Post by BreathFromADove on Aug 24, 2019 22:38:19 GMT
Anybody here met HAL? This message board reminds me of something he posted the other day: “Way back in the day, years before AOL, they had on-line BBS (Bulletin Board Services).
You used a dial-up modem and for the more popular ones, there were anywhere from 3 to a dozen local numbers you could use to connect. Each number being a trunk line supporting 30-40 connections. During peak times, you might have to make 30-40 attempts to find an open trunk. It could take an hour or more to make a connection on a Friday night.
The BBS's had multiple areas of specific interests and some general interests "rooms" where you could gather and have real-time chats about just any topic. These were completely text-based systems, no GUI whatsoever. But there were dozens of keyboard shortcuts that you could use to make navigation a bit easier.
The system would announce the arrival and departure of users
>>"User SkyHigh has entered the room"
>>"User ChickenLips has left the room".
Of course, just as today, you would get the occasional troll looking to stir up some shit, but there was no blocking feature. You could report someone for harassment, obscenity, etc - but rarely was anything done about it unless the conduct was especially egregious.
I do remember one jackass who would come online and do nothing but utter non-sequiturs and try to derail whatever conversation happened to be on-going at the time. He was obnoxious and annoying. Most people just ignored him. One evening he was being particularly annoying and bitching about some system problem and so I told him he could correct the problem with CTRL-F7
This was the keyboard shortcut for instant disconnect.
>>User ShitforBrains has left the room
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
About 2 hours later I see
>>User ShitforBrains has entered the room.
ShitforBrains: "That wasn't very nice Hal"
HAL9000: "No, but it was funny as fuck."
You used a dial-up modem and for the more popular ones, there were anywhere from 3 to a dozen local numbers you could use to connect. Each number being a trunk line supporting 30-40 connections. During peak times, you might have to make 30-40 attempts to find an open trunk. It could take an hour or more to make a connection on a Friday night.
The BBS's had multiple areas of specific interests and some general interests "rooms" where you could gather and have real-time chats about just any topic. These were completely text-based systems, no GUI whatsoever. But there were dozens of keyboard shortcuts that you could use to make navigation a bit easier.
The system would announce the arrival and departure of users
>>"User SkyHigh has entered the room"
>>"User ChickenLips has left the room".
Of course, just as today, you would get the occasional troll looking to stir up some shit, but there was no blocking feature. You could report someone for harassment, obscenity, etc - but rarely was anything done about it unless the conduct was especially egregious.
I do remember one jackass who would come online and do nothing but utter non-sequiturs and try to derail whatever conversation happened to be on-going at the time. He was obnoxious and annoying. Most people just ignored him. One evening he was being particularly annoying and bitching about some system problem and so I told him he could correct the problem with CTRL-F7
This was the keyboard shortcut for instant disconnect.
>>User ShitforBrains has left the room
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
About 2 hours later I see
>>User ShitforBrains has entered the room.
ShitforBrains: "That wasn't very nice Hal"
HAL9000: "No, but it was funny as fuck."
