44: alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die

00:00SPEAKER- I hope you're happy, Brad.

00:01SPEAKER- Always.

00:02SPEAKERLast week-

00:03SPEAKER- Never.

00:04SPEAKER- Yeah, never's right.

00:05SPEAKERFor all of us right now.

00:07SPEAKERLast week, we talked about desks

00:09SPEAKERand I was ashamed of my situation.

00:12SPEAKERSo I took three days.

00:15SPEAKER- Three days?

00:16SPEAKER- Well, first I had to clean out the drawers

00:17SPEAKERbeside my desk. - Three days?

00:19SPEAKER- So that I had room to put the shit

00:20SPEAKERfrom my desk someplace.

00:21SPEAKER- That's fair.

00:22SPEAKERAlso, I don't want to preemptively throw any shade here,

00:25SPEAKERbut that printer table behind you there,

00:26SPEAKERit seems like the cone of cleaning

00:28SPEAKERdid not extend all the way across the room.

00:30SPEAKER- Look, it made it up into the wood part, right?

00:33SPEAKER- Okay, that's fair.

00:34SPEAKER- Yeah, past the wood is a dumping ground.

00:37SPEAKERSo yeah, first I had to clean off the shelves.

00:43SPEAKERThen I had to clean off the desk surface

00:45SPEAKERand then I unplugged everything,

00:47SPEAKERtook all the monitors off, all the speakers,

00:49SPEAKEReverything came off the desk.

00:50SPEAKER- Wow.

00:51SPEAKER- I cleaned it all.

00:53SPEAKERI rewired everything.

00:55SPEAKERI bought a bigger power strip,

00:56SPEAKERso I only have one power strip under there

00:58SPEAKERfor each computer now. - Nice.

00:59SPEAKERYou made an investment in your own sanity.

01:02SPEAKER- Hold on, I'm not done.

01:03SPEAKERI got wire baskets on the advice of people in the Discord

01:07SPEAKERthat I screwed into the bottom of my desk

01:10SPEAKERand now the power strips don't live there yet

01:12SPEAKER'cause I need one more basket.

01:13SPEAKERBut the cables and my audio interface

01:17SPEAKERand my hardware switcher between the two computers,

01:21SPEAKERall that stuff, everything that I don't need to touch

01:23SPEAKERon the day-to-day lives in that basket.

01:25SPEAKER- Suspended in the air.

01:27SPEAKER- My wires go straight back.

01:29SPEAKERThere's little cable drop hooks at the end of those wires.

01:32SPEAKERSo they hold them in place,

01:33SPEAKERbut I can get them out easily if I need to.

01:34SPEAKER- Excellent.

01:36SPEAKERHave you achieved, the real question though,

01:38SPEAKERhave you achieved true desk nirvana, tidiness nirvana,

01:42SPEAKERand cleared the floor under the desk?

01:45SPEAKER- There are two power strips and some cables under there.

01:47SPEAKER- Oh, those are right, the power strips, yes, okay.

01:49SPEAKER- I gotta get the baskets.

01:50SPEAKER- Yeah, true joy, ultimate purity.

01:54SPEAKER- It was really nice for about 20 minutes

01:55SPEAKERand now it's already a little messed up again.

01:57SPEAKER- Well, I get it, I get it.

01:58SPEAKERBut the ultimate purity here is to be able to push a vacuum

02:01SPEAKERright under your desk and just vacuum.

02:03SPEAKER- I mean, I have a little foot thing under there,

02:06SPEAKERso I can't ever do that.

02:08SPEAKER- As long as you don't eat up any cables with a vacuum,

02:11SPEAKERthen you know you've made it.

02:12SPEAKER- So I bought foot pedals last year for like,

02:18SPEAKERI thought I was gonna use them for leaning in PUBG,

02:20SPEAKERso I could lean without moving my fingers

02:21SPEAKERoff the movement keys.

02:22SPEAKER- I figured you were gonna say you were getting

02:24SPEAKERinto eye raising or something, but I never considered

02:26SPEAKERusing your feet as just generic inputs.

02:28SPEAKER- Yeah, so, but I think I'm gonna use them

02:30SPEAKERfor like push to talk and push to mute.

02:32SPEAKER- That's not the worst idea.

02:33SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like, so I might screw them into my footrest,

02:37SPEAKERmy little, my little tilty footrest thing.

02:39SPEAKER- Wow.

02:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not sure.

02:42SPEAKER- See, the desk student has become the master, I see.

02:45SPEAKER- Well, look, I get a little weird about stuff.

02:48SPEAKERThe problem I have with the foot thing

02:51SPEAKERis that I have hardwood and it slides.

02:55SPEAKERSo like, I feel like both my chair,

02:57SPEAKERI'm always kind of floating, right?

02:59SPEAKERI'm always like, if I lean back too far,

03:01SPEAKERI can slide around, it's not great.

03:04SPEAKER- I bought 202 rubber feet from Amazon

03:09SPEAKERfor like 6.99 or something, so.

03:13SPEAKER- Do you know about the nano bubble sticky material?

03:15SPEAKER- What, what?

03:16SPEAKER- Oh, hello, I'm about to change your life.

03:19SPEAKERI'm typing nano bubble into Google as we speak.

03:23SPEAKER- So I'm holding up the camera,

03:25SPEAKERbut you can get like this stuff

03:26SPEAKERthat looks like double-sided foam

03:28SPEAKERand one side is just normal 3M sticky stuff.

03:30SPEAKER- Okay.

03:31SPEAKER- Oh, wrong camera.

03:32SPEAKERAnd then the other side is this,

03:34SPEAKERit has like micro bubbles on it, nano size bubbles on it.

03:37SPEAKERSo if you're on any kind of smooth surface,

03:39SPEAKERyou can, it'll suction onto it and is on,

03:44SPEAKERI would say surprisingly well.

03:46SPEAKER- I'm scrolling their website

03:48SPEAKERand reading about Brownian motion

03:50SPEAKERand neutral buoyancy right now, so.

03:52SPEAKER- Who is this?

03:53SPEAKER- Does it actually cling?

03:54SPEAKERLike, will it actually defy gravity?

03:56SPEAKER- So I have stuck an iPad mini on the front of a cabinet

03:59SPEAKERas they advertised.

04:00SPEAKER- Wow.

04:01SPEAKER- I don't think it'll go upside down,

04:03SPEAKERbut it'll do vertical, it'll do surfaces.

04:06SPEAKERIt's great for like, I have my mouse wrist rest

04:10SPEAKERand my keyboard wrist rest stuck down with that stuff

04:12SPEAKER'cause then I can peel them up and it resticks.

04:16SPEAKERWhat else did I do?

04:17SPEAKERA lot of the cable drop things are there,

04:19SPEAKERlike my little switch for the hardware USB switcher

04:23SPEAKERis on that.

04:24SPEAKERMy stream deck is stuck down with that stuff.

04:26SPEAKERMy microphone and my headphone amp,

04:28SPEAKERall that stuff is stuck down with that stuff.

04:29SPEAKERI love that stuff, it's really good.

04:31SPEAKER- Joe, the aeration industry expert, Michael Stenstrom

04:33SPEAKERsaid that the company's nano bubble generators

04:37SPEAKERprovide the highest oxygen transfer efficiency

04:39SPEAKERof any aeration technology he has tested so far.

04:41SPEAKER- Oh no, that's different.

04:42SPEAKERThat's not the stuff we're talking about.

04:43SPEAKER- Oh no.

04:44SPEAKER- No, that's a different,

04:45SPEAKERthat's a different business. - Different type

04:46SPEAKERof nano bubbles, okay.

04:48SPEAKER- I think it's nano suction tape

04:50SPEAKERis what you're looking for. - I just clicked,

04:50SPEAKERI clicked the first link that came up

04:52SPEAKERwhen I typed nano bubble in.

04:54SPEAKER- So. - Nano suction?

04:56SPEAKER- Yeah, Sewell, aha.

04:59SPEAKERAirFuse nano microfilm suction.

05:01SPEAKER- Oh man. - Please.

05:02SPEAKERYou get it from Amazon for like a sheet for 15 bucks.

05:04SPEAKER- Slightly less exotic as material science goes.

05:07SPEAKER- I'm sorry.

05:08SPEAKERIt's still nano though, that's good, right?

05:10SPEAKER- That's, yeah, smaller the better.

05:12SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:16SPEAKER(upbeat music)

05:42SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod.

05:44SPEAKERI'm Will. - I'm Brad, Will.

05:45SPEAKERI don't know that we have ever struggled so much

05:47SPEAKERto come up with a topic as we did this week.

05:49SPEAKER- This has been a challenging week on a lot of fronts.

05:52SPEAKERNone related to the TechPod as always.

05:56SPEAKERTechPod and TechPod related interactions

05:58SPEAKERhave been a source of brightness and joy

06:01SPEAKERin an otherwise grim time.

06:02SPEAKER- This podcast exists within a bubble of positivity.

06:05SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, well, it's funny.

06:07SPEAKERI was, a friend of mine on Twitter this morning was like,

06:09SPEAKERI think people are probably willing to pay

06:12SPEAKERfor mediated social networks

06:13SPEAKERthat don't have all of the horrible things

06:15SPEAKERthat are on the big social networks.

06:17SPEAKERAnd I was like, yeah, I have actual, you know,

06:19SPEAKERlike proof of that.

06:20SPEAKERPeople are paying to hang out in our discord

06:23SPEAKERwith other like-minded individuals, that's right now.

06:26SPEAKER- That's right.

06:28SPEAKER- And share things about their hobbies and business.

06:30SPEAKER- I've seen it, I've seen a similar effect on certain forums

06:32SPEAKERthat charge for posting access,

06:35SPEAKERkind of self-selecting for better conversation.

06:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it turns out. - And so forth,

06:40SPEAKERstuff like that now.

06:41SPEAKER- Who knew? - Yes.

06:43SPEAKER- This week, we thought after a great deal of conversation,

06:47SPEAKERsome feedback from the folks in the discord,

06:50SPEAKERwe thought a retrospective, a nostalgia trip

06:55SPEAKERmight be in order and welcome.

06:57SPEAKER- Just happened to click on a website earlier

07:00SPEAKERthat I realized has been around

07:02SPEAKERfor well over two decades at this point.

07:04SPEAKER- Yeah. - That I've been going to

07:05SPEAKERfor pretty much that entire time.

07:07SPEAKERAnd I was just like, you know what,

07:09SPEAKERthis internet thing is kind of getting

07:10SPEAKERa little long in the tooth.

07:12SPEAKER- My first job writing was for Ars Technica,

07:17SPEAKERwhich now has been around for 21 or 22 years,

07:21SPEAKERdepending on what the...

07:22SPEAKERIt's like they started in the summer of '98.

07:25SPEAKER- Man, I was expecting this podcast to be all warm and fuzzy

07:29SPEAKERand full of nostalgia, but if it's just gonna remind us

07:31SPEAKERof our mortality, it's just maybe not working as intended.

07:34SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say, the thing that was funny

07:35SPEAKERis it was I think our tagline was

07:40SPEAKERsomething about recovering technology

07:42SPEAKERfor two times 10 to the negative two years

07:44SPEAKERor something like that, but we messed up the exponential

07:46SPEAKERfor a really long time and nobody noticed.

07:48SPEAKER- Nobody did?

07:49SPEAKER- No, nobody did. - That seems like something

07:50SPEAKERthat somebody would check the math on instantly.

07:53SPEAKER- Well, it was harder to give direct feedback back then.

07:56SPEAKERYou had to open an email client or something.

07:58SPEAKER- That's fair, that's fair.

08:00SPEAKERYeah, I don't know, as we were trying to think of topics,

08:02SPEAKERI just, at some point it was just like, you know,

08:04SPEAKERreminiscing about the good old days

08:06SPEAKERis a good, fun, warm, fuzzy thing

08:08SPEAKERthat everybody can feel good about

08:10SPEAKERat a time when nothing else feels very good.

08:13SPEAKERSo let's just deliver 45 minutes of escapism here.

08:17SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what we're here for,

08:18SPEAKERand I mean, it feels good for us too,

08:21SPEAKERso that works for everybody,

08:22SPEAKERbut we've kind of hinted on this a little bit,

08:25SPEAKERbut I thought first time on the internet was a good idea,

08:30SPEAKERlike what it was like on the internet when we started,

08:32SPEAKER'cause it's a dramatically different time,

08:34SPEAKERand you and I are just different enough in age

08:37SPEAKERthat my guess is that your first time on the internet

08:41SPEAKERand my first time on the internet were pretty different.

08:43SPEAKER- Yes, I would say it's based on your talk

08:46SPEAKERabout owning a Wang and stuff like that.

08:49SPEAKERYou definitely have a few years on me.

08:51SPEAKER- If you wanna talk about the Wang, that's a different show.

08:54SPEAKERThat's for patrons only.

08:55SPEAKER- That's fair.

08:57SPEAKERYeah, I know we've hinted around this stuff a little bit,

08:59SPEAKERlike when we talked about building PCs back in the day

09:01SPEAKERand when we ranked the Windowses and some stuff like that.

09:04SPEAKERI know that kind of early internet access

09:07SPEAKERhas come up a little bit here and there.

09:09SPEAKERLike I, for whatever reason, the words Trump at Winsock

09:13SPEAKERwant to tumble out of my mouth as a way to kick this off.

09:15SPEAKER- Oh, see, I was waiting before that, yeah.

09:18SPEAKER- That's probably even late for you.

09:20SPEAKER- So I got internet access when I went to college

09:23SPEAKERin the fall of '93, which makes me part of the dark,

09:27SPEAKERlike I was part of the people that destroyed the internet

09:29SPEAKERthe very first time, is my understanding.

09:31SPEAKER- The eternal September?

09:32SPEAKER- Eternal September, yeah.

09:33SPEAKER- You were one of them?

09:35SPEAKER- I was one of those kids.

09:36SPEAKER- Wow, man, we should, I don't know how hard this would be,

09:39SPEAKERwe should find somebody who was on the other side of that,

09:42SPEAKERone of the old school grognards.

09:44SPEAKER- Oh, I know people who can do that,

09:46SPEAKERwho can have that conversation, yeah.

09:47SPEAKER- How old, what's the age range we're talking here?

09:49SPEAKER- Like three years older than me would have been.

09:51SPEAKER- Oh really? - Yeah.

09:52SPEAKER- I was envisioning somebody who was like

09:53SPEAKERa gray bearded sis op even then.

09:56SPEAKER- I'm sure.

09:58SPEAKER- Somebody who was like developing,

09:59SPEAKERco-developing Unix in the '70s or something.

10:02SPEAKER- Well, so it's funny, the people that I know now

10:06SPEAKERthat were on the other side of that,

10:08SPEAKERwere basically, you know, it's the normal early internet

10:12SPEAKERexclusioning bullshit where like, you know,

10:15SPEAKERyou are, I am six months cooler than you,

10:20SPEAKERso you can get fucked, sir.

10:21SPEAKER- I was here before you, I know about all the cool stuff

10:24SPEAKERthat you'll never understand.

10:25SPEAKER- Yes, exactly, I was here when it was good,

10:27SPEAKERnot when your alt.binaries.Barney.die.die.die

10:33SPEAKERwas the hot news group nerd.

10:36SPEAKER- Does that still exist?

10:37SPEAKER- I hope so.

10:38SPEAKER- I'm sure we will talk about Usenet,

10:40SPEAKERbut thank you to Google, somewhat sincerely,

10:44SPEAKERsomewhat ironically for archiving the whole of Usenet.

10:47SPEAKER- Yeah, right, I mean, so, okay, so I got a VAX login

10:53SPEAKER'cause I wasn't a CS student, if you wanted a Unix login

10:55SPEAKERwhen I started at Vanderbilt my freshman year,

10:57SPEAKERyou had to be a CS student, so I got a VAX login,

11:00SPEAKERand I was excited 'cause I could send, theoretically,

11:03SPEAKERthese electronic mails to my high school friends

11:05SPEAKERwho were at other schools.

11:06SPEAKER- Okay, this is how I know we've talked about this before,

11:08SPEAKER'cause VAX is V-A-C-S, right?

11:10SPEAKERNot V-A-X? - No, VAX.

11:11SPEAKER- Oh, okay. - It's a DEC thing.

11:13SPEAKER- Okay. - I think.

11:14SPEAKERIt's like a mainframe-y type timeshare,

11:17SPEAKERtimeslice computer. - Got it.

11:18SPEAKER- It's all terminal access. - Okay.

11:21SPEAKER- So you got a VAX login, my Wang 386SX25,

11:25SPEAKERno math coprocessor, didn't,

11:28SPEAKERhad a modem, had a 14.4 modem,

11:30SPEAKERso I used that to dial into the terminal,

11:34SPEAKERand this was before the web, so there was, at this time,

11:37SPEAKERI mean, I guess it wasn't technically before the web.

11:39SPEAKER- I guess the web was being created around that time, right?

11:42SPEAKER- Yeah, like links was new, maybe.

11:46SPEAKERI didn't use links for a really long time from this point,

11:49SPEAKERso the first two years of my internet access

11:53SPEAKERwere all shell-based. - Okay.

11:54SPEAKER- It wasn't until 1995 that I got a slip or PPP login.

11:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's what I was gonna ask,

11:59SPEAKERwhat kind of connection that was.

12:02SPEAKERI mean, it was just a, literally just a serial console,

12:04SPEAKERand that was it? - Just a serial console

12:06SPEAKERover a modem. - Okay, okay.

12:07SPEAKER- And like, you'd get this login, and then you had,

12:11SPEAKERthere was no documentation or anything,

12:13SPEAKERand we didn't have the internet to,

12:14SPEAKERyou couldn't Google the documentation,

12:16SPEAKERso basically, I would open up the console and type help,

12:19SPEAKERand it was like figuring out the best adventure game,

12:21SPEAKERtext adventure game in the world.

12:23SPEAKER- Sure, so I was gonna ask

12:24SPEAKERif there was any kind of menu-driven interface,

12:26SPEAKERso they just dumped you at a prompt?

12:27SPEAKER- Dumped you at a prompt, and you would say help,

12:30SPEAKERor eventually you learned the, I think DIR worked,

12:34SPEAKERso you could see the list of commands

12:35SPEAKERthat were accessible to you in your home directory

12:36SPEAKERand stuff like that, but there were some exchange students

12:42SPEAKERfrom, I think, the Philippines who lived in the lounge.

12:46SPEAKERYou know, even private schools are underfunded,

12:49SPEAKERit turns out, in the US,

12:50SPEAKERso the exchange students had to live

12:53SPEAKERin what was previously the student lounge

12:55SPEAKERon the end of the floor,

12:57SPEAKERand they taught me how to use IRC,

13:00SPEAKER'cause they were using IRC to talk to family at home,

13:02SPEAKER'cause it was cheap.

13:03SPEAKER- Sure.

13:04SPEAKER- We would do Usenet, I knew how to use Usenet early on,

13:08SPEAKERbut Archie and Gopher, ironically,

13:11SPEAKERwere the things that kind of exposed

13:15SPEAKERthe power of the internet to you, to me early.

13:18SPEAKER- That's interesting, because we got our first

13:20SPEAKERkind of permanent, I mean, it was a dial-up connection,

13:22SPEAKERbut first full-on commercial internet access

13:25SPEAKERat my house in '96, and even by then,

13:27SPEAKERI think Archie and Gopher were,

13:29SPEAKERI'm not sure they were still in use,

13:30SPEAKERbut I never came into contact with them.

13:32SPEAKERThey were already kind of in decline at that point, I think.

13:34SPEAKER- So they were almost like,

13:36SPEAKERit was almost like somebody had said,

13:37SPEAKER"Hey, let's take these BBSs and apply them,

13:40SPEAKER"make it easier to connect between them."

13:43SPEAKER- Is that what those are?

13:44SPEAKER- It's basically a menu-driven interface.

13:46SPEAKER- Okay, okay, sure.

13:47SPEAKER- So you would type Archie and then an IP address,

13:50SPEAKERor a domain name, and that would point you,

13:53SPEAKERand it was usually something really esoteric,

13:55SPEAKERlike an actual machine name, not just a straight URL.

14:01SPEAKERSo it would be like vax0506.cincinnati.edu,

14:06SPEAKERor whatever your thing was, and it was often tied in

14:10SPEAKERto mini card catalogs for the library

14:13SPEAKERfor all of the documents that they had online.

14:15SPEAKERSo you could kind of drill down by topic.

14:17SPEAKERThere were searches sometimes.

14:19SPEAKERIt was a weird interface for finding information on the web.

14:26SPEAKER- All still console-based?

14:28SPEAKER- It's all still console-based, yeah.

14:29SPEAKER- Was there any real meaningful difference

14:31SPEAKERbetween the two protocols or standards?

14:34SPEAKER- Well, the thing was,

14:35SPEAKERthey weren't cross-compatible at that point.

14:38SPEAKERSo in order to, you had to find out,

14:40SPEAKERbasically, I bought a book at the bookstore

14:43SPEAKERof Archie, there was a list of Archie and Gopher servers.

14:46SPEAKER- I'm sure that was timely.

14:48SPEAKER- Because, well, I actually kind of was,

14:50SPEAKERbecause it's not like anybody was doing a ton with them.

14:52SPEAKERIt was kind of hard to add information to them.

14:55SPEAKERSo they weren't changing.

14:58SPEAKERIt was like the card catalog at your library

14:59SPEAKERwas changing when somebody would get a new book, but not-

15:01SPEAKER- I guess the internet was not quite as active as it is.

15:05SPEAKER- Yeah, that's an understatement.

15:07SPEAKERSo I don't know that I ever found anything useful

15:09SPEAKERon either of those, right?

15:12SPEAKERMost of my early internet access at that point

15:16SPEAKERwas like going into pound quake or pound doom on Fnet

15:21SPEAKERand like hoping that Romero would come hang out

15:24SPEAKERin IRC one after you're gone.

15:26SPEAKER- You pronounced the pound as pound?

15:28SPEAKER- Back then you did.

15:29SPEAKER- I always pronounced it as channel.

15:32SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

15:33SPEAKERNo, pound.

15:34SPEAKER- Man.

15:36SPEAKERNonsense.

15:37SPEAKER- Like, I ended up making friends with the Linux admin.

15:41SPEAKERSo I transferred to UT after my first year,

15:42SPEAKER'cause I didn't want to pay for Vanderbilt.

15:44SPEAKERI didn't want to graduate with $100,000 in debt.

15:48SPEAKERAnd also I almost funked out

15:49SPEAKER'cause I was playing a lot of doom.

15:50SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:51SPEAKER- Full disclosure.

15:52SPEAKER- Yes.

15:53SPEAKERI get it.

15:54SPEAKER- But-

15:55SPEAKER- I get it.

15:56SPEAKER- Yeah.

15:57SPEAKER- I can identify.

15:59SPEAKER- But so we got, so I was using IRC a fair amount.

16:04SPEAKERI was using Usenet a fair amount.

16:06SPEAKERIn order to download stuff from Usenet back then,

16:08SPEAKERyou would have to Kermit.

16:10SPEAKERYou'd have to use Kermit or XCopy or one of those things

16:12SPEAKERto transfer the binary, switch the modem from ASCII

16:17SPEAKERto binary mode and, or switch the terminal

16:19SPEAKERfrom ASCII to binary mode and suck down the binary file.

16:24SPEAKERIt wasn't anything.

16:24SPEAKERI mean, there was, I'm sure if you had faster connections,

16:26SPEAKERthere was a lot of useful shit on Usenet at that point,

16:28SPEAKERbut mostly it was just like pictures and it was,

16:32SPEAKERthis was prior to MP3s or anything like that.

16:34SPEAKERSo you were downloading MIDI files probably.

16:36SPEAKER- I'm over here Googling Kermit and Archie

16:40SPEAKERand all this stuff as you talk about it

16:41SPEAKERand just resisting going off on 18 different tangents.

16:44SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a weird.

16:45SPEAKER- Like I never knew Kermit was a file transfer protocol.

16:48SPEAKERThat's like, the thing is I've always heard all these names.

16:51SPEAKERYou know, I've always heard about Gopher and Kermit

16:52SPEAKERand all that stuff, but I never knew exactly what it was.

16:55SPEAKER- It was a weird, and also those file transfer protocols

17:00SPEAKERand the noise, the modems were noisy enough

17:02SPEAKERand not very good at error correction at that point.

17:05SPEAKERSo like if there was a blip on your phone line

17:08SPEAKERwhen you were in the middle of downloading

17:09SPEAKERan image file or something.

17:11SPEAKER- There would just be a nice correction in there.

17:13SPEAKER- Yeah, pink line right across the middle of the image.

17:16SPEAKER- Sure, sure.

17:17SPEAKERThis reminds me that there was a search engine

17:19SPEAKERfor Archie called Veronica.

17:21SPEAKER- Yep, yep.

17:22SPEAKER- That's ridiculous.

17:23SPEAKER- That was maybe the advantage of Archie over Gopher

17:25SPEAKERwhen I think about it.

17:26SPEAKER- That's ridiculous.

17:30SPEAKERThe background name for Veronica is very easy,

17:32SPEAKERrodent oriented, net wide index to computer archives.

17:36SPEAKER- 'Cause Archie, I think was a superset of Gopher, right?

17:39SPEAKER- That's kind of what I'm picking up from this

17:41SPEAKERas I quickly scan these Wikipedia pages, yeah.

17:44SPEAKER- Early open source drama

17:45SPEAKERwhere somebody forked the project.

17:47SPEAKERThere's an RFC for Gopher,

17:49SPEAKERand apparently there's still Archie and Gopher sites up.

17:51SPEAKER- I wanna go check that stuff out.

17:54SPEAKERI have to go check that stuff out, I'm fascinated.

17:55SPEAKERI assume there must be like web-based clients

17:57SPEAKERfor that stuff at this point.

17:58SPEAKER- Yeah, so when you log into it with a web-based client,

18:00SPEAKERyou'll see--

18:01SPEAKER- Why would I, fuck, I've literally logged into

18:04SPEAKERa bash prompt or a seashell prompt,

18:07SPEAKERbut as we speak, why would I use a web-based thing

18:09SPEAKERwhen I can actually--

18:11SPEAKER- Huh, I'm curious if you'll even have a,

18:14SPEAKERif you'll even have a Archie client accessible.

18:17SPEAKER- I bet there's something kicking around.

18:19SPEAKER- Yeah, well anyway, so--

18:21SPEAKER- Let me go to freshports.org and type Archie in,

18:24SPEAKERsee what I can find.

18:25SPEAKERNothing?

18:26SPEAKEROkay.

18:27SPEAKER- Yeah, there you go.

18:28SPEAKER- Let's see.

18:29SPEAKER- Get fucked, Archie.

18:30SPEAKER- Man, there is a Gopher client.

18:33SPEAKER- Okay, the Gopher client probably talks to Archie too

18:35SPEAKERif I had to guess.

18:36SPEAKER- Okay, okay.

18:37SPEAKERI might have to fiddle around with this a little bit later.

18:40SPEAKER- If somebody wants to set up an official tech pod

18:42SPEAKERArchie client where we have one level per episode,

18:45SPEAKERthat would be amazing.

18:46SPEAKERI know, I'm just saying that 'cause I don't wanna do it.

18:51SPEAKER- Real quick, I was just gonna ask before we move on,

18:53SPEAKERdid those services ever use any kind of like ANSI graphics?

18:56SPEAKERLike, I mean, how BBS-ish were they?

18:59SPEAKER- So I don't remember.

19:01SPEAKERI mean, maybe there were some ASCII graphics

19:03SPEAKERon Archie and Gopher logins.

19:05SPEAKERThere was a lot of that stuff if you would like Telnet into,

19:09SPEAKERlike, I feel like that stuff came on more with MUDs.

19:11SPEAKER- Okay.

19:12SPEAKER- So MUDs were a little bit later.

19:15SPEAKER- Maybe multi-user dungeons.

19:16SPEAKER- Multi-user or MUSE, multi-MUD object oriented.

19:22SPEAKERSo basically, like a MUD is basically, I guess,

19:24SPEAKERspecialized IRC server that has scripting and stuff

19:28SPEAKERso that players can extend it in a lot of cases.

19:32SPEAKERAnd you'd end up with these like, you know, kind of,

19:36SPEAKERactually they begat things like the people

19:39SPEAKERthat made Ultima Online started as MUD designers.

19:43SPEAKERThe EA or Origin hired them.

19:46SPEAKER- That checks out.

19:47SPEAKER- Straight from MUD designs.

19:49SPEAKERAnd then they just strapped a UI on top of it.

19:51SPEAKER- Ultima Online is just an attempt to make a graphical MUD.

19:55SPEAKER- Yeah, in a lot of ways, yeah.

19:56SPEAKEREverQuest as well.

19:58SPEAKER- Sure.

19:59SPEAKER- And more so, after EverQuest is becoming their own thing,

20:03SPEAKERbut it was very much like at text,

20:05SPEAKERthere were combat ones, there were Star Wars ones,

20:07SPEAKERthere were social ones.

20:08SPEAKERLike there was this thing called Lambda Mu

20:10SPEAKERthat was just a huge, yeah, it was a huge user generated.

20:17SPEAKERIt was maybe the first piece of user generated content

20:19SPEAKERI ever saw, actually, when I think about it.

20:21SPEAKERBecause like the makers wrote the initial lobby

20:24SPEAKERand made some special areas at the beginning,

20:25SPEAKERbut then you could just basically put an object in any room

20:29SPEAKERif you get the owner of the room to put an object in it,

20:31SPEAKERthat object could link you out

20:33SPEAKERto anywhere else in the world.

20:34SPEAKERAnd it became this massive just snarl of,

20:38SPEAKERlike there were different areas.

20:40SPEAKERThere was like, it's kind of,

20:42SPEAKERit's what I'm sure Ernie Klein was thinking about

20:45SPEAKERwhen he wrote the descriptions of the metaverse,

20:47SPEAKERthe Oasis in Ready Player One.

20:49SPEAKER- Sure.

20:51SPEAKER- 'Cause problems with that book aside,

20:52SPEAKERthe description of the metaverse that he came up with

20:55SPEAKERand that Neal Stephenson came up with in Snow Crash,

20:57SPEAKERI think are probably the two key points for me.

21:01SPEAKER- Sure.

21:02SPEAKERSo, all right, don't let me derail this conversation

21:04SPEAKERtoo much, but I mean, I could come up with endless questions

21:06SPEAKERabout all this stuff.

21:08SPEAKERSo you were connecting on that Wang remotely,

21:10SPEAKERlike from your dorm or wherever you were living,

21:12SPEAKERlike you weren't having to go into a computer lab

21:14SPEAKERto get to this stuff at this point, right?

21:16SPEAKER- So if you, at that point, if you went into the computer lab

21:18SPEAKERthey were connected, but most of the lab machines

21:21SPEAKERdidn't have the stuff.

21:22SPEAKERLike, I don't know that there was a terminal

21:24SPEAKERon the lab machines 'cause they were mostly connected

21:26SPEAKERto the internet for printing.

21:27SPEAKER- So were you running Windows on that 386 then?

21:30SPEAKER- Yeah, I was running Windows.

21:31SPEAKER- Okay, so like what was the terminal client situation

21:33SPEAKERlike in Windows at that point?

21:36SPEAKERLike was it built into the dialer you were using?

21:38SPEAKERLike I'm thinking back even on like when I got onto BBS's

21:41SPEAKERin like probably '94 is when that started.

21:45SPEAKERAnd I don't remember, I remember next to nothing about like,

21:49SPEAKERmaybe the modem came with some kind of dialer software

21:51SPEAKERthat had a terminal built into it, I guess.

21:54SPEAKERI really don't remember what that software situation

21:56SPEAKERwas like.

21:57SPEAKER- I think that the IT department gave me a floppy disk

22:00SPEAKERwith the dialer pre-configured to dial the school's

22:04SPEAKERmodem lines and had a terminal client.

22:08SPEAKERAnd I feel like I probably downloaded a better terminal

22:10SPEAKERclient at some point in the process of like noodling

22:14SPEAKERwith all this stuff.

22:15SPEAKER- Okay.

22:16SPEAKER- Like it's a really, like thinking back on it,

22:19SPEAKERit's really weird because like there wasn't a lot to do.

22:22SPEAKER- Right.

22:23SPEAKER- But it was also this big, it was almost like an,

22:25SPEAKERlike it was a huge puzzle to figure out how all this stuff

22:28SPEAKERworked and there weren't a lot of books at that time.

22:31SPEAKERI think the internet for dummies didn't come out until '94.

22:34SPEAKERAnd that was kind of ironically a big,

22:38SPEAKERhey, here's how to use Gopher, here's how to use Archie,

22:40SPEAKERhere's how to use IRC and like Usenet

22:43SPEAKERand here's all the different things you can do.

22:44SPEAKERAnd oh, by the way, you might want to check out

22:46SPEAKERthis little thing called Lynx.

22:47SPEAKERMaybe it's going to be a big deal one day.

22:49SPEAKER- Right.

22:50SPEAKER- Like before PPP and SLIP were really used,

22:53SPEAKERat least in my experience.

22:55SPEAKER- Yeah, so I think we talked about it,

22:56SPEAKERlike maybe when we did the origin story stuff,

22:59SPEAKERwhich has been almost a long time ago at this point.

23:01SPEAKERBut like, yeah, when we got that first 14.4 modem,

23:03SPEAKERit was at least a day, maybe two days

23:06SPEAKERbefore I actually successfully dialed and connected anything.

23:08SPEAKER'Cause it was like on top of troubleshooting IRQ conflicts

23:11SPEAKERor whatever, just to install the card once you got in there,

23:13SPEAKERthen you had to like write the init string

23:15SPEAKERto actually properly make it dial something.

23:17SPEAKERAnd it was just, yeah.

23:18SPEAKER- Yeah, so my guess is that the difference

23:20SPEAKERbetween your first time on the internet

23:22SPEAKERand my first time on the internet

23:23SPEAKERis when I first got on the internet,

23:24SPEAKERit was probably maybe the second time I had heard about it.

23:28SPEAKERAnd the previous time was like in a Newsweek article

23:30SPEAKERabout this thing that might be interesting in 10 years.

23:32SPEAKER- So you, because you were at a university,

23:34SPEAKERyou had like a gateway into it.

23:36SPEAKERThere were people there sort of facilitating it for you.

23:38SPEAKERAlso, I should clarify that when I was on those BBSs,

23:40SPEAKERthey have no semblance of access to the internet whatsoever.

23:43SPEAKERThose were just tiny little rural town,

23:45SPEAKERself-contained bulletin boards.

23:47SPEAKER- Yeah, pirate havens was what ours,

23:51SPEAKERpirate porn were what ours were.

23:53SPEAKER- I don't remember a lot of piracy on those.

23:55SPEAKERThere was a decent amount of shareware.

23:58SPEAKER- Okay.

23:59SPEAKER- I don't remember any like full games being traded.

24:00SPEAKERI mean, granted you were on like,

24:01SPEAKERyou know, you were on a 14.4 connection.

24:03SPEAKERLike you were not really gonna be downloading

24:05SPEAKERunless you were gonna leave something connected overnight.

24:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I feel like it would take what,

24:09SPEAKERlike an hour per floppy disk, basically,

24:11SPEAKERto copy something on a 14.4.

24:12SPEAKER- I'm trying to think, God.

24:15SPEAKERLike I used to have a lot of stuff memorized.

24:16SPEAKERLike how long does it take to download a megabyte

24:18SPEAKERover a 14.4 connection?

24:19SPEAKERHow long, what's the transfer speed

24:21SPEAKERto a three and a half floppy versus a five and a quarter?

24:23SPEAKERAnd that stuff's all gone.

24:24SPEAKER- It's funny, now if something, I had to download it up.

24:26SPEAKERI was playing Luigi's Mansion last night.

24:28SPEAKERI hadn't touched it in six months.

24:29SPEAKERAnd it took five minutes to download the patch

24:32SPEAKERfrom Nintendo because Nintendo's,

24:34SPEAKERfor whatever reason, their shit is always really slow.

24:36SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:37SPEAKER- And I was like, this is, this is, this is an interminable.

24:39SPEAKERHow do people handle this?

24:41SPEAKERWhy would anybody do this?

24:42SPEAKER- On a, God, what was it?

24:43SPEAKEROn a 14.4, well, I mean, we could do the math,

24:46SPEAKERbut like, isn't it like roughly

24:47SPEAKERlike one and a half kilobytes a second with,

24:50SPEAKERif you've got kind of full throughput?

24:51SPEAKER- Kilobits per second, right?

24:52SPEAKER- No, no, no.

24:53SPEAKERWell, 1.5 kilobytes.

24:54SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, 14.4 divided by eight.

24:55SPEAKER- Roughly, roughly. - So that's, yeah.

24:57SPEAKER- It's something like that.

24:58SPEAKER- Yeah.

24:59SPEAKER- Anyway, yeah, so it was a very,

25:00SPEAKERlike 10 minutes per megabyte or something like that.

25:02SPEAKERIt was incredibly slow.

25:05SPEAKERI guess we should jump forward.

25:07SPEAKERSo we got, we got our first, like I said,

25:09SPEAKERour first internet connection in '96,

25:11SPEAKERwhich was a PPP dial-up connection.

25:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

25:14SPEAKER- Well, a lot of--

25:15SPEAKER- Do you know if that's a call or something?

25:16SPEAKER- Yes, yes, we did.

25:17SPEAKERWe did have, there was a period of, God, that's right.

25:20SPEAKERI completely forgot about that.

25:21SPEAKERYeah, it was kind of BBSs in like '94-ish.

25:24SPEAKERAnd then there was probably a year or something

25:26SPEAKERof me daisy-chaining AOL free month,

25:31SPEAKERmagazine-included CD account deals back to back.

25:35SPEAKERI don't know if we--

25:36SPEAKER- Did they not require a credit card for that?

25:36SPEAKER- I don't remember how I did that.

25:38SPEAKERI do remember like popping multiple AOL trials off and on.

25:43SPEAKERI remember that there was a period of time

25:46SPEAKERbefore credit card processing,

25:47SPEAKERpeople were okay with the internet.

25:49SPEAKERAnd like, this is post '95 probably.

25:52SPEAKERWhen, like if you're, if you're,

25:55SPEAKERif you knew how to generate a credit,

25:57SPEAKERa fake credit card number that passed the hash

25:59SPEAKERof the last four digits, you could basically,

26:02SPEAKERyou could basically sign up for free services

26:05SPEAKERwith relative impunity.

26:06SPEAKER- That sounds pretty dangerous these days.

26:10SPEAKER- It wasn't a good idea, but yeah.

26:14SPEAKER- It was a different time.

26:14SPEAKER- Yes, it definitely was.

26:15SPEAKERThere was every possibility that I kept convincing

26:17SPEAKERmy parents to let me use different,

26:20SPEAKERof the different ones of their credit card numbers

26:22SPEAKERto use for different free trials.

26:23SPEAKERI don't remember.

26:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

26:25SPEAKER- Anyway, yeah, yeah.

26:26SPEAKERI was on AOL for some number of months

26:28SPEAKERor something like that.

26:29SPEAKERAnd then I found out about just the open internet

26:32SPEAKERand the ISP in the next town over,

26:34SPEAKERwhich had had local numbers that we could connect to,

26:37SPEAKERhad pretty good service.

26:38SPEAKERSo we got onto that, but did you get online

26:42SPEAKERon the actual internet from Windows 3.1 at all?

26:45SPEAKER'Cause it was Windows 95 was out

26:46SPEAKERand like it had its own TCP/IP stack and all that stuff.

26:50SPEAKER- So I will-

26:51SPEAKER- But did you ever, did you ever,

26:52SPEAKERdid you ever exist in that liminal space

26:54SPEAKERwhere you could get on the internet from Windows 3.1,

26:56SPEAKERbut you had to kind of make it all work yourself?

26:58SPEAKER- So I did that in labs at school for sure.

27:02SPEAKERAnd, but at that point I was taking CS classes.

27:04SPEAKERSo I was mostly doing internet from Sun machines

27:07SPEAKERrunning X windows and we had Mosaic on those.

27:09SPEAKERSo you can play, that was my first taste

27:11SPEAKERof like graphical internet,

27:13SPEAKERwhich wasn't that graphical at the time.

27:15SPEAKERThe, my windows, so I ordered a cup,

27:19SPEAKERa copy of Trumpet/Windsock 'cause they enabled slip

27:23SPEAKERand PPP on our school ISP at the,

27:28SPEAKERbasically like the end in May, right when the term ended.

27:34SPEAKERAnd then by the time August rolled around,

27:38SPEAKERwe came back, Windows 95 was out.

27:39SPEAKERSo I ordered the Trumpet/Windsock,

27:42SPEAKERused it for like a month.

27:44SPEAKERI ordered it at the same time we had pre-ordered Windows 95

27:47SPEAKERand then Windows 95 came and all that.

27:48SPEAKERI paid a hundred dollars for something completely useless.

27:50SPEAKER- Oh, wow, I was gonna ask how much it was.

27:52SPEAKERI was gonna say, I bet it wasn't cheap

27:53SPEAKERbecause it was the kind of thing

27:54SPEAKERthat you couldn't really get anywhere else.

27:56SPEAKER- It was a total rip off 'cause it was like,

27:58SPEAKERit was all free software bundled up in,

28:01SPEAKER'cause it was like Netscape, Trumpet/Windsock,

28:03SPEAKERa Usenet client, a mail client.

28:05SPEAKER- Wait, were you not buying it

28:06SPEAKERfrom the developer of Trumpet/Windsock?

28:08SPEAKER- No, because you had to get a CD

28:09SPEAKERand the developer of Trumpet/Windsock was just a dude.

28:12SPEAKER- Oh, wait, was this one of those sleazy, mid-90s,

28:16SPEAKERbottom feeders that just packaged up

28:17SPEAKERother people's free software and sold it to you?

28:20SPEAKER- Remember all those books you bought at Costco?

28:22SPEAKER- Yeah, was that in fact legal?

28:25SPEAKERI don't know, I guess software licenses

28:26SPEAKERwere not as buttoned up back then as they are now.

28:29SPEAKER- I think as long as they, I can't imagine it was illegal.

28:32SPEAKER- Actually, they would have gotten stopped.

28:34SPEAKERI mean, this is going off on another tangent,

28:36SPEAKERbut I'm trying to remember what happened with,

28:37SPEAKERremember the third-party collections of Doomwads

28:39SPEAKERthat you could buy at Walmart?

28:41SPEAKER- Oh yeah.

28:42SPEAKER- What happened with that?

28:42SPEAKERWasn't there some legal action at some point?

28:45SPEAKER- Well, Q was the one who published a bunch of those

28:48SPEAKERand they were an imprint of somebody big,

28:50SPEAKERlike Wiley or something,

28:51SPEAKERso they would have not messed that up, I would think.

28:53SPEAKER- Okay.

28:55SPEAKER- Those Doomwad books were,

28:57SPEAKERI have a Doomwad CD with the aliens.

29:01SPEAKER- Right, even in that case, they were just going online

29:03SPEAKERand downloading a bunch of other people's free work

29:05SPEAKERand selling it to you on a disk, man.

29:07SPEAKER- Man, it's data, man.

29:08SPEAKERIt's information wants to be free, Brad.

29:10SPEAKER- That's right, man.

29:11SPEAKER- What are you gonna bring the man into this?

29:12SPEAKER- Kid copyright zeros and ones.

29:14SPEAKER- Turns out, actually.

29:15SPEAKER- Yeah, so, okay, so I missed that whole weird

29:18SPEAKERWindows 3.1 phase of internet access.

29:21SPEAKER- It was not great.

29:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm sure it was not.

29:24SPEAKER- It was like, I mostly just ran everything in Terminal

29:33SPEAKER'cause it was so janky.

29:36SPEAKERAlso, at that point, I guess until Netscape came out

29:41SPEAKERand we started getting tables and progressive image loads,

29:44SPEAKERit took so long to load any pictures.

29:48SPEAKERYou were better off just looking at the text page and links.

29:51SPEAKER- Sure.

29:51SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that's it.

29:54SPEAKEROkay, so you got on AOL.

29:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't remember much about it, honestly.

29:59SPEAKER- You were probably pretty stoked for the internet, though.

30:01SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, it was blue by,

30:03SPEAKERI mean, even BBS has blew my mind.

30:04SPEAKERLike, just the idea of typing into a computer

30:07SPEAKERand somebody else being able to see it somewhere else

30:09SPEAKERin your town was like fucking mind-blowing to me.

30:12SPEAKER- Yeah, there were definitely moments

30:14SPEAKERwhen people would come in.

30:15SPEAKERSo we had everybody, almost every room on our floor

30:18SPEAKERhad a computer.

30:19SPEAKERLike, one of the people that lived in the room

30:21SPEAKERhad a computer.

30:22SPEAKERSo there was a pretty hefty trade in software

30:28SPEAKERwalking up and down the halls when I was a freshman.

30:30SPEAKER- Oh, sure.

30:32SPEAKER- And as a result, like most people were playing games

30:35SPEAKERor like writing papers.

30:37SPEAKEREvery once in a while, people would come in

30:38SPEAKERand just see text scrolling on the screen of my computer

30:40SPEAKERand they'd be like, "What is that?"

30:41SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Oh, it's some IRC channel, I don't know.

30:43SPEAKERThey're talking about how much Wil Wheaton sucks

30:46SPEAKERor something."

30:49SPEAKER- Common topic back then.

30:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, these were the important things back then.

30:53SPEAKERBut yeah, there was always a moment of like,

30:57SPEAKER"Well, how are you seeing what they're saying

30:58SPEAKERon their computers?"

31:00SPEAKER'Cause nobody really got networks at that time.

31:03SPEAKER- Right. - Like it was a weird concept.

31:04SPEAKER- Totally.

31:05SPEAKERLike "Legend of the Red Dragon" on a BBS

31:07SPEAKERwas probably my first exposure

31:09SPEAKERto some kind of online multiplayer game.

31:11SPEAKER- I don't even know what that is.

31:12SPEAKERWhat is that? - Oh, my God.

31:13SPEAKERShould Google, let me see if,

31:14SPEAKERsurely there is a way to play "Legend of the Red Dragon"

31:18SPEAKERor "Lord" as we usually refer to it at the time.

31:23SPEAKERApparently there is a Jet Li film of the same name.

31:25SPEAKERSo finding the BBS door game may be a little bit tough.

31:32SPEAKERIt was just a menu-driven,

31:33SPEAKERlike text-based kind of medieval sword and sorcery RPG.

31:38SPEAKER- Oh, that's awesome.

31:38SPEAKER- And I don't remember much at all.

31:40SPEAKERLet's see, here we go.

31:42SPEAKERLooks like you can play it on the web.

31:45SPEAKERIt was very text-based.

31:46SPEAKERIt was very just like you were standing in a wood.

31:49SPEAKERThere is an imp here, what do you do?

31:50SPEAKERAnd it was just kind of menu of like swing sword.

31:52SPEAKER- It was multiplayer?

31:54SPEAKER- Well, I don't remember how you interacted with,

31:57SPEAKERyou may actually not have interacted with people

31:58SPEAKERnow that I think about it.

32:00SPEAKERLike there may have been some very,

32:02SPEAKERvery limited interaction with other players,

32:04SPEAKERbut it actually, maybe it was just a kind

32:07SPEAKERof single player thing.

32:07SPEAKERAnyway, yes, there are places to play that on the web.

32:12SPEAKERThere's on this, on lord.stabs.org,

32:14SPEAKERthere's one person playing "Lord" right now.

32:16SPEAKERAnyway, I'm rambling here, but like I said-

32:18SPEAKER- Lord.stabs, that's a good name.

32:21SPEAKER- Just like the idea of, like you said,

32:22SPEAKERthe idea of doing something on a computer

32:26SPEAKERand somebody else on a different computer,

32:27SPEAKERsomewhere else seeing that reflected on their end

32:30SPEAKERwas just like completely like pet explode, right?

32:32SPEAKER- Yeah.

32:33SPEAKER- Like I found, I randomly happened on the episode

32:37SPEAKERof the Computer Chronicles where they had a guy from Sierra

32:39SPEAKERshowing off the Sierra network and he was showing like,

32:42SPEAKERhere's how you play cribbage against somebody in Dubai

32:46SPEAKERor whatever.

32:47SPEAKER- That's what became one, right?

32:49SPEAKER- I think that's right.

32:52SPEAKERAlso, I'm pretty sure he was calling it the Sierra network

32:55SPEAKERat the time, but I feel like I remember it being called

32:57SPEAKERthe Entertainment Network for a while.

32:59SPEAKER- Oh yeah, 10.

33:00SPEAKER- 10? - Yeah.

33:01SPEAKER- Anyway.

33:02SPEAKER- Well, there were a bunch of those,

33:03SPEAKERlike Yahoo Games was one, the Microsoft X Zone

33:06SPEAKERor Microsoft Zone, whatever that was.

33:08SPEAKER- I'm sure CompuServe had a similar thing.

33:11SPEAKER- Well, so the other weird thing about a lot

33:12SPEAKERof those early dial-in services,

33:14SPEAKERthey were basing everything on the Arthur C. Clarke idea

33:17SPEAKERthat you were gonna pay by the minute

33:18SPEAKERor by the hour for that stuff.

33:20SPEAKERSo like, if you played the wrong game on CompuServe,

33:25SPEAKERyou could rack up a fairly substantial bill.

33:27SPEAKER- Sure.

33:29SPEAKER- It was a weird, I mean, in retrospect,

33:34SPEAKERmaybe charging for shit early on was the right idea.

33:37SPEAKERBut anyway, that stuff was all really weird.

33:42SPEAKERAnd then we got PPP access.

33:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's what I was working up to asking you about

33:47SPEAKERwas that's what our first proper actual dial-up connection

33:50SPEAKERwas, was a PPP connection.

33:52SPEAKERDo you have any recollection of like the functional

33:54SPEAKERdifference between PPP and SLIP?

33:58SPEAKER- It was just different, it was just different protocols.

34:01SPEAKERIt was just one of your ISP supported.

34:03SPEAKER- Just a different dial-up standard.

34:04SPEAKERLike it didn't actually change the nature

34:06SPEAKERof your internet access or anything like that?

34:08SPEAKER- No, you basically, it was just a tunnel across a modem

34:13SPEAKEReither way.

34:13SPEAKERAnd the question was which hardware,

34:15SPEAKERI feel like it was a hardware on the modem side

34:18SPEAKERas to which, or on the router side

34:20SPEAKERas to which one was gonna be supported.

34:22SPEAKER- Okay.

34:23SPEAKER- But I don't know for sure.

34:24SPEAKER- Got it.

34:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't, it wasn't, my school supported PPP.

34:29SPEAKERI don't think I ever actually saw SLIP.

34:32SPEAKERMaybe in May before the, we might've been on SLIP before,

34:38SPEAKERI know PPP was the later protocol.

34:40SPEAKER- Okay.

34:41SPEAKER- SLIP was the earlier one.

34:42SPEAKER- I always had it in my mind that it was better somehow,

34:43SPEAKERbut I don't know where I got that impression.

34:45SPEAKER- I feel like on SLIP, you had to always log in

34:48SPEAKERwith a terminal or set up a script to do that in PPP.

34:50SPEAKERLike you do that in the,

34:52SPEAKERlike it was built into the transmission.

34:54SPEAKER- Yeah, Windows 95 had like pretty decent

34:58SPEAKERbuilt-in setup stuff for PPP connection.

35:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I know that when we had the SLIP connection,

35:04SPEAKERit may have just been 'cause I didn't figure out

35:05SPEAKERthe scripting to do it automatically,

35:07SPEAKERbut I had to manually log in.

35:08SPEAKERI dialed in, then you'd log in,

35:10SPEAKERthen the terminal window would go away

35:12SPEAKERand then you'd have the direct connection.

35:14SPEAKER- That makes sense, okay.

35:15SPEAKER- Yeah.

35:16SPEAKER- Yeah, after we got that connection,

35:17SPEAKERI pretty quickly found my way

35:18SPEAKERonto first Usenet for a few months,

35:20SPEAKERand then that led me to IRC,

35:22SPEAKERand then that was just kind of the end of everything.

35:25SPEAKERThen I spent all of my time doing that.

35:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it was funny, like after Doom,

35:29SPEAKERso Doom came out the fall,

35:31SPEAKERthe Doom shareware came out in December,

35:33SPEAKERright around finals time,

35:35SPEAKERwhich was deleterious to the quality of my grades.

35:38SPEAKER- Yeah.

35:40SPEAKER- And we, I've told this story before,

35:43SPEAKERmy roommate worked in the computer lab,

35:44SPEAKERso we would go down and,

35:46SPEAKERor not, one of the guys on my floor

35:48SPEAKERworked in the computer lab,

35:49SPEAKERwe'd go down and play Doom

35:52SPEAKERafter the computer lab closed at midnight.

35:55SPEAKERAnd after that, like that's when,

36:01SPEAKERlike sometime between then and the fall of '95

36:04SPEAKERor winter of '95 when Quake Test came out,

36:07SPEAKERis when like Scary's Quake Holio,

36:09SPEAKERwhich became Shaq News and Redwood's Stomp.

36:13SPEAKER- Stomp, Blue's News.

36:14SPEAKER- The URL was redwood.stomp.com,

36:16SPEAKERbut I think it was, he had a name for it,

36:17SPEAKERit was Redwood's site, Quake site or something.

36:20SPEAKERAnd Blue's News, which is still,

36:24SPEAKERlike Blue's News is still around, doing Blue's News stuff.

36:27SPEAKER- I don't, you know, whatever,

36:30SPEAKERif the dude is happy, then more power to him.

36:33SPEAKERI don't understand how Blue's News

36:35SPEAKERhas not changed in like 20 plus years.

36:38SPEAKER- It's like a, it's like the coelacanth,

36:42SPEAKERit's a living reminder of a time gone past.

36:45SPEAKER- I mean, I'm talking like a literal site design.

36:47SPEAKERLike it is the same, it is the same site design

36:49SPEAKERas it had when I was in college

36:51SPEAKERin around the turn of the century, but modern content,

36:57SPEAKERlike they're like, I'm looking at updates from today,

36:59SPEAKERSaturday, July 18th, as we record this,

37:02SPEAKERthere are posts about a Ghost Recon Breakpoint,

37:06SPEAKERFree Weekend, a Remnant from the Ashes DLC release,

37:10SPEAKERlike coverage of modern games on a site

37:13SPEAKERthat hasn't changed in over 20 years.

37:15SPEAKER- What does Blue's News think about Dark Souls, right?

37:17SPEAKER- Like it's wild to me, it's cool.

37:21SPEAKERI'm not trying to knock it, like I think it's kind of,

37:24SPEAKERit's really fascinating, but I just don't know

37:25SPEAKERwhat the nature of this site nears Last of Us

37:28SPEAKERpart two sales figures, anyway.

37:30SPEAKER- But I mean, the thing that was weird about that time

37:32SPEAKERwas that the people that were covering,

37:34SPEAKERthat were into the emerging first person shooter scene

37:38SPEAKERcentered around id, mostly in a little bit of Epic

37:41SPEAKERat that point, but mostly id at that point,

37:43SPEAKERlike they were the only ones that were producing

37:46SPEAKERregular content for the internet early on.

37:48SPEAKERLike there were some like Linux people,

37:51SPEAKERbut like Slashdot wasn't around at that point.

37:53SPEAKER- Yeah, like those were early blogs basically.

37:55SPEAKERTo be fair, like Quake was an industry into itself,

37:58SPEAKERbasically, like the amount of stuff happening

38:00SPEAKERaround that game was completely,

38:02SPEAKERlike looking back on it now, completely insane.

38:05SPEAKERFrom like the first mods, I mean, you know,

38:08SPEAKERlike Doom had very rudimentary modding support,

38:10SPEAKERbut in terms of like actual new game modes being created,

38:14SPEAKERlike it was kind of the first place

38:15SPEAKERthat multiplayer mods happened,

38:16SPEAKERlike skins, player skins came from there.

38:19SPEAKER- Well, and there weren't, there wasn't,

38:21SPEAKERit's not like there was a constant churn.

38:23SPEAKERThis is hard to understand now,

38:24SPEAKERbut like, it's not like there was a new game

38:26SPEAKERcoming out every week.

38:27SPEAKERThere were definitely new games coming out every week,

38:28SPEAKERbut there weren't new games like Doom

38:30SPEAKERcoming out every week.

38:30SPEAKER- Right, right.

38:31SPEAKER- So like if you wanted to keep playing new stuff

38:35SPEAKERthat was like Doom, you were scouring Usenet groups

38:38SPEAKERand downloading mods and going to like stomped

38:41SPEAKERand downloading whatever the new mod

38:43SPEAKERthat was on the popular list that week was.

38:46SPEAKER- Right, like do you remember, oh go ahead.

38:49SPEAKER- Oh no, no.

38:50SPEAKER- Do you remember playing capture the flag in Quake

38:52SPEAKERfor the first time?

38:53SPEAKERLike that was a completely mind blowing thing.

38:54SPEAKER- Oh yeah, like that one, like even the stuff

38:59SPEAKERlike the people who downloaded the,

39:01SPEAKERwhen the 3D accelerators came out,

39:02SPEAKERthe people who revisited the map

39:07SPEAKERso that you could see through the water.

39:08SPEAKER- Transparent water, right?

39:09SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:10SPEAKERBut there was a whole, like, so Carmack and the id folks

39:15SPEAKERwere posting like dev updates live, like blog posts,

39:18SPEAKERbut they were putting them in their plan files.

39:20SPEAKER- Oh man, I'd had no, like, yeah, prior to that,

39:22SPEAKERI had no idea what a plan file was.

39:24SPEAKER- Yeah, nobody used, I mean, okay,

39:26SPEAKERnerds use plan files like that.

39:27SPEAKERAnd it was a lot of like,

39:28SPEAKERif you were in the CS department at a university,

39:30SPEAKERthere was a lot of like jokes going back and forth

39:33SPEAKERwhere you would burn somebody in your plan file

39:35SPEAKERand like, you know,

39:37SPEAKERpeople would have to figure out who it was that got burned.

39:39SPEAKERAnd then you'd burn that person back in your plan file.

39:42SPEAKERAnd it was just, you know, dipshit 20 year old nonsense.

39:45SPEAKER- Corny software developer humor.

39:47SPEAKER- Yeah.

39:48SPEAKER- I have to assume the plan files original purpose

39:50SPEAKERwas from like the university setting, right?

39:52SPEAKERWhere any kind of like research was probably going on

39:54SPEAKERand stuff like that.

39:55SPEAKERLike, I'm sure it was a way to.

39:57SPEAKER- It was the same as like your aim status message

39:59SPEAKERor what became Twitter, right?

40:00SPEAKER- Right, right.

40:01SPEAKERYou finger somebody's account and you get their plan back.

40:05SPEAKER- Yeah, problematic language, but okay.

40:09SPEAKERAnd so Carmack started updating there,

40:11SPEAKERthen all the folks did,

40:12SPEAKERand then all the like the people in the studios

40:14SPEAKERthat spun off or were lightly affiliated with it

40:16SPEAKERstarted doing that.

40:18SPEAKERAnd it ended up being this whole,

40:21SPEAKERlike I think Blue or Redwood had a plan viewer.

40:27SPEAKER- Yeah, I forget one of those sites

40:28SPEAKERstarted aggregating the plan files.

40:30SPEAKER- Yeah, so you didn't have to actually terminal in

40:33SPEAKERto the plan file, to the plan servers

40:35SPEAKERand finger John C at edsoftware.com.

40:41SPEAKERAnd like, honestly, those guys spawned

40:45SPEAKERa lot of what is now games journalism.

40:47SPEAKERLike without, I think that's why,

40:49SPEAKERI think that's why all the bad stuff happens in games

40:52SPEAKERbefore it happens anywhere else

40:54SPEAKERis because that online games journalism stuff

40:56SPEAKERhas been going on for five years more than,

41:01SPEAKERlike that was before CNN had a website, right?

41:04SPEAKER- Yes, you're right.

41:06SPEAKERIt is a space that is very consistently ahead of its time

41:09SPEAKERin a lot of ways.

41:09SPEAKER- And it is, I think specifically because it is,

41:12SPEAKERit literally started five, four or five years

41:14SPEAKERbefore anybody else, anyway.

41:15SPEAKER- But it's also a very tech savvy scene

41:19SPEAKERthat is like plugged into the emerging technologies

41:21SPEAKERand stuff like that.

41:22SPEAKER- But also it shaped the way people cover games

41:24SPEAKERand the way people expect games to be covered

41:26SPEAKERand the way companies approach the journalists

41:30SPEAKERwho are covering their products.

41:31SPEAKER- Yes.

41:32SPEAKER- Anyway, that's kind of off topic, but.

41:34SPEAKER- That stuff was happening on the web

41:35SPEAKERand like I was on Usenet at the same time

41:38SPEAKERwhere a lot of like kind of the '96, '97 timeframe,

41:41SPEAKERlike a lot of like late breaking news

41:43SPEAKERwas being passed around there

41:45SPEAKERand then that stuff took down to IRC.

41:47SPEAKERLike that's why.

41:48SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no.

41:50SPEAKER- That's why I appreciate Google archiving

41:52SPEAKERpretty much all of Usenet 'cause I can, you can still go back

41:54SPEAKERand find all of your 25 year old Usenet posts.

41:58SPEAKERLike when I breathlessly went on

42:01SPEAKERprobably alt.games.finalfantasy

42:04SPEAKERbecause some Japanese magazine had reported

42:06SPEAKERthat Square was moving Final Fantasy 7 to the PlayStation.

42:08SPEAKERNobody believed it.

42:10SPEAKER- Wow.

42:11SPEAKER- And I ran on there.

42:12SPEAKERI was just like, have you heard about this?

42:13SPEAKERWhat the fuck?

42:16SPEAKER- So it's funny, I was in,

42:17SPEAKERI was spending a lot of time in IRC at that point.

42:19SPEAKER- Yeah.

42:20SPEAKER- Because I was seeing like every once in a while,

42:23SPEAKERI think I was in Poundquake one time.

42:26SPEAKER- Is that Fnet?

42:27SPEAKER- Fnet, yeah.

42:28SPEAKER- Like it's really sad to me

42:30SPEAKERthat I'm starting to forget a lot of these details,

42:32SPEAKERbut like if I thought about it really hard,

42:34SPEAKERwe could probably spend a whole episode

42:35SPEAKERjust talking about IRC

42:36SPEAKERand all the weird idiosyncrasies of that service

42:38SPEAKERand like server splits and channel takeovers

42:40SPEAKERand stuff like that.

42:41SPEAKER- Oh God, yeah, I remember one time I ended up with an op

42:43SPEAKERon a big IRC channel because of a horrible net split.

42:48SPEAKERAnd I mean, this is also a time

42:49SPEAKERwhen there were only a handful of routers

42:52SPEAKERthat could route traffic across the country.

42:54SPEAKERSo it's not like now where it's an actual web,

42:56SPEAKERbut it was like May East and May West.

42:58SPEAKERAnd that's where all the country,

42:59SPEAKERMay East is where all the traffic coming from Europe came in

43:02SPEAKERand May West was where all the traffic

43:03SPEAKERcoming from the Pacific came in.

43:05SPEAKERAnd if one of those had problems,

43:07SPEAKERthen everything would go to shit.

43:09SPEAKERAnd they had problems all the time

43:11SPEAKERbecause we were really bad at routing back then.

43:13SPEAKER- Yeah.

43:15SPEAKER- So like if an IRC net split happened,

43:18SPEAKERwhoever got back into the channel first

43:20SPEAKERon one of the splits would have mod and op powers.

43:24SPEAKER- Mops, yeah.

43:25SPEAKERPlus like for you, if you've never used IRC before,

43:28SPEAKERyou basically set up,

43:29SPEAKERthere's a bunch of modes you can set on users.

43:32SPEAKERSo like if you set somebody plus O,

43:33SPEAKERthen they're an op in the channel.

43:35SPEAKERI mean, then they've got all kinds of like

43:36SPEAKERbanning and kicking powers, like.

43:38SPEAKER- They're basically owners, yeah.

43:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm trying to remember what else they're-

43:41SPEAKER- They were mod powers plus X and stuff like that.

43:44SPEAKERThey were like, you could mute people

43:47SPEAKERwho didn't have the ability to speak.

43:49SPEAKER- You basically could set people,

43:50SPEAKERI forget what the mode was,

43:51SPEAKERbut yeah, you could set people so they could talk.

43:53SPEAKERAnd then anybody who didn't have that flag set couldn't talk.

43:55SPEAKER- Well, and there were,

43:57SPEAKERthere were like the whole point of it was

43:59SPEAKERyou had to defend your territory.

44:00SPEAKER- Right.

44:01SPEAKER- Like in a fucking gang war or something.

44:03SPEAKER- That's totally where I'm going with this.

44:04SPEAKERIs that like as distressing as it was at the time?

44:07SPEAKERI don't know about you,

44:08SPEAKERbut did you ever hang out in any channels enough

44:11SPEAKERto become like enough of a regular that you were like,

44:13SPEAKERlike had permanent ops in there and stuff like that?

44:16SPEAKER- I didn't ever have ops and I had ops in smaller channels.

44:19SPEAKERAnd when we were doing like competitive,

44:21SPEAKERwhen I was playing competitive quake,

44:22SPEAKERthen like I had ops in channels that were related to that,

44:25SPEAKERbut it wasn't like, they weren't like high traffic channels.

44:27SPEAKER- No, no, no, I wasn't either.

44:29SPEAKERLike the channel vid games on F net

44:30SPEAKERis where I kind of got my start.

44:32SPEAKERAnd like, that's how I'd literally, how I have a job now.

44:35SPEAKER- Was that Andy Eddy, wasn't Andy Eddy on that?

44:38SPEAKERHe was active there, I think.

44:39SPEAKER- He might've been in there a little bit

44:42SPEAKERor that might've been before my time.

44:43SPEAKERLike I showed up in there like 96, 97.

44:45SPEAKER- Okay.

44:46SPEAKER- And then it was like kind of the second generation

44:48SPEAKERof EGM and the Ziff Davis mags.

44:50SPEAKERLike the guys from those places were in there

44:52SPEAKERand they were like random people

44:54SPEAKERfrom different game developers in there and stuff like that.

44:56SPEAKERIt's just, it was a great network opportunity,

44:59SPEAKERbut that was like, I don't know, 30, 40 people at a time

45:03SPEAKERor something like that.

45:04SPEAKERBut what I was gonna say was like as distressing as it was

45:07SPEAKERwhen like a split would happen and somebody would,

45:09SPEAKERsome asshole would come in and take the channel over,

45:12SPEAKERlike it was almost like a kind of an online,

45:15SPEAKERlike an emergent online game.

45:17SPEAKERIt was totally like that, like you said,

45:18SPEAKERlike a turf war of like people doing end runs

45:21SPEAKERaround each other, trying to get back in there.

45:23SPEAKERThere was like social engineering involved to try to

45:26SPEAKERlike go in there and like impersonate other people

45:28SPEAKERto try to get the usurpers to trust you

45:31SPEAKERand all kinds of shit like that.

45:33SPEAKERIt was wild.

45:34SPEAKER- 'Cause like the thing to remember about IRC

45:36SPEAKERis back then at least you didn't actually log in.

45:38SPEAKERYou just put what your name was.

45:40SPEAKER- Right, it didn't gonna be anything.

45:42SPEAKERAs long as nobody else on that server

45:43SPEAKERor on that network was using it.

45:45SPEAKER- Yeah, it was, I mean, eventually they added authentication

45:48SPEAKERand stuff like that for channel owners and things like that.

45:50SPEAKERBut like you had to run a network of bots that would sit

45:53SPEAKERand maintain the mod knob and the channel for you

45:56SPEAKERwhen you were offline.

45:57SPEAKER- Get your egg drop going.

45:59SPEAKER- Yeah, oh yeah, you gotta get that egg drop.

46:01SPEAKERThat's why shell accounts, those Unix shell accounts

46:03SPEAKERwere so valuable 'cause you could run stuff

46:05SPEAKERthat stayed online all the time and the universities

46:07SPEAKERUnix accounts, Unix machines were pretty reliable

46:10SPEAKERcompared to like whatever else was running.

46:14SPEAKERSo yeah, that stuff was weird.

46:17SPEAKER- Like every time I come into contact with IRC now,

46:19SPEAKERwhich is almost never, but I'm kind of blown away

46:23SPEAKERat how like open and kind of raw the whole thing is.

46:25SPEAKERLike for example, whenever you join a channel on IRC,

46:29SPEAKERlike it just flat out prints your IP

46:31SPEAKERright behind your username, right there in the open channel

46:35SPEAKERfor everybody to see.

46:37SPEAKER- Well, IPs aren't private, right?

46:38SPEAKER- Well, though obviously there are ways to get them,

46:40SPEAKERbut like it just makes me think about stuff like Discord

46:42SPEAKERand similar services these days that obfuscates

46:45SPEAKERso much of that stuff.

46:46SPEAKERLike there is so little, I guess I would say like potential

46:51SPEAKERfor fuckery there, you know what I mean?

46:53SPEAKERLike it's so, everything is a walled garden.

46:56SPEAKEREverything is very manicured and like well considered

46:59SPEAKERfor the most part, like you've got pretty limited options.

47:01SPEAKERWhereas like back in the day, it was just a protocol

47:05SPEAKERdesigned by engineers and nerds, you know,

47:07SPEAKERthey weren't thinking about usability.

47:08SPEAKERThey were just thinking about exposing as many options

47:10SPEAKERas they could.

47:11SPEAKERAnd there were a lot of ways to exploit that

47:12SPEAKERand do a lot of really weird stuff.

47:14SPEAKER- I mean, it's definitely indicative of the early time

47:17SPEAKERwhen no one considered bad actors on the internet.

47:19SPEAKERLike the whole net split thing was one of the first examples

47:24SPEAKERof that people posting viruses and use net binaries

47:27SPEAKERand stuff like that was not that much after that.

47:31SPEAKERAnd yeah, it was a weird time.

47:34SPEAKER- Yeah, it was fun though.

47:36SPEAKER- It was, I mean, the thing is the stakes were really low

47:39SPEAKER'cause it's not like your bank account was tied to anything.

47:41SPEAKERSo if you lost your handle on IRC, on Fnet,

47:45SPEAKERwho fucking cared?

47:46SPEAKERYou just made another one.

47:47SPEAKER- Eventually the asshole or the attacker would get bored

47:49SPEAKERand go do something else.

47:50SPEAKERAnd then you would just show back up and take your nick back.

47:52SPEAKER- Yeah, well, and the point, their whole point,

47:54SPEAKERa lot of times the point was,

47:55SPEAKERhey, you need to have better security, dumb ass.

47:57SPEAKER- Right.

47:58SPEAKER- That was how the Greybeards used to teach the people

48:02SPEAKERwho ruined the internet what they were doing wrong.

48:04SPEAKER- Yeah.

48:05SPEAKERSo thinking back in my mind, it was that late nineties

48:07SPEAKERinto kind of turn of the century era that was that sort of

48:10SPEAKERWild West period.

48:11SPEAKERAnd then like, for example,

48:13SPEAKERif I look back at my Amazon account,

48:15SPEAKERlike my first Amazon purchase was in 2001

48:18SPEAKERand social media started coming about in a major way,

48:21SPEAKERprobably '04, '05, '06.

48:25SPEAKER- How do you see your first Amazon purchase?

48:26SPEAKER- It's all in the history.

48:27SPEAKERLike you can just go into the word history.

48:28SPEAKER- I get to scroll back?

48:29SPEAKER- Maybe not on the app.

48:30SPEAKERI don't know if they expose it all in there,

48:32SPEAKERbut on the website, you absolutely can.

48:33SPEAKER- Holy crap, hold on.

48:34SPEAKER- And granted that was college textbooks.

48:35SPEAKERLike that's when I was in college.

48:37SPEAKERAnd if you remember,

48:38SPEAKERlike this is really hard to remember at this point,

48:40SPEAKERbut Amazon was a bookseller first, right?

48:43SPEAKERSo that's why I have,

48:47SPEAKERthat's probably why I have Amazon purchases that far back

48:49SPEAKERis because they primarily sold books back then

48:51SPEAKERand I needed textbooks.

48:52SPEAKERSo I got some of them there.

48:56SPEAKERAnyway, point being like the point I'm trying to make

48:58SPEAKERis like Amazon is a major force still, you know,

49:00SPEAKERlike Facebook obviously is gigantic.

49:02SPEAKERAnd like all of that stuff was coming about in the 2002 to 5

49:07SPEAKERish timeframe, right?

49:10SPEAKER- I mean, for me the modern web

49:12SPEAKERstarts kind of with Google, I think.

49:13SPEAKER- Yeah, sure.

49:14SPEAKERYeah, that's another one, of course.

49:16SPEAKER'Cause I feel like early search engines

49:18SPEAKERis like a whole other tangent to go off on.

49:20SPEAKERBut yeah, like once Google came about,

49:22SPEAKERyou were not touching AltaVista or Ask Jeeves

49:25SPEAKERor any of that stuff.

49:26SPEAKER- Do you remember Metacrawler?

49:27SPEAKER- Vaguely, yes.

49:28SPEAKER- It searched Lycos and AltaVista and Jeeves

49:32SPEAKERand all the other search engines.

49:33SPEAKER- I was an AltaVista guy primarily

49:36SPEAKERuntil Google came about

49:38SPEAKERand destroyed all the other search engines.

49:39SPEAKER- I just found my first Amazon order.

49:42SPEAKER- Wow, what do you got?

49:43SPEAKER- It was on January 14th, 1999.

49:46SPEAKER- Oh, wow.

49:47SPEAKER- It was 80 bucks, three items.

49:49SPEAKER- Okay.

49:50SPEAKER- A copy of the Truman Show on DVD.

49:53SPEAKER- Okay.

49:54SPEAKER- A copy of Armageddon on DVD.

49:56SPEAKER- Got it.

49:57SPEAKER- And a pre-order of the BOS Bible written by Scott Hacker,

50:01SPEAKERwho's now a friend, which is a delight.

50:03SPEAKER- B-O-S.

50:04SPEAKER- Oh, B, B-O-S, yes, B-O-S.

50:08SPEAKER- Yes.

50:09SPEAKER- Which didn't arrive until May, so.

50:12SPEAKER- Let's see.

50:17SPEAKERMine is a bunch of books

50:19SPEAKERfor the Japanese literature class I was taking

50:23SPEAKERand a copy of Black and White for PC.

50:26SPEAKER- Nice, that's a good one.

50:28SPEAKER- But those are my 2001 orders.

50:30SPEAKER- Wow.

50:31SPEAKER- But anyway, yeah, like you said,

50:32SPEAKERit was like Google, Amazon, Facebook,

50:34SPEAKERall the companies that define the internet now

50:36SPEAKERstarted coming about in the early 21st century,

50:40SPEAKERwhich was kind of-

50:40SPEAKER- I mean, Microsoft and Apple were around prior to that.

50:42SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but Microsoft is like,

50:44SPEAKERthose are companies from the '70s, though.

50:46SPEAKERThose were companies that existed in a prior era

50:49SPEAKERthat transitioned into internet businesses,

50:53SPEAKERbut the companies that exist

50:55SPEAKERbecause of the internet happened around that time.

50:58SPEAKER- To me, that's the end of that really wild west open era

51:01SPEAKERof the internet,

51:02SPEAKERand when things started getting a little more buttoned up.

51:05SPEAKER- There was a moment, I don't know if you,

51:07SPEAKERyou might, it might've been too early for you,

51:08SPEAKERbut Yahoo, when it started, was like a search engine,

51:12SPEAKERbut it was all human curated.

51:14SPEAKERI don't know if people realized that.

51:16SPEAKER- Huh, I don't think I, like I definitely used Yahoo,

51:18SPEAKERbut I don't think I realized that.

51:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it was literally,

51:21SPEAKERpeople would submit your website to Yahoo,

51:23SPEAKERa person would go look at it,

51:24SPEAKERand they would figure out what slot to put it in.

51:27SPEAKERSo like the results were really good

51:29SPEAKERuntil it got to the point that they couldn't keep up anymore

51:32SPEAKERand then they were not good anymore.

51:34SPEAKER- Sure. - It was just all old.

51:35SPEAKER- I mean, that's really telling

51:36SPEAKERof how much content there was on the internet back then.

51:39SPEAKER- I mean, it really was, like it was hard to find,

51:43SPEAKERit was really profoundly unuseful until Google came around.

51:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, that's true.

51:49SPEAKER- If you wanted to do computer shit

51:51SPEAKERor you wanted to look up stuff about video games

51:52SPEAKERor you wanted to find out how to do something on Unix,

51:56SPEAKERit was great for that. - Yeah.

51:57SPEAKERI thought Google was the best thing ever

51:59SPEAKERfor a number of years and then I went

52:01SPEAKERand worked at a website that depended entirely

52:04SPEAKERon traffic from Google to generate ad revenue.

52:06SPEAKER- Yeah. - And then the first time

52:08SPEAKERthat relationship went bad in some way,

52:10SPEAKERI was like, maybe they have too much power.

52:12SPEAKER- Who knew? - And it was too late.

52:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, oh well. - So, yeah, here we are.

52:18SPEAKER- Who knew that finding porn on the website

52:20SPEAKERwas going to be the thing that gave Google,

52:22SPEAKERon the internet, was going to be the thing

52:24SPEAKERthat gave Google infinite power.

52:26SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah. - On that cheery note.

52:28SPEAKER- Oh wow, man, I'm sitting here looking.

52:30SPEAKERI've totally got the mailing address

52:32SPEAKERfrom the dorm I lived in. - Oh wow.

52:34SPEAKER- In college on this order.

52:36SPEAKER- I had a house then. - It was almost 20 years old.

52:38SPEAKERMan, that's wild.

52:39SPEAKER- That was where I bought my first house.

52:41SPEAKER- God, we didn't even get into the fact

52:42SPEAKERthat when I went to college,

52:44SPEAKERI went to a very engineering-oriented school.

52:48SPEAKER- Did you have the internet in the dorm,

52:49SPEAKERlike ethernet in the dorm? - That's where I'm going

52:51SPEAKERwith this, I went to a school that was known for,

52:53SPEAKERI had a massive computer science program,

52:55SPEAKERlike huge engineering school.

52:57SPEAKERI got put in one of the three remaining dorms on campus

53:00SPEAKERthat was not wired for ethernet.

53:02SPEAKER- Oh my God. - So I had a dial-up account

53:04SPEAKERI could use for my dorm or I could go to the computer lab.

53:07SPEAKER- Nope. - I rapidly got myself moved

53:11SPEAKERto a dorm with ethernet as fast as I could.

53:14SPEAKERIt took a semester or two.

53:16SPEAKER- I was gonna say, they wired the dorms for ethernet

53:19SPEAKERthe semester after I moved out.

53:21SPEAKER- Oh no.

53:22SPEAKER- So I was working then, so I had money and I was like,

53:26SPEAKERI'm gonna get a one-bedroom apartment

53:27SPEAKERwhere I can not have to deal with assholes

53:29SPEAKER'cause UT at the time didn't have any single solo dorms

53:33SPEAKERand I'd had a series of terrible roommates

53:36SPEAKERand I almost moved back because of the internet access.

53:40SPEAKER- Yeah, totally. - I didn't, like, yeah.

53:43SPEAKER- I felt wronged when I got to school

53:45SPEAKERand found out I didn't have any kind of fast internet.

53:48SPEAKERI was like, that was half the reason

53:50SPEAKERfor going to college, what the fuck?

53:51SPEAKER- Yeah, what am I paying for this for?

53:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

53:55SPEAKER- Yeah, it was the early internet.

53:58SPEAKER- It's a fun time.

54:02SPEAKER- In terms of things I learned about,

54:04SPEAKERI learned more on the day-to-day

54:07SPEAKERand honestly, like, the following the plan files

54:10SPEAKERand that's where I learned about 3D accelerators

54:13SPEAKERand that was what my first writing job was,

54:15SPEAKERwriting about 3D accelerators.

54:17SPEAKER- Totally, I was kind of the same as you.

54:20SPEAKERI was like a solid B, B plus student in college

54:23SPEAKERbecause I did pretty much the minimum I could get away with

54:26SPEAKERto spend the rest of my time messing with computer stuff

54:28SPEAKERand playing games and getting up to other nonsense.

54:31SPEAKERBut yeah, but I started reviewing video games

54:35SPEAKERwhile I was still in school.

54:36SPEAKERLike, that time was well spent in one way or another.

54:39SPEAKER- The amount of time I spent trying to learn

54:41SPEAKERhow to make a computer faster to play Quake better

54:45SPEAKERand like reading SIGGRAPH papers, like trying,

54:48SPEAKERI remember reading SIGGRAPH papers

54:50SPEAKERto try to decode Carmack plan file updates.

54:53SPEAKER- Sure.

54:54SPEAKER- And like, as a result,

54:56SPEAKERI learned a lot about how 3D accelerators worked

54:58SPEAKERand was able to write reviews of them.

54:59SPEAKER- Yes, wondering what NURBS meant

55:02SPEAKERled to developing a lot of real world job skills.

55:05SPEAKER- Yeah, why did this power VR card I bought for 50 bucks

55:09SPEAKERfrom some guy down the hall make cracks in Quake?

55:12SPEAKERWhy are there holes in the walls in Quake all of a sudden

55:15SPEAKERthat are obviously not supposed to be there?

55:17SPEAKER- Yes.

55:19SPEAKER- It was a weird time.

55:20SPEAKER- Curved surfaces, you can't do that.

55:21SPEAKER- How do benchmarks work?

55:23SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:24SPEAKER- Oh God, curved surfaces, Jesus, I forgot about that.

55:27SPEAKERThe things we couldn't do.

55:28SPEAKER- Yeah.

55:29SPEAKER- I think that's as good a place as any to wrap up.

55:31SPEAKER- That was a fun trip down memory lane.

55:33SPEAKER- Yeah, I hope you all enjoyed.

55:35SPEAKERAnd if you like this kind of conversation and more,

55:37SPEAKERyou should consider backing the Patreon at tech,

55:40SPEAKERsorry, patreon.com/techpod in the Patreon Discord,

55:45SPEAKERwhich you get access to at the $2 level and above.

55:48SPEAKERYou have access to such channels as old computer,

55:52SPEAKERold ass computers, just network things, code, code, code.

55:56SPEAKER- It's a problem that Discord insists on inserting hyphens

56:00SPEAKERinto every space.

56:02SPEAKER- Yeah.

56:03SPEAKER- Because that should be old hyphen ass space computers.

56:08SPEAKER- That's true.

56:09SPEAKER- I think some people have read it as old space

56:12SPEAKERass hyphen computers. - Ass computers?

56:14SPEAKER- Yes, old ass computers, as opposed to old ass computers.

56:17SPEAKER- Is it an ass computer?

56:18SPEAKER- I couldn't tell you.

56:19SPEAKER- A computer that's shaped like an ass

56:20SPEAKERor a computer that goes in your ass?

56:22SPEAKER- I don't have a good answer for that.

56:23SPEAKER- Okay.

56:24SPEAKER- It's just an unfortunate name

56:25SPEAKERthat I think we're stuck with now.

56:28SPEAKER- As always, thank you so much to all of our patrons

56:30SPEAKERwho help support the show.

56:31SPEAKER- Yes, totally.

56:32SPEAKERI get so much out of reading those conversations every week.

56:35SPEAKER- It is a genuine joy every day to fire up the Discord

56:40SPEAKERand see what people are talking about

56:41SPEAKERand learn some new stuff.

56:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I have to, I think we've been talking about it,

56:46SPEAKERobviously in the intro of the last couple of weeks,

56:47SPEAKERbut please keep the desk pictures coming.

56:49SPEAKERI have to salute all the nice tidy desk photography

56:53SPEAKERthat's happening in there.

56:54SPEAKERI'm aiming to get my desk cleaned up and contribute myself,

56:57SPEAKERbut I can't get enough of seeing people's setups,

57:00SPEAKERwhich is probably sad, but whatever.

57:01SPEAKER- I guarantee you that your desk was cleaner right now

57:04SPEAKERthan mine was seven minutes

57:06SPEAKERafter I finished cleaning my desk.

57:08SPEAKER- Here's the extent of the--

57:10SPEAKER- Oh, goddamn, Brad.

57:11SPEAKER- The extent of the mess.

57:13SPEAKER- Just post the picture.

57:14SPEAKEROh man, you have those Cambridge World Soundworks speakers.

57:16SPEAKERThose speakers are so good.

57:17SPEAKER- Yeah, they are.

57:19SPEAKER- They don't make speakers like that anymore.

57:20SPEAKER- You back me on this?

57:22SPEAKER- Yeah, dude, I'm 100% with you on the Cambridge Soundworks.

57:25SPEAKER- These are 20-year-old speakers

57:26SPEAKERand people mock me for having them,

57:27SPEAKERbut it's not like speakers go bad or something,

57:29SPEAKERlike good speakers are good speakers.

57:31SPEAKER- I wish I still had my Altec Lansing ACS,

57:34SPEAKERthe ones that Redwood recommended.

57:36SPEAKERThere were two speakers that were hot in the quake scene

57:39SPEAKERin like 1999.

57:40SPEAKER- The Cambridge Soundworks, Cubes, and the Altec Lansing.

57:43SPEAKER- Yeah, the Altec Lansings had a wooden subwoofer,

57:45SPEAKERso I bought the Altec Lansings.

57:46SPEAKERThey were great.

57:47SPEAKER- Yes, good speakers hold up, man.

57:49SPEAKERThese things still sound great.

57:52SPEAKER- Very special thanks to our executive producer

57:54SPEAKERlevel patrons, David Allen, Kurt Brownwich,

57:56SPEAKERJacob Chappell, and Andrew Cotton.

57:58SPEAKERYou guys are amazing, but everybody who supports,

58:01SPEAKERwe appreciate everybody who supports the tech pod.

58:02SPEAKER- Yes, you have unassailable taste in podcasts,

58:06SPEAKERI would like to say.

58:07SPEAKER- So this is definitely the second best podcast

58:10SPEAKERthat either of us are on, I think.

58:11SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:13SPEAKER- So yeah, thank you all for your support.

58:15SPEAKERYou can find out more about the podcast

58:17SPEAKERat techpod.content.town.

58:19SPEAKERAnd if you can't support the Patreon, that's fine.

58:21SPEAKERWe love you anyway.

58:22SPEAKER- Thanks for listening.

58:23SPEAKER- Just tell your friends.

58:24SPEAKER- Yeah.

58:25SPEAKER- I love seeing people post about the podcast on Twitter.

58:27SPEAKERIt's always nice to see like somebody saying something.

58:29SPEAKER- Spreading the word helps too, for sure.

58:31SPEAKER- Exactly.

58:32SPEAKERAnd hey, Brad, you pointed this out before the show,

58:35SPEAKERbut this episode, sometime between now

58:38SPEAKERand when this episode is done,

58:39SPEAKERwe're gonna have 500,000 downloads of the tech pod.

58:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that's half a million.

58:42SPEAKER- Half a million, hopefully, satisfied customers.

58:46SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a lot of downloads.

58:47SPEAKERI feel flattered and gratified,

58:50SPEAKERbut also plenty of imposter syndrome there.

58:52SPEAKERLike, wow, people really want to listen to this, okay?

58:55SPEAKER- No, look, we're providing a valuable service

58:57SPEAKERin these dark times.

58:58SPEAKER- I guess so.

58:59SPEAKER- Everybody take care of yourself, wear masks.

59:01SPEAKERDon't go out if you don't have to.

59:02SPEAKER- Yes, be safe, please.

59:03SPEAKER- And if you're out of the US, then congratulations,

59:05SPEAKER'cause nice job.

59:08SPEAKER- At least we know somebody can pull it off.

59:10SPEAKER- Yeah, have a great week.

59:12SPEAKER- We'll see you all next week.

59:14SPEAKERThanks for listening.

59:15SPEAKER(upbeat music)