[Ramius]

Heh... I'm not even any good as an ubergeek anymore. Whenever I say sumpthin' it turns out I'm wrong. My teeth must be recedin'. I may have to turn in my pocket protector if this trend continues. :-)

But by way of edumacatin': BBS stands for "bulletin board system". It's what forums like FR did in the days before the web. Each user had to dial in on a modem directly to the BBS server machine. BBS servers could handle maybe 2 to 8 to 24 to 48 or whatever simultaneous connections, depending on how much they wanted to spend. People could post messages and others would reply... and so on and so on...

It was great fun, but it was mostly regional, since people didn't want to make long distance calls. Usenet came along and let local people share posts across distances and lots of other BBS's joined the Usenet newsgroup system.

But usenet newsgroups was like drinkin' from a firehose.

[TalonDJ]

But by way of edumacatin': BBS stands for "bulletin board system". It's what forums like FR did in the days before the web. Each user had to dial in on a modem directly to the BBS server machine. BBS servers could handle maybe 2 to 8 to 24 to 48 or whatever simultaneous connections, depending on how much they wanted to spend. People could post messages and others would reply... and so on and so on...

It is interesting that as much as things change the basics of what works in human communication does not change that much. A posting forum like this is more or less a BBS, from the human communication format side it is the same.