Randy Suess, computer bulletin board inventor, has died | Hacker News Reader

Randy Suess, computer bulletin board inventor, has died

nytimes.com

122 pointspgrote28 comments

Wow, I didn't get online until a got a 300 baud modem around 1981 but I remember dialing into CBBS once. I remember because I was on the west coast and it was in Chicago so I just dialed in to say I'd connected. To minimize the cost I got my dad's stopwatch out to ensure I hung up at 59 seconds exactly.

What I find fascinating now is that I was able to connect, read the greeting, look through the main menu and leave a note in whatever counted as the 'guest book' - all in 59 seconds at a connection speed a decent typist could beat.

Yesterday, I turned on my XBox One for the first time in several months so a visiting pre-teen could entertain themselves while his parents chatted. It took more than 20 minutes to atone for the crime of not turning it on for a while. First, it demanded a 'mandatory OS upgrade' followed by a reboot, then that I re-login and verify an MSFT account I never use (despite only wanting to run one game from a DVD-ROM already in the drive). Then the game itself wouldn't run until we completed a mandatory update download even though it worked fine last time it ran and we didn't try to do anything online.

BTW, not just bagging on XB. My PS4 pulls the same shit. If one of the next gen consoles coming soon advertised a "Just fucking load this media and work" mode, I'd choose it solely for that reason.

The switch is fantastic about this. If a game needs an OS update its generally included on the cartridge, and then it will just work. It politely reminds you about updates when launching software, but you always have the ability to just play the game instead. I think only online focused titles (Like Splatoon) would require an update, and those are fairly uncommon.

What I read out of this is that times were better when there were fewer bad actors. Every UX pain you mention is somewhat a fight against piracy and hacking.

> times were better when there were fewer bad actors.

At the meta-level, I don't think there are, per capita, more 'bad actors' in any broad consumer population today than there were 30 years ago. Most people are generally about the same morally and ethically in their day-to-day lives as we were back then. I think mass media and social media are incentivized to make things look worse today but the data doesn't support that view.

Media and software piracy are good examples. It's no harder today to pirate most music, movies or games than it was 20 years ago. Comparing the free Napster-to-Torrent options vs the paid-Spotify, Netflix, and Xbox/PS4 subscription services show consumers will pay a reasonable price for convenience. I would argue that anti-piracy efforts that make the user experience worse are shortsighted optimizations that are long-term foolish. In 2019 the recording industry set a new total revenue record thanks to the subscription model, finally surpassing the peak of the physical media era.

I brought a Nintendo switch and the initial install was pretty quick (sub 3 minutes I think) didn't require a Nintendo account until I brought a game on their store, and I could literally just plug-in the physical cartridge and get started with Zelda.

Granted the price is outrageously high considering the graphics quality, but still at least it worked.

The Switch does it better - you don't have to update if you don't want to (unless you're going online).

The PS4 doesn't require an update if you don't want to go online. The same for a game, you can just cancel the update if it's started. The entire platform can run offline if you want. Any game that requires a system update to run will package the update on the disc.

Well, thank you a lot Randy! Great idea, good times...

In case this interests someone, I recommend you to check out Jason Scott's BBS Documentary [http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/], and while the DVDs sold out, it seems to be available on his youtube channel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv...].

PS. adding a trailing dot after .com in the article URL saves you some trouble :)

I was going to recommend the same thing - great documentary. One of the places I learned about BBS's because I missed out (born too late). Also...I would recommend [https://www.textfiles.com/] to see some content from some bulletin boards

Jason Scott uploaded all the video he took trailing to places making the BBS Documentary to the Internet archive. There is more there.

TIL http://www.dns-sd.org/trailingdotsindomainnames.html I imagine that upsets cookies and scripts and such, but I wonder how long until they "fix" that?

Thanks, Mr. Suess, for my introduction to online conversations and a profitable business model for a while.

My first introduction was to a BBS that was localized around Santa Cruz, CA - We even met up once in real life at the Scotts Valley Roller Rink. I think it was called Internet Cafe, although in retrospect that seems very vague as a name... My ISP shortly thereafter was Mtnweb... Which got bought by Got.Net, which is still in operation!

Then later I made decent revenue selling BBS systems based on WorldGroup to Builders Exchanges in the Bay Area. My wife and I would hand make the sign-up kits for contractors, complete with 3 1/2" discs and installation/connection instructions, sent in a nice little manila envelope.

I still have a few of the WorldGroup software box packages in my library...

My how times have changed. That was back in the period where I was lucky if a vendor had a 1200 BAUD modem (or faster - Maybe even 9600!) hooked up to download drivers from - Assuming I could get through with no busy signal. Otherwise I had to wait 3-5 days for a drivers disk to arrive via postal mail.

Memories...

Hah! My wife just found a donations envelope that never got sent in addressed to Electric Cafe - THAT was the name of my first BBS... Internet Cafe did seem close but too generic.

I wouldn't be in this industry without stumbling into the BBS subculture. Thanks for everything!

I was a Chinet subscriber in the 90s and early 2000s. For many years after I left UIUC it was one of the few places you could get a Usenet feed without belonging to a university or a company like AT&T. I met Randy at a number of parties and CBBS reunions.

He was a unique cat, and this NYTimes writeup was very nicely done.

Thank you, Randy. We'll miss you.

ATH0

NO CARRIER

+++ Wait 1 second ATH

So sad to hear, as one who grew up with tech like this.

I actually had a short online chat with Ward Christiansen on CompuServe in.... 1985 to 1987ish time frame. He said he was surprised many people even remembered XMODEM.

Hah! XMODEM still shows up in a surprising number of places. Bootloaders and stuff use it for firmware recovery, although I think we're past the era where Cisco routers used it for OS upgrades.

RIP Mr. Suess, and I hope you're not cringing too much at "Mr. Suess and Mr. Christiansen built their electronic bulletin board using a personal computer called the S-100."

That sentence conveyed an important fact, but is missing a word or two for technical accuracy. Hopefully, after a long full life, he had much more important things to cringe about! Glad the Times published his obit even with this bit.

Here's a PDF of the 1978 Byte with all the details.

http://vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/byte%20nov%201978%20compu...

Super interesting primary source with the technical details and a bit about how they built the community. Thanks and merry christmas!

ATDT *70, 7778889999

Love those days. You always felt like you were in a secret society. You couldn't talk to anyone else about what you were up to because they wouldn't understand it.

Thanks Randy and Ward for a great gift. BBSs are what sparked my interest in computers in the first place. Thanks Jason Scott for the great documentary. Watched it several months ago and it brought me back. Wow those were good times.

Mega RIP to the man responsible for a huge chunk of my childhood. I used to run Nucleus in Texas and Tennessee when I lived in those states. Was how I met my first friend in TN, when he logged into my then-blazing 9600 baud capable BBS, with LoRD and Sinbaud and The Pit and Baron Realms elite and Tradewars door games.

I lived in Chicago and would log into CBBS, Ward and Randy's and The Ward Board all the time.

Thank you, Randy, for all the good times I had on those boards and the joy and excitement of discovering new things, even if was just to say hi to strangers with a similar interest.

ICYMI: https://paleotronic.com/2019/09/04/bbses-partying-online-lik...

I thought that Lee Felsenstein and the Community Memory project would count as the first?

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