Quothe Dave McGuire, from writings of Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 04:40:03PM -0500:
> On February 7, R. D. Davis wrote:
> > Were most others here sysops of BBSs at one time as well?
>
> I ran an RCP/M BBS, the "Mercerville RCP/M", in Mercerville NJ (near
> Trenton and Princeton) from about mid-1985 to 1988 or so. I enjoyed
> it very much. I sorta miss the "culture" of BBSs.
Me too. If everyone could have their own class C network, there would
probably still be many active BBS's accessible via telnet; web sites
just aren't the same. BBS's provided a degree of autonomy that isn't
necessarily available over the WWW. For example, many ISPs and
mailing-list hosts impose "politically correct" rules limiting freedom
of speech. Many BBSs, on the other hand, had more of an "anything
goes" environment - at least some, like mine, did. There was no one
to regulate content on BBSs, and the telephone co. didn't go around
disconnecting people for the content on their BBSs. On my BBS, there
existed unlimited freedom of speech, although I discouraged profane
language in most situations; this was the opposite of some local BBSs
run by tyrants who'd readily kick users off-line for offending anyone
who was the least bit over-sensitive.
It might be fun to put some of our older systems back on-line as BBS
systems! All I need, if I recall correctly, to bring my old BBS to
life again is fossil driver, which I think I'm missing, but I might
have it around here on a floppy somewhere.
If anyone's intersted in putting classic systems on-line as BBS
systems, I'll gladly maintain a list of systems, telephone numbers,
hours of operation, etc. and make it available on my web site.
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd_at_rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Thu Feb 07 2002 - 17:22:42 GMT