I also like the after-hours office feel. Seems feasible, and has never bothered me. In fact I love it.

Ahh, the 300 baud modem. I should take that thing out and photo it. I used it with Q-Link service on my Commodore 64 (I think I saw a Wiki article, if it's reliable, saying Q-Link was the predecessor to AOL?). I was even using the 'ole 300 baud modem to IRC and email in early 1990s. I remember seeing BBS listings o'plenty in the back of computer mags or something.

doctorclu Wrote:Internet or no, I would like to bring up the more common concept of the poor man's internet, the computer bulletin board system (the BBS). BTW, feel free to check out my favorite, the Prison Board BBS at telnet://rdfig.net. (or 972-329-0781 for the people who want the true old school experience) Many corporations had a dial-in point, and someone with a early IBM, Apple ]I[, I even knew someone who used an Atari 400, could call in with a modem. It was common for corporations to have multiple phone lines. People could work over the phone, could chat real time in chat rooms (with other users that dialed into the corporate computer), even play online games if the company allowed it. DARPA net was well known, but was a government accessed network. Later the DARPA net and BBS's would start to share Usenet groups, but that was a gradual process. Anyway, a Bulletin Board System, I'm sure ENCOM would have had one, but connection speeds at 1981 were like 300 to 600 baud, with crazy people with 1200 baud modems. Not bad, but even better would be to STAY AFTER HOURS and just get the programming projects done. :P And honestly I think that is what we saw in the first TRON movie. I kinda liked that after hours office feel, and think of TRON when I stay after hours at my office. And sometimes, I think of popcorn but never seem to have any on hand damnit.

Excellent post. While there was no "internet" like we have today there was arpa and darpanet, the seeds of the global network and in addition to that the BBS system allowed for direct dialup of computers everyday. In fact Steven Lisberger mentioned that they watched models of lightcycles and recognizers in Hollywood as they were downloaded over phonelines from New York. Not always common place but still possible back then. In fact the process has been shown much earlier in film. If you ever get a chance to see the old sci-fi film "The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler" you will see a doctor downloading DNA patterns for cloning via a accoustic coupled telephone modem. That film came out in 1970 so by TRON's time the technology was almost a teenager. It was the modem and the mainframe technology that inspired people like Bruce Sterling, William Gibson and John Brunner, the latter especially in his book Shockwave Rider.on line abortion pill misoprostol dose abortion medical abortion pill online

And I know of one application that you can get for windows at least that you can still do it through the web but via browser or via telnet like what your mentioning there.

That was one reason why I mentioned phone number and telnet address for the Prison Board BBS. Truth is there are still 40-ish dialup BBS's in US and Canada, some in the UK, and hundreds of telnetable BBS's still out there.

Part of what got me into BBS's were naturally Wargames (everyone wanted to be hacker/phreaker after that), and TRON.

As for the world of ENCOM, I think their local server might have been a BBS setup, but as the MCP got more intelligent he probably found ways to hit networks like the ARPA and DARPAnet. He was adding military programs, hitting government sites, and was even talking about the Crimlin , so his influence was starting to hack into other networks. Truth is, if the MCP had been successful a much darker internet might have started through ENCOM controlled by the MCP. order abortion pill morning after pill price where to buy abortion pill