Hello, Eric.

Friday January 07 2011 at 21:56, you wrote to me:

 EO> Sometimes I miss the early-mid 90s, calling my favorite BBSs, and
 EO> running my own, but these days I've gotten very used to 24/7
 EO> connectivity to the internet and having the world at my fingertips all
 EO> the time, and being able to keep in touch with people easily on the
 EO> internet, I don't think I'd want to give up the internet.  Without
 EO> 24/7 internet, I feel a bit disconnected and isolated.

I will agree that the ability to telnet into a BBS is one of the saving
graces of today's BBS scene.  It's easy, convienent and with the the
proliferation of high-speed connections, keeps a lot of us BBSers together
in the scene.  I still do have POTS users, both for my BBS and my mail
network, and it costs me all of $5 a month to have a "distinctive
ring" line on my phone line (my USR Courier can be easily programmed
to recognize distinctive ring patterns).

(On a side note, I've noticed that there seems to be a few more POTS-based
boards popping up.  There's evidently been a bit of a backlash with the
Internet and how crowded it's become.  I keep the POTS side open as part
functionality and part nostalgia.)

My main beef, I guess, is trying to fully integrate a BBS into the Web.  I
know it can and has been done, but to me, there just isn't the same feel to
it, you know?  But in many ways, I'm a stick in the mud about these things.
 I liked BBSing how it was back in the heyday and am loathe to change those
things (although I embraced telnet for connectivity, but I felt that was
absolutely necessary to actually have a majority of callers these days). 
I've been razzed about my views now for the better part of twenty years but
I think people have backed off since they know I'm not going to change.

I am grateful, though, to one particular sysop who pushed me to set up
fTelnet on my website.  I do enjoy having that capability to get into the
board directly if I can't access a telnet client from where I'm at.  One of
my regular users who accesses his mail via QWK and who is a world traveler
has used the fTelnet connection extensively (according to my system logs)
to get his mail from whereever he may be in the world at the time so some
change is good, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. :)

At least there are plenty of us still around and people still dedicated to
"the cause" to keep working on BBS software and other things we
need to keep BBSing alive in the 21st century and beyond.

Later,
Sean

... Be kind.  Remember, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Thompson
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1