7 ms·

Intel Internet Party Line (1997)

92 points by omnibrain 6y ago

neom 6y ago
Any ZNC admins from the 90s also half expect this to be about the bouncer?
tyingq 6y ago
One of the third party clients: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FJ8GxFzwGc8J:manta-2000.com/partyline.htm+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FJ8GxFz... I wonder if it had similar trajectory/problems as chatroulette.
ArtWomb 6y ago
Getting IDMOO running live again would make an interesting browser experiment. Hardest part may just be finding a downloadable archive. This is why software preservation is so hard ;)
tpmx 6y ago
It uses the same open GSM audio codec implementation as John Walker's Speak Freely (http://www.speakfreely.org/history.html http://www.speakfreely.org/history.html, https://web.archive.org/web/19970511165210/http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/windows/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970511165210/http://www.fourmi...) from around the same time. https://imgur.com/a/y4De3Wc https://imgur.com/a/y4De3Wc
WalterGR 6y ago
Omnibrain - I’m curious: you submitted this 2 - 3 days ago, yet this is a fresh submission showing “3 hours ago”. Only this post is in your submission history. How are you able to ‘bump’ or ‘refresh’ a submission in this way?
- silasdavis 6y ago
  This may be the unseen hand of the moderator. See the 'second chance pool': https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md#second-chance-pool https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    That must be it. Thanks.
  - cehrlich 6y ago
    I could see that being the case - the Intel Internet Party Line was recently mentioned in the top comment of a different front page thread.
  - superkuh 6y ago
    It's too bad they don't use real HTML anchors. All FAQ index links fail if JS execution from that domain is disabled. It is a common problem with using github for documentation.
- omnibrain 6y ago
  I had no hand in this. It's either what silasdavis said https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26927915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26927915 or someone else submitted the same ink what lead to a bumb or something else entirely.
silasdavis 6y ago
This is rather like the utterly-irritating-until-you-start-using-it-yourself voice note feature of many popular messaging clients.
moftz 6y ago
Depending on the number of people in the room, this could easily turn into insane waits between when you sent your message and when everyone hears it. This would probably work best in a conference call sort of situation where you have people mostly speaking one at a time rather than just a normal IRC room where there's a dozen conversations going on simultaneously.
- rconti 6y ago
  My very first thought. It would become almost immediately unusable, haha.
- jetrink 6y ago
  It would be fun to design ways to manage the latency. I could imagine a modified push-to-talk where you hold down a key and the system gives you an audio cue to start speaking when the backlog of audio has dropped to an acceptable length. The system could also load balance speakers that way, giving people who make shorter or less frequent statements priority in the meeting.
- don-code 6y ago
  You'd need some really great moderators for this kind of conversation. No conversation is perfectly linear - new ideas lead to forks, and a large group needs to somehow choose whether or not to take one. But if there's a queue of five folks waiting to speak, that's four opportunities for the tangent to either be taken or not taken, and exponentially many opportunities for the wrong tangent to be replied to.
marcodiego 6y ago
I used it back in the day. Also relevant at the time were VDOLive and VDOPhone: https://web.archive.org/web/20000520100808/http://www.vdo.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000520100808/http://www.vdo.ne...
userbinator 6y ago
System Recommendations Intel Pentium® processor-based system, 60 MHz or higher Windows* 95 or Windows NT* operating system Half-duplex sound card with speakers or headset Microphone for voice input Client: Modem, 28.8 Kbps or faster Server: ISDN or higher connection to the Internet An Internet service provider that supports TCP/IP* "real-time, multi-party audio chat over the Internet" was possible 24 years ago. Meanwhile, on a two-year-old computer, I still have frequent trouble getting Teams audio chats to work without stuttering and breaking up on a 50Mbps connection...
- ok123456 6y ago
  Switch to iparty?
- bayindirh 6y ago
  A lot of things are possible for very long times, but for some reasons that I cannot fathom, we decide to abandon nicely working things for flashy, less capable and closed systems.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I don’t see what closed systems have to do with it. The big difference now is that someone with no computer experience can tap a touch screen and chat for hours using a device the size of a candybar wirelessly from the back of an elephant in rural south east asia. That wasn’t possible 24 years ago.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      Ease of use and decent software performance optimizations shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Just because we have touchscreen now doesn't excuse the shit show that some modern software has become. I shouldn't need Apple M1 levels of performance just to browse the reddit frontend without issues.
      - zepto 6y ago
pjc50 6y ago
> Internet Party Line queues each person's statements and plays them serially, which allows each person to talk without interrupting the others This would be a game changer, for those of us who are a bit deaf / have trouble picking out multiple voices. This is harder on normal voice conferences because they're not spatial; everyone's speaking to you from the center of the stereo pan.
xwdv 6y ago
Is a party line like an early version of Clubhouse?

92 points by omnibrain 6y ago

neom 6y ago

Any ZNC admins from the 90s also half expect this to be about the bouncer?

One of the third party clients: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FJ8GxFzwGc8J:manta-2000.com/partyline.htm+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FJ8GxFz... I wonder if it had similar trajectory/problems as chatroulette.

ArtWomb 6y ago

Getting IDMOO running live again would make an interesting browser experiment. Hardest part may just be finding a downloadable archive. This is why software preservation is so hard ;)

tpmx 6y ago

It uses the same open GSM audio codec implementation as John Walker's Speak Freely (http://www.speakfreely.org/history.html http://www.speakfreely.org/history.html, https://web.archive.org/web/19970511165210/http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/windows/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970511165210/http://www.fourmi...) from around the same time. https://imgur.com/a/y4De3Wc https://imgur.com/a/y4De3Wc

WalterGR 6y ago

Omnibrain - I’m curious: you submitted this 2 - 3 days ago, yet this is a fresh submission showing “3 hours ago”. Only this post is in your submission history. How are you able to ‘bump’ or ‘refresh’ a submission in this way?

silasdavis 6y ago
This may be the unseen hand of the moderator. See the 'second chance pool': https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/master/README.md#second-chance-pool https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...
- WalterGR 6y ago
  That must be it. Thanks.
- cehrlich 6y ago
  I could see that being the case - the Intel Internet Party Line was recently mentioned in the top comment of a different front page thread.
- superkuh 6y ago
  It's too bad they don't use real HTML anchors. All FAQ index links fail if JS execution from that domain is disabled. It is a common problem with using github for documentation.
omnibrain 6y ago
I had no hand in this. It's either what silasdavis said https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26927915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26927915 or someone else submitted the same ink what lead to a bumb or something else entirely.

silasdavis 6y ago

This is rather like the utterly-irritating-until-you-start-using-it-yourself voice note feature of many popular messaging clients.

moftz 6y ago

Depending on the number of people in the room, this could easily turn into insane waits between when you sent your message and when everyone hears it. This would probably work best in a conference call sort of situation where you have people mostly speaking one at a time rather than just a normal IRC room where there's a dozen conversations going on simultaneously.

rconti 6y ago
My very first thought. It would become almost immediately unusable, haha.
jetrink 6y ago
It would be fun to design ways to manage the latency. I could imagine a modified push-to-talk where you hold down a key and the system gives you an audio cue to start speaking when the backlog of audio has dropped to an acceptable length. The system could also load balance speakers that way, giving people who make shorter or less frequent statements priority in the meeting.
don-code 6y ago
You'd need some really great moderators for this kind of conversation. No conversation is perfectly linear - new ideas lead to forks, and a large group needs to somehow choose whether or not to take one. But if there's a queue of five folks waiting to speak, that's four opportunities for the tangent to either be taken or not taken, and exponentially many opportunities for the wrong tangent to be replied to.

marcodiego 6y ago

I used it back in the day. Also relevant at the time were VDOLive and VDOPhone: https://web.archive.org/web/20000520100808/http://www.vdo.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000520100808/http://www.vdo.ne...

userbinator 6y ago

System Recommendations Intel Pentium® processor-based system, 60 MHz or higher Windows* 95 or Windows NT* operating system Half-duplex sound card with speakers or headset Microphone for voice input Client: Modem, 28.8 Kbps or faster Server: ISDN or higher connection to the Internet An Internet service provider that supports TCP/IP* "real-time, multi-party audio chat over the Internet" was possible 24 years ago. Meanwhile, on a two-year-old computer, I still have frequent trouble getting Teams audio chats to work without stuttering and breaking up on a 50Mbps connection...

ok123456 6y ago
Switch to iparty?
bayindirh 6y ago
A lot of things are possible for very long times, but for some reasons that I cannot fathom, we decide to abandon nicely working things for flashy, less capable and closed systems.
- zepto 6y ago
  I don’t see what closed systems have to do with it. The big difference now is that someone with no computer experience can tap a touch screen and chat for hours using a device the size of a candybar wirelessly from the back of an elephant in rural south east asia. That wasn’t possible 24 years ago.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Ease of use and decent software performance optimizations shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Just because we have touchscreen now doesn't excuse the shit show that some modern software has become. I shouldn't need Apple M1 levels of performance just to browse the reddit frontend without issues.
    - zepto 6y ago

pjc50 6y ago

> Internet Party Line queues each person's statements and plays them serially, which allows each person to talk without interrupting the others This would be a game changer, for those of us who are a bit deaf / have trouble picking out multiple voices. This is harder on normal voice conferences because they're not spatial; everyone's speaking to you from the center of the stereo pan.

xwdv 6y ago

Is a party line like an early version of Clubhouse?