Text 3296, 110 rader
Skriven 2012-09-03 10:30:58 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
   Kommentar till text 3276 av mark lewis (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: The old and the new (was: Qwk)
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mark lewis wrote to Robert Bashe on Sunday September 02 2012 at 17:49:

ml> everyone over there (and a lot over here) shut down their systems when
ml> the callers got so distracted by the internet... you guys haven't
ml> brought them back up and so no one can even try to become a user on
ml> them...

ml> if you build it, they will come

Maybe where you are. Here, the younger people (and most of the older ones) are
mainly interested in Facebook, Twitter, emails and YouTube. Fido? What's that -
a dog or something?? ;-)

RB>> Most of the users we had would read messages on a BBS,

ml> our's did too until they found they were running out of time with
ml> their 60 minutes a day allotment...

That may be still another difference between Z1 and at least R24. I can't
remember ever having any time limits on a BBS. Maybe there were, but I didn't
use them and I have so little experience as a user that I don't know if others
did. I used BlueWave for a time because I found it easier to work with than the
editor of the BBS, and (here another _big_ difference between the zones) local
calls were never free here - only time-unlimited up until the 1970s or so,
thereafter metered. They were cheaper than long-distance calls, but never free.
So there was _always_ an incentive to keep online times as short as possible
here. In the meantime, with flat rates for domestic calls, this reason has
largely disappeared, but nowadays, people go to the Internet. Even a well set
up Maximus system would be boring in comparison.

RB>> but for lack of traffic we don't have many of those around anymore.
RB>> Could be different outside R24, but at least here, the game really is
RB>> nodes and points.

ml> that's good on the one hand... sad on the other...

You probably mean the "local group" at a BBS you mention later on in this
message. Actually, that was never really an issue here, since we used to have
point gatherings every week or two when I started up - arrange a time at a
local restaurant with plenty of room, and just chew the fat. Those things are
gone, too, started dying in the mid-1990s and died out completely around 2000.
The last time I tried to organize a point meeting was the end of 1999 or so,
but nobody was interested, so I let the matter drop. Now, these weren't points
scattered all over the country, but local guys who would have reached me by car
in half an hour or so. But the interest simply evaporated. I regretted this,
too, but it just happened and you can't force people to meet even if you're the
sysop and they're all points.

DS>> I don't know what you mean by "mailboxes".

RB>> BBSes, Maximus, whatever you want to call them. Numbers you call up
RB>> with a modem and connect to give you some kind of entry screen,
RB>> followed by a menu. Maybe the terminology has changed over time, but
RB>> we called them mailboxes.

ml> i thought it a rather strange term to be using, too...

;-))) There's some strange stuff running around, Mark - they tend to call it
"Denglish" (combination of "Deutsch" (German) and "Englisch" (English), and
it's quite common in the technical area.

Know what a "Handy" is? It's what the Germans call a cell phone. It's a typical
German expression and doesn't come from Englsh unless you think of a cell phone
being held by the hand. Oh, and the plural is "Handys", not "Handies". Go
figure - that's "Denglisch" ;-)

ml> mailboxes == bbs  ...  interesting... that must have come about from a
ml> translation thing from english to german... do you guys not have
ml> bulletin boards in your grocery stores?

Often, but not always. They call them names like "Notizbretter" (notice boards)
or "schwarze Brett" (black board - even though they're not what an American
would call a blackboard) here, and are mostly used to offer things to sell or
services such as help for older people or babysitting.

ml> surely you don't/didn't call those corkboards a "mailbox"...

No, just a "notice board". The expression "bulletin board" is pure English and
the average German wouldn't understand it. For that matter, the average German
wouldn't understand BBS, although the term is sometimes used in German fido
echos as a convenient abbreviation.

[...]

ml> .. having a bbs is about the only difference between a node and a
ml> point...

The main difference here was that a node has downlinks, a point doesn't. But
that difference has meanwhile become blurred since there are now nodes with no
downlinks. There was quite an argument here about whether a node without
downlinks really was a "node", but in the end nobody cared to make a big fuss
about the point. So the only real difference left is being listed in the
nodelist. A point isn't, and also can't be reached directly, since points are
never online 24/7, whereas nodes often (even mostly) are.

ml> BUT a point may also run a bbs for themselves... while it has been
ml> done where points had more than one user, points are generally a one
ml> person thing... multiple people in a residence would each have their
ml> own point number...

Must be an American specialty - never heard of anything like this in Germany.

At any rate, it was interesting to discuss this again. I'm forever impressed at
the differences that crop up, and that we weren't aware of until we actually
discuss specific situations.

Cheers, Bob

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