Dammit to hell. So how do I actually make line returns anyway?

(Ok it has been a while since I've posted here but every time I preview this the line returns are ignored. If it doesn't show up properly I'm an idiot. Enough said.) Pretty much every thing you stated completely ignores the technology available at the time. In the 70's 80's and early 90's there where no ISPs. Really. In 1983 if you were really in the know you had a computer and second phone line that was dedicated to your modem. If you were in the goverment or research you connected to the naescent internet. Otherwise it was a few BBSs. Think I'm wrong? Go watch "Wargames." That's actually a movie that doesn't completely suck when it comes to computer cracking. When you watch Mathew Brodderick push a phone on an interface device tell me exactly how the "internet" was supposed to take off then even if you could self publish. Who the hell would see it? Remember in the eighties most houses had one, yes one, phone line. If a computer was using it no one could call in. If someone in the house picked up the phone it would break your connection. Sidenote So you have the prototype internet or BBSs. BBSs were used quite a bit for those with the right kit. Which pretty much meant the crackers and hackers. Ever wonder how so many cracked games spread around in the eighties? BBSs. Which also explains the explosion in disc copying software at the time. End Sidenote The idea that CompuServe was a "walled garden" is kinda cute in a way. I mean you could dial a BBS and get a local view of something, plus pay for it most of the time. Or you could pay CompuServe and actually get on what was even close to the internet at the time. Plus tame flame wars in forums! Walled garden my hairy butt. Expensive? Hell yeah. But walled? Well the wall was actually knowing what the hell it was and having the equipment to dial into it plus having access to the true internet. Asside from CompuServer there was no other way to get on the internet if you were not in a school or government organization. Period. For instance when I went to college in 1989 the way I "surfed" the internet was through a serial, yes serial, connection to a VAX server. Once I terminaled into that I could contact other servers using gopher or ftp. Then I could download items to my scratch disk on the VAX. Once it was there I then had to download it to my computer using the XTERM, YTERM, ZTERM or KERMIT protocol. That is not a joke. AOL came along, as I remember, in the early nighties as a competitor to CompuServe. It was another "walled garden" that gave people access to the internet. There was a time when people would collect AOL discs as coasters. Again not a joke. They battled each other out and eventually AOL bought CompuServe. Why? I have no idea. But still the AOL coasters came in the mail. It really wasn't until the second half of the nighties that ISPs really started to exist. I think it was early 1997 when my phone company offered a consumer DSL line. I split the payment with my roomate and setup an ethernet hub. Yes hub. Routers didn't exist for normal people then. In fact hubs didn't either but I worked in a tech company. From there yeah the internet pretty much exploded. As far as self publishing goes well, do we really have to count geocities? Ok fine but that makes it what 17 years? I realize it's easy to think we could have done this forever in the past but seriously you need to consider the technical barriers at the time before spouting the "walled garden" argument.

I would have agreed with you a month ago, but not now. I think there is a big transition going on where more people will be taking video with the Flip and Kodak Zi6 which have USB interfaces. Yes older, standard and in many cases higher quality cameras do have Firewire. But with these new point and shoot video cameras I think the average person isn't going to care about Firewire.