#newsgroup

[stuffedcrocodile]

The Oldest TTRPG Forum on the Net

Did you know there is an online forum for tabletop role-playing games that has been around since the late 70s, and which still is active and operating? Admittedly in a much diminished state than at it’s heyday. I don’t know if you ever heard the term Usenet before, and even if you did, if you don’t just connect it with data piracy. Because that’s what it is mostly used for nowadays. What it…

[cybercultnzicd]

SPECTRO-SCREEN, THE COMPUTERIZED PSYCHIC Computer technology using spectrum analysis to read, monitor and control subtle energy can now achieve more consistent results than the best psychic. Currently Spectro-Screen is offering specific services to screen prospective employees during the hiring process as well as to screen lease applicants for residential rental properties. The results are almost totally accurate, the only failure being that some questionable yet acceptable applicants are screened out. The program works equally well for use in all areas of business and personal environments, ranging from making money to gaining fame, winning recognition and improving one's love life. It works basically the same way as a prayer chain, psychic healer or magic spell, except that the results are more precise and consistent. Finally a machine has replaced human error in the arena of psychic phenomena. And naturally the cost is reduced as well. Spectro-Screen is open for business, but the owners are very selective about their clientele. They say they have all they can handle with their own personal programs, but they do take on additional clients. Reply for more information. jpgossett

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.paranormal/c/98KJZ2-aApk/m/63PIWoHTM4QJ

[oldwindowsicons]

Netscape - Newsgroups

[mellotronmkll]

obsessed with these evasive answers from an MSN interview with Linnell in 2003

[vimbry]

does bluesky have a slightly cheesy but harmless atmosphere in a way that makes it feel like a more liberal-leaning facebook in general, or am I just getting older and made this my sphere

[opendirectories]

[prospitianescapee]

Converting UTZOO-Wiseman Usenet Tapes to Website with PostgreSQL backend using Python 3.8

October 7, 2020 by joe0

Recently, I came across a resource that allowed me to download the entire collection of UTZOO NetNews Archive of the earliest USENET posts. These were essentially the earliest available discussions posted to the Internet by people working at various Universities who were already connected to the Internet. There were approximately 2.1 million posts in these archives created between Feb 1981 and June of 1991. This article describes the journey of converting those tapes into fully searchable PostgreSQL database and later also into the usenetarchives.com website.

[daemonhxckergrrl]

you want federated media ? a distributed network that's versatile and pseudo-anonymous and doesn't tie you down to a single experience ?

Usenet !!

[dreamy-conceit]

There's ALWAYS a means to revenge yourself if you have foresight and imagination.

— legume@subgenius.com, 'What I Learned In Boot Camp', posted to alt.slack on 30 April, 2000

[wolfie180g]

Newsgroups on yahoo. A kind of chatroom?? In like 1999 -2004 years or so.we make posts for others in the newsgroup for our fandoms. Its hard to describe. Chatrooms were also popular hangouts back then , around the time of myspace and livejournal

*for our purposes, a youtube account only counts if you’ve used it to post videos.

reblog for reach/bigger sample size!!

[madlori]

On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[vimbry]

going through that artist's dA and giggling at how no one's online speech patterns have really changed that much in 21 years

[ramavoite]

Okay but this all makes so much sense

[magnetic-terp-input]

Usenet old, here!

[seat-safety-switch]

When you go to school for computer science, one of the things they try to teach you is that a computer can be anything. It doesn't have to be a bleepity-bloopity thing, stimulating rocks with canned lightning. It doesn't have to be a room-filling automaton made entirely out of fancy light bulbs. And it sure as fuck doesn't need to be some rocks that you move along on a piece of wood to count things. No, a computer can be anything, as long as it follows some basic rules. A dog can be a computer.

Recently, as part of my court-ordered requirement not to touch electronic computers and mobilized smart telephones, I've been training the neighbour's dog to access the internet. You might think that this is difficult, or impossible, but again: computer science theory says that the dog can do it. Rufus can be a computational device. At the very least, I can train him to run over to the neighbour's computer and read my newsgroups for me.

You might think that this is difficult work, but time is on my side. Without the cruel bonds of "productive employment," I can spend all day leaning out of my kitchen window and yelling random words at the dog. Eventually, I seem to hit on what I assume is some kind of command-injection fault. Rufus stands shock-straight, looks at the sky for a moment, and immediately bolts inside the house. Minutes pass, and then he emerges with a print-out of alt.autos.plymouth-volare, which has not seen any posts since the last time I checked. It's almost as if nobody else is posting there, but I feel relieved having reconnected to my people.

There's just one problem: Rufus, it turns out, is a narc. He has made more than one printout. In the time he was gone, he was delivering the other one to my parole officer. The judge doesn't appreciate my clever application of theory to practice. It wouldn't be so bad, except that from my prison cell, I can look out the window. It's there that see and hear the dog receive a medal from the Mayor Himself for valour. This is bullshit. He's no hero. He was just following orders.