61 new of 87 responses total.
Hmm..still having weird experiences listing new items in bbs cf's...
The system is trying to trick you into thinking it is vibrant and useful with new posts. People are interested in Grex!
Be productive Be Compliance Be All that you can be
Grex is wearing parachute pants and a Frankie Goes to Hollywood shirt. Holding an ice cream while checking the Casio watch. Humming "It's a Sin" by Pet Shop boys in the mall. They are showing Preadator in the cinema in 20 minutes. Play some defender when the ice cream is gone to burn some time. Compliance and productivity is the mantra of mall rat Grex.
Wallet chain...bum a smoke...another quarter on the Defender screen "I'm up next"
Wow...Such a Warm atmosphere here? Grex must have Hundreds of new users waiting to be validated.
The people that actively participate are warm and friendly, but most of that is in 'party' and on gopher I believe. There are really only one or two sour grapes here in bbs... and really only a handful of active users period. What grex really needs are more people who are willing to participate.
What tfurrows said. Also, a hallmark of both Grex and its sister site M-Net are a somewhat ascerbic and dry sarcastic wit. It's not meant to be personal or mean; just funny. Feel free to join in!
I go with the "warm atmosphere" sentiments; Grex is indeed quite a cosy place to hang out, and a warm friendly bunch of people to hang out with. The 'party' comms program is a good place to meet other Grexers, even if they are not online at the same time. The Grex gopher server, has not long been back online , after 'quite' a few years (how many years now?) and is a great addition to the gopher universe: well worth a visit, or adding your own gopher page to the server (some tutorials in user: papa, and tfurrows, gopher holes, to help create your own gopher hole and join in :) ). More people would be nice.
I come here for the puzzles
I'm "Dazed and Confused". Does anyone have a quick answer to this question? What the heck happened to Grex?? How does a "Public Service System" lose the public? I've read most of the BBS stories and the history of Grex. Does Grex believe they can revive Front/Talk / Back/Talk?? No seriously. Is there a plan to bring in new users? Are you guys/gals just toot'in your horn? Remembering the "Good Old days"? I'll tell you what..I'd kill to be sitting in front of the console of Grex servers, wherever that is. But that's just me. I had it great in 1994 with LI.NET but that was many moons ago. No sense in crying over spilled milk right. So What the heck happened??
resp:37 The World-Wide Web happened. Smartphones happened. Broadband and Wi-Fi happened. Angry Birds happened. Where have you been? We are here because we enjoy Grex more than the alternatives, but 1994 is not going to come around again.
I get that part. I guess I don't understand why Grex didn't jumpon the Web bandwagon. Even I could see where the NET was going in 1994. There was Google then MySpace, then Wordpress. Is running a Web server that costly? I don't know? I know you UNIX guys hate the Web but man if it pays the bills? Now I see Grex wants to try and put a spark into Gopher. I think that's great but doesn't the world want a Web Page? Is Gopher going to attract new users? What kind of new users? Programmers? Unix Admins? I don't know?. How did SDF get so big? Maybe Grex needs a Server in Iceland? Japan? Get me a Plan ticket. I'll go! Anyway in case anyone is interested the Web side of Back Talk doesn't work right but I managed to login. There's a 505 error that needs to be fixed. It looks like Grex was on to something with Back/Talk. it's a damn shame it didn't work out. Now don't everyone get all bent out of shape. I'm not bashing Grex. If I could go for a walk with you guys (Wherever it is you go) I surely would. I'd love to hear the "Grex Stories". I have a few of my own. That's just my opinion.........I could be wrong. ;-) Steve
Though I've been using *nix since the mid 90's, I'm a late arrival to the public unix scene. I just found SDF and Grex a year or two ago. I found them through gopher (well, found SDF that way, at the time, Grex didn't have gopher.) Sure, the web is huge and all that, but it's not everything for everyone it seems... hence the survival of SDF, and numerous other systems. But I like your questions and your thinking: how will grex attract more users? Certainly the web is one way to do it, but you'll have a lot of random people to filter through before you can target the types that will join grex. Education is another avenue, though I'm not sure how you'd target them. Perhaps it really is just a matter of letting those who are interested filter in and find it. Cross might be able to tell how many people have joined since gopher was added, vs. recently months before that. Not sure what else could be done, but ideas would be welcome!
Also, I'm not sure being found or doing web stuff is really what grex needs. I think what grex needs is what's happening right here- user participation. Grex needs more people like you, who are willing to dive in and try bbs, gboard, and party. The more that is going on, the more those who stumble in will enjoy or appreciate, the more they'll stick around, and the more they'll invite others. I think :)
Ok. So how much advertising does Grex want? What would an "ad" look like? I use a lot of BBS systems, news groups etc. Should young people be the target audience? I'm not a programmer but isn't a UNIX shell account the place to learn Python and other Programming languages? What about IRC? Does Grex still have the NO BOTS policy? What does Grex offer that people want and are willing to support for a few bucks a month? I'll come up with an ad and post it on all the BBS's I'm on. I won't do that until Grex agrees to it of course. I think most "newbies" would have difficulty with Front/Talk but should have no problem with Back/Talk. BTW the 505 error is only with Back/Talk on Grex.org and not Cyberspace.org.
Advertising? Go for it. Hmm. There are a lot of questions in your posts, and I'm afraid I'm swamped at work at the moment so can't give them all adequate answers, but I'll try and write some words right now just to put something down. What happened to Grex? Basically, Grex's fundamental problem (as I see it) is that it tried to retain a local focus for far too long. Grex started up as a dial-in BBS, believe it or not: granted, the "BBS" part was a program called Picospan that ran on a Sun computer running Unix (basically 4.2BSD + some 4.3 enhancements) but it was a dialup BBS none the less. As such, the majority of users were from the immediate geographical region around the physical system (Ann Arbor, Michigan in the US) for the first couple of formative years. Eventually the system got connected to the Internet, but it was never able to fully shake off the local flavor of the thing and embrace being a world-wide Internet resource. Contrast this to SDF, which *did* make that transition successfully. Why isn't Grex on the web? Grex is on the web. The web site is probably kind of broken (no one is curating the content anymore) but it's been running a web server since something like 1994. You can create a `www` directory in your home directory and put HTML files in there (or any other content type, I guess...). As long as your content doesn't violate any laws or anything, no one will stop you. I don't think anyone here hates the web, nor is "grex" as some kind of monolithic entity trying to push gopher; some Grex users are interested in Gopher and we put up a gopher server for them to play around with. If you want to do a web thing, though, then go for it. That said, Grex had some pretty draconian policies based around what one might describe as a culture of fear in the early 90s. It seems that the staff at that time did much hand-wringing around the possibility of hordes of unwashed Internet newbies overrunning Grex and swamping it with lots of bots, script-kiddy attack scripts, and using it as a vehicle to send spam and host porn. To be fair, there was a period when that was more or less precisely what was happening, but this air of general caution was paired with an excessively baroque decision making process based on hippy ideals of consensus and trust in the fundamental good intentions of the users (this was much easier when everyone calling into the system lived just down the road; much harder when the majority of users are anonymous figures on a vast and nebulous Internet). So instead of, for example, putting some simple roadblocks onto new users and requiring them to provide some minimal verification of who they are and what they might use Grex for but otherwise give them interesting and useful tools, users were let onto the system but then the system itself was locked down in such a way that it wasn't interesting for anything more than the BBS and party. Anyway, the effect of all of the above was to halt forward progress at some point, particularly as we started getting abusive users who would login, trash the system, get kicked off and then just come back and create a new account and do it again. By the time anyone realized what was happening, most of the userbase had mostly moved on and Grex was left as a lonely backwater. For example, the prohibition against images on Grex's web pages was because there was great fear that Grex would be overrun by amateur porn producers hawking their nefarious wares; the users voted and decided to prevent hosting images as a result. Yay us. We've tried to fix some of that in the past few years, but the decay is large and time is limited. Who is Grex trying to attract? I think part of the problem is that we haven't actively tried to attract *anyone*. Personally I'd like to see a kind of online hacker-space in the same vein as hashbang.sh, but I don't know if there's a lot of interest in such a thing and just getting anyone on board would be cool. I think there is some notion that Grex, in its present form, will mostly appeal to the technically oriented.
Ok Got it. Get it. Good. I'm sure you are busy. Here's the thing. I KNOW exactly where you're coming from. I was part of an Internet Dialup provider called LINET. (Li.net) We went from 20 modems to 300 (Not enough) in 3 years. After 2 years in the house we had to move to a "real building" and out of the house we rented. After 5 years it got too Crazy. The business was sold. So yea. I get it. And I really think I may be of some use here. I'm retired now. I have TOO much time on my hands. I would very much like to volunteer in anyway I can (Remotely). My finger info is all real info. Let's brain storm this thing and see what we can come with. I have no idea what Grex is running on so I don't know what you can or can't handle as far as a user base etc? OK I'm getting a "woody" thinking about this. LOL My time at LINET was the best time of my life. I really missed "the boat". Maybe I can get a second chance??
Sure. Feel free to enter an item for brainstorming. As for what Grex is, it's modest: it's an i386 virtual machine running OpenBSD; it's hosted on a virtual machine running on hardware in a staffer's basement. This works OK, but is problematic for some things. I wanted to move to FreeBSD on a mulitcore server machine with more RAM and an excessive amount of storage space; the server I sent died. No idea what happened to it. Oh well. At least we're not on SPARC anymore.
How is the security? Is OK for me to post Grex on Public Web Sites, BBS's, Reddit? I don't want to "overwhelm" the system advertising to would be hackers. What services would be safe to offer at this stage of the game? I assume the software is still available. Newsgroups? IRC? Email? Personal Web page (100mg) Gopher Lynx blah blah the list goes on and on. Tags like so what do you pay to stay connected to your friends? You can do this for a lot less at Grex. Or PayLess@grex. Ooooh. I'm brainstorming now. LOL! Ouch.. I think I hurt my head.
If there's going to be a new Grexer recruiting drive, we should fix Backtalk and Fronttalk. The accumulated bulletin board posts are one of Grex's unique charm points, and the *talk systems are easier-to-learn environments for users not already accustomed to the shell. However, with the current bugs in both *talks, I wouldn't recommend them to new users. Specifically, the "terminated by signal 11" Backtalk crashes that occur when trying to open conference items when logged-in on the web, and broken bookmarks in Frontend where "new" command lists some items in spite of having been read previously. The *talks could also use a "catchup" command so that users who don't want to power-read through 20+ years-worth of posts on their first visit can clear the unread item flags and track new items since their previous connection.
There have been suggestions for backtalk/frontalk before, but it seems it's such old code that no one wants to really investigate it. As Perl has changed versions and the OS has changed around it, it gets harder to maintain. But, if we could fix it, that would be great. The trouble is, the original authors of the code are no longer around that we can find, so to dig into it would take a lot of time for someone to fix it (someone familiar with Perl coding amongst other things). We used to have more people reading BBS on the web than at the command line (though that was somewhat hard to prove). The nice thing about reading on the web is cellphones and tablets could get involved too. One suggestion for bbs was to allow editing of responses since we occasionally make mistakes in our responses. That turned into a censorship debate and was turned down. If you want to correct a response, you need to delete it and re-enter it. Therefore, as you can see making progress is rather difficult unless everyone agrees (which is rarely the case). Right now, if you can get our web-based command line going you can use the bbs command and that's about as far as we can go right now with web-based conferencing unless you can get the current web bbs working or consider other options. We could install a free web-based forum system on the Grex web site but that would take someone to not only install it, but set it up correctly, and maintain it (including moderation, most likely, as abhorrent as that is to Grex users--but like a conference fair witness). It's not clear if anyone has time for that, but it is one way to modernize Grex a bit. It would likely diverge from the way bbs saves its data, so might split the users (but if there are so few, does it matter?). We have an item in Agoras past regarding how to improve and keep Grex going (Grex Town Hall: How do we Move Forward). It initially had a lot of responses, but not so much any more. In fact, we have not "rolled" the Agora conference system for over a year now. It used to be set up fresh (with popular on-going items linked from the previous agora conference). Again it takes someone to do it and do it correctly. Waiting for a consensus, as Dan implies above, is partly to blame for this situation. The other is the perpetual lack of staff time. I've been snowed under at work, too so it's been difficult to concentrate on much more.
Text Or Die re #39 AOL and the rest of the GUI mousepointing morons can have their World Wide Web. Hytelnet as Iain called it. Why didn't Grex serve HTML and usenet etc? It did. And once you go there then you are on your own. Grex and MNet were build around PicoSpan and then YAPP (read as: UNIX BBS) Jan Wolter and some cats wrote party (read as: Instant Messaging) ASCII Web is crap. Go enjoy yourself if you don't like Grex.
resp:46 Sure, that's fine. Security is something we're at least not terrible at, if not perfect at either. Advertise away! resp:47 Hmm. I'll have to look at backtalk to see what's crashing. The issue with backtalk is that it's basically a programming language interpreter (the language looks a lot like PostScript, believe it or not) and it emits markup specific to some kind of "theme". So instead of using e.g. CSS to style consistent markup, we emit FONT tags and antiquated things like that. Cleaning it up is almost not worth it: I'd rather rewrite it in a managed language so it never segfaults. As Kent mentioned in resp:48, fronttalk is a perl front-end to backtalk. It needs a rewrite, too. I started it with Attospan, which can read and parse every "item" file on both Grex and M-Net, but am also swamped at work and haven't had much time for it.
If I could find an Open Source Bulletin Board system for openbsd (Free) would that be an option to install on Grex? I'll bet it's out there and I have the time to research and find it.
That's exactly what you're typing into now. The sum of Grex's many parts is, in a very real sense, a superset of what a "BBS" is.
I realize it's a Bulletin board system. My concern is the BackTalk (Web) side of Fronttalk. It needs some fixes. I'm gonna research this further. I read some of papa's page today.
The thing that I love about SDF's bboard is specifically that it's not on the web. I believe monochrome BBS had a similar debate in the past and decided to keep their content off the web. The web is so overrun with forums and every other kind of mass communication. I'm not against progress or technology, but I'm not sure having a web-accessible BBS is important to the kind of people that would use grex. Maybe what we should look at are the things that are working well for other public access unix systems. IRC seems to be very popular on several of them. Command-line social tools are what I personally love (com, party, bbs, bboard, writo, bbj, botany, feels). What else are the other public unix systems doing well that draws in users?? I don't think a web forum is it.
I was more or less thinking of ways to attract "NEW" users. To me a new user is someone that recently came on line. Not seasoned veterans. Hey..I'm getting kick out of reasearching backttalk. I would just like to spruce up the web side to attract the newbie. I have no problem keeping things as is. I'm a big advocate for "If it aint broke, don't fix it".[A[A[D[D
Don't get me wrong, I think it's awesome that you're actively trying to find ways to help promote, keep it up!
I'm just trying to get a feel for what type of users to bring in. Would you say users looking for a minimal approach to online services? I've been browsing the gopher sites and I can see where gopher would like to go. I need to change my thinking. Meantime I have a lot of reading to do. Spent all day reading the Backtalk manual. The script language makes sense to me. Probably cause I'm not a programer. I would really like to get Backtalk functional with Lynx but I'm not sure if a login is possible using lynx. I can read the messages anonymously but that's it. Is there anyway to get color into the text?
Ok. I get it. Agora and Coop still work on the Web side of BackTalk.The others are DOA. Just for "Argument Sake" What would it take to "fix it" f the Web side is going to be down a while I'll let people know. If BackTalk is only usable from CLI I can let people know that too. This a reply from the my Web browser. (Note for me). I agree tfurrows. The Web is polluted with message boards but people like the point and click stuff. If you visit these boards, even the free shell accounts and IRC is fading away. I think the internet craze over . They want YouTube and Music Videos. That said what's the attraction at Grex? Why would someone SSH to a prompt and go through the validation process to get a Grex account? For the memories of the good old years? Is Grex just another BBS on the list of thousands?? Is it place for programmers or folks that want to learn programming? Help me out here. I'm "Dazed and Confused" LOL The ad is in my Gopher site if you want take a look at it.
Some things from the past (vinyl records, muscle cars, crystal Pepsi) come back and people enjoy them. But the reality of BBS is that most people are unfamiliar and the numbers of people that would care are dwindling. I don't see young people caring. I tried to teach my teenager Linux but he'd rather play his PS4. Realistically, I don't expect anyone to care when I re-cap a Commodore or get it on the Internet with a NIC+ adapter. Tinkering and reminiscing is a mostly solo effort. It may even be unhealthy. I'm guilty of it but I don't expect most people to care or understand. There are lots of twitter accounts dedicated to such things. I tried to engage but it got exhausting really quick. There are a lot of people who can't move on. It's sad.
AND MY LOCAL TELCOMAKES IT UNFRIENDLY TO USE THIS HAYES MODEM CARTRIDGE ON THIS COCO2 WITH THE OLD B&W TV. ARE THERE ANY MODEM DIALOUT BANKS STILL AROUND FROM MERIT?
Hi folks. This is my first time using fronttalk (I just noticed someone else using it while w'ing the current users, and had to test it out). Looking back on this recent discsusion, I would love to talk more to all of you about this. I think there is a big opportunity for the reinvigoration of Grex around people who see the value of command line social computing as an alternative to commercial social media. I have my own particular concerns about corporate media -- that it is killing democracy -- so I think that alternatives are very important. But I also think that text-based social computing is just fun; and from what I see (sdf.org, tilde.town, blinkenshell.org, many others) a lot of other people do too. Now I only have to figure out how to really use fronttalk so I can find this thread again. If you don't hear from me, someone please email me at cmccabe@sdf.org
Well, I'm up to the task Carl. Whatever that may be. If you're having trouble with fronttalk try using "gboard" at grex. It's very similar to "bboard" on sdf so you might have a smaller learning curve using it. Meanwhile let's keep the conversation going on how to attract new users to grex.
Ok, I figured it out. No need to email me @SDF :) Cross mentioned in response 43 about the hackerspace model like hashbang.sh. I love that idea. tfurrows seems interested too (off-board discussion). How can we most effectively go about fleshing that idea out? cross and kentn, I see both your names on the Grex staff list. Is that list up to date, and is there a way we can engage the others in this discussion?
#60 Ha ha ha ha ------- This is Major Tom to Ground Control I'm logged into an old BBS And I can't get back to fronttalk this way And the modem lights are fading fast today For here Am I am typing on a terminal Far above the world Planet Earth is blue And there's nothing I can do. #CrystalPepsiForever
Having (hopefully) finally figured out how to get Fronttalk to keep track of my conference reading progress (see resp:garage,45,17), I am now face with the task of catching up with 25+ years of accumulated items and responses. I was thinking that I needed a program to catch-up my conference reading status by automatically going through the conf's and marking every item and response as "read". That way I could then use the NEXT and READ NEW commands in FT to easily scan the conf's for new items and responses since my previous visit. However, since yesterday in spare moments I've been using READ NEW to skim part of the backlog in dribs and drabs selected by FT's mysterious algorithm, and have found myself enjoying exploring Backtalk's dusty and ancient corridors. Of course a lot of garbage has built-up over the decades and many items are worth no more time than a glance at the opening post, but there are a lot of well-hidden gems in there. Today I have been exploring conf:Language and conf:International. Feel free to join me in exploring Grex's Backtalk catacombs!
"fixseen" is your friend. :-)
FIXSEEN is useful to know. Thanks.
re #64 #CrystalGravy
Grex has a conf:Laundry conference!
:D You are pure class papa! After you have finished mining Grex for gold; if you get bored - there are 25+ years of conferences to read at mono.org (monochrome BBS) ssh mono@mono.org :)
No rest for the wicked. ;)
papa: you havn't time to be wicked - with another decade of conference posts to read still (or the inclination even if you hadn't: still good to keep busy eh? :) ) .
btw: Happy New Year!! :)
Happy 2021!!
resp:74 It only took us six-and-a-half months to notice!
yes, HIGH FIVE, very nice
What are everyone's latter half of 2021 plans?
resp:77 Immanentize the eschaton!
That seems so pedestrian. What about botanicals or intangibles?
"Lying on stained, wretched sheets with a bleeding virgin We could plan a murder Or start a religion." ― Jim Morrison, An American Prayer Plans for 2021? Definitely plan to do a light sand on my little toyota and reapply clear coat. There's always another project determined by a complaining wife. She wants me to nail these rubber tiles to our porch (which is a deck material). Some other misc misery soon to follow. We ordered new doors months ago. Where are they? Construction is a wait and see thing nowadays.
re #80 Are the rubber tiles to keep from slipping on ice?
#81 mostly for appearance. She bought them over a year ago and they are sitting in the garage. Cringe I think it's a dumb idea. The porch is a deck material which is painted. I think it looks fine. Not in favor of over complicating things. But obviously I need to get it done before there's trouble. ;)
How will you adhere the tiles? Finish nails?
#83 Likely deck screws.
How did the deck screws work out?
#85 Uh... it's still on the list! LMAO
re #86 TOMORROW Tomorrow tomorrowww
You have several choices: