| Nostalgia |
[Apr. 22nd, 2009|12:32 am] |
I am really missing the old local Citadels right now. WWWA, Cathode Cathedral, Satellite of Love. Names few will remember, but I know at least slowbob will probably be getting a warm tingly feeling if he's glancing this over.
Cit-68k, Cit-86, GremCit's, Cit/UX's, MacCit's and Macadel's. Whatever. Sure, there were your major BBS's and C-net's and WWIV's and boards with focuses on files, games, maybe even multi-line chat - but the breed of Citadels excelled at communication in a way no other BBS's could touch. In a way, it's unsurprising - Citadels evolved organically, they were not written with a purpose to fulfill, the first Citadel started as a text adventure game; one feature enabled users to leave a message for other players. That little excursion from the core of intention soon proved to be more popular than playing the game itself, and in turn the software evolved to facilitate what the community cared about; the community was not built around molding their ways to the software as so many are now.
I miss *knowing* everyone with whom I would chat, and for whom I would write. No random crawler archiving our messages for posterity. Strangers were interrogated until vetted; and it was generally easy to do since few called who weren't local. And if they were calling LD and they knew how to phreak, they were probably worthwhile enough anyway. Regardless, anyone was welcome to tool around in the public rooms but only those trusted friends (and I really mean -friends- not some meaningless term for a digital association) made it into the sanctuaries where the real conversations happened.
If they turned out to be a troll, an asshole, bad blood boiled, or simply an untrustworthy idiot. Sysops would twit them. A twitted user could log in, enter messages the system would make it look like everything was fine. But behind the scenes, the message would be discarded and no one would have any idea the twit had even existed. Far better than actively blocking someone to their knowledge thus raising their ire; and with the power of giving everyone the same ignore list - good users were never troubled by the twits; and twits never knew they were getting the short end of the stick. Ignoring the trolls as it were wasn't a form of advice, it was a double ended technological implementation, without social fallout.
I miss the -thread- of conversations. Even the layout of information is so much simpler and smarter than most systems today. Start at the oldest unread message and work your way down to the most recent, just like we read things in English: top to bottom. None of this backwards show me newest messages first and let me try to ascertain when I've finally started rereading things I read last time. When someone chose to contribute - append that message to the tail within the flow chronologically. No needless crap of people answering the same question someone else has already answered because you were made to read other people's responses before you were provided with an opportunity to respond yourself.
And Citadels had one feature that people probably can't even comprehend today if they never experienced it. .Terminate Abort Sure sure, Cit/UX doesn't have it. Well not public releases of Cit/UX anyway. Young Republican (RIP) hacked in support for the revival of SoL along with me figuring out how to jump to it via ssh via crude efforts. TA'ing as we called it essentially would clear all the message pointers; making it like you'd never connected that session. Useful for occasions where you had enough time to connect and skim, but not enough time to formulate a proper replies; which turns out is often enough. But don't sacrifice the conversation - come back to it later when you've got a chance to really contribute; like putting a bookmark a page or two from where you've read so that you can be sure to reread that part later when you're not distracted.
We may have had simple line editors, but god - so much better than dealing with stupid escape codes or reserved characters.
Our networking was crude, but we managed, across continents and even oceans sometimes; and of course oceans of a different sort - variant software implementations (Deadman wrote the Cit-86 to Gremcit networking code that linked us to his board after he switched coasts; but we kept in touch with nightly syncs over illicit pc-pursuit accounts). And the anti-vortexing helped alleviate a problem that most people deal with today - repeated messages rebroadcast on endless nodes. Networked rooms could be tagged such that their networked nature was clear, and you knew if you'd checked one on one board you didn't need to check the same room on another board. None of this failed syndication and intractably implemented aggregation without even comprehending the problem an aggregator should be trying to solve.
Digital communications today are archived duplicated EULA'd appropriated analyzed aggregated datamined and more, even as the messages themselves are of an increasingly banal nature. Astute researchers spend more time analyzing the relationships of the parties interacting and how they can model or map those than they spend actually -looking- at the communication. And the same is true for many people who choose to use these new mediums. The citadels, ephemeral as the storage upon which they were written (sometimes even on dying floppy disks) contained a culture and a conversation that was, to me at least, so much more intimate than anything I could even imagine existing today.
And yes, things change and evolve - but is it the community that is driving it anymore? Big business here, startup over there all looking for consumers. So rare is it when the community is the driving force now; actively implementing a better world not passively digesting or -demanding- what they wish to see from those "on high" whom are given undue credit.
Years before the FSF the GPL, rms and all kinds of political evangelism; Cynbe ru Taren whom I knew only by the citation of Jeff Prothero released the source as public domain.
The legacy goes on. Cit/UX has continued to evolve (far from even when I last used it when YR was running SoL on it) into a robust groupware platform; apparently still at the behest of its community. I am tempted to fire it up; I can only assume that all the functionality is still available from the fundamental text interface, even if it now offers caldav, groupdav, imap, all manner of web front ends and client support.
But this isn't so much about the present as it is about the nostalgia; and really of truly vetted and trusted communities and means to communicate digitally in a time where prying eyes hadn't been conceived or at best were embryonic. A time of small fiefs of communication among friends with walls to protect them. Vibrant and full of potential and optimism.
CItadel is a real hacker's code. Which is unsurprising seeing as it got its start from someone who wrote one of the first hacker's codes:
http://muq.org/~cynbe/hackers-code.html |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Mar. 16th, 2009|04:07 pm] |
I rarely use the mood tag thinger; the one I wrote doesn't accurately represent how pissed I am.
So I'm checking the (incredibly shitty) Santa Cruz court website to double check the date for the next status conference hearing for my divorce which I was informed back in November was going to be the 18th or 19th this week when I went to the last status conference hearing.
Not only can I not find anything scheduled; when I dig up the case # from queried the last date I was in family court about this; I find that they never noted the schedule for the next date. Moreover, there's been no status update at all (i.e. my paralegal never filed the paperwork I'd filled out and given to my exwife to sign and return; or perhaps my exwife never signed and returned it to her for her to file, even though she claims she did).
ARGH!!!
So either the exwife, or more likely paralegal completely fucking dropped the ball AGAIN. But moreover, the court didn't even schedule anything when they said they did.
How the fuck am I ever going to get divorced at this rate when other people keep fucking up their shit? I don't want to be a babysitter; I just want it behind me; it's been almost four years to the date since my marriage imploded. ;-/ |
|
|
| nothing to see here move along. |
[Mar. 10th, 2009|12:32 am] |
. . . I feel like I should be writing something as a means of catharsis. But I don't know if I want anyone reading it... what do people use for real private journals in the 21st century? Because it sure as hell isn't on the internet. ;)
Life has been full of tribulations but I'm working on resolving the ones pertinent to me. I don't seem to have the kinds of drama other people do; not that I want any more drama of any sort. But at least those kinds of drama are often the result of intimate relationships which I'm still avoiding.
I'm sure intimate relationships can exist without drama. I look forward to those. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2009|04:56 pm] |
|
I'm not doing a year end write up, it's not year of the ox until January 26th, I'm still living in the year of the rat! So nyah! |
|
|
| Preaching to the choir |
[Dec. 14th, 2008|02:09 pm] |
Donate money to NIMBY NAO! They need $6500 MOAR by tomorrow to make this happen!
http://www.nimbyspace.org/
Use your credit card w/o even using a paypal account! Or, if you have one, you can use that too.
$krillaz
(and yes they have already raised over 9000 dollars, but that isn't enough). |
|
|
| sunday Sunday sunDay! |
[Dec. 12th, 2008|07:00 pm] |
Half the tme crew is lending a hand for megabyte mike's special bday static. Come out!
 |
|
|
| livejournal sux, here's a shitty workaround |
[Dec. 4th, 2008|03:43 pm] |
I can't post a reply over 4300 characters in someone else's journal, so here's a reply here without dumbass arbitrary limits. Not of interest to others, but since I've got some other security/hacker practitioners as friends who read this, you're welcome to offer your comments too. This is just my perspective having been in a role of errr support of some sort for . . . too fucking long. Albeit, my views outline an ideal, and I've certainly dealt with things that put a lot more burden on me than I like handling and I deal with that; it's also a goal to not put too much burden on users [that doesn't tend to work or scale], but where do developers fit in? If you are interested in my biased thoughts, read on:
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| Posted using TxtLJ |
[Nov. 16th, 2008|10:20 pm] |
|
the greatest birthday gift of all is the love & support from some amazing friends. Thank you! |
|
|
| Posted using TxtLJ |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|06:12 pm] |
|
After finally getting a working debit card again & being paid the money irs shorted me last year, credit card paid off! |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Nov. 14th, 2008|07:38 pm] |
|
Goddamn I've had this g1 for like three hours and am already so in love with it I can't describe how awesome it is. But seriously, why didn't this phone exist four years ago when I was rockin qwerty, wifi, touchscreen, evdo back then? |
|
|
| Posted using TxtLJ |
[Nov. 13th, 2008|04:30 pm] |
|
No kids this weekend. Bday is sunday. Is anything doing tomorrow (friday)? Or should it be impromptu party time? |
|
|
| overdue update? |
[Nov. 9th, 2008|07:07 pm] |
I haven't written here in a while; but I am still reading regularly? Here's some catch up.
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| Tickle Me Electro tonight! Now Free! |
[Sep. 27th, 2008|02:01 pm] |
The sound guy isn't charging us, so we're not charging you! Maybe I'll find a coffee can for donations or something for people who feel like it, or just save your money for the bar. Anyway, hope to see people out (albeit on a very busy Saturday night).
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Sep. 25th, 2008|05:53 pm] |
Don't forget about Tickle Me Electro on Saturday!
In return, I give you (worksafe) pr0n after the cut:
( Read more... ) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Sep. 20th, 2008|11:01 am] |
Blarghity itsmorelikeachainletterthanamemebutisagoodexcusetoshowoffnewcmykhair
blargh! |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
artkiver's journal