From: bje@e4500.ripco.com

textfiles@gmail.com wrote:

: That is the strangest review I've ever gotten yet! "Interesting to
: watch and incredibly boring at the same time" goes up on the wall.

Well, might as well run with it.

To tell you the truth, I never received a copy. After March, I sort of
stopped checking your site figuring it would be released sooner or later. By
accident I ran across that partial upload (think by darkoz) on
alt.binaries.dvd just a couple weeks ago. I don't do the emule stuff but had
a friend do a search for "bbs documentary" and was somewhat surprised when
it showed up. The 8 chapters only version.

I watched that one first which somewhat embedded my above comment. It just
seemed to run out of steam after chapter 2. Of course that didn't stop me
from watching all 5 hours in one sitting. Probably 10 times an hour I
thought to myself if the grass needed cutting, should I run the dishwasher,
animals been fed yet? None of that seemed to matter.

So I guess the comment fits well.

In the next day or two I found another version of it, two avi files which
ran 6 hours, total run time. Hmm, the other was only 5 hours. Started
watching it again and figured out that one has the bonus stuff lumped
together. Actually watched the fidonet and compression chapters again
because there was some bonus material that helped explain some stuff I
didn't catch the first time around on those chapters.

Now I checked bbsdocumentary.com and see it was in fact shipping, so
naturally I swept usenet and found darkoz making a return, except to
alt.binaries.multimedia.documentaries now. Disc 1 complete (4.5 gigs), but
only a partial on 2 and 3.

Apparently he went to Defcon in vegas, following tuesday the remainder of
the other two showed up.

So now looking at the completed dvd's, I'd change the comment to something
like "mostly boring". Having chapter stops and the ability to scan forward
and backwards give it a couple points up from "incredibly boring".


: Your mentions about finding some parts interesting and others not so
: hot shows why I made the choice of making a bunch of smaller episodes
: instead of one single documentary; you'd be fast-forwarding through
: everything trying to find "the good stuff". Others have found the
: fidonet or the artscene episodes the ones they like the most, so there
: you go.

The only comment I have is the two things (fidonet/ascii art) I thought were
"not worthy" could of been an east coast/west coast kinda thing. Not that
anyone I talked to seen the documentary yet, but mentioning the subject
matter with some of my cronies that used to run small boards around here
in the midwest didn't see the importance of either, either.

Fidonet we thought was just plain gay. We'll leave it at that.

: I also DEFINITELY agree with "best taken in small bits". I tell people
: (who ask) that it should be thought of as a big series, where you pop
: it in and learn a little something as you go. I get people who mail me
: and tell me they devoured it in one sitting, of course.

Reguardless of what I think, you are to be commended on the whole project, I
know you put a ton of work and money into it and I think it really came out
sterling. It's really a pro job, even better than the documentary I watched
tonight on North Korea, and that was a PBS made one.

I totally agree with you (from our talk) that it needed to be done, it's a
snapshot of something that was going on that eventually will fade away from
memory. Even at six-plus hours it couldn't cover everything, but came out so
well that when all the dust settles a hundred years from now, one would be
able to reconstruct things fairly accurately.

Just too bad I'll never get the wife to watch the whole thing.

So when is the extended directors cut coming out?

-bruce
bje@ripco.com

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 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)