🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2018-08-04, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:

> First modem I got did 300, whatever it is called, would'nt get it to work,
> years later I discovered that (US - EU(well, european)) were incompatible,
>  then I got 1200/75.. the speeds mattered in Ireland, local calls were dear,
>  further very dear. Every step was accompanied by people proving that higher
>  speeds were impossible.

Here are my first modems and costs:

    300 baud  $150
   1200 bps   $160
   2400 bps   $250
  14400 bps   $500

Prices had already started dropping rapidly.  When I was doing mainframe
stuff in the early '80s, I remember seeing modem prices fall from $1 US
per bps to $1 Canadian.  Yup, a Bell 201-style modem (2400 bps synchronous)
cost about $2500 at the time.  You could have 9600 bps, but the modems
cost 10 grand apiece.  (I remember hearing about something from Gandalf
called a "Supermodem" - IIRC it divided the phone line into something
like 4000 frequency bands and ran each one at about 3 baud.)

> I once tried a messaging system, like a BBS, based on Ncomm, a utility.
> I quickly discovered that such a thing was a magnet for nutters, and i worried
> that if one of them left an abusive message, I would be liable.

Ncomm?  Is that the Amiga utility?  I thought it was a pretty good
terminal emulator.

One of the BBSes I frequented, Mind Link, added a Usenet feed and made
a number of groups look like more of their local groups.  That's how I
started posting here in 1989.

> My opinion is that you trust nobody, be careful about everyone.
> There was a rape trial in Belfast recently, and the Facebooks were flooded.
> the case was basically "She didn't object" vs "I never said yes." Some of the
> opinions offered were awful. 
>
> Every newspaper has opinions, the bias has to be weeded out by the reader.

That last clause is the critical part.  People nowadays seem to have lost
the ability to do even the most rudimentary sanity checks on what they
read or hear.  As you said, be careful about everyone.

-- 
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