Re: [TCLUG:2041] Strange terminal

[Jelly Donut <jellyd@jellyd.org>]

Sometime around the 3rd of December in 1998, a certain Andrew McCulloh said:

: Sounds like you have a minitel (I think that's how its spelled.) A few
: years ago (like 10 or something) before the web & before gopher (I
: believe--don't quote me on this stuff) France telecom produced a menu
: based information system that you could use from your home. I've never
: actually seen one but my wife grew up in Toulouse and told me about
: them when the web first hit 5 or so years ago. Unlike the web I dont
: think it was possible for people to put up their own information--the
: flip side of that is that things were much more organized and yuo
: could get lots of local information from it. Ordering concert tickets
: for a show in Paris is one example she's told me about. 

My last few years of French class books had slightly dated information in
them, and they made a big deal about how 'high-tech' the Minitel system
was ;) All in all (from what I gathered) it -was- high-tech for the time
.. one could do a lot of things with it that we do nowadays on the Web ..
it being tied to the phone service was rather convenient, I gather.

I'm -assuming- they're nearly or entirely phased out in favor of something
a bit more modern than that, but it's entirely possible. I seem to recall
the prof. mentioning that some people didn't like the switch to the
Internet and modern terminals, and fought vehemently to keep the aging
Minitel system .. 

I suppose that's like those who still maintain that BBS's will 'make a
comeback' <g>

: At least that's what I think that thing is. If it is I wonder if you
: could get the correct protocol to make it recieve info, assuming it
: would produce fcc accepted modulations for our (ie AT&T's) version of
: the phone system.

That could have some very intriguing possibilities.

-- 
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| Josh Becker                   - aka -                     JellyD |
| email: jellyd@jellyd.org                      IRC: EFnet, DALnet |
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