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Hundreds of Hours of BBS Documentary Interviews 215
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."
Ahhh... the good ol days. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ahhh... the good ol days. (Score:1, Informative)
Hey Baby... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hey Baby... (Score:2)
Congrats... (Score:3)
Re:Congrats... (Score:1)
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
The Fidonet and artscene interviews alone are well worth the price of the discs.
Why would it take you so long to upload your files (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why would it take you so long to upload your fi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why would it take you so long to upload your fi (Score:2)
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...
Ahh.. BBS's (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember back in the late 70's to mid 80's we ran something called The Message System on a system at the college. Every behavioural trait you would see on USENET, BBS's and Bl
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2)
That local scene has spread to other Internet based communities such as the one I participate the most in, geocaching.
We have a state-wide forum and routinely meet up for "Events" which are generally cook-outs drawing people in from all over the area.
While I miss the BBS days I really don't think that much has changed as far as communities meeting up outside of the computer realm.
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2)
The bbs community may be gone, but in some respects, its be replaced with a wider audience.
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2)
Not entirely gone... just more or less an underground community now. There's several old BBS software packages that have been ported from their x86 DOS versions into Win32 and Linux versions and run via telnet (and soon ssh). I happen to run Synchronet BBS software (which is open source) for my BBS, which I started a little over two years ago because I had always wanted to run one when I was a kid, logging into ev
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2)
community = women (Score:2)
Local BBS = straight up meat market. Aw yeah. i miss those days..
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2)
All of the BBS's local to me were. And you got in late if 14.4 was a normal speed - and stayed too long if the speeds were 33.6.
The norm was 2400 here, and some were USR 9600's - you needed a USR modem to connect at those speeds. Eventually, the USR 16.8's hit the scene but again, you needed expensive USR modems to make use of the speeds. Most everyone else was stuck at 9600, or 14.4 later on.
It didn't matter. Downloading cool stuff was good - I got into the demoscene (as a pure spectator) after
Re:Ahh.. BBS's (Score:2)
BBS scene memoirs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:BBS scene memoirs (Score:2)
I started with WWIV, but became frustrated with some of its quirks and limitati
Ethnography of BBSers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
The Games! (Score:3, Interesting)
Many hours wasted playing those darn text games...
Re:The Games! (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely, and you forgot the biggest one - Tradewars. Man, did that game start some flamewars.
Re:The Games! (Score:2)
The Pit (Score:2)
Re:The Pit (Score:2)
Re:The Pit (Score:2)
Re:The Pit (Score:2)
Re:The Games! (Score:2)
Played LORD all the time in the middle '90s. I'd use up all my connect time, have to connect the next day, and find out that someone had killed me. :(
In a way I suppose these were precursors, in that you had to spend all your available time playing them to make your character any good, score with the barmaid, etc...but since you were always kicked off after a period of time, and your character was auto-run instead of disappearing from the game whenever you weren't there, it wasn't quite like that. I'd say
Still around.... (Score:3, Informative)
Their website is here: http://lord.nuklear.org/ [nuklear.org]
Re:LORD (Score:2)
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.
Yup. Used to host them. (Score:2)
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.
Re:The Games! (Score:2)
Hear hear! I had macros tuned so efficiently I could play 2xBRE (1 local, 1 IBBS) on a dozen different BBSs in under an hour on a 1200BPS modem. I and a group of 2-3 friends used to converge on certain BBSs to create our own undefeatable empire. There's nothing like the satisfaction of bringing down a well established BBS with teamwork and a well executed plan of attack.
Modern chat vs. BBS (Score:5, Funny)
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...==
Re:Real-time chat typing rocked (Score:2)
Re:Modern chat vs. BBS (Score:2)
where'd the porn go? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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 an
That wasn't a flame, it was a legit question (Score:2)
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?
Re:That wasn't a flame, it was a legit question (Score:3, Informative)
The episode entitled "Make it Pay" covers some of the aspects of how dirty pictures represented an easy way to make fast cash on BBSes, accompanied by a few dozen advertisements I found for "adult" BBSes, and reactions by some people to this fact.
San Diego BBSes (Score:2)
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!
Blogs look a lot like BBS's did. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ahhhhhhh the memories (Score:2, Interesting)
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
The bad 'ol days. (Score:2)
Re:The bad 'ol days. (Score:2)
Half and half. I loved the client-side part of it enough to clone Qmodem 4.x [sf.net] and use it all the time at work. (I work with buoys running an embedded Linux on PC/104 hardware.) I think for interactive text-mode stuff BBSes were more advanced than the current Internet. For example, transferring files across multiple firewalls that you can ssh through is hard without Zmod
Re:The bad 'ol days. (Score:2)
Bluewave...
Re:The bad 'ol days. (Score:2)
The best thing about Bluewave was not supporting Hector Santos...
{cough}
<VBFEG>
I remember the days... (Score:2)
Blast from the past! (Score:2)
Re:Blast from the past! (Score:2)
It's good (Score:2)
Re:It's good (Score:3, Interesting)
When I asked for more music on top of the mass he had available for download, he was unable to make the time because he was hard at work making a 64k bank-switched Atari 2600 RPG. You could buy an ocean liner on that much geek cred.
People hear his work as the "theme song" of the BBS Documentary; the music was created by hooking a microphone to a dot-matrix printer with a hacked ROM.
I'm privileged to be in any way associated with him.
How to generate hype for this... (Score:2)
"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.
Re:How to generate hype for this... (Score:3, Funny)
(Slaps Forehead)
I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
That never worked on my machine. I had an old IBM-PC that was a dinosaur by early 90's standards. Com-it was the only one that worked reliably for me.
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
http://homepage.mac.com/dalverson/zterm/ [mac.com]
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
My BBS struggled similarly. I started by downloading a BBS software package (Remote Access, IIRC) on my 1200BPS modem on my XT (with a 20MB hard drive). When I finally got a used 286 w/ 40MB d
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
# TheDraw - an ANSI graphics editor
I still use this sometimes... Oh ANSI...
# BinkleyTerm - the Fido/File net front end mailer
# RoboBoard FX
This was cool, but I forgot what it was...
# Shotgun BBS - written by Brent Shellenberg right near the end of the BBS days, but this was definitely a great BBS software
# There was also Renegade, which was free and had some nice features. MajorBBS I goofed around with for a while but it was the most "commercial" of them all and e
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
It's really cool how in the
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
Re:I ran a BBS for about 10 years (Score:2)
They actually cut footage? (Score:2, Informative)
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 t
This is great news! (I bought this DVD set.) (Score:2)
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 document
Re:This is great news! (I bought this DVD set.) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Thanks for the reply, Jason! (Score:2)
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 s
Re:This is great news! (I bought this DVD set.) (Score:2)
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
Re:This is great news! (I bought this DVD set.) (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, Channel Zer0 BBS was the ACiD [acid.org] 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 ne
Re:This is great news! (I bought this DVD set.) (Score:2)
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 anythi
Interviewee and Former Sysop (Score:2, Interesting)
Just Bought My Copy (Score:2)
BTW, I've been keeping my eye on this project for the last couple of years. I'm glad it finally went gold!
Early 90's slashdot effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Things are Better Now (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [systransoft.com] 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.
Re:Things are Better Now (Score:2)
And yet, the folksy local spirit of old-style BBS's doesn't exist in places like Yahoo Groups (or even Slashdot, which although it is basically a BBS, is way too big for that "get to know the regulars" type of community a BBS fosters).
Nope... to revel in the spirit of a BBS environment, you have to log in to a real BBS. There are still plenty of them out there (such as this one [citadel.org]), and they're on the Internet now so y
Re:Things are Better Now (Score:2)
Don't know what BBSs you dialed, but I can tell you that a Yahoo group is unfortunately nowhere near the sense of community achieved in my local ones.
Re:Things are Better Now (Score:2)
"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."
You're forgetting about scale. That 25K game was s
Creative Commons? Free downloads? (Score:2)
Re:Creative Commons? Free downloads? (Score:2)
Re:Creative Commons? Free downloads? (Score:2)
What about transcripts? (Score:2)
Boardwatch magazine (Score:2)
That long to upload? (Score:2)
In otherwords, "never underestimate the bandwidth of your FedEx guy carrrying a stack of CD-ROMs."
Re:That long to upload? (Score:2)
That's what's going to take the most time, really.
Oh man (Score:2, Funny)
Fond memories (Score:2)
BBSMates (Score:2)
My old board is even on there
Thank you Jason Scott for this documentary, it really does bring back the memories!
Re:Creative commons licensed?? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Creative commons licensed?? (Score:2)
Anyway -- look out, MPAA! Hundreds of hours of interviews with ex-BBSers? With competition like that on the horizon, the movie studios might as well just shut their doors!
Re:Creative commons licensed?? (Score:2)
It's meaningful to some people. At the least, it shows I am aware of and acknowledge Creative Commons, which is an important first step.
Anyway -- look out, MPAA! Hundreds of hours of interviews with ex-BBSers? With competition like that on the horizon, the movie studios might as well just shut their doors!
The purpose of the Creative Commons license is not to shut down the movie and
Re:Anyone remember the US Robotics Sysop Program? (Score:2)
I still have my USR Courier 56k (bought it on SysOp deal for $289 as a 28.8) which has survived 1000s of hours and numerous loan-outs to those that lost a broadband connection or needed a sturdy analog connection.
It will be the *one* piece of hardware that will follow me no matter where I move to. You never know when you might need an analog connection and you can always guarantee that the Courier will connect at the fastest and most reliable speeds available.
Re:Torrents for the original Documentary... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/order/ [bbsdocumentary.com]
Re:Torrents for the original Documentary... (Score:2)
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/warez/ [bbsdocumentary.com]
Re:Download it (Score:2)
Torrents for all episodes (Score:2)
1. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343541 [thepiratebay.org]
2. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343673 [thepiratebay.org]
3. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343713 [thepiratebay.org]
4. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343745 [thepiratebay.org]
5. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343746 [thepiratebay.org]
6. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343748 [thepiratebay.org]
7. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3343749 [thepiratebay.org]
8. http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=33437 [thepiratebay.org]
Re:Subtitles.... (Score:2)
I basically get angry when people don't subtitle their little DVD projects (I buy a lot of independent, REALLY independent DVDs these days) because the problem was, basically, solved.
Subtitle Workshop [urusoft.net] is 100% free, unbelievably easy to use, and compatible with basically every DV
Re:thanks for the spam Jason! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't make me regret the boxes are already printed; that would've gone great on the front cover.
Re:thanks for the spam Jason! (Score:2)
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
Re:Available on Usenet (Score:2)