Reply With QuoteI am, but I don't think I posted under a consistent handle there.
And I'm not, because I still use usenet. It's actually gotten better the last year or so.
Quatoria mentioned this in another thread.
I do recognize many csipg.* refugees here.
I am, but I don't think I posted under a consistent handle there.
And I'm not, because I still use usenet. It's actually gotten better the last year or so.
I think most of the old guard here are definitely USENET refugees and some even have long posting histories with each other that started before these boards existed.
--Dave
Usenet is the REAL internet.
Pah. Hyper-web-link-stuff-crap. Newfangled garbage. Who needs graphics? You can find anything you need with anonymous FTP sites and gopher.
Remember when wuarchive.wustl.edu was THE place to find every single utility or whatsit you could possibly want?
I remember in the first week I had Internet access, I tried to download the just-released Descent 1.4 patch from wuarchive. I couldn't get it to work, because I was trying to connect to wust1, not wustl. As first-timer Internet problems go, I think that was a pretty good one to have.Originally Posted by Rollory
Started there and moved to web-based forums when it made more sense...
My first usenet post was on the 17th February 1994. I was using a Unix command line ISP at the time. I was asking when Mechwarrior II was going to be released. Before usenet I was a CompuServe/OZCIS forum participant.
It has been quite a few years since I seriously used usenet. I haven't really missed it.
Most of the flamewars and a lot of the spam seem to be gone, at least in the groups I frequent. Amazing turnaround from just a few years ago, probably because the clueless have mostly moved to the web.
Before I even had Usenet access, one of the People/Link sysops used to capture the Amiga Usenet group posts and post them to the download forums there, where we Amiga geeks would read them. This would have been, oh, late 1987.
The oldest post Google Groups pulls up for me is 2/26/89, asking whether I should buy one of the amazing new HP Deskjets or go for a Panasonic KXP-1124 24-pin printer. (I think I went for the Panasonic -- I was po.)
I even list both my standard Internet address and my UUCP address:
UUCP:{ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!dennya
Wow. I'd forgotten about those!
A couple of months later I made a post trying to get in touch with someone where I posted my home phone number to a newsgroup. Wow, those were innocent days.
[size=2](IE: Before AOL added Internet access and began the slow process of ruining everything...)[/size]
I still use Usenet very occasionally -- I even spent the $15 to upgrade to Forte Agent 2.0 -- but for the most part I use web boards now.
Haven't made up my mind to upgrade to Agent 2.0. Any benefits apart from feeling good about supporting Agent ?
Oh yeah... from waaaayy back. And give http://xnews.newsguy.com/ a shot, it rocks.
My first USENET post.
http://groups.google.com/groups?&sel....ix.netcom.com
Hey, not so bad for a 17 year old. Nothing to be ashamed of (unlike some of the other stuff I've posted to USENET...)Mechwarrior II is a great game. I think that they tried to
follow the battletech universe's storyline, as written
by Michael Stackpoole, but they changed some stuff.
First, the Situation and Aftermaths in the missions are
great background for the universe, but serve very little
purpose for the game.
Clan Stars: They are composed of 5 mechs, 10 fighter, or
25 elementals. How we get three mechs is beyond me,
espeicall y when the library gives the same figures that I
did.
The Wolf Clan is NOT trying to get to Terra, and they are
NOT the last of the Wardens.
There are other Warden Clans, but the Wolves (some of
them, at least) are the most vehement.
They had to fiddle with some of the weapons on the mechs
due to the 10-weapon limit.
The Clans do not use the Tarantula, it's a F-C (Federated
Commonwealth) designed mech.
Overall though, I love the game!
This is a neat thread idea in of itself. Here's the earliest post of mine I can find on google groups, dated august 1994:
Well I thought it was neat, anyway.Code:>Hey! can anybody enlighten me on what the hell has happened to these games? > > 1. Forgotten Castles Gone. The developer. Twin Dolphin Games, went belly up, and the game code (85% finished) is for sale. Prospects look grim. > 2. Stonekeep MAJORLY delayed. Many features have been removed, including 360 degree scrolling. However, its now a multiple CD-ROM release, and is supposed to have incredible static graphics, kind of like a high-res Lands of Lore. Look for it in '95, if ever. > 3. System Shock Delayes, but its an Origin released, so thats to be expected. Official release dates are Sept-August, but I'd bet it'll be much later. This one looks REALLY good! >Any info. is much appreciated. Any release dates? Thanks! > >++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >Kevin Tan. Sure, no problem.
Oh man, now you guys did it. Lee Johnson's going to be along with a post he made in like 1983 or something like that.
--Dave
Not a lot... It's faster, which is good since I run it under Virtual PC on my Mac iBook, and the interface has some nice tweaks.
I was more or less prepaying for Agent 2.1, which comes out in a couple of months and will support multiple news servers. They're going to raise the upgrade price by a few bucks when that's ready, so I figured I'd get in now. The upgrade was cheap enough to justify, given how much use I got out the program over the years. That "If Bill Huffman, Rod White, or PapaDoc posts to a thread, stop grabbing it immediately" filter added years to my life.
LOL! PapaDoc. He has sort of become the newsgroup patron for CSIPCG.Flight-Sims. He stated last year that he wasn't interested in web-based forums since they were inhabited by too many idiots.
I never really found PapaDoc to be offensive though. Certainly not like Huffman.
I didn't even know about it; they were using my email address from late 1995/early 1996. Wow, that was a good run for $29. I upgraded immediately.Haven't made up my mind to upgrade to Agent 2.0. Any benefits apart from feeling good about supporting Agent ?
There are a lot of specialized usenet topics that don't have effective web communities (that I've been able to find, anyhow), e.g., Lisp.
PapaDoc used to be a sane and normal poster. Had a pink Flanker painted for his young daughter, which was a really cute thing to do.
Then there was some wackiness with him having a falling out with the Flanker community during the Flanker 2.0 beta testing, and that seemed to start a downhill slide.
Now he seems to be a catalyst for the idiotic political crap that overwhelms .flight-sim nowadays. Don't know that he instigates it, but he fans the flames and seems to respond to all the threads. So if you killthread him, it gets rid of most of the politics talk. And he rarely actually discusses sims -- in 2004 he's posted to only three or four sim-related threads -- so you don't miss much due to the filter. :)
If you discounted all the HEEHEEs,that is.The various web boards have really hit that group hard.
Hmm, the earliest Usenet post of mine I could find on Google groups was this:
Hmm, you know what, I'd still like to see games like this made - especially a 4x Succession Wars-type game, or a Battletech-version of Missionforce: Cyberstorm.Subject: Re: Mechwarriow III sugguestions
View: Complete Thread (26 articles)
Original Format
Newsgroups: alt.games.mechwarrior2
Date: 1996/05/14
I don't know if this would particularly be a suggestion for Mech3, really,
but I would really like to see a strategic/tactical Mechwarrior game.
Clans, IS, Mercenary - any side would be good.
Features for it could include:
- Turn-based combat system using the Mechwarrior pen-and-paper rules
- Semi-3d view a la X-Com.
- Ability to control battles on a large, battalion/galaxy-sized scale (mostly
involving company deployment and management) and/or a small, tactical,
lance/star scale (involving tactical combat decisions).
- Bidding before battles if Clan.
- Resource management for Mechs, parts, money.
- If done on a small (lance/star scale), specific Mechwarriors with
personalities and attributes that improve with experience.
- A combat system NOT like the old old Crescent Hawk's Revenge game, but more
like Jagged Alliance or X-Com.
If a game such as this were created with a large scale in mind (think Master
of Orion) it could spawn a Succession Wars type conversion to the PC from the
board game, involving political dealings with other clans/houses, dealing with
mercenaries and ComStar, and planning invasions of star systems and the like.
The whole Battletech/Mechwarrior universe is incredibly rich, and I would like
to see games based on the many facets of it, some of which I have listed
above.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=au...r.edu&rnum=938
Boy, that was one helpful hint!
I went from GEnie to Compuserve to Usenet to web boards. GEnie was kind of snobbish, I thought. Compuserve had some great game forums. Once people got Internet access Compuserve got killed, though.
I loved Usenet, but it did seem to get less interesting and I gradually stopped reading it.
So what ever happened to Old Salt?
If you were a science fiction fan, though, GEnie's SFRT *rocked.* Shooting the breeze with grandmaster Damon Knight, Peter David, even... (gasp) (sarcastic gasp, that is) Jerry Pournelle! Lots of well-known authors there, and SF discussions that weren't the scary fanboy stuff you see online nowadays.
On the Amiga side of things, GEnie was less snobbish than CI$. It all depended on the sysop, really.
Anyone hang out on BIX? That was the techie haven.
That's the real reason I went into media -- to get press accounts! How was I going to afford CI$, GEnie, BIX, People/Link, etc. otherwise? But hey, if I didn't have accounts on all of them, I might miss something important!
Compared to today... This is the only board I read on a daily basis. (But hey, I have a life nowadays, too. :) )
I looked for Old Salt on the google groups but it looks like he keeps his posts from being archived. I saw him quoted in some messages in Historical. He was plonking people just a few months ago -- the guy loves to plonk. Pretty funny to see him still at it after all these years. His killfile must be gigantic.
Salt still posts on war.historical,although mostly he reposts the group charter,and involves himself deeply in the off-topic flamewars he claims to hate.I'm sure he posts on other groups as well,war.historical is one of the few I still read.
news.google has a bunch of mine listed from 1/3/99 (here's one http://groups.google.com/groups?q=au...uy.com&rnum=13 on BG1) - either I posted a lot that day or, more likely, that was when they imported a batch.
The day mark first mentioned what would become oldmanmurray and my heart swooned, i have been in love ever since.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...-1.starnet.net
Anyone else started on the Prodigy boards circa 1993-6?
The earliest posts I could find were ones I made to net.tv in 1984, when I was in fourth year at Waterloo. ;)
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