Ten things meme

[kengr]

(stolen from almost everyone)
Ten things I don't think anyone else on my flist has done

1. gone skinny dipping in the snow. (Yes, walk thru snow on ground to natural body of water, jump in. swim for a bit get out, walk back to clothes)
2. dressed as a Buddhist monk, complete with shaved head.
3. Worn a dress while sporting a full beard.
4. taken 550 V AC across the chest (from one hand to the other, stupid accident)
5. reported a ROM BIOS error and later noted that the error was corrected on the new machines in stores.
6.fed cake to a hunky porn star.
7. keypunched my own FORTRAN IV programs
8. written a login/password harvester
9. installed illegal phone extensions
10. helped hack a mainframe
bonus
11. Own (not owned) a TRS-80 Model I
12. Been BBS sysop
13. Am a member of Fidonet

Comments

Re: Right assertion, wrong numbers.

[kengr]

The Internet began as ARPANET in the 60s.

http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa--2.html
They were still working on the protocols ARPANET would use in December of 1969.

The first BBS's were on mainframes in the 70s; I ought to know, as I was ON some of those.

Having used computers back then, I know that a few of the timesharing systems were capable of something like that (and in fact, in the summer of 1981, someone set one up on a system that was going to be decommissioned in September), but this is the first I've heard of such being done that far back. And as I recall, it took so weird kludges on the system in question due to userr/directory rights issues.

"The world's first BBS" is considered to be Randy Suess' CBBS in Chicago.

Re: Right assertion, wrong numbers.

[seawasp]

Guess it depends on how you define it; the name comes from "Bulletin-Board System" which describes the way "Talk", the program I used to use on the PDP-11 VAX from 1976 on, worked; multiple users could post to various subjects, visible to all users, just like on a bulletin board, etc. We wrote our own Email programs (the sysop considered such things to be games; "Electronic mail will never have any practical use") and our own real-time instant-messaging program (called "Phone"), all of which we used long before 1980.