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November 14, 2013 3:50 PM Subscribe
What's the word that describes nostalgia for something that never was?
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:54 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:54 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
Weak effort. It needs to return LINE BUSY at least 70% of the time.
posted by Jimbob at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2013 [15 favorites]
posted by Jimbob at 3:59 PM on November 14, 2013 [15 favorites]
This makes me nostalgic as hell. It needs to randomly knock you off because either
a) Call Waiting interrupted your session or
b) Dad picked up the phone downstairs and started dialing. A moment later, a voice calls up the stairs GET OFF THE DAMN PHONE WITH THAT THING.
posted by jquinby at 4:03 PM on November 14, 2013 [11 favorites]
a) Call Waiting interrupted your session or
b) Dad picked up the phone downstairs and started dialing. A moment later, a voice calls up the stairs GET OFF THE DAMN PHONE WITH THAT THING.
posted by jquinby at 4:03 PM on November 14, 2013 [11 favorites]
It's broken. I tried searching for +++ATH0 and I got disconnected.
(Also it's broken because they're out of quota and Google can't afford to support fun things.)
posted by Nelson at 4:09 PM on November 14, 2013 [4 favorites]
(Also it's broken because they're out of quota and Google can't afford to support fun things.)
posted by Nelson at 4:09 PM on November 14, 2013 [4 favorites]
What's with that news stuff? Cluttering up the classic clean Google design.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:20 PM on November 14, 2013
posted by Drinky Die at 4:20 PM on November 14, 2013
Too much ASCII, not enough ANSI.
posted by ckape at 4:29 PM on November 14, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by ckape at 4:29 PM on November 14, 2013 [3 favorites]
Don't forget the Mad Men era punchcard and line printer version - Google60.
posted by dragoon at 4:34 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by dragoon at 4:34 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}NO CARRIER
posted by Westringia F. at 4:43 PM on November 14, 2013
posted by Westringia F. at 4:43 PM on November 14, 2013
planetesimal had the same idea I did. Of course, searching for "boobs" is pretty much how I used BBSes in the 80s, so it was kind of soothing to be taken back to those golden days.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:51 PM on November 14, 2013
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:51 PM on November 14, 2013
I used the image search to search for "pinkie pie" (what? what??) and ended up with a lot of familiar silhouettes of hair, but nothing else. Apparently their ASCII-ifier is hyper-attenuated towards certain shades of pink above others. I started thinking about why that might be -- and then had my question answered for me by planetesimal's comment, above.
posted by JHarris at 4:55 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 4:55 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
Found an ASCII image called "Nice pair of hooters", turned out to be two owls :(
posted by Ad hominem at 4:57 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Ad hominem at 4:57 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
The hell? Type a website into a command prompt and it autoexecutes a dialup script as if the protocol and terminal client operations were written into the OS? And how that modem is expected to communicate without any proper handshake or agreed upon speed designations?
+1 for whimsy
- several million for realism
posted by mediocre at 5:00 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
+1 for whimsy
- several million for realism
posted by mediocre at 5:00 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
All hail The 404. Word up to The Headboard III.
posted by ob1quixote at 5:06 PM on November 14, 2013
posted by ob1quixote at 5:06 PM on November 14, 2013
mediocre,
Or, they are running a program called google.com, since com is an executable file type.
posted by ckape at 5:12 PM on November 14, 2013
Or, they are running a program called google.com, since com is an executable file type.
posted by ckape at 5:12 PM on November 14, 2013
- several million for realism
Right, especially because in the 80s and as late as 1992, the idea of a search engine delivering pretty much instantaneous results was inconceivable given computer and network speeds. There was some work done at the MIT Media Lab at that time around the idea of "autonomous agents" that would go to work for you and maybe overnight deliver you some interesting results. The notion of a "search engine" wasn't around until 1994 or so when WebCrawler was launched.
posted by beagle at 5:15 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
Right, especially because in the 80s and as late as 1992, the idea of a search engine delivering pretty much instantaneous results was inconceivable given computer and network speeds. There was some work done at the MIT Media Lab at that time around the idea of "autonomous agents" that would go to work for you and maybe overnight deliver you some interesting results. The notion of a "search engine" wasn't around until 1994 or so when WebCrawler was launched.
posted by beagle at 5:15 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
"But, Boss, you really need to upgrade to 2400 bps, a 300 baud modem is too slow." Paraphrase of an actual conversation I had when I worked at a newspaper circa 1990. A few years later I was an early employee at a startup ISP. I miss Mosaic...
posted by CincyBlues at 5:49 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by CincyBlues at 5:49 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
What, you're not all browsing in Lynx?
posted by loquacious at 5:56 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by loquacious at 5:56 PM on November 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
This is not realistic. You would log into the BBS and immediately look for warez. Then the sysadmin would call you a couple hours later and ask you to upload something you freaking leech.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:57 PM on November 14, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:57 PM on November 14, 2013 [5 favorites]
Also, I actually remember hitting hotbot and proto-Yahoo with a BBS door link that led to a super rudimentary SLIP/shell kind of account.
posted by loquacious at 5:58 PM on November 14, 2013
posted by loquacious at 5:58 PM on November 14, 2013
This one time, I used my 2400 baud ZOOM modem to wardial an entire exchange worth of phone numbers overnight looking for carriers because, well, why not? The next morning, the local police called my mom, explaining that they'd been talking over coffee and had discovered that several among them had been woken in the middle of the night by calls from our house's single phone number. Picking up, they'd heard only a series of mysterious bongs and bings, followed by silence.
When confronted about this mysterious occurrence, I feigned ignorance, suggesting that perhaps there was a virus on our computer. Later, I dialed into the HVAC system of an office park (one of many interesting open systems which I'd found during the night's foray) and screwed around with its buildings' thermostat settings.
There was a certain magic to all of it that has been lost in this era of ubiquitous connectivity.
posted by killdevil at 7:00 PM on November 14, 2013 [6 favorites]
When confronted about this mysterious occurrence, I feigned ignorance, suggesting that perhaps there was a virus on our computer. Later, I dialed into the HVAC system of an office park (one of many interesting open systems which I'd found during the night's foray) and screwed around with its buildings' thermostat settings.
There was a certain magic to all of it that has been lost in this era of ubiquitous connectivity.
posted by killdevil at 7:00 PM on November 14, 2013 [6 favorites]
Wait, how am I getting data while the handshake is still happening?
And WTF? The handshake never got beyond V.8? I'm stuck with Bell 103? BUY A REAL MODEM, GOOGLE. Do you have any idea how much I paid for this Telebit Trailblazer, you think I want to fuck around at 300bps?
I am so old. I think I still have a Telebit T2500 around somewhere. So old.
posted by eriko at 7:31 PM on November 14, 2013 [4 favorites]
And WTF? The handshake never got beyond V.8? I'm stuck with Bell 103? BUY A REAL MODEM, GOOGLE. Do you have any idea how much I paid for this Telebit Trailblazer, you think I want to fuck around at 300bps?
I am so old. I think I still have a Telebit T2500 around somewhere. So old.
posted by eriko at 7:31 PM on November 14, 2013 [4 favorites]
The notion of a "search engine" wasn't around until 1994 or so when WebCrawler was launched.
Veronica, anyone? WAIS?
posted by adamg at 7:39 PM on November 14, 2013 [6 favorites]
Veronica, anyone? WAIS?
posted by adamg at 7:39 PM on November 14, 2013 [6 favorites]
Makes me long for the days of calling down the dot-matrix printed list of local BBS's in my area and hoping that I connect to one before I hit the ones that will show up on the phone bill.
Still, the modem sound seems all wrong (there is something towards the end that I don't remember hearing). I never remembered seeing "loading..." stuff either - usually the BBS computers could keep up with the 14.4 kBps you'd get printed out on the screen. And where would the sound have come from while searching?!?
posted by montag2k at 8:15 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
Still, the modem sound seems all wrong (there is something towards the end that I don't remember hearing). I never remembered seeing "loading..." stuff either - usually the BBS computers could keep up with the 14.4 kBps you'd get printed out on the screen. And where would the sound have come from while searching?!?
posted by montag2k at 8:15 PM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]
What's the word that describes nostalgia for something that never was?
hiraeth
posted by hapax_legomenon at 9:30 PM on November 14, 2013
hiraeth
posted by hapax_legomenon at 9:30 PM on November 14, 2013
If I remember correctly, you could have the modem emit its wonderful sounds only during the handshake OR during all the connection. Not just when data was being transferred.
This looks like more a hollywood version of a bbs. (Hear? we are doing the weird sounds? eh? eh?)
posted by yann at 5:03 AM on November 15, 2013
This looks like more a hollywood version of a bbs. (Hear? we are doing the weird sounds? eh? eh?)
posted by yann at 5:03 AM on November 15, 2013
Veronica, anyone? WAIS?
They used to have these insane scavenger hunts where people were tasked with finding all kinds of obscure information in FTP archives and Gopherspace using Archie, Veronica and WAIS - lists of winners of an oddball technical Oscar award, recipes for obscure cuisine, untranslated medieval texts. It was amazing what was online and searchable before the WWW and webcrawlers (of which Google is one.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:21 AM on November 15, 2013 [3 favorites]
They used to have these insane scavenger hunts where people were tasked with finding all kinds of obscure information in FTP archives and Gopherspace using Archie, Veronica and WAIS - lists of winners of an oddball technical Oscar award, recipes for obscure cuisine, untranslated medieval texts. It was amazing what was online and searchable before the WWW and webcrawlers (of which Google is one.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:21 AM on November 15, 2013 [3 favorites]
needs more tradewars.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:30 AM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by kaibutsu at 5:30 AM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]
HAYES AT command set all up in this
Y'all think this is funny? Let me show you part of my sad life.
Laugh it up, kids. Laugh. It. Up.
posted by eriko at 9:28 AM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]
Y'all think this is funny? Let me show you part of my sad life.
gsmodem: ~/NewOps/Bin -> kermit C-Kermit 8.0.211, 10 Apr 2004, for FreeBSD 4.0 Copyright (C) 1985, 2004, Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. Type ? or HELP for help. (/usr/local/NewOps/Bin/) C-Kermit>set host 10.0.0.121:2102 Trying 10.0.0.121... (OK) Negotiations.. (OK) (/usr/local/NewOps/Bin/) C-Kermit>set modem type usrobotics (/usr/local/NewOps/Bin/) C-Kermit>connect Connecting to host 10.0.0.121:2102 Escape character: Ctrl-\ (ASCII 28, FS): enabled Type the escape character followed by C to get back, or followed by ? to see other options. ---------------------------------------------------- atz OK ati4 USRobotics Courier V.Everything Settings... B0 C1 E1 F1 L2 M1 Q0 V1 X4 BAUD=230400 PARITY=N WORDLEN=8 DIAL=HUNT ON HOOK TIMER &A3 &B1 &C1 &D2 &G0 &H1 &I0 &K1 &L0 &M4 &N0 &P1 &R2 &S0 &T5 &U0 &X0 &Y3 %N6 #CID=0 S00=000 S01=000 S02=043 S03=013 S04=010 S05=008 S06=002 S07=075 S08=002 S09=006 S10=014 S11=070 S12=050 S13=000 S14=000 S15=000 S16=000 S17=000 S18=000 S19=000 S20=000 S21=010 S22=017 S23=019 S24=150 S25=005 S26=001 S27=000 S28=008 S29=020 S30=000 S31=000 S32=009 S33=000 S34=000 S35=000 S36=000 S37=000 S38=000 S39=000 S40=000 S41=000 S42=126 S43=200 S44=015 S45=000 S46=000 S47=000 S48=000 S49=000 S50=000 S51=000 S52=000 S53=000 S54=064 S55=000 S56=000 S57=000 S58=000 S59=001 S60=000 S61=010 S62=000 S63=000 S64=000 S65=000 S66=000 S67=000 S68=000 S69=000 S70=000 S71=056 S72=125 S73=121 LAST DIALED #:Ports 2100-2115 all have modems, all USR Couriers.
Laugh it up, kids. Laugh. It. Up.
posted by eriko at 9:28 AM on November 15, 2013 [1 favorite]
Just for realism's sake, I ran around the apartment making sure no one was on the phone or was going to use it for the next 20 minutes before I tried this.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:07 AM on November 15, 2013
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:07 AM on November 15, 2013
eriko, so you're saying the machine you're on now has a bank of 16 US Robotics modems? What do you use them for? Are you running a BBS? Is there a web interface to it so we can play Green Dragon?
posted by JHarris at 4:19 PM on November 15, 2013
posted by JHarris at 4:19 PM on November 15, 2013
ob1quixote: “All hail The 404. Word up to The Headboard III.”I was on my phone, and now I realize that maybe I should have waited and pulled in some links.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:47 PM on November 15, 2013
And maybe I should be more careful about cursor placement when typing on the laptop…
Anyway, point being in the before-time, the long-long-ago the Atlanta 404 area code was huge (Both 404/678 and 770/678 in this map). The entire area is a toll-free calling zone — the largest toll-free calling area in the world, actually.
This meant you could call BBSes run by people so far away it would take hours to drive there. Thus, there was a surprisingly large and diverse BBS culture around Atlanta. There were hundreds of boards and many, many meet-ups, or as we called them in those days "bashes." I remember one in particular where I had to drive for over an hour to get there.
So this made me nostalgic for all of that.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:01 PM on November 15, 2013 [2 favorites]
Anyway, point being in the before-time, the long-long-ago the Atlanta 404 area code was huge (Both 404/678 and 770/678 in this map). The entire area is a toll-free calling zone — the largest toll-free calling area in the world, actually.
This meant you could call BBSes run by people so far away it would take hours to drive there. Thus, there was a surprisingly large and diverse BBS culture around Atlanta. There were hundreds of boards and many, many meet-ups, or as we called them in those days "bashes." I remember one in particular where I had to drive for over an hour to get there.
So this made me nostalgic for all of that.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:01 PM on November 15, 2013 [2 favorites]
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posted by yomimono at 3:54 PM on November 14, 2013 [8 favorites]