RE: [TCLUG:2041] Strange terminal

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jelly Donut [mailto:jellyd@jellyd.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 1998 1:57 AM
> To: tclug-list@listserv.real-time.com
> Subject: Re: [TCLUG:2041] Strange terminal
>
>
> 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.)...
>
> 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>

	I've heard, can't remember where, that Minitel is still in use in France --
thanks to the same spirit that inspired a government bureau to weed
anglicisms like "le compact-disque" out of the language.  I don't know
whether to admire or be alarmed at that kind of commitment to national
identity -- "Vive la France" just doesn't have the same ominous ring as
"Deutschland Uber Alles", I guess.
	I recall that in 1992 USWest was trying to sell Minitel to Minnesota.  I'm
not sure whether they were actually using French Minitel terminals, but I
saw a demo of it at a technology fair at Dayton's in Minneapolis that year
(I also got to play that damned VR game with the pterodactyl) and it looked
identical to the systems I remembered from my highschool French textbooks.
They got a little over a thousand customers before the Web explosion
relegated the project to Betamax status.
	I've seen a couple of Minitel-like terminals at a pawn shop across from
where I work, and they looked as though they would at least be sufficient
for, say, dialing up local  Citadel BBSes.  Unfortunately, the shop got its
license suspended, so I never got a chance to take the thing home and try it
out.

--
Eric Hillman - UNIX Sysadmin
City & County Credit Union
ehillman@cccu.com
The opinions expressed in this message are my own.  You can't have them.