2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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BBS
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/BBS/ , n. [common; abbreviation, Bulletin Board System ] An electronic
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bulletin board system; that is, a message database where people can log in
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and leave broadcast messages for others grouped (typically) into topic group
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s. The term was especially applied to the thousands of local BBS systems
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that operated during the pre-Internet microcomputer era of roughly 1980 to
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1995, typically run by amateurs for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes
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with a single modem line each. Fans of Usenet and Internet or the big
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commercial timesharing bboards such as CompuServe and GEnie tended to
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consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they
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served a valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in
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the personal-micro world who would otherwise have been unable to exchange
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code at all. Post-Internet, BBSs are likely to be local newsgroups on an
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ISP; efficiency has increased but a certain flavor has been lost. See also
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bboard.
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