Re:Ward Christensen has died (BBS and XMODEM fame)
by gausswho on Sunday October 13, 2024 @08:02PM
(#41832857)
This is increasingly fascinating.
I want to see a documentary of this in the style of alternating scenes of a) narration over still photos and b) contemporary music alongside silent video of the people behind this community.
Re:Ward Christensen has died (BBS and XMODEM fame)
by textfiles on Monday October 14, 2024 @01:33AM
(#41834495)
Someone should get right on that.
Re:Ward Christensen has died (BBS and XMODEM fame)
by squigz on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @04:30AM
(#41856850)
I've been thinking this comment was just unnecessary snark, but... :P
Re:Ward Christensen has died (BBS and XMODEM fame)
by beaugunderson on Wednesday October 16, 2024 @02:40PM
(#41862304)
interesting, I always heard this as "you own your own words": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOYOW
Its author/developer/maintainer was blind. You can imagine how well it worked with screen readers and other accessible technology (which was primitive at the time, and yet somehow better than it is today).
Text on a terminal is much better suited to accessibility technologies, whether readers or braille terminals. BBSes were all about text on terminals, and it was a place where folks who used accessibility tools could choose whether to identify themselves as someone who needed it... and most of the time if they chose not to make it known, none of the other users had any idea.
"You are your own words" is a BBS-ism. For people who are in the deaf community or who used tools because of their sight, being able to be known primarily by their words and not by the way that they used them was absolutely incredible.
(edit: typo)