[Puke]

first, i remember the grand old network services, prodigy for home Users and compuserve to access all sorts of scientific databases. eventually they became portals to the internet, but originally they were collections of interconnected systems and databases that you could Subscribe to.

that trickled down to syndicated news Groups on BBS systems. I always wondered where they came from and how they were organized, since they seemed to be from loose coalitions rather than organized networks. I always thought they were of a considerably lower quality than the Groups and forums on our local Boards.

the same places that brought us those mysterious syndicated news Groups also brought new files that the sysops would upload. strange and interesting things from computer systems far, far away.

somehow it all turned into the internet and more and more people started accessing it, prodigy and compuserve had portals to it, and the relationships between providers on different tiers was a clearly understandable thing. these days, the only providers left are a handfull of tier-ones, and there are almost no middlemen. the MAE has almost entirely become an anachronism, and... and im talking too much.

I suppose my point is that my original perspective on what things were and how things transpired was fairly limited, but from it you can probably see the kinds of things that I was doing at the time.