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BBS Documentary Now Shipping 280

Posted by Hemos from the ready-and-ordered dept.
Prophetic_Truth writes "Jason Scott is now shipping his BBS Documentary, which consists of five and a half hours of episodes outlining the history of Bulletin Board Systems. On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS."
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BBS Documentary Now Shipping More

BBS Documentary Now Shipping

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  • You'd pick a BBS documentary over SW and H2G2? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mtrisk ( 770081 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:05PM (#12630126) Journal
    Oh come on, they weren't that bad...
    • You obviously never spent the better portion of your free time using Telix to connect to single or multi-line BBS.

      I had the good fortune to grow up the son of the owners of a 50+ line BBS. IIRC, the most number of people I saw connected through the text interface was about 25. A lot of our lines were for SLIP users.

      Ah, those were the days. I might have been an annoying as hell ten-year-old who liked to see how many exclamation marks he could put in one line, but it was still fun, and I still see some of same people on a weekly basis.

      Alas, if I'd been born a bit sooner, I might have been able to enjoy it longer. The BBS I was on is still around, and you can log into it via telnet [slashdot.org], but it's mostly used as a database to authenticate against for the dial-up portion of the ISP. For a few years(1999-2003), I was the phone tech. Then we sold the business to a family friend, who still runs it.
    • My first stalker ex-g/f came from a bbs. I was all of 19 or 20 when I dated a girl named Connie who went by the username Moonlight on Baudtown (located in LA County in Southern California.) I'd have to say some parts of BBS life make SW and HHGttG seem a bit less painful in comparison. Just got a blast, I did a google search... I found this: Hah ! Google has imortalized my first stalker ex-g/f. Moonlight 1221 Moon CA F/S 22 2 2025 08-08-95

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:07PM (#12630134)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Woo! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:07PM (#12630136) Homepage Journal

    It'd be fun to watch for the nostalgia value. Hordes of 80's greasy, long haired geeks with huge glasses (myself included :)) freaking out about how much faster 1200 baud is over the old 110/300.
    • A friend of mine who used to run a QuickBBS with me reminded me of this comment: We had just bought and hooked up our first 2400 baud modem and as we dialed up a local BBS at the vo-tech I commented..."This is REAL speed." That seems silly now. :)

    • Re:Woo! (Score:4, Informative)

      by vegaspctech ( 769513 ) <vegaspctech@yahoo.com> on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @10:15PM (#12630526) Homepage Journal

      It'd be fun to watch for the nostalgia value. Hordes of 80's greasy, long haired geeks with huge glasses (myself included :)) freaking out about how much faster 1200 baud is over the old 110/300.

      That's a tired and inaccurate stereotype. And there were no 1200 baud modems, just 300 baud modems that many users incorrectly identified as such because they thought bit rate and baud rate synonymous. But I've been interrupted while posting this so there are likely twenty posts pointing that out already, eh? ;-)

      The only thing I really miss about the BBS days is hobbyist network messaging. FidoNet netmail and echomail had a far better signal to noise ratio -and probably still do- than anything I've yet seen on the 'net.

      • Re:Woo! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Kiryat Malachi ( 177258 )
        Actually, Bell 202s were true 1200 baud, and Bell 201 2400 bps modems used a 1200 baud encoding system as well. V.26 (ITU 2400 bps spec) is 1200 baud too.
    • fuck yeah- I had a 'friend' who really wasn't that cool, but I still wanted to go over to his house to check out the 2400 baud modem. it was really fucking fast. you wouldn't believe it.

  • Wow....that brings back memories... (Score:3)

    by neiffer ( 698776 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:08PM (#12630142) Homepage
    I used to co-run a small local board using QuickBBS. Those were the days!!! We used to play some multiplayer game...Trade Wars? Galaxy Wars? Galaxy Trade wars? Whatever it was, I would log in every night at midnight to play my turns. It was early nerd-dom...
    • Trade Wars... best part - giving the sysop custom maps to run that only you and he had copies of...
    • *sigh* trade wars... i used to be obsessed with that game. at first, it started by installing scripts to automate trading... then I started exploiting the plethora of bugs to become super powerful, especially the "clone planet" bug (which also cloned all the money in the planet's bank), then I would buy a zillion probes and fire them off into every sector of the galaxy (again, scripted to do this) and blow away every bad guy until I could buy the Enterprise, at which point I would turn to the dark side (t

  • I am SO EXCITED. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ZiZ ( 564727 ) * on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:09PM (#12630145) Homepage
    As a longtime friend and associate of Jason, I've watched him build up this thing from bare bones, and you will not find a more dedicated man nor a deeper labor of love than this documentary. I preordered a copy and can't /wait/ to see the finished product.

    Yay, Jason!

  • Torrents? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Average_Joe_Sixpack ( 534373 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:11PM (#12630155)
    Can we download the torrent using kermet?

    • Re:Torrents? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No but you can use zmodem.
      • Do you remember LeechZmodem? In stead of sending the final ACK of the last byte of the download, it would send an Abort and you wouldn't get charged for your Download. Or should I say, it wouldn't affect your UL/DL ratio.

        Damn I miss those days when you could chat with someone online and actually have something in common with them - because you were both "chatting online". Being "online" was something worth having in common with a stranger. These days, some old lady might be online chatting about paper

  • As someone blind that grew-up in mid-80's... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:11PM (#12630156)
    BBS's were my life. Most of my interaction with other people outside of school was using them.

    Too bad that as of Monday Slashdot no longer allows the blind to post without the help of someone that can see, or we might hear from more of us. Fortunately I had a relative that was over that could type-in that damn code from the image.

    Just why is Slashdot so anti-blind? Did some blind girl dump Taco?

  • Pirated versions (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:12PM (#12630168)
    It remains to be seen if uuencoded pirated versions will be seen on fidonet...

  • old school (Score:3, Interesting)

    by humankind ( 704050 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:13PM (#12630175) Journal
    As a sysop of one of the oldest BBSes in the world, I spoke with Jason early on regarding the project. Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it down to interview me but I think it's great that this project has finally come to fruitition and wish him all the best. I also want to say Hey to everyone who hit the Dungeon BBS in the early days.
    • Bump. From one of the old schoolers that visited your BBS.

      These days, I think "Bump" is a keyword equivalent to nudge, nudge (I now have a 14 year old, so I'm hip-by-proxy).

  • A BBC documentary about what? I don't get it. There not even a title, or anyth. . .

    Oh, nevermind.

  • I too am excited (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pao|o ( 92817 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:16PM (#12630187)
    I can't wait to get my preordered copy!

    I can't wait to get my BitTorrent copy!

  • C-Net (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Haxx ( 314221 )
    I ran a BBS on a commodore 64 with 4 1541's (which I had to crack open and solder to change the drive number) and an SFD drive which held an amazing 4066 blocks! I ran the BBS with C-Net software. All this and more before I was 15.. those were the days.

    P.S. I had to Phreak with MCI codes to get the best cracked games from across the country to lure in users.
    • Ahhh. back when warez went by the civilized term "elite files".

      Did your BBS do ringbacks to verify callers numbers?

  • I can't be the only one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by espergreen ( 849246 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:23PM (#12630222) Homepage
    Whats a BBS?

    • Re:I can't be the only one... (Score:5, Informative)

      by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:34PM (#12630292) Homepage
      OMG, shoot me. It was the internet for us poor kids that didn't go to college (or weren't old enough) to get on the real internet.

      BBS is an acronym for Bulletin Board System. It was a server with modems that people would dial into. It ran special software that served up files, forums, and even email gateways to real internet in some cases.

      Since you had to call into them and pay toll charges (to access the really good BBS'es that were Long Distance [or LD if you're nasty]), Beige Boxes, Blue Boxes, and Red Boxes were popular.

      Besides, when you jacked into your neighbors phone line, you didn't have to worry about your parents getting pissed 'In case someone has to call the house in an emergency'.

      Fun times, yessiree! Ah, the memories (and 8-bit mammaries).

      • which used off-hours capacity on Telenet to tunnel your session to a modem bank in the same city as the BBS. It was a clever idea with a reasonable flat fee, promptly taken advantage of by Usenet sites transferring multi-megabyte news feeds.

        (This is all back when long distance still cost money).
      • BBSes had pr0n, warez, and multiplayer games - basically everything the net is good for these days ;)

        My setup was an IBM XT Clone, with 640k of ram, dual 5 1/4 inch 360k floppies, 2400bps modem, CGA (Crap Graphics Adapter), and about DOS3.1 to 3.3 in my heyday. I lived in a large city, and we had many local high-quality BBSes around, I was even a co-sysop for one of them. At the time, most BBSes could only handle one caller at a time, and they were often busy. A BBS session consisted of the terminal so

    • Re:I can't be the only one... (Score:5, Funny)

      by bnitsua ( 72438 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @10:08PM (#12630484)
      they were the slashdot of their time (mid 80's-early 90's.)
      the information was never accurate, a lot of the users were 10 years old, the porn was disgusting, no one knew how to spell...,but damnit, they were all we had.

      • Like Slashdot, but local (Score:4)

        by PizzaFace ( 593587 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @01:57AM (#12631692)
        they were the slashdot of their time (mid 80's-early 90's.)

        Yup, Slashdot is in a lineage of threaded discussion forums - including BBSes, Fidonet, CompuServe and Usenet - where, for better or worse, I've hung out for almost 20 years. The obvious downside is the timesink. But on the upside, I've learned a lot, I've often been entertained, and I've had a soapbox from which to make remarks that I sometimes felt were appreciated by others.

        One advantage the old BBS forums had was their sense of community. The communities were often local, and even when they were international (as on CompuServe's forums) the number of active participants was small enough that you got to know many of the members' personalities, and to feel that you were known to others. On Slashdot, I must admit I don't have that awareness of individual identities, except for a couple editors. There are so many participants here, and so many articles I don't read, I just haven't noticed who "the regulars" are, and I don't feel like one myself.

        On the other hand, the huge variety of posts on Slashdot produces more gems than the BBSes yielded. Quantity and quality tend to trump community.
  • I ran a WWiV and Emulex/2 board from my parent's house back in the day. I think the # was 407-259-5286.

    Anyway, those were the days. G-Files and waiting 30 minutes for a [hopefully] good X-rated .GIF (or jif).

  • One of the last remaining BBSes: SDF-1 [lonestar.org]

    I'm a member. I'm seventeen years old. I missed the golden age of the BBS. I must watch this documentary.

    • Enjoy the documentary. I was around for the golden age of the BBS and remember it fondly. But you aren't missing all that much if you enjoy the Web today, for a web site dedicated to a particular community is very much in the BBS spirit. Oh, there are differences. BBS were more localized, so you were more likely to be dealing with people in a geographic location (although anyone could and did sign in too), whereas Web sites tend to be more open and accessible to anyone the world over. Only if you have

    • Telnet BBS Guide (Score:5, Informative)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @10:13PM (#12630506)
      One of the last remaining BBSes: SDF-1

      But not the last. The Telnet BBS Guide [dmine.com] lists about 100 active dial-up, and 400 Telnet BBS services.

  • Man the old days again (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:31PM (#12630281) Homepage Journal
    I ran Maximus first and then RABBS and played with many others. At first I did straight DOS but then with WFWG 3.11 I could run the bbs in a dos window and do other things.

    I also was a Fidonet hub for my small town and there were a lot of people who subscribed to that. I think I had nearly 300 users at it's peak.

    Sometimes I think of putting one together on a old box.. Really cool if I had my old Tandy 486SX 25mhz PC to run it all off of it's 14.4 modem.
    • At first I did straight DOS but then with WFWG 3.11 I could run the bbs in a dos window and do other things.

      I remember running something called DeskView. It allowed multitasking without the Windows junk. You could hot-key to different programs, each running in their own protected mode.

  • Ahhh, FidoNet, and all those other networks that I can't even remember the names of.. Door games...

    Of course, this was before I was into *nix (Hmmm, just about the time Linus had the Linux twinkle in his eye).. I used DesqView, on my 486/33 packed with a whopping 4Mb ram (that cost about $150 per meg), and had 3 nodes. One was on a nice US Robotics Courier Dual Standard, and a couple cheapie ones.

    I considered setting one back up, but then was like "why?". :)

  • Worst BBS prank ever (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:45PM (#12630348)
    Back when I used my older brothers ATARI 1200XL and 1200baud modem my friend Matt posted my home phone number on a bunch of BBS reviews saying that I ran an awesome BBS that had 50+ MB of pirated games. My phone rang all day and at all hours of the night for a week. Everytime we picked up the phone it would give us the piercing modem squawk! My Mom was so pissed!

  • I'm confused.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sik0fewl ( 561285 ) <<xxdigitalhellxx> <at> <hotmail.com>> on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @09:48PM (#12630362) Homepage

    On a personal note, I can't wait to get my preordered copy! I've been looking forward to this documentary more so than HHGTG and Star Wars ROTS.

    Does this make him more geeky or less geeky?

  • Back in the BBS days I used to play a game on an old Apple II BBS that involved running around space trading stuff for credits. Unfortunately, I can't remember its name. Anybody out there know it?

  • CBBS (Score:2)

    by stox ( 131684 )
    Just out of curiousity, any other CBBS old timers read ./?

  • and it's Creative Commons licensed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Josh Coalson ( 538042 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @10:12PM (#12630501) Homepage
    At first I was just interested but quite enough to order. Until I saw:

    • Region-Free DVDS
    • No Copy Protection, CSS or Macrovision
    • Licensed under Creative Commons

    Honestly, that sold me.

    • Yep...The only reason anyone even remembers half the world's bbs' is because of the archive of the documentary creator Jason Scott, who runs textfiles.com. I think it's amazing that this guy took it all on himself turn preserve this for all of us. Without him, these bbs's would all be forgotten, along with the thousands of text files we used to swap on them. (which he also archived)

      Add to that a classic hacker mentality of sinking 4 years and tons of his own money into this, and textfiles.com...only to CC
  • In some ways, I preferred the days of the BBS to the modern internet. It was easier to get together with the local geeks and freaks, and to have something of a social life based around the nerdvana of computers, comics, and sci-fi.

    Back then, tho, I'd have given my eyeteeth for Usenet access... it was available at $95 for a dial-up shell across the state, out of reach broke-ass art student. Then a local ISP opened up, with shell accounts for $25/month. Woo! Usenet was almost everything I had hoped it would
  • Wow, havn't even thought of BBS systems in some years. I used to run a BBS system from my Apple //e running GBBS "Pro". It was a very, very nice environment for an Apple //e (ran on ProDOS, and the software was pretty much BASIC with additional commands to handle the modem I/O interface, message board database, etc. - it was also compiled into a form of pseudo-code which ran really fast too). I was never able to find out much about the author/company though.

    Ran that until my Apple // hardware died, then
  • When I was in high school, I ran my first BBS, originally on an Apple using Net-works (circa 1979), then later under TRSDOS I wrote my own custom BBS software.. it used to call me in the morning on the modem to wake me up to go to school. From there I went to the IBM PC when it became available and cycled through a bunch of software including various home-brew systems, then hooked into Fidonet and got into using echos (the predecessor to usenet).

    Anyone remember Hell in NYC? The original hacker system?

    Ho
    • "Penn & Tellers early BBS?" do you mean "secret backdoor to the NYC parking violations ticket computer"? It was one of the first things I used to show a friend and her family when she got an Amiga, they were totally fooled by it. And an hour later totally pissed at me when I broke it to them that they actually did still owe for that ticket....
      • That must have been a later incarnation of Penn & Teller's BBS. I realized I made an error in my earlier post: there was no "click here" because there was no mouse. But those guys were into the BBS stuff in the early days like myself and it was cool to see.

  • I'd bet a heap of Slashdotters have a spare land line that they don't use. It'd be great if people started using them for BBSes again -- not all virtual communities need to be connected to the Interweb.
  • 1. Starting out BBSing on a TI-99/4A in 1989. It was even then outdated to use, but it worked in 40 column glory.

    2. Using it as an outlet to meet girls, and it actually worked out.

    Ah those were the days.
  • What is a BBS?

    It's a bulletin board system.

    To put it in perspective for the younger kids...

    It's like a computer without a graphical interface.

    It's like Unreal Tournament, except instead of fragging people, you interact with them and learn things.

  • Interview with Jason Scott (Score:3, Informative)

    by pgrote ( 68235 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @10:51PM (#12630772) Homepage

    Jason's been working on the documentary for four years.

    This is an interview with Jason Scott [dotjournal.com] at the beginning where he explains the goals and the reasons why he did it.

  • Telnet BBS's (Score:3, Informative)

    by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @10:54PM (#12630787) Journal

    It's not quite the same, but for what it's worth there are still some BBS's operating that are available via Telnet. Check out here [dmine.com] for a listing.

  • Out of all the stories I've posted in, I think this is the most appropriate.

    I decided to set my BBS back up after I saw a segment on AoTS on G4 (which I won't be watching too much longer now that K.Rose is going away).

    telnet://sinep.gotdns.com [gotdns.com]

    If someone has a copy of OS/2 4 in english they don't want any longer, I'll be happy to pay shipping for it! (just had to do a major repair to my car and then buy a new lawn mower so I can't afford the prices going on eBay)

    Once I get my hands on a copy of OS/2,

  • I'll definitely be purchasing a copy. You could say that I have an obligation to :)

    It may be a part of history, but I dare say that the BBS lives on. There are still quite a number of bulletin boards, both traditional dial-up and telnet, alive and well in the world. My mailbox is flooded with:

    "Hey John, I ran a BBS 10 years ago called <insert bbs name here> and am starting it back up, but lost my registration codes for <insert doorgame here>. And chance I could get them again?"

    As furth

  • History and continuing history (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:18PM (#12630900) Homepage Journal
    I was one of the people interviewed in this documentary. One of the things Jason always found interesting was that I was the one who at every phase of production was constantly reminding him that BBS's are not in any way a thing of the past. [citadel.org] Dialup is dead, but BBS's live on. I haven't seen the final product yet, but I hope he's managed to convey this message successfully.

    Those of us who still frequent BBS's know that it's still the best way to stay in touch with groups of people. BBS's are still home to some of the best online communities on the Internet, [citadel.org] and now the BBS tradition is even providing an unconventional but surprisingly effective solution for groupware applications. [citadel.org]

    For those of you who aren't currently part of a BBS community, I'd strongly urge you to go out there, find one that you like, and make some friends. Log in every day. Keep the discussions going. The "modern" Internet has been trying (unsuccessfully) to re-create for a decade what the BBS has always provided. It's the people that matter most, and nothing connects people to each other better than a BBS.
  • Yay, I've been waiting patiently for my copy which is over five and a half months late, but I know it will be worth it. Jason Scott is to be commended; he has put his heart and soul into this documentary and I hope he sure makes a profit on it.
  • Hot damn, how long will that take to download with kermit at 75 baud over an acoustic coupler on a phone handset?

  • What's His Name Speaks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jason Scott ( 18815 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2005 @03:01AM (#12631890) Homepage
    Hi, everyone. I find the best thing to do with Slashdot discussions if something you've done is the center of it is to wait out the initial wave, find the general questions people are asking about that they can be told without visiting the site, and answer as best I can. Obviously, the website [bbsdocumentary.com] itself has answers in more detail.

    So here we go.

    As most people figured out, it's a multi-episode collection, not a single documentary. That would be insane and pretty unwatchable. There are 8 episodes, covering everything from Fidonet to ANSI to hacking/phreaking BBSes to the BBS Industry (think Boardwatch, Mustang, Galacticomm, PC-Board, and so on). Each of these are of varying length from 20 to 40 minutes, and go into their own subjects with slightly different styles.

    The documentary is subtitled. All of it. All episodes, all bonus footage, all easter eggs, you name it. Subtitled, period. I don't think it's right to put out a DVD that isn't. Some of these episodes have second or third subtitle tracks with 'non-technical' subtitles.

    There are commentary or statements on pretty much all the episodes. There are easter eggs, as mentioned. There is a DVD-ROM with thousands of photographs and a few speeches I've given on history. There is a lot of stuff.

    $50 is steep for some people, and not steep for others. I've now spent 10 percent of my life so far making this film, interviewed 205 people, travelled thousands of miles over years, and spent a year editing the resulting 250 hours down to the works on the DVD. I am asking, in return, $50.

    Releasing the DVD as a Creative Commons work is less about encouraging people to "not pay" and more about treating my audience with respect. The thought of threatening people with jail because they shared copies of my movies absolutely revulses me. People will watch and pay or not watch and pay but it's a lot more important to me that they WATCH than anything else. If my story of making the production, my willingness to autograph any copies you buy, and the hard work I put into designing the packaging isn't sufficient to make it worth buying for you, so be it. I'd rather you at least heard what it had to say. Additionally, I encourage people who think I did the documentary "wrong" to use the documentary as source material and make a new one.

    By the way, a lot of the raw footage will be released to the public under the same license. That will result in a body of work well into the dozens (and perhaps hundreds) of hours.

    It was a nice surprise to see this documentary slashdotted by someone else before I had a chance to mention it. I am very touched. And a big thanks to everyone who has bought or is buying a copy. I appreciate that very much.

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