
Randy Suess, computer bulletin board inventor, has died - pgrote
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/technology/randy-suess-dead.html
======
mrandish
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.

~~~
madrox
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.

~~~
mrandish
> 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.

------
kbr2000
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/](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...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQuW8QshBWE)].

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

~~~
kderbyma
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/](https://www.textfiles.com/)] to see
some content from some bulletin boards

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

------
raintrees
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...

~~~
raintrees
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.

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

------
koz1000
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.

------
a-dub
ATH0

NO CARRIER

~~~
buck4roo
+++ Wait 1 second ATH

------
michaelcampbell
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.

~~~
myself248
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.

------
jejones3141
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."

~~~
flomo
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.

~~~
8bitsrule
Here's a PDF of the 1978 _Byte_ with all the details.

[http://vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/byte%20nov%201978%20compu...](http://vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/byte%20nov%201978%20computerized%20BBS%20-%20ward%20christensen.pdf)

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

------
martin1b
AT

OK

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.

------
lightedman
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.

------
GoofballJones
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.

------
empressplay
ICYMI: [https://paleotronic.com/2019/09/04/bbses-partying-online-
lik...](https://paleotronic.com/2019/09/04/bbses-partying-online-like-
its-1989/)

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

