An interesting aspect is that it was impossible to obtain an address without providing some service or newsletter on a specific subject to the sysop in return, so it was a privilege to have your own FidoNet address.

Huh? Not when I joined in my region. I didn't have to provide anything.

I was 14, but the BBS owner and mostly old guy heavy metal user base only found out when I later showed up at their annual user group meeting - and we had lots of fun (and drinks) together! They even took me clubbing later with a fake ID, and I woke up heavily wasted in the BBS owner's student apartment and we had microwaved frozen pizza together. Fun times.

I don't think that was just a fluke of random luck. I suspect early 8-bit hobby computing (especially outside universities) was an almost perfect gating filter. Nothing was very easy, little was well documented and frankly, it wasn't yet all that much fun. While there was some fun to be had, there were always bits of barbed wire and broken glass to crawl over first, whether typing in BASIC listings from a poorly printed 'zine (inevitably with a few misprints to debug), or figuring out at which volume level software might load from finicky cassette tapes. And even when you got something to finally work, the fun came in short bursts before the next cryptic barrier would arise.

The experience never quite lived up to what we'd imagined owning a hobby computer would be like while we were saving up our pennies to buy our own. But we persevered, driven forward by the sunk cost, brief interludes of fun and faith that tons of 'awesome' lay just ahead. The lack of relevant information beyond a few monthly magazines forced early hobbyists to find each other in ad hoc user's groups and then via BBSes. When I got my 4K, 800 Khz, 8-bit personal computer in 1981, no other person in my entire extended family's social circles knew anyone else who owned a computer at home. Even the concept sounded as strange as owning a "personal cement truck". The first question was always, "A what...?" followed by "Why?" So, despite being just a teenager, my desperation for information forced me to start a user's group simply for lack of there being any in my area. And it quickly grew to several hundred members despite my ineptitude and lack of experience at... well, anything. It turns out, the hearty souls both enthusiastic and naive enough to buy a computer for a hobby in those days, then persevere through failure and continue to connect with other lost users - ended up filtering for some unique qualities.

While the instant global connection (and gratification) of the web is amazing and immensely powerful, one thing we've perhaps lost along the way is that kind natural filter.

Now you can have crippling health issues and still post on the internet. In fact, you're probably more inclined to spend time online if interacting with the offline world is so tough. This was much harder from '85-05.

True. I was fortunate to grow up middle-class in suburban California with a college grad dad and stay-at-home mom. Still, I had to mail-order my 4K computer to get it for $400 instead of the $500 MSRP, and even that was a BIG ask. By far the most expensive single thing my parents had ever bought for me. I had to settle for a Radio Shack Color Computer, even though I desperately wanted a Commodore 64. The C64's $600 MSRP was just too much to even consider suggesting and I didn't even dream of an $800 Atari 800 (but I do now own every 1980s Atari, Apple, Commodore and Sinclair computer). :-)

Turns out, that Coco was accidentally perfect for me because the CPU wasn't the usual 6502 or Z80 but the unique Motorola 6809, a true 8/16 hybrid (the same way the later, very similar, 68000 was a 16/32 bit hybrid). The 6809 was far more powerful per clock than the 6502 or Z80 and had a huge, orthogonal "PDP-ish" ISA with dual stacks, multiple 16-bit index registers and maskable interrupts enabling advanced code that was position-independent, re-entrant and multi-tasking. But the trade off was the Coco was all CPU and no dedicated graphics or sound chips, so the screen was memory mapped and we had to move each pixel on every frame with only the CPU.

So, never having touched a computer before and starting from zero with no help, I had to first teach myself BASIC from the Radio Shack's manual and then how to push the hell out of that sweet 16-bit CPU with highly-optimized, hand-coded assembler. It took years and was painfully slow and difficult. But it turns out the brutal discipline of cycle-counting down to the metal while racing the CRT beam every 63.5 microseconds was the best foundation imaginable for my future. A future I had no way of knowing would include the Amiga 1000 in 1985, on to 2D graphics, real-time broadcast video, 3D rendering (including working on new movies and shows in the science fiction franchises that shaped my childhood) and being there for the birth of the first GPUs. Not being able to afford the computer I wanted and having to teach myself computing due to flunking out of college, led directly to a multi-decade career as a serial tech entrepreneur. So, bad grades, early failure and stumbling along with no coherent plan can occasionally work out surprisingly well.

> some real characters in the computing scene

Oh, yes indeed. I had to sneak into my first couple Comdex, CES and NCC trade shows due to being too young, not 'in the trade' AND being broke. But I met (and partied with) OG legends like John Draper (Cap'n Crunch), young Bill Gates, even younger Steve Jobs, and a whole zoo of eccentric characters including a guy who legally changed his name to R2D3, and a guy who dressed like Gandalf every day. Of course, these days there's a clerk at the local UPS store who wears a Gryffindor cape daily but in the mid-80s that stuff was wild for a suburban kid. But as I said in my first post, nearly everyone I met in 80s computing was interesting, worth knowing, and usually happy to help a random kid who wasn't interesting OR worth knowing.

After 5-7 minutes of work, it returns many results, yet it's citing 2 specific websites as sources, one of which was blogspam you'd write to get visibility on Google results.

So I guess we're heading towards a future where websites will be optimized to increase the probability of chatGPT and AI tools to use you as a reference and link to you with confidence, regardless of their sources.

I wish for it to only use sources that are older than 2019 and have zero ads and referral links, haha.

That’s not the same thing. Trademarks become generalised terms in the public’s mind, not legally. Two people in conversation might refer to a non-Xerox photocopier as a Xerox, but a non-Xerox photocopier company can’t just advertise their products as being Xerox.

Additionally, from the wikipedia page you linked (emphasis mine):

> A trademark thus popularized is at risk of being challenged or revoked, unless the trademark owner works sufficiently to correct and prevent such broad use.

Which, again, goes directly counter to the idea of a public domain trademark.

When a trademark becomes "genericized," the trademark is lost and any other company can use it for their own products. The word "escalator" used to be a trademark and now anyone can sell escalators and market them as such.

Independent certification that something fits a brand but anyone is allowed to use the brand if they pass certification.

It would need a non-profit or government support though.

Things like "Organic" already do that a bit, but it doesn't work too well over there.

But then it’s not public domain (which was the argument I was replying to). Public domain means everyone can do it without permission, while applying for a certification still requires a governing body which has the ultimate power.

> Things like "Organic" already do that a bit

That’s a classification, not a trademark.

How would that work? So anyone could release anything under the Commodore brand? That would be awful.

This whole setup collapses when Bezos calls someone and says "you're fired if you don't do as I say", which he might if Trump leans heavily on him or threatens to take control.

The above quote implies that the threat from Bezos should have no effect. Then again, I have no experience in corporate politics. Are you saying that even with that quote the "AWS European Sovereign Cloud" setup is pointless in practice?

An advisory board is very different from a governing board.

At worst it sounds like a canary.

What about them? It can be as independent and legally obligated to focus on whatever set of interests you want, if its only an advisory board, then it has no real power. (And, unless there is some guarantee of information other than what the management of the main org feels like giving it to support its advisory function, it can't even serve as a reliable canary.)

Depends if PR is pointless.

Show me one.

I think it's the dumbest, high confidence kids(with big egos) in the room who agree to do shit like this.

And what if your assumption about printing checks is wrong? I find no basis for that assumption, by the way.

There are simply no mechanisms in place to do what you're saying, nor does there appear to be any willingness to correct errors, given the desire to cut spending. Missed payments may be a feature, not a bug.

> Missed payments may be a feature, not a bug.

> not legally, and certainly not in a timely manner.

Bad faith magic wand waving, these arguments do not have substance. People/bots are on a bandwagon against change many have been calling for years for. Our treasury system NEEDS an overhaul and there are much bigger problems with this admin to make an issue out of.