Without Internet, Egyptians find new ways to get online

Computer World ^ | January 29, 2011 | Nancy Gohring and Robert McMillan

[mylife]

BB’s were mostly porn and software.

There is an oxymoron.

[bronxville]

Bingo!

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Wonder why our usurper wants the off switch?

Mu-Barak Hussein Obama.

[BushCountry]

These methods are too simplistic to work. What needs to be done is a loose network of techies needs to be formed. They need to develop a plan to hijack microwave and cell phone data towers, transmit data over existing infrastructure (thousands of miles of fiber optics), and develop backup wireless communication. Let’s face it, if the government shuts down the Internet, it’s war!

[prisoner6]

Fidonet....and others. Back in the day that's how techies got things going. I can see the same sort of thing now but one with private, wireless networks.

The only way to shut it down would be to shut down The Grid.

Rural areas would be a problem (at first) and it would probably have to go back to text only but it would still be communication.

[Steely Tom]

If the U.S. govt shuts down the internet they will grind business to a halt. Everything from simple email communication to sales to financial markets transmission of data are internet dependent.

A techie friend told me that cell phone data goes over the internet. No internet, no cell phones; or the cost goes way, way up.

Billions of dollars every day move on the retail side of the internet business equation. Delivery of internet purchases produces tens of thousands of jobs in the package delivery industry.

The "internet kill switch" is an "economy kill switch," which in turn is an "Americal kill switch." Which is, ultimately, why Obama wants it so much.

[Talf]

what the protesters need,
is a pirate radio station

[Traveler59]

Wildcat BBS, Remote Access BBS, Robo-Board BBS, mail tossers, multiple phone lines, QMail, Telemate, BlueWave, RANet, zones, nodes... It could be done but it takes quite a bit of coordination and effort to get it going.

[TomGuy]

BB’s were mostly porn and software.

Actually, they are more that that.

They had forums, communications, chat, file transfers. Their limitation was that they would only support incoming connections based on the number of modems they had, and they were dependent on landline telephone service.

Ingenuity could improve and alter that to meet more current needs.

[Traveler59]

Do either of you know any place on the web to locate some (or any) of the programs required to build, operate and link BBS’s together. Might be a good idea to gather up these programs in one area for distribution when needed. I admit I never ran a BBS, but I was a co-sysop on one and a forum moderator (antivirus) on several local forums. But that was many (many, many, many) years ago.

[prisoner6]

Not right off the top of my head BUT I'm sure I have TONS on my old HD's. The only thing I'm sorry about is recently getting rid of all my old Tandy Color Computers, related hardware and software.

Even so I'm sure all of the programs I used on those as well as on the PC's are on the HD's I've saved. The only terminal program I recall by name is "Mikeyterm" but there were lots of others as well as BBS software.

In a couple of weeks the computer I'm now using will be "retired" and available for testing and seeing what's on those old drives.

[TomGuy]

I have a few old (pre-1998) BBS software programs in my disk archives. Most of these are DOS based and may not even run on Win7 systems.

Probably, the best way would be to do a Google search. I know of a few websites that catalogue and archive old programs.

[Traveler59]

In a couple of weeks the computer I'm now using will be "retired" and available for testing and seeing what's on those old drives.

I've retired a few computers, and I'll go and buy a hard drive enclosure kit (Radio Shack has them) and put the old hard drive in the enclosure. Give me a chance to keep the old data and have an extra USB external hard drive.

[Charles Martel]

List of BBS software

(Some with active download links)

Remember, this stuff is worthless if you have digital phone service (commonly bundled with cable internet). VOIP will shut down along with the internet, so get an analog phone line (and a *modem*). Hmm, where did I put that U.S. Robotics 56K...?

[prisoner6]

U.S. Robotics 56K

At one time I was SO jealous of folks who had 56K! I was stuck a LONG time with 300 baud acoustic and then "upgraded" to a 12.4K or 24K IIRC.

Even at that speed I though I was flying, LOL!

[Charles Martel]

I never had an acoustic modem, but I did start out with a 300 baud “VICModem” plugged into the back of my Commodore 64! Great fun, though dialing into QuantumLink was like watching paint dry. The later, faster modems did indeed make things more pleasant.

[Traveler59]

Also found that Fidonet is still (sort of) active. Maybe it's time to invest a little effort to build up a BBS, make step by step instructions (including cost), and get ready for the ‘O’ to hit the stop switch.

[Charles Martel]

I see that CompuServe is also still around, and even though the e-mail accounts are now gone, the forums are still accessible (even by dial-up using local numbers). There's even one forum titled "Political Debate" with a number of subforums.

I think they were originally based in Canada, but after becoming part of AOL, I'm not sure if the servers moved. It makes me wonder what other options might be out there.

[southland]

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