I was given some old BBS session logs and I scanned them | Hacker News Reader

I was given some old BBS session logs and I scanned them

silent700.blogspot.com

90 pointssalgernon30 comments

Wow this is awesome. It takes me back to my own BBS days from when I was only 6 years old+!

What's a shame is how much people in the beginning created to share with people -- it cost money to run these BBSes let alone call into others. The Internet as a whole was built similarly where protocols like email allowed a diversity of providers and people to talk regardless of implementation/account.

Now I'm seeing a complete commercializations of all communication, from Facebook owning a giant chunk of social to now even with slack I see on product hunt some list of semi-public channels replicating what IRC has done for years. Attempts as decentralized social networks haven't gone anywhere because it's been protocol first, implementation & network effect later (not to mention all trying to clone fb or Twitter versus having a differentiated experience). Plus everyone in a mobile non-html world just wants to own the next big thing.

We need more Mozillas out there doing things beyond the web to get communication out of the hands of individual companies and into the greater public. With blockchains, oauth, json, and cloud storage the tech is there to do interesting stuff. We need now someone that already has the network to step forward.

In all fairness, there was also a lot of commercial BBS activity around that same period--or at most a couple of years later: Compuserve, Delphi, AOL. And some of the bigger non-corporate BBSs became commercial as well (and later became some of the early regional ISPs).

It's interesting stuff though. I suspect that relatively little has been saved from the BBS days in part because it was so decentralized--although I'm not aware of Compuserve and the like ever having made archives public either. The situation is a bit better on the early Internet side but even there Usenet archives are incomplete--and were very nearly even more incomplete.

Commercialiation of communication is an interesting way of putting it.

I agree that the attempts at decentralisation are so-so but I do think it's critical that the low-level pieces are done properly. Once they're deployed, every wart and bottleneck becomes magnified. It's easy to have a 'move fast and break things' mentality for a centralised service because there's an army of people with access to everything so they can peer in, monitor and fix breakages. Not quite the same for a decentralised system.

Another way of thinking about the network side is that we already have many of them. Address books, emails, services etc all of which contain different subsets. If we can recreate the existing services with a resilient, decentralised alternatives then that can form the bedrock on which to build further things. FWIW, I'm working with others on an open source stack that can do this [1]. We're starting with the core services of mail, contacts and calendars (to replace iCloud), but the stack itself is very flexible and built using Mirage [2].

[1] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/

[2] http://www.openmirage.org/wiki/overview-of-mirage

You can watch the documentary about BBS

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com

The documentary really brought back a lot of great memories about how one dials in, some of the software used, what one does online, etc. Plus the producers went out their way to make sure the set was captioned after I asked. (I heard of this documentary prior to its release so I got lucky)

Randomly flipping though, message 7811 is to John Gilmore[1] thanking him for the pointer to this new thing called public-key encryption.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilmore_(activist)

Working for an OCR company. Dot Matrix is a pain..

That said, would it make sense to give it a try here? Would need to separate the pages/create a TIF file, but I could send this through a good number of engines, I assume. I cannot promise some miracles, but.. worth a try, perhaps.

I attempted OCR with Acrobat, which you can inspect by downloading the PDF. Then archive.org does their own OCR (I believe with ABBY?) which is what you'll see if you look at their .txt version. I haven't had a chance to compare them yet.

I wouldn't expect much from OCRing dot matrix, though I'd be happy for others with access to other engines to give it a try.

Someday I'd like to get all the messages into a browsable form on a website. Hell, we can crowd-source transcription if we have to.

I would have thought dot matrix would be easy. Few characters and fixed spacing and all...

After reading a couple of pages of this, I had one of those moments where I feel sort of like the earth is shifting beneath me, and everything feels unreal for a moment. It struck me (hard) that in my lifetime, I have watched technology go from these printouts, to what we have today. I used my first BBS in around 1986, and it hadn't yet evolved terribly far from where it was when these archives were produced.

It's both amazing and terrible (in the "extreme in extent or degree; intense" sense) to think about. In 1980, that was a pretty impressive piece of machinery, but it was not even in the same league as a smart watch today. But, raw numbers (32k, 1.5MB disks) don't begin to express how different the world we live in today is. At the time this BBS was almost unique. A few thousand people in the entire world used an online messaging system like this. Today about 3 billion people are online somehow, and the majority of people under 30 in the developed world use some sort of online messaging every day. Long distance telephone calls were expensive enough that few people made them more than occasionally. International communication was an extreme rarity except for the richest and most powerful. (And, 12 year old me had to break the law to communicate across the country, using stolen calling cards to call BBSes in other states.)

The 8BBS software, unique and impressive for its time, was positively simplistic by today's standards. The BBS I ran back then operated on a similar system (BASIC plus an assembly communications core) called Color 64, and some little games and tweaks were the first real independent programming I ever did. Thinking back, I'm struck by how simple the system was--I printed out the entire BASIC source code on a small stack of paper, to study it--compared to the codebase I'm working on now (500,000 lines of code spanning four programming languages and 15 years of development).

The world of computing was so small back then, and it is now probably the single most important industry in the world, touching billions of people's lives daily, in both good and bad ways (mostly good). I carry multiple supercomputers with me almost everywhere I go; my phone dwarfs the power of the first dozen, or more, computers I owned. And, equally importantly, it is connected to the world via satellite and cell tower at speeds beyond imagining in 1980. The first modem I used was 300 baud, and I could read the words as they came down the line. Now I can download a 1080p movie in 30 minutes, and when Google Fiber arrives, the same download will be almost instant.

All of this change has happened in my lifetime; heck, I was old enough to participate in BBS culture a few short years after these archives began. And I don't even feel that old. I've got a few grey hairs in my beard, but I'm not a grey beard, yet.

Moore's law predicted (and maybe even drove) the increasing transistor count, but couldn't have predicted the vast difference in what computers would become and where they would reach. 12 year old me wouldn't have believed in the stuff we have today.

It's not jet packs or personal space ships, but it's pretty neat. And, despite the general silliness that seems to pervade our industry lately (so many toy web apps consuming so much effort and brain power and investment), I suspect the general trend is accelerating rather than decelerating. We are constantly on the cusp of revolutionary change, and have been since most of us have been alive.

It was suggested by some in the 19th (and 20th) century that invention had peaked and that it would only be a process of improvement from then on. I suspect people are still suggesting that, or thinking it. I even find myself in that mindset now and then, and I know better.

I know I'm rambling here...but, the history in this archive is fascinating. I probably won't read more than a couple dozen more pages, as I feel vaguely like the best thing I can be doing is getting back to figuring out what the future is going to look like and figuring out how I can best be a part of it. I may not have as many years left ahead of me as I have behind me...it would be easy to let nostalgia win my mental bandwidth.

Just recently I had a chance to visit the Computer History Museum out in Santa Clara. It was amazing to me to see so much of my childhood and so many areas of the technology I grew up with sitting behind glass. I really didn't get very heavy into computing till early 90s, but when you step back and realize the progress from even that period until now, it is unimaginable. I truly think those of us who grew up during the computing explosions of the 80s/90s owe a great deal to that time period as it really seemed to breed a huge hacker/tinkerer type of culture where nothing was unexploreable or off limits. It feels nowadays so much is spoonfed, there just isn't that same opportunity. Or maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety like the PDP/mainframe folks who walked before us??

The Computer History Museum is one of my favorite places. When I lived in Mountain View (which is where it is located), it was the one place I would always take any family or friends who were visiting, and they always enjoyed it, no matter how technically inclined they were.

Hearing about the technology from the people who built it, is amazing, and it's an opportunity we won't have much longer in the case of these original systems. The guy who built the first computer game (Space War), and helped restore the PDP/1 on which it runs, presented it on a couple of the occasions when I went there. They have docents that can tell you, with deep personal experience, about the Cray supercomputer, the PDP/1, PDP/8, UNIX, IBM mainframes, etc. But, they're all getting up there in age, and many of the founders of our field have passed away in the past couple of decades.

As for being spoonfed, I don't believe that's true. The depth of knowledge required to truly innovate is much higher than ever. Making the early steps of learning about technology easier doesn't make working with the vastly more complex systems any easier. I feel overwhelmed pretty much every day, when I try to stay ahead of the curve in my field and try to stay at least abreast of what's happening in other fields. Things are moving faster than ever, and it's always going to require being at the front edge of that to actually innovate.

The people building the future today don't have it any easier than the people who built the future we're living in now.

That's not to say we shouldn't teach kids about what came before. I believe the Computer History Museum is really important in that regard. This is the most amazing time in history to be alive, and it's because of the things a few hundred people built 30-50 years ago. I just watched the American Experience film on Silicon Valley (which chronicles the earliest days of the integrated circuit). It's really incredible how far we've come in such a short time. Seeing people who are still alive today telling the stories of the inventions that have re-shaped our entire world in unbelievable ways is inspiring and intimidating.

>>. It feels nowadays so much is spoonfed, there just isn't that same opportunity.

I concur. I was in college during the 90's and the changes just in the five years I was there was pretty amazing. Several of my EEE roommates were tried and true hackers, cyberpunks and phreakers. The stuff they showed me just blew me away.

So many incredible things happened in the 90's. In just three years, I went from using BBS's, to scanning newsgroups on distant colleges and downloading entire research papers, to seeing the internet in full bloom. It never occurred to me at the time how fast things were changing, or how so many of us were standing at the threshold of a brave new world.

You're not getting old and crotchety, you want the same thing I do. For people to recognize our contributions to what is now completely taken for granted. Even hearing stories from my Dad, I have to tell myself, "And you have to remember, there was no internet, no Google back in the 60's, information got around in a totally different manner." And those stories seem all the more fantastic when you take it into account. To a degree, it's the same with our generation, we saw how information flowed before, and then after the Internet.

I do often get saudade about those times. Such an amazing amazing few decades, and went by so fast.

I think you meant to say the computer history Museum in Mountain View.

Great post. I think what you're referring to is Buckminster Fuller's 'Knowledge Doubling Curve'.

I get a sense from your post that we're most likely roughly the same age and grew up in very similar circumstances. If you do get around to reading this comment, can I just ask;

Do you feel a sense of marvel at where things have ended up, or disappointment?

Thanks for a good read, as comments go.

"Do you feel a sense of marvel at where things have ended up, or disappointment?"

Both. But, mostly marvel.

I'd certainly hoped we would have made more progress on health and life extension by now (I started reading about it when I was maybe 15), but the progress that has been made is also wonderful. Hell, we're on the verge of an effective vaccine for malaria. That alone would be a miracle that saves about a million lives each year.

And, I'd hoped space exploration would have gotten further. We seem to have lost vision on that front. The space shuttle was a bad idea, and I think it cost a lot of momentum only now being re-gained.

And, flying cars. Where are the flying cars? I guess electric cars are almost as good. Maybe better in terms of reducing the harm humans do the earth.

Which brings me to the disastrous behavior of humanity toward the environment. I was much more optimistic about humanity's willingness and ability to stave off climate change. We have only accelerated the destruction in my lifetime. That's a serious disappointment.

I also think I'm just now beginning to understand some things about the global economy that aren't so flattering to humanity. My lavish developed-nation lifestyle is built on the suffering of people in poorer nations. My computer, phone, shoes, appliances, clothes, etc. are all made by near-slave labor in horrific conditions. Even if I try to minimize my impact in that regard (and I do), it's impossible not to be part of a pretty horrific system. That's disappointing, and not something I knew to think about (because the access to information needed to begin to understand it wasn't within my reach back then).

I marvel at the pace of the technical (mainframe in pocket), and despair at the uses (masses and masses of vapid trivia).

The link to the pdf on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/8BBSArchiveP1V1

But I like the narrative in the original link.

Now that I've had a chance to read more, I see that casual misogyny in the tech world is definitely not new. So far, I've seen a half dozen messages, and multiple people, calling someone named "Susan Thunder" a whore, bitch, etc. Example:

    Message number 7168 is 4 lines from John Billings
    To SUSAN THUNDER at 14:30:49 on 12-Mar-81.
    Subject: YOUR LAST MESSAE 
    YOU LEFT ONE THING OUT OF YOUR
    DESCRIPTION OF YOURSELF,
    WHETHER YOU CHARGE BY THE HOUR 
    OR THE EVENING?

And, I have seen no polite messages directed toward anyone with a female sounding name.

Given that 90+% of the messages are from people with male-sounding names, and every message, so far, that I've seen directed to a woman has been overtly hateful, it puts some things in perspective about why there are so few women in our industry today. I can't say that, as a 12 year old, I was treated with respect by the BBS community at large, but at least I wasn't on the receiving end of veiled rape threats.

I'm hoping I stumbled on the few really hostile messages in the bunch. But, I've bounced around a bit...I fear further study will only be further disheartening.

You're missing the context.

Susan Thunder is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Headley. She was a prostitute. She was an adversarial figure in the phreaking scene at the time.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this is a small slice of a much larger scene.

She was also one hell of a social engineering hacker.

One of the last chapters in Cyberpunk, she's in an office of some big corporate big wigs and asked to demonstrate her hacking skills. Within ten minutes she had the system passwords for their network.

Interesting. But, still, the threats of violence and general dehumanization of her by several people is pretty horrible (someone has suggested she got someone arrested, but I don't see confirmation of that or an explanation for why...if they threatened violence against her, as several messages in the archive do, I wouldn't begrudge her for reporting those threats to police, for example).

Really it's a bunch of people trying to impress and out-do each other. "Dave Starr", "Susan Thunder", and "Roscoe Dupran" tangled with each other through almost any format available to them.

Here's more old-school sources of all this rivalry: http://www.flyingsnail.com/missingbbs/ http://phrack.org/issues/10/2.html

It takes a truly epic troll to span decades...impressive, in a way. Embarrassing, too.

Could be reusable handle(s) in an extended psychology experiment. One person could use multiple handles, or one handle could be used by multiple people.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=5370

A recent-ish example of someone using multiple handles...

If you read just 2 posts above the one you quoted, you'll see that "Susan" got someone from the board arrested.

Did she get them arrested for paying her for sex?

Edit: I just spent another ten minutes reading some of the various rants against Susan. I suspect David Starr is/was mentally ill. His obsession with her is creepy, and the accusations bizarre and practically incoherent. I don't know if Susan is a nice person, or a cop, or a fed, or whatever...but the stuff David Starr says is way out there. Also, I can't believe I have spent this much time at 5AM reading some stupid, probably mostly made up, BBS drama from 34 years ago.

Edit #2: The message you refer to is this:

    Message number 7166 is 18 lines
    from Jude Saucier To SUSAN THUNDER
    at 14!07:35 on 12-Mar-81.
    Subject: SUSAN'S PRANKS
    MS THUNDER, I HAVE BEEN OFF OF THE
    SYSTEM FOR QUITE SOME TIME ANO JUST
    FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO PAUL MONT.
    I JUST WANT TO LET YOU KNOW THAT
    I AM QUITE SICK OF YOUR LITTLE PRANKS.
    lF YOU GET YOUR ROCKS OFF BY PICKING
    ON KIDS I SUGGEST YOU BUY A GOOD 
    VIBRATOR INSTEAD.  I'll GIVE YOU A
    CHALLANGE
    -
    IF YOU WANT TO PICK ON SOME ONE
    -
    LET IT BE ME.  WHEN YOU DC THOUGH
    -
    LET ME WARN YOU
    -
    YOU ~Ill NEVER MESS ~ITH ANYONE
    PGAIN.  JUST BECAUSE YOU GO TO
    THE EXTENTS THAT YOU DO TO GET
    PEOPLE IN TROUBLE FOR THINGS THAT
    YOU ARE GUILTY OF YOURSELF DOESN'T
    ~EAN THAT YOU CAN GET EVERBOOY.
    I HAVE SOME SURPRISES IN STORE FOR
    YOU WHEN YOU START TO TRY DOING 
    DAMAGE TO ME.  BY THE TIME I AM
    THROUGH YOU WON'T EVEN HAVE A 
    TERMINAL TO USE THESE SYSTEMS.  
    THAt•s ENOUGH FOR NOW BUT DON•T
    FORGET
    -
    I'LL BE WATCHING YCU AND I WILL
    <NOT MAYBE> GET YOU SOON.  
    CONSIDER YOURSELF ~ARNED!
    !!!
    SEE YOU SOON
    JUDE.
    P.S.  PAUL HAD BETTER BE OUT OF
    THIS MESS SOON
    -
    UNDERSTOOD??

I can't make much sense out of that. But, it's also full of misogyny and threats of violence. That's pretty fucked up.

> Also, I can't believe I have spent this much time at 5AM reading some ...

I upvoted you just for this. I so very feel that pain.

Cool. I think I first posted here in 1979, found a lot of useful phreak info.

I don't see any of my posts, but do see my name (pseudo) mentioned by others a couple times.

You're the 8BBS first user to speak up. Any stories?

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