they've not even risked a hernia...
I was KIDDING!
Has anyone fixed that bug that automatically gives John Carmack a +5 Informative whenever he talks about anything? Or, at least substituted his name in your string tables with "wrinkledshirt"? Just wondering.
Like, great if we get a standards base, but how is it going to be USED? Will RedHat, Suse, Debian, etc. offer us a bare-bones LSB install, without all the extras? Will people working on important projects offer a special implementation for people with LSB setups? Will it finally be feasible to have an InstallShield-like program for Linux? Will it be easy or a nightmare to go from an LSB install to one of several kinds of rigs (ie: a server box, an internet browsing box, a gamer's box, a development box, etc.)?
Also, how often do they forsee this base being updated? When new killer hardware comes out, how will this affect the LSB? Will the LSB be so concrete that a new killer ap coming along will shake it to the core and require a complete rebuilding? Or will the LSB be so abstract that it won't be really any use to anybody?
But if you don't have 3D drivers installed properly it's going to affect both native and emulated games, so your efforts, though understandably frustrating, don't apply to this argument really.
Heh, I guess that was a bit of a rant. I just wanted to respond to the fact that, from the point of view of an average game developer, the conditions are not entirely in place for true native development.
Having said that, have you got 3D up and running on your system?
Nope. I've tried everything except for a fresh base-bones install and adding things one-by-one, which is what's coming next. I was holding off on this because I have a LOT of things to add one-by-one.
Currently, the SDL is working great. No arguments there. But you really have to get your geek on to get DRI to work, and that's unacceptable if you want Linux to be accepted as a gaming platform. I've been spending over three weeks trying to get a game I'm working on to start working faster (limiting factor is currently blitting), and each time it's the same. Yes, I RTFMed (several different ones, actually), and when you RTFM a manual like DRIs FM and you still can't get hardware acceleration, it's heartbreaking.
Maybe the LSB will help improve things, but it's hard to say.
We send Bruce Willis ... with a handpicked suicide crew equipped with drills and nukes, right?
Good god I hope not. If I have to sit through that again, I think I'll welcome the asteroid.
Er... if you skipped the subject header, what's holding it back speed-wise? Is speed in the area of MS Explorer possible?
I'd assumed certain layers/barriers between the operating system and the browser would need to be eliminated or reduced in order for that to happen, and I also figured that such layers/barriers would only come into play post-1.0...
Just curious.
Okay, some unknown hacker creates his/her foo application and releases the source under GPL. Something occurs that leads him/her to suspect that the foo source has been incorporated into a commercial product that isn't following the terms of the GPL with regards to rereleasing the source. Furthermore, the things that lead him/her to suspect this aren't basic paranoia -- someone with a conscience and access to the suspect source has leaked information about it or whatnot. Or maybe something else -- point is, there is a case that could be made.
From a PRACTICAL standpoint, what sort of things would this unknown hacker have to do to make their case? Would it be possible from a practical point of view under (eg) the United States legal system for this unknown hacker to take the company to court? What sorts of costs would he/she incur? What sort of time-frame would it take to achieve resolution? What sorts of potential rewards or compensation could he/she expect? Are there any precedents that are analogous to this situation?
Why not resurrect the BBSes themselves? Seriously, look at some of the most popular websites out there. They're often community-based. There was a real art to virtual communities that has been lost since the internet was taken over by commercial interests.
I mean, pr0n sharing, ASCII art and muds aside (or maybe even with them), BBSes (BBSen?) often embodied the best of what the internet could be.
And considering how low-end these things often were, can you imagine how fast they'd be?
Just a thought. I guess even though I've become a bit of a karma whore over here, Internet browsing has just become a bit too much of a passive experience for me. I remember many of the BBSes I visited as having been a bit more engaging.