Re: Speaking of BBS's...

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <9lvl7.82895$K6.33972144@news2>,
william strutts <wrstrutts1@nospam.home.com> wrote:
 
> If I recall, Fidonet was a precursor to Usenet.
 
No, Usenet really preceded FidoNet.
 
The history of Usenet is longer than most current Usenet users
realize.  However, during the earlier days of Usenet, comparatively
few people had access to it.  This had advantages as well as
disadvantages: the advantage was that Usenet was then almost
completely free of spam, and the noise level was also very low
compared to today.  The disadvantage was that access was hard to get
unless you already were part of some organisation (typically some
university) with Usenet access.
 
Fidonet was formed by people without Usenet access who wanted
to be able to communicate globally electronically.
 
> You would post messages on your local BBS and the messages would
> be uploaded during the night and your responses from the previous
> day would be downloaded.  That is what I recall of such relay type
> systems of the 80's.
 
Fidonet is still alive and well.  Check out e.g.:
 
    http://www.ftsc.org/
    http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=fidonet;list
    http://www.fidonews.org/
 
Interestingly the tables have now turned: some 10 years ago Fidonet
news were full of noise while Usenet was fairly noise free.  Today
most of the noise makers have migrated to Usenet, and Fidonet is run
by comparatively few enthusiasts -- and today Fidonet is more noise
free than Usenet.
 
-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
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