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The next day Steve Billings signed on to the SDSU/BBS from his small Mission Beach apartment. It was a local university Bulletin Board Service or BBS. A BBS is like a library. There are li- braries of software which are free, and as a user you are recip- rocally expected to donate software into the Public Domain. Con- ference Halls or Conversation Pits on the BBS are free-for-all discussions where people at their keyboards can all have a 'live' conversation. Anyone, using any computer, anywhere in the world can call up any BBS using regular phone lines. No one cared or knew if you were skinny, fat, pimpled, blind, a double for Christy Brinkley or too chicken shit to talk to girls in person. Here, everyone was equal.
Billings 234
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There was a brief pause.
WELCOME TO THE SDSU/BBS. STEVE BILLINGS, YOU ARE USER #109
Steve Chose (12) for SERVICES:
The menu changed to a list of further options. Each option would permit the user to gain access to other networks around the country. From one single entry point with a small computer, anyone could 'dial up' as it's called, almost any of over 20,000,000 computers in the country tied into any of ten thousand different networks.