The End of Minitel 39
ZeldorBlat writes "The French Minitel service is closing it's doors at the end of today. Started in 1982, Minitel provides several services now widely available on the web including phone listings, train ticketing, and many other third-party content. Many prefered it to the web for it's simplicity and perceived security. The system is to be replaced with Le Compte Achats, available to businesses only. The notice can be found here."
Its death is a good thing (Score:2)
I remember when Bell Canada tried to introduce a similar service - Alex - a dedicated terminal w. 300 baud modem - to try to take piggyback on the popularity of free BBS systems and pay systems like Compuserve. Of course, even the cheapest modems at the time could do 1200 - 2400 baud, and 9600 baud if you had the bucks.
It was overhyped, overpriced (30 cents/minute), and not missed at all.
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You're forgiven ... since yu probably never saw it.
Bell Canada tried to copy the Minitel scheme, which was already long in the tooth by the early '90s. For a while they also tried to get into the fax business, before finally hitting upon satellite porn . Bell Canada then quickly became North America's top hard-core porn distributor before getting exposed http://www.friends.ca/News/Friends_News/archives/ a rticles03300101.asp [friends.ca]
Is the Swiss one still alive? (Score:1)
one down... (Score:2)
Now if only we could make the same progress with Miniluv, Minitruth, and Miniplenty.
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Sorry, France is still vigorously defending the Common Agricultural Policy.
That's too bad (Score:4, Interesting)
The Minitel systemi is slow, old and expensive, but it has one great redeeming quality that the internet doesn't have: it's basically a huge star-shaped network, with the only agent between the dumb terminal (the Minitel proper) and the service provider being France Telecom: FT operates the trunk lines, the last-mile lines (it's just the POTS) and the servers that manage the whole thing. So, what's great about that is, unless someone is tapping your phone line, or some well-placed FT employee is a thieve, there is no way in hell anybody can steal your personal information. As a result, it's an extremely secure way of doing business "online". What's more, you don't need a computer, Windows, anti-virus software and whatnot, so it's great for technophobic people.
But I should say "was", since it is no more. Too bad...
HTTPS + Wii? (Score:2)
So what makes it so much better than visiting HTTPS sites on Internet Channel for Wii?
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I'm going to take a guess here, and assume that you've never used/seen a Mintel? Forgive me if that is not the case.
A minitel, unlike a Wii, has a keyboard. The Wiis software keyboard is as easy to use as a regular one, especially if you have to type a lot in -- it's fine for entering URLs, but I wouldn't want to use it for writing email, for example (yes, I have a Wii). A mintel also does not require a seperate screen,
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So, what's great about that is, unless someone is tapping your phone line, or some well-placed FT employee is a thieve, there is no way in hell anybody can steal your personal information.
Nope. The fact that FT operates the whole network only means that man-in-the-middle and sniffing attacks are no longer possible. Insofar as "doing business online" still involves you giving personal information to the third party (which is to say, FT does not operate in the merchant credit services capacity) then that t
too bad (Score:2, Informative)
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Many early webpages were plaintext, with only the occasional picture like a company logo or a nice-looking bullet.
Indeed, this was almost a requirement in the 14k4 modem days. It can still be done today, but apparently it does not sell in most markets.
Wrong ! (Score:5, Informative)
the reason for its popularity was billing users (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying that minitel doesn't have security mechanisms, I'm just saying that its popularity was due to economics.
Personally, I'm glad it is gone. I thought it was slow and clunky a decade ago, and I can't imagine that I would like it any more today.
- doug
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OFQ (Score:1, Offtopic)
C: Hello.
UT:: Bonjour!
H: See? Utter gibberish!
The death of Videotex? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comments above suggest that this article suggests a more than may actually be occurring. Still, it does appear that we are beginning to approach the end of Videotex and the elaborate graphics compression schemes that supported it. That can only be a good thing. All Videotex was created with the tools that enforced the mindsets of what, today, we would usually think of as badly designed web pages. The "features" of these pages:
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All Videotex was created with the tools that enforced the mindsets of what, today, we would usually think of as badly designed web pages. The "features" of these pages:
As compared to the "features" of flash pages:
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Nonresizable web pages with fixed fonts drive me crazy too. I was never a fan of flash until recently. The web desktop programs, most of which are done with flash (and several of which appear to be resizable) are converting me. My son, who programs UI's in meta-languages that produce flash UI's based on XML and code, has been a big fan for a while, but there are lots of badly done web pages whose worst feature is their flash requirements. That's particularly true for people with slow connections.
My pe
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All video displays of those days have a fixed arrangement of so-many-characters by so-many-lines, where the cells of the matrix are displayed using a "character generator", a lookup table that displays a certain character in a pixel grid within the character cell. This reduces the amount of memory, and also reduces the amount of
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That predates the development and release of the personal computers that you compare it with (which appeared end 1977 and in 1978).
Of course, larger scale rollout of videotex and teletext happened only by 1980, and by then it would have been done differently when development only had started at that date. A lot happened in those six years.
In those days we were all focussed on gettin
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3615 Finis (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember when Minitel was first introduced, and, in 1982, it was pretty hot stuff. Lots of people were playing with videotex in the 1980s (remember Telidon [ieee.org]?), but only France seemed to find a use for it. I knew people who used Prestel [wikipedia.org], but all they ever seemed to do with it was send pr0n.
I have used Minitel when visiting France for its original purpose, putting the phone book online. It worked.
...laura
Not as dumb as all that (Score:3, Insightful)
Minitel was slow and basic, but, in terms of domestic market penetration, it achieved in the 80s what the Internet didn't achieve for another 20 years. By giving out the terminals for free (initially, and then asking a peppercorn rent), and by convincing customers it was a telephone, not a computer, France Telecom got the entire nation using text-based comms, for everything from directory enquiries through weather forecasts and company reports to porn (I never did work out how that worked on a teletext screen, but there you are...) There are still plenty of Minitel users who have never taken to any of the PC or set-tpo box alternatives because they seem more complicated.
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I think it was mainly sex chat and apparently it worked quite well: it was one big source of revenue for FT and in France at the time, all the ads billboards were covered with nearly nude women doing advertisement for 'Minitel rose' (so many that it was a little annoying).
There was also some text porn and a few ASCII arts of course..
Some people spent *a lot* of money on these 'sex site'.
The End?? (Score:5, Informative)
Hold on, the end of the Minitel? Nothing less? Because when I look at the main Minitel [minitel.fr] page there is no such thing. Plus it seems to me that if the Minitel network would stop working I would have heard about it quite a lot from my family, on TV and I'm sure we would have returned the terminal to France Télécom, not to mention that the Slashdot article would have been edited.
It rather seems that the news is rather about some particular online (on the web) service, not the end of the network itselves.
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not to mention that the Slashdot article would have been edited.
I obviously meant the Wikipedia article
One of those stories that drives you crazy (Score:2)
"In the 1990's, US West, (now Qwest), launched a Minitel service offering in its service areas called "CommunityLink." The service, a joint venture of US West and France Télécom, utilized Minitel-emulator software for the IBM PC, Commodore 64, Apple II and other computers. The service was fairly short-lived,"
I _knew_ I saw a kiosk selling Minitel in Mall of America. I knew it. I was aware of Minitel so it caught my attention enough to look at the screen and have the guy exchange s
Minitel Surrenders? (Score:2)