How long have you been on the net?
Kathy Gallagher
back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
KG
Matt Austern
I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84. I
don't remember when I started posting; Google doesn't show anything
before '88, and they say I didn't start posting to rec.arts.sf-lovers
until '90, but they acknowledge that their archives for the '80s are
incomplete.
Loren MacGregor
I was on Compuserve for a couple of years, dropped off, and came
back; I can't find links to the earlier incarnation, but I was
73404.3666 for some time, with posts around 1984 or so. I -think-
I've been "on line" (though not on the internet; I wasn't one of the
at bang boys) for somewhat over 20 years, including some time
running a BBS.
I've been loren.macgregor@sfnet, lm...@tatertot.com,
lmac...@amazing.cinenet.net, loren.m...@disneysoft.com,
lmac...@pacwest.com, lmac...@qwest.com, lmac...@metacentre.com
... do you sense a trend?
Oh, and churn...@metacentre.com, as well as lmac...@efn.org and
churn...@att.net. Um, lmacg...@bofa.com, lmacg...@cadix.com,
lmacg...@brass.com. I'm missing another dozen or so.
-- LJM
--
*****************************************
* Loren J MacGregor - The Churn Works *
* churn...@att.net - (541) 338-0675 *
* Multi-Platform Systems Administration *
*****************************************
Keith F. Lynch
> For fun I googled all of my old email addresses I could remember but
> could only find posts going back to 1998.
You can Google by name, not just by email address.
If you were GALLA...@SLUVCA.SLU.EDU, your first message was in 1994,
according to Google. If not, but if you were Kathy.G...@stpaul.gov,
your first message was in 1995.
> I'm sure I've been on the net longer than that. I can find
> references to my name going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on
> the net since Compuserve opened up its portals.
That would have been 1991 for newsgroups, 1989 for email.
The Google newsgroup archives are far from complete. And of course
they only list newsgroup messages. In the early days mailing lists
were more important. The earliest messages Google lists for me
were all messages I posted to mailing lists that were gatewayed to
newsgroups.
--
Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable. Please do not send me
HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.
Dan Goodman
news:v6aveb...@corp.supernews.com:
1992, a bit before Election Day. The first mailing list I joined was
filled with posts pointing out that one of the major party Presidential
candidates was the Antichrist, and the other was the Archangel Michael.
There was some disagreement on which was which.
David Goldfarb
dorms, in 1987. A year and a quarter later, in 1988, I got an account
of my own that I could use to read and post. A year later than that,
in 1989, I got the account I've been using since.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|From the fortune cookie file:
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |"You have an ability to sense and know
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | higher truth."
David Goldfarb
Matt Austern <aus...@well.com> wrote:
>I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84.
False modesty does not become you, my friend. The above is rather
like saying that you're "relatively short" at 6' 8" because some
people are even taller.
My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
were like before September of that year.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"To summarize the summary of the summary:
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | People are a problem."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Douglas Adams
John R. Owens
Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
(shudder) mainframe. Over the next couple of years, was slightly on IRC
from time to time on a friend's account at another university. Finally
got my own computer (beyond the old Apple ][c, for which I never had a
modem) in '96, and got to start really exploring the 'net, in a variety of
ways since then.
Incidentally, some of that "variety" involved working for your ISP,
Voyager.net. I was in business services and DSL, though, so remember:
Don't blame me!
--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Something far worse than the Shadows: reporters.
--Captain John Sheridan
David Bilek
>In article <dil65qy...@mattlinux.localdomain>,
>Matt Austern <aus...@well.com> wrote:
>>I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84.
>
>False modesty does not become you, my friend. The above is rather
>like saying that you're "relatively short" at 6' 8" because some
>people are even taller.
>
>My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>were like before September of that year.
How about: If you recognize who the various alien usenet posters in
_A Fire Upon the Deep_ are, you're an old timer?
-David
Michael Kube-McDowell
Depends on which "here" counts in your mind. It's been long enough
that I don't -remember- all my old email addresses, though.
I've been online since February 1984. My first service was Control
Data's PLATO, accessed with a 300bps Hayes Smartmodem. I didn't stay
there long. I spent the next few years in dial-up BBSland, including
visits to various Fido echoes.
I was on Compuserve by May 1987 (I don't know the exact date, because
the first few months I had a freeflag)--in time for Bill and Brenda
Sutton's Virtual Hot Tub parties, anyway. Names I remember from the
early days: Bob Matthews, Rita McConville, Kurt Siegel, Barb Podell,
Cheryl Peterson, Pat Mullet, Kathryn Beth Willig, Barb Delaplace, Alex
von Thorn, Kevin Ring, Marin Paul, Chuq von Rospach, Marte Brengle,
Marie Parsons, Kevin Standlee, Dupa T. Parrot...Mike Resnick, Joel
Rosenberg, and Martha Soukup were around, too.
I was on Genie by June 1989 (same caveat). Neil Harris, Bill Warren,
Ray Aldridge, Jennifer Roberson, Pete Granzeau, Terry O'Brien, Patrick
Nielsen Hayden, David Dvorkin, Peter Heck, Janice Eisen, Susan
Shwartz, Ken Estes, Robin Bailey, Jim Audlin, Barb Denz, John
DeChancie, Beth Meacham...Genie was a happening place in the
Star*Services flat-rate days.
I started getting Usenet access through various gateways sometime
around 1992, though it was intermittent until CompuServe came on
board. I first surfed the Web on June 29, 1995 (with Spry Mosaic).
Version 1.0 of my own web page went live on July 4 at greyware.com
(now sff.net). Wrote my first check to an ISP in September 1996.
First post to RASFF or RASFW...I don't know.
--
Michael Kube-McDowell, author and packrat
New novel VECTORS (Bantam Spectra) now in stores.
Preview at http://www.sff.net/people/K-Mac/Vectors.htm
Karen Lofstrom
> My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
> in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
> were like before September of that year.
Oh my, I've finally graduated from newbie to oldbie :)
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't see, Mr Speaker, why we should put ourselves out of the way to
serve posterity. What has posterity ever done for us?" -- Boyle Roche
Lucy Kemnitzer
<kat...@voyager.net> wrote:
About ten years now. When my first born turned fourteen, we got him
this email account to go with the newly Frankensteined 386 computer he
and I built from bits and bobs (handmedown pieces, leftovers,
discounted obsolete bits and presents).
We were on cruzio's bbs to be online at first, and aside from the lack
of pictures, it was wonderful. Eventually cruzio scrapped its old bbs
and we were drawn kicking and screaming into the modern world. Then
the nice fellow decided he was tired of busy signals and taking turns
to go online and he insisted on getting DSL.
But I've only ever been me and I've only ever used this account. I
keep saying I'm going to activate one of the other addresses we can
have, so that my son and I won't keep having to send each other the
mail we pick up (so we like forward it to ourselves, see? And then if
we're lucky the other one picks it up first? But sometimes I'm not
lucky and I forward the k\i\d\ young man his mail multiple times
before he finally picks it up). But I never get around to it.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Ulrika O'Brien
says...
I started reading usenet when I was working at Caltech. Put it at '86
or '87 or so. Mike Godwin was still in law school in Austin, back then.
Chuq von Rospach (sp?) was a regular on rec.arts.sf-lovers, along with a
smallish coterie of regulars who are mostly all gone now. I didn't post
then, because I didn't know vi and learning it to post to Usenet didn't
seem like a good use of my time at work.
I went off to finish my BA and came back and discovered RASFF on my own
net connection in 1995.
--
Oh, to have a clever .sig file
Ulrika O'Brien, still without portfolio
David Goldfarb
Ulrika O'Brien <uaob...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I didn't post
>then, because I didn't know vi and learning it to post to Usenet didn't
>seem like a good use of my time at work.
Heh. I remember when I first got on, I *tried* to post and it put
me in vi. I hadn't the faintest idea what was going on, stuff seemed
to happen at random, and I couldn't even figure out how to exit back
to the newsreader. The first couple of times were lateish and I was
the only one around; I resorted to switching off the terminal.
A bit later on I did learn to use vi and have used it since (I'm using
it right now, in fact).
--
David Goldfarb <*>| "When the cat calls at midnight, your shorts
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | will ignite."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- J. Michael Straczynski
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>On Tue, 04 Mar 2003 23:32:04 -0500, Kathy Gallagher wrote:
>
>> My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
>> back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
>> I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
>> I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
>> going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
>> opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
>
> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
>to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
>(shudder) mainframe.
What's (shudder)-worthy about VMS? I'm posting from a VMS system now.
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
===============================================================================
Tom Galloway
David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In article <dil65qy...@mattlinux.localdomain>,
>Matt Austern <aus...@well.com> wrote:
>>I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84.
>False modesty does not become you, my friend. The above is rather
>like saying that you're "relatively short" at 6' 8" because some
>people are even taller.
Reminds me of an Arisia back around '93 or so. They had a panel on this
new Internet thing that people were starting to hear about. Judy (Yduj)
Anderson and I decided to go watch from the back, since both of us
got on the 'net circa 1980 and we didn't recognize anyone on the panel's
name.
Introduction time. First person "Well, I guess I'm a newbie. I've only
be on the net since last year." Second and third persons intro, neither
getting back into the '80s with their net experience. Final person says
something like "I guess I'm the veteran. I've been on since 1988".
Judy and I turn to each other, and sotto voce, say in unison "Newbie!".
tyg t...@panix.com
--
Currently looking for high-level tech writer/course developer/trainer work.
Extensive writing/training experience as well as software engineering skills.
Willing to do either contract or permanent work, as well as relocate.
Tom Galloway
Well, with the exception of a sort of technicality if Ben Yalow pops in,
I'm probably the oldest Usenet participant due to having been a Computer
Science undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill when Usenet was invented there and
at Duke. Or, as I like to say, if Usenet had registration numbers, mine
would have two digits. And my earliest posts predate anything in Google's
archives (which, per Henry Spencer who contributed most of the early stuff,
get progressively less complete of non-tech/cs/science groups as the
decade went on and traffic picked up so that storage costs increased. So
we ended up with a really complete set of posts about, say, the Amiga's
technical details, but much less of interest on the sociological side).
The technicality is that Ben was consulted by Steve Bellovin, one of the
Usenet creators, about Usenet beforehand. Although I'm not sure when he
was actually able to post to it; certainly after BITNet circa 1981, but
I'm not sure if he could beforehand.
The other folk hereabout who I know beat me out on ARPANet access would
be Keith Lynch and Seth Breidbart.
As a side note, one of my favorite retorts was when I got into a mild
flame war via email with someone a few years ago. He ended one message
with something like "And *I* have an account at Duke University, where
Usenet originated". My reply was something like "That's nice. I'd probably
be more impressed if I hadn't had an account at UNC-Chapel Hill, the
other place Usenet originated, *when it actually originated* instead of
15 years later..."
Irina Rempt
> Introduction time. First person "Well, I guess I'm a newbie. I've only
> be on the net since last year." Second and third persons intro,
> neither getting back into the '80s with their net experience. Final
> person says something like "I guess I'm the veteran. I've been on
> since 1988".
>
> Judy and I turn to each other, and sotto voce, say in unison
> "Newbie!".
You're making me feel like a newbie. We got an account when the first
Dutch ISP started making accounts available for private people, around
1992, and I've been active on mailing lists (and conceivably Usenet)
since early 1993. My only claim to non-newbity is that I was in
*before* the fateful September.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/foundobjects/ Latest: 02-Mar-2003
Mike Van Pelt
>back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
>I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998.
At the risk of revealing my net.geezerhood, I found
one of mine from July, 1984.
----
From: Mike Van Pelt (mik...@proper.UUCP)
Subject: Re: Continuity error in STAR WARS - the ANSWER
Newsgroups: net.movies.sw
Date: 1984-07-14 10:59:32 PST
In the "A New Hope", just before Han Solo dropped out of hyperspace into
the Alderaan (sp?) system, there was a scene in the window similar to the
"wormhole" in "Star Trek: The Motion Picure".
--
The only meaningful memorial, the only one that will really count, will be when there are streets, tunnels, living and working quarters named after each of those astronauts--and those who will yet die in this effort--in permanently occupied stations on the moon, on Mars, in the asteroid belt, and beyond.
-- Bruce F. Webster
David G. Bell
gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU "David Goldfarb" wrote:
> In article <dil65qy...@mattlinux.localdomain>,
> Matt Austern <aus...@well.com> wrote:
> >I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84.
>
> False modesty does not become you, my friend. The above is rather
> like saying that you're "relatively short" at 6' 8" because some
> people are even taller.
>
> My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
> in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
> were like before September of that year.
I was reading Usenet at the time of the Green Card spam., but still
pretty new.
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"Let me get this straight. You're the KGB's core AI, but you're afraid
of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?"
From "Lobsters" by Charles Stross.
Kip Williams
> In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>, David Goldfarb wrote:
>
>>My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>>in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>>were like before September of that year.
>
> Oh my, I've finally graduated from newbie to oldbie :)
The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
--
--Kip (Williams) ...at members.cox.net/kipw
I was on CompuServe in '85, but I didn't stick with it.
Arwel Parry
<kat...@voyager.net> writes
Oh, I'm a youngster round here. I got my first 14.4K modem for my Atari
in January 1994 (and a 40MB hard drive, wow!) and spent most of the year
playing around on Fidonet (and wincing every time a phone bill landed on
the mat -- there were no local numbers for me at the time, and one
quarter I remember the bill was £360!). I got a Compuserve account a
couple of months later, and my Demon account appeared in November '94
and I've been posting from this address ever since. I was around for the
arrival of the Green Card Spam (sigh).
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
Dave Weingart
Too long.
Really, it's just a hobby, though. I can log off any time I want.
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK Sixteen Tones (16th UK Filkcon)
mailto:phyd...@liii.com Feb 6-8,2004, Lincoln, England
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux
ICQ 57055207 More info coming soon
James Nicoll
my posts from abck then have been lost.
--
"Repress the urge to sprout wings or self-ignite!...This man's an
Episcopalian!...They have definite views."
Pibgorn Oct 31/02
Kathy Gallagher
"Michael Kube-McDowell" <KMac_...@yahoo.com.null> wrote in message
news:Bfh9a.320671$iG3.40278@sccrnsc02...
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2003 23:32:04 -0500, "Kathy Gallagher"
> <kat...@voyager.net> wrote:
> I was on Compuserve by May 1987 (I don't know the exact date, because
> the first few months I had a freeflag)--in time for Bill and Brenda
> Sutton's Virtual Hot Tub parties, anyway.
I did the virtual hot tub on Compuserve. I stayed there until AOL bought
it.
.
>
> I was on Genie by June 1989 (same caveat). ...Genie was a happening place
in the
> Star*Services flat-rate days.
>
I did Genie until it was sold.
KG
Julia Jones
<db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
>On Wednesday, in article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>
> gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU "David Goldfarb" wrote:
>
>> In article <dil65qy...@mattlinux.localdomain>,
>> Matt Austern <aus...@well.com> wrote:
>> >I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84.
>>
>> False modesty does not become you, my friend. The above is rather
>> like saying that you're "relatively short" at 6' 8" because some
>> people are even taller.
>>
>> My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>> in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>> were like before September of that year.
>
>I was reading Usenet at the time of the Green Card spam., but still
>pretty new.
>
far as UK netdom is concerned - I am pre-FreeServe.
I do occasionally find that I am accorded some sort of respect because I
a) had a Demon account
b) *kept* it when FreeServe arrived.
That won't mean a lot to the non-UK contingent, but a rough translation
is that FreeServe had a somewhat similar effect to AOL.
--
Julia Jones
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California; do not send
unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org
address.
Timothy McDaniel
1982-06-14. I posted in net.movies about the recent novelization of
Star Trek II by Vonda McIntyre. (Maybe acouple of you can deduce from
the headers that I used the University of Illinois's notes system for
UNIX, rather than readnews or some such. Notes was the earliest
schism in readers.) If Diane Duane is reading, I'd like to humbly
retract the first sentence of my first point:
(1) [not a movie point] Professional sf writers should never be
allowed to touch a Star Trek script/story. Vonda Macintire
(spelling?) did this book, and didn't, in my opinion, do a
good job.
Actually, having seen a lot of SF dogs' breakfasts out there,
I'd like to retract it in general.
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
Bill Higgins
> Depends on which "here" counts in your mind. It's been long enough
> that I don't -remember- all my old email addresses, though.
>
> I've been online since February 1984. My first service was Control
> Data's PLATO, accessed with a 300bps Hayes Smartmodem. I didn't stay
> there long. I spent the next few years in dial-up BBSland, including
> visits to various Fido echoes.
>
> I was on Compuserve by May 1987
[...]
> I was on Genie by June 1989
[...]
Ah, yes. In those days there were many "cyberspaces," and during this
period the academic/government/industrial institutions were pretty well
gatewayed, so that Bitnet people could post to certain Arpanet
mailing lists, or postings mailed to SF-LOVERS on Arpanet would show up in
net.sf-lovers or, later, rec.arts.sf-lovers.
I was sometimes irritated by friends who touted the joys of CMC
(computer-mediated communication, as it was known in those days) because
they had discovered the puddle of GENIE and were splashing around in it,
because they were ignorant of the mighty ocean of Usenet. Which I
considered The Real Net. (Still do, though the Bloggiverse has swallowed
many of our best correspondents.)
One by one, the big commercial services got a clue about the Internet, and
opened gateways to it, so their cyberspaces became debalkanized. (Google
says the first Usenet posting from an AOL account was in May 1992.)
> I started getting Usenet access through various gateways sometime
> around 1992, though it was intermittent until CompuServe came on
> board. I first surfed the Web on June 29, 1995 (with Spry Mosaic).
> Version 1.0 of my own web page went live on July 4 at greyware.com
> (now sff.net). Wrote my first check to an ISP in September 1996.
>
> First post to RASFF or RASFW...I don't know.
Googling on your given name has a lot of noise, because so many people
insist on discussing those pesky novels you keep writing.
Googling on "k-mac," I learn that you posted to rasfw, rasff, and
rec.arts.sf.starwars (in separate messages, no crossposting) on 6 July 1996,
using your Compuserve address (7374...@compuserve.com), to announce the
aforementioned Web site.
--
Bill Higgins | ASTRONOMY:
Fermi National | The early science of the sky.
Accelerator Laboratory | ASTROLOGY:
Internet: | How it was paid for.
hig...@fnal.gov | --Michael Rivero
Loren MacGregor
> In article <pan.2003.03.05....@ghiapet.homeip.net>, "John R. Owens" <jowen...@ghiapet.homeip.net> writes:
>
>> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
>>to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
>>(shudder) mainframe.
>
> What's (shudder)-worthy about VMS? I'm posting from a VMS system now.
I liked working on them when I was at BofA, but haven't been near
one (to my knowledge) since. I think I may have finally forgotten
how to configure 320 and 420 terminals, too.
-- LJM
--
*****************************************
* Loren J MacGregor - The Churn Works *
* churn...@att.net - (541) 338-0675 *
* Multi-Platform Systems Administration *
*****************************************
Loren MacGregor
>
<snip>
>
> I was on Compuserve by May 1987 (I don't know the exact date, because
> the first few months I had a freeflag)--in time for Bill and Brenda
> Sutton's Virtual Hot Tub parties, anyway. Names I remember from the
> early days: Bob Matthews, Rita McConville, Kurt Siegel, Barb Podell,
> Cheryl Peterson, Pat Mullet, Kathryn Beth Willig, Barb Delaplace, Alex
> von Thorn, Kevin Ring, Marin Paul, Chuq von Rospach, Marte Brengle,
> Marie Parsons, Kevin Standlee, Dupa T. Parrot...Mike Resnick, Joel
> Rosenberg, and Martha Soukup were around, too.
Good heavens. I remember all those names, but I don't recall that I
ever ran into you in that period. Interesting! A couple of folks
had me talked into doing story critiques, which I did for a bit
until time intervened.
Loren MacGregor
> In article <MPG.18cf42b18...@news.earthlink.net>,
> Ulrika O'Brien <uaob...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>I didn't post
>>then, because I didn't know vi and learning it to post to Usenet didn't
>>seem like a good use of my time at work.
>
> Heh. I remember when I first got on, I *tried* to post and it put
> me in vi. I hadn't the faintest idea what was going on, stuff seemed
> to happen at random, and I couldn't even figure out how to exit back
> to the newsreader. The first couple of times were lateish and I was
> the only one around; I resorted to switching off the terminal.
>
> A bit later on I did learn to use vi and have used it since (I'm using
> it right now, in fact).
Hmm. I didn't know it was vi; I just tried commands that had worked
in other programs (:H, /help, --help, /? and so on) until I hit on
one that would give me basic information. I'm not sure I ever have
learned it well, but I use it regularly. Emacs is still the monster
in the closet when the lights are off, though.
Loren MacGregor
In retrospect, it might help if I dig into the vasty deeps of memory
and point out that I recall Vonda complaining, at the time she got
the contract for the book, that they wouldn't tell her the ending at
first for fear she'd let it slip to the news media or something, so
that some significant portion of the book was completed before she
knew how it was going to end. This probably affected the writing
somwehat.
I liked "The Entropy Effect" quite a lot when it came out, but
haven't re-read it. It's still got the errata sheet Vonda sent me,
correcting some little points in the book like the fact that one
character changes sexes back and forth, something that had not, as
it happens, been true in her original manuscript.
Charlie Stross
as <t...@panix.com> declared:
> Reminds me of an Arisia back around '93 or so. They had a panel on this
> new Internet thing that people were starting to hear about. Judy (Yduj)
> Anderson and I decided to go watch from the back, since both of us
> got on the 'net circa 1980 and we didn't recognize anyone on the panel's
> name.
I was on a panel along the same lines at the Glasgow worldcon in '95.
Turned out that I was the newbie, having only been on the net since
'89 (although having first seen it in '86). I was the newbie by over
a decade, too. The oldbie on the panel was one of the original team
from BBN who worked on the first IMP ...
-- Charlie
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<kat...@voyager.net> wrote:
>I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
>opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
The same with me. That is, I can't find references to the address I
had when I got online.
It was first in 1993, after Croatia got its own TLD. I was first
mucking about in local groups. Then I got into alt.fan.pratchett and
RASFW. I think I recall I intended to go to the RASFW party at
Intersection in Glasgow, but didn't. Sometime after that, I started
frequenting this group.
vlatko
--
http://www.niribanimeso.org/eng/
http://www.michaelswanwick.com/
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
David G. Bell
<vPyj1$X0pjZ...@jajones.demon.co.uk>
jaj...@suespammers.org "Julia Jones" wrote:
> In message <20030305.08...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk>, David G. Bell
> <db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
> >On Wednesday, in article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>
> > gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU "David Goldfarb" wrote:
> >
> >> In article <dil65qy...@mattlinux.localdomain>,
> >> Matt Austern <aus...@well.com> wrote:
> >> >I'm a relative newcomer: I started reading Netnews in '83 or '84.
> >>
> >> False modesty does not become you, my friend. The above is rather
> >> like saying that you're "relatively short" at 6' 8" because some
> >> people are even taller.
> >>
> >> My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
> >> in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
> >> were like before September of that year.
> >
> >I was reading Usenet at the time of the Green Card spam., but still
> >pretty new.
> >
> 1997 for me. Newbie, but before another great dividing line, at least as
> far as UK netdom is concerned - I am pre-FreeServe.
>
> I do occasionally find that I am accorded some sort of respect because I
> a) had a Demon account
> b) *kept* it when FreeServe arrived.
>
> That won't mean a lot to the non-UK contingent, but a rough translation
> is that FreeServe had a somewhat similar effect to AOL.
I got the Green Card Spam through a BBS that was gatewaying to Usenet.
Back before I joined Demon, I went through a sequence of 3 BBS systems,
one after another, the first two of which closed when the Sysops had
problems with their wives.
Serious problems, like waiting until the sysop went on a business trip,
and then selling the furniture and going home to mother.
Demon users who complain about a GNSNAFU don't know how lucky they are.
They were also on a non-Fidonet BBS system which has some peculiar
newsgroup analogues. And I confess to playing a small part in making
one of these _very_ peculiar, with the help of Bruce Grant. I think we
had about half the BBS users lurking to see what happened next.
Karen Lofstrom
> The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
As I sit here in my nightshirt, reading Usenet rather than doing my
statistics and Java homework ... clearly a Don't-Bee.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"There is a lot of U.S. history here." -- my mother
Nate Edel
> My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
I first got on usenet sometime in early 1993 or possibly even late 1992,
although I know longer remember the ID I first used ('twas via a Fido/USENET
gateway). I got more direct access to USENET a little bit latter, around
may or so, or possibly a little earlier. The first posting of mine I can
find is from June of that year, on my mostly-read-don't-post account (it was
a university VM/CMS account in one of my parents' name)
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=93167.235913CKEQC%40CUNYVM.BITNET
but I had been reading earlier, at least as of early May, via my account on
another site. This posting is from another buddy of mine; I can't remember
if he found cdreams.com or I did, but we were both using that BBS within a
day or two of each other:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=49.101.102.0NEAD1E4%40cdreams.com
*shakes head* high school juniors. Though in the intervening decade, I've
probably grown up less than I should have.
Nate
Michael Kube-McDowell
wrote:
>Michael Kube-McDowell wrote:
>>
><snip>
>>
>> I was on Compuserve by May 1987 (I don't know the exact date, because
>> the first few months I had a freeflag)--in time for Bill and Brenda
>> Sutton's Virtual Hot Tub parties, anyway. Names I remember from the
>> early days: Bob Matthews, Rita McConville, Kurt Siegel, Barb Podell,
>> Cheryl Peterson, Pat Mullet, Kathryn Beth Willig, Barb Delaplace, Alex
>> von Thorn, Kevin Ring, Marin Paul, Chuq von Rospach, Marte Brengle,
>> Marie Parsons, Kevin Standlee, Dupa T. Parrot...Mike Resnick, Joel
>> Rosenberg, and Martha Soukup were around, too.
>
>Good heavens. I remember all those names, but I don't recall that I
>ever ran into you in that period. Interesting! A couple of folks
>had me talked into doing story critiques, which I did for a bit
>until time intervened.
I sometimes wonder where everyone went. I know that a couple of the
old regulars shuffled off this mortal coil, and a few have a presence
here or on SFF Net, but most of the rest seem to have disappeared from
CompuServe's SF groups (and, later, Genie's) and not resurfaced
anywhere that I might expect them to.
Loren J. MacGregor 73404,3666
loren.m...@sfnet.com
You and I exchanged some messages (behavior and biology being one hot
topic), but that was later on--1993-94.
Michael
--
Michael Kube-McDowell, author and packrat
New novel VECTORS (Bantam Spectra) now in stores.
Preview at http://www.sff.net/people/K-Mac/Vectors.htm
Richard Kennaway
> I was reading Usenet at the time of the Green Card spam., but still
> pretty new.
I remember a time when there was no spam.
-- Richard Kennaway
John R. Owens
> Karen Lofstrom wrote:
>> In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>, David Goldfarb wrote:
>>
>>>My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere in
>>>early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things were like
>>>before September of that year.
>>
>> Oh my, I've finally graduated from newbie to oldbie :)
>
> The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
Or a half-a-bee? Wait, her name's neither Eric nor Erica.
--
John R. Owens http://www.ghiapet.homeip.net/
Londo Mollari: It is good to have friends, is it not, Mr. Garibaldi? Even
if maybe only for a little while.
Michael Garibaldi: Even if only for a little while.
Bill Higgins
> My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
I don't think anyone actually cares how long I've been on the Net.
--
___ O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/
/ / - ~ -~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
/__// \ (_) (_) / | \
| | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
\ /
- - Internet: hig...@fnal.gov
~ New! Improved! Now with THREE great neutrino flavors!
Beth Friedman
>My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
>back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
>I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
>I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
>going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
>opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
I've been on the Net since DD-B turned Terraboard from a Fidonet BBS
to a UNIX-based BBS with access to both Usenet and Fidonet groups.
According to DejaGoogle, my first post to rassef was on 12 July 1994,
on the subject of ghosting, and my first Usenet post was on 22 May
1994, about Steven Brust's books.
Then there was a few years' hiatus, after DD-B closed down Terraboard.
I signed up with Wavefront.com (later acquired by Visi.com) in 1997,
and I've been mouthing off ever since.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Arthur D. Hlavaty
>Karen Lofstrom wrote:
>> In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>, David Goldfarb wrote:
>>
>>>My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>>>in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>>>were like before September of that year.
>>
>> Oh my, I've finally graduated from newbie to oldbie :)
>
>The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
Doesn't that have something to do with Sartre, Camus, and Frank
Sinatra?
--
Arthur D.Hlavaty hla...@panix.com
Church of the SuperGenius in Wile E. we trust
E-zine available on request
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Sigh indeed. Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be. I first read
SF-LOVERS as textfiles on a Fidonet bbs. (Using a 300 bps modem and
a vic-20 for which I had handtyped a terminal program, and got a
friend to solder up an rs232 conversion module)
I couldn't possibly tell you what year of the early 80's that was.
Even after I started reading Usenet, for a long time I only had
read privileges. And when in the mid 80's I finally got to write
my first Immortal Posts, the propagation-lag to Finland was something
perverse. Most of the time when I got a post to which I would have
wanted to reply, the appropriate response (by somebody else) had
reached me already before the original message.
Unaccountably I too dropped out totally in the mid 90's and have
only been back for a few months now. So I totally identify with
Kathy Gallagher's situation.
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (AIM name "sir iso root")
To respond by Email, please remove "this".
Tom Galloway
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <t...@panix.com> declared:
>> Reminds me of an Arisia back around '93 or so. They had a panel on this
>> new Internet thing that people were starting to hear about. Judy (Yduj)
>Turned out that I was the newbie, having only been on the net since
>'89 (although having first seen it in '86). I was the newbie by over
>a decade, too. The oldbie on the panel was one of the original team
>from BBN who worked on the first IMP ...
I'm not sure, but I think I was on that panel. Faulty memory is due to
1) having been on a fair number of Internet panels in those years and
2) my main memory of Glasgow panels being having to yell to be heard
beyond 3 feet away (or, as the unofficial bid slogan for Glasgow in 2005
went "Once more...with ceilings!"; the non-huge-event panels were in
rooms with no ceilings within multiple tens of feet, and thus had
terrible acoustics).
tyg t...@panix.com
--
Currently looking for high-level tech writer/course developer/trainer work.
Extensive writing/training experience as well as software engineering skills.
Willing to do either contract or permanent work, as well as relocate.
Kip Williams
> On Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:14:09 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>Karen Lofstrom wrote:
>>
>>>In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>, David Goldfarb wrote:
>>>
>>>>My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>>>>in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>>>>were like before September of that year.
>>>
>>>Oh my, I've finally graduated from newbie to oldbie :)
>>
>>The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
>
> Doesn't that have something to do with Sartre, Camus, and Frank
> Sinatra?
I kant say for sure. I was too jung at the time.
Maybe if you were to hume a few bars.
--
--Kip (Williams) ...at members.cox.net/kipw
"Why, what a splendid trifle, young man! You and your friends may
travel for free!" "Cor!" "Hooray for Tommy!" --Tommy and his Trifle
Jane Wagner
about right -- some crossover between BITNET and Usenet, but I don't
remember precisely when. For many years I only had news access
through my work account, which means I posted a lot to work-related
groups (computers, database programming, etc.), and only occasionally
to the "fun" groups. I was a regular reader and infrequent poster
well before the Great SF Newsgroup Split, whenever that was.
Jane Wagner
replace nospamwanted with wagner_jane in address
----
A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help. (Norman Maclean, _Young Men and Fire_)
Big Bird
David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
< My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
< in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
< were like before September of that year.
What happened in September '93?
Mark Geary
--
"Build high for happiness."
Nate Edel
> In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
> < My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
> < in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
> < were like before September of that year.
>
> What happened in September '93?
It never ended.
Arwel Parry
<ar...@dircon.co.uk> writes
...and when every email you received was at least potentially
interesting and relevant. Sigh. A la recherche du temps perdu, indeed!
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
Danny Low
>My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
>back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
>I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
>I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
>going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
>opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
1984. An easy to remember date.
Danny
Don't question authority. What makes you think they
know anything?
Keith F. Lynch
> Googling on your given name has a lot of noise, because so many
> people insist on discussing those pesky novels you keep writing.
You can put his name in the "author" field of advanced group search
(http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search) to see just
the messages written by him, and not messages written by others
mentioning him.
When I do that, the earliest message I find is Jul 6, 1995, in this
very newsgroup.
--
Keith F. Lynch - k...@keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/
I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but
unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable. Please do not send me
HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.
Keith F. Lynch
> I was on a panel along the same lines at the Glasgow worldcon in '95.
> Turned out that I was the newbie, having only been on the net since
> '89 (although having first seen it in '86). I was the newbie by over
> a decade, too. The oldbie on the panel was one of the original team
> from BBN who worked on the first IMP ...
That would be two decades, as the first IMP went online in '69.
Mark Atwood
> >
> >I remember a time when there was no spam.
>
> ...and when every email you received was at least potentially
> interesting and relevant. Sigh. A la recherche du temps perdu, indeed!
I remember that as well.
Which is why the barrage of shit that hits my inbox with every refresh
keeps making me wish it was possible to make a career out of hunting
down spammers and beating them to death with a tire iron.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
David Dyer-Bennet
> My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
I had some messages in the SF-Lovers mailing list in 1981 or 1982, and
started participating on usenet groups a couple of years later. I've
been in and out since then, depending on employment access, for a
while, until I started gating them into my Fidonet BBS system, and
then became a news admin, and then things progressed to the point
where *everybody* has access.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info
David Dyer-Bennet
> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
> to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
> (shudder) mainframe.
When did Vaxen become "mainframes"? Sheesh. Vaxen were the little
toy systems.
--
dd-b, DEC Large Computer Group (MRO1-3), 1981-1985
Keith F. Lynch
> I remember a time when there was no spam.
So do I. Before 1982, when the first known online chain letter was
sent. Spam didn't start to become a significant problem until 1994,
however. And didn't exceed my regular email in volume until 1996.
David Dyer-Bennet
> In message <v6aveb...@corp.supernews.com>, Kathy Gallagher
> <kat...@voyager.net> writes
> >My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> >back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> >I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> >I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> >going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> >opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
>
> Oh, I'm a youngster round here. I got my first 14.4K modem for my
> Atari in January 1994 (and a 40MB hard drive, wow!) and spent most of
> the year playing around on Fidonet (and wincing every time a phone
> bill landed on the mat -- there were no local numbers for me at the
> time, and one quarter I remember the bill was £360!). I got a
> Compuserve account a couple of months later, and my Demon account
> appeared in November '94 and I've been posting from this address ever
> since. I was around for the arrival of the Green Card Spam (sigh).
I do have fond memories of Fidonet. I ran 1:282/341 in Minneapolis
from 1986 until maybe 1995, and moderated the SF echo for a good chunk
of that time. I got into fidonet because it was the closest to Usenet
I could do on my own (and later started carrying usenet groups on my
BBS, when I got enough connections to get a partial feed).
Beth Friedman
<Pine.SGI.4.31.0303051...@fsgi01.fnal.gov>, wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Kathy Gallagher wrote:
>
>> My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
>> back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
>> I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
>> I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
>> going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
>> opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
>
>I don't think anyone actually cares how long I've been on the Net.
It's no sillier than "Which hobbit are you?" type stuff. I have a
moderately low tolerance, but will sometimes play.
Given what I know of your background, I assume it was long ago.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Priscilla Ballou
when it first started up, and I was already established in another
newsgroup at that time. I didn't yet know I was part of fandom.
Priscilla
--
"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it."
--G.K. Chesterton
Keith F. Lynch
> I don't think anyone actually cares how long I've been on the Net.
I do.
Either you, Seth, or I is the oldbie in this thread, and I'm curious
which of us it is.
Tom Galloway
Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>Richard Kennaway <ar...@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I remember a time when there was no spam.
>So do I. Before 1982, when the first known online chain letter was sent.
Although, strictly speaking, that first chain letter wasn't spam but a
joke that got out of control...but was still useful.
As I recall, it started when some undergrad at MIT sent out a typical
"Break this chain and you'll have bad luck" fun, non-commercial, chain
letter to his/her friends as a lark, since no one had ever used email
for a chain letter. They thought it was fun, and sent it to their friends,
etc.
Now, the useful thing about this was that everyone kept *all* the headers in
each forward (in fact, I recall later messages having add-ons at the top of
the form "OK, this is silly, but get a load of all the headers!"). So around
iteration 10 or so of the ones any single person got, you could actually use
the message to construct what amounted to a nigh complete address book for
the ARPANet. And it wasn't just the rare undergrad who had access who was
sending it; I recall bigname researchers being on the From: lines.
Of course, the military, whose network it was at the time, were not pleased
by this frivolous use of the net and quickly established the "no chain
letters, ever" rule for the ARPANet, and MIT was told to yell at the
undergrad who'd started the whole thing to never even think of doing it
again.
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr wrote:
>> In article <pan.2003.03.05....@ghiapet.homeip.net>, "John R. Owens" <jowen...@ghiapet.homeip.net> writes:
>>
>>> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
>>>to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
>>>(shudder) mainframe.
>>
>
>I liked working on them when I was at BofA, but haven't been near
>one (to my knowledge) since. I think I may have finally forgotten
>how to configure 320 and 420 terminals, too.
Just push the SETUP button and work through the menus. (I usually think of
those as VT320, etc, terminals, so for a moment I thought you were talking
about IBM gear.)
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
===============================================================================
Seth Breidbart
>Introduction time. First person "Well, I guess I'm a newbie. I've only
>be on the net since last year." Second and third persons intro, neither
>getting back into the '80s with their net experience. Final person says
>something like "I guess I'm the veteran. I've been on since 1988".
>
>Judy and I turn to each other, and sotto voce, say in unison "Newbie!".
>
>tyg t...@panix.com
I seem to recall using that same comment to kill a stupid flamewar
between you and Joel Furr. (BTDTGTTS) (LOTS)
sethb@bbn
Seth Breidbart
Big Bird <ge...@acm.org> wrote:
>In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
>David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>< My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>< in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>< were like before September of that year.
>
>What happened in September '93?
Almost a decade's worth of stuff, so far.
Seth
Michael Kube-McDowell
wrote:
>Bill Higgins <hig...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>> Googling on your given name has a lot of noise, because so many
>> people insist on discussing those pesky novels you keep writing.
>
>You can put his name in the "author" field of advanced group search
>(http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search) to see just
>the messages written by him, and not messages written by others
>mentioning him.
>
>When I do that, the earliest message I find is Jul 6, 1995, in this
>very newsgroup.
There could be earlier stuff, from Fidonet. I have some logged
messages going back to January 1991, conversing with the likes of John
Stith, Cally Soukup, Joel, LWE, John DeChancie, Kay Shapero, Bill
Caefer, Steve Smith, Pamela Dean (yep, originating from Terraboard),
Diane Duane...but my logs aren't complete enough to tell me which
messages went where.
--
Michael Kube-McDowell - author of VECTORS, now in stores
Keith F. Lynch
> Heh. I remember when I first got on, I *tried* to post and it put
> me in vi.
Ugh. That would put me off posting for life.
> ... stuff seemed to happen at random,
It does.
> and I couldn't even figure out how to exit back to the newsreader.
I know just one vi command. Escape colon q bang. That's vi for "get
me out of here!".
> The first couple of times were lateish and I was the only one
> around; I resorted to switching off the terminal.
What a cruel thing to do to whoever the next user was.
Loren MacGregor
> "John R. Owens" <jowen...@ghiapet.homeip.net> writes:
>
>
>> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
>>to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
>>(shudder) mainframe.
>
> When did Vaxen become "mainframes"? Sheesh. Vaxen were the little
> toy systems.
Well, at work we referred to them as the "minimainframes." Next to
them we had the HP-3000 (which was so big it had to be dismantled
piece by piece to be removed, because they'd installed it and then
built the cool room around it) -- and the big machines were in the
other room. They wouldn't let me play with those, darn it.
-- LJM
--
*****************************************
* Loren J MacGregor - The Churn Works *
* churn...@att.net - (541) 338-0675 *
* Multi-Platform Systems Administration *
*****************************************
Loren MacGregor
> In article <3E6646E2...@att.net>, Loren MacGregor <churn...@att.net> writes:
>
>>Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr wrote:
>>
>>>In article <pan.2003.03.05....@ghiapet.homeip.net>, "John R. Owens" <jowen...@ghiapet.homeip.net> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
>>>>to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
>>>>(shudder) mainframe.
>>>
>>>What's (shudder)-worthy about VMS? I'm posting from a VMS system now.
>>
>>I liked working on them when I was at BofA, but haven't been near
>>one (to my knowledge) since. I think I may have finally forgotten
>>how to configure 320 and 420 terminals, too.
>
> Just push the SETUP button and work through the menus. (I usually think of
> those as VT320, etc, terminals, so for a moment I thought you were talking
> about IBM gear.)
No, if I'd meant IBM I would have said 3290 or something. Actually,
my brain went blank as I was typing that. Of course, I know how to
configure them; I just don't -want- to know how to configure them.
(Although they'd be really good in inventory control.)
David W. James
gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) wrote:
> My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
> in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
> were like before September of that year.
You mean it isn't before/after the Great Renaming any more?
Vnend
before, barely
--
David W. James vnend(at)sff.net
"So, it _is_ a monster!" "Hey, just a little one."
Matt Austern
> In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) wrote:
> > My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
> > in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
> > were like before September of that year.
>
> You mean it isn't before/after the Great Renaming any more?
Yep, that'd be my definition. I'm pretty sure I never posted anything
before the Great Renaming, which is why I classify myself as a
newcomer.
Matt Austern
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Kathy Gallagher wrote:
>
> > My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> > back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> > I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> > I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> > going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> > opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
>
> I don't think anyone actually cares how long I've been on the Net.
>
> --
> ___ O~~* /_) ' / / /_/ ' , , ' ,_ _ \|/
> / / - ~ -~~~~~~~~/_) / / / / / / (_) (_) / / / _\~~~~~~~~~~~zap!
> /__// \ (_) (_) / | \
> | | Bill Higgins Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
> \ /
> - - Internet: hig...@fnal.gov
> ~ New! Improved! Now with THREE great neutrino flavors!
Should I interpret your .sig to mean that you were on the net before
the discovery of the tau neutrino?
Bjørn Vermo
>
> I got the Green Card Spam through a BBS that was gatewaying to Usenet.
> Back before I joined Demon, I went through a sequence of 3 BBS systems,
> one after another, the first two of which closed when the Sysops had
> problems with their wives.
>
Ah, those were the days!
Some people were still busy flaming those newbies who relayed from Fidonet
hosts and used the wrong kind of software.
Come to think of it, an important dividing line is the appearance of spam.
I think I'd say those who were reading News before spam got to be a problem
are bona fide oldies.
Of course, I do not have my old archives available. They are on a couple of
old 40MB disk drives, and I must rebuild a historical computer to use them.
Does anybody here recall what and when the first commercial spam was?
My first exposure to News was on the old Unix Software Exchange net. We got
a monthly tape because dial-up UUCP connections abroad were too
slow/expensive, and I was in a commercial company so we were not allowed to
use ARPANET. We would copy our own additions to the contributed library and
follow-ups to articles to the tape and send it on to the next member. I do
not remember exactly when this was, it was just before Delphi started up.
Somebody from England was invited by Veritas to present the international
UNIX community and help start a chapter in Norway, and most of the major IT
companies in the country were present.
Before that, I had to make do with unofficial mail exchanges through
friends at the university in Oslo. My old boss Rolf Nordhagen got them
connected to ARPANET in 1973, but that was after I had left the university
for a career in the commercial world.
Other fond memories are of reading Newsbytes over an X.25 connection to GTE
Telenet and the early days of Delphi. And from some time around 1980 we had
the mail system developed by Volvo for IBM mainframes, but that only linked
some big companies in the Scandinavian countries.
--
Bjørn Vermo
Bjørn Vermo
> In message <1frd652.1t7tgtiljw5tsN%ar...@dircon.co.uk>, Richard Kennaway
> <ar...@dircon.co.uk> writes
>> "David G. Bell" <db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> I was reading Usenet at the time of the Green Card spam., but still
>>> pretty new.
>>
>> I remember a time when there was no spam.
>
> ...and when every email you received was at least potentially interesting
> and relevant. Sigh. A la recherche du temps perdu, indeed!
>
That's my cup of tea...
--
Bjørn Vermo
Bjørn Vermo
> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>> "John R. Owens" <jowen...@ghiapet.homeip.net> writes:
>>
>>
>>> Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much
>>> what
>>> to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
>>> (shudder) mainframe.
>>
>> When did Vaxen become "mainframes"? Sheesh. Vaxen were the little
>> toy systems.
>
> Well, at work we referred to them as the "minimainframes." Next to them
> we had the HP-3000 (which was so big it had to be dismantled piece by
> piece to be removed, because they'd installed it and then built the cool
> room around it) -- and the big machines were in the other room. They
> wouldn't let me play with those, darn it.
>
HP-3000 was never meant to be moved without being separated into the units
they were made from. They came as a series of 19" racks which wre joined
together during installation. The HP-3000 is one of my favourite
minicomuters, and a big one was every bit as powerful as a VAX. Beside, in
my religion they had a superior operating system.
--
Bjørn Vermo
David Goldfarb
David W. James <un...@aol.comDAMNSPAM> wrote:
>In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) wrote:
>> My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>> in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>> were like before September of that year.
>
>You mean it isn't before/after the Great Renaming any more?
Since I postdate the Great Renaming myself, I don't know if it was
the kind of phase change in the net's atmosphere that happened in
1993 -- but I am inclined to doubt it. I also am reluctant to adopt
a a definition of "old-timer" that excludes me. :-) Actually, I'd
tend to think that you're practically an old-timer if you even know
what the Great Renaming *was*, let alone having to have posted before
it happened.
I do recall that when I first started reading, the helpful rn program,
seeing that I had never posted before, suggested to me that I go
read mod.announce.newusers. I dutifully attempted to do so....
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"Feeling smug about one's opinions is the very
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | lifeblood of the Net."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Dawn Friedman
David Goldfarb
>> < My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>> < in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>> < were like before September of that year.
>>
>
It gave me a good laugh to see two separate people chiming in with the
right answer here. Seeing as that has happened, I'll be the party pooper
and give the straight answer.
Before the early '90s, access to Usenet tended to be through computer
companies, the military, and universities. One result was that
things would tend to be quieter in the summer; and every September,
new students would get their first access and come on and be abrasive
and teenage, causing flame wars and other stirrings-up that would die
down in a few months.
Except that in 1993, they never did seem to die down. During the election
of 1992, Al Gore talked up the net a lot. (Remember the phrase
"Information Superhighway"?) Around then, as well, AOL started doing
its first big general-public marketing push. People started first
coming on every month; September stopped being part of a noticeable
cycle. Things never have died down to being as quiet and polite
as they were in the summer of '93.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"...I'm a member of the Centre Extremist party.
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | We have very moderate views, but if you don't
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | agree with them, we'll kill you."
David Goldfarb
Keith F. Lynch <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
[first encounter with vi]
>> The first couple of times were lateish and I was the only one
>> around; I resorted to switching off the terminal.
>
>What a cruel thing to do to whoever the next user was.
Bite me, Keith. These were ethernetted PC's; switching them off
rebooted them.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"You are trapped in that bright moment where you
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | learned your doom."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Samuel R. Delany, _City of a Thousand Suns_
David Goldfarb
Jane Wagner <nospam...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I was a regular reader and infrequent poster
>well before the Great SF Newsgroup Split, whenever that was.
Most of 1991. See for instance
<http://www.feep.net/~roth/geek-humor/net/Usenet-Olympics-1991>
...or just google on "Usenet Olympics".
--
David Goldfarb <*>| "Oh no, foolish Jed, you have let out
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | the verbal gerbils!"
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- _Sandman_ #11
Charlie Stross
as <k...@KeithLynch.net> declared:
> Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
>> I was on a panel along the same lines at the Glasgow worldcon in '95.
>> Turned out that I was the newbie, having only been on the net since
>> '89 (although having first seen it in '86). I was the newbie by over
>> a decade, too. The oldbie on the panel was one of the original team
>> from BBN who worked on the first IMP ...
>
> That would be two decades, as the first IMP went online in '69.
Correct. Clue: there were five people on the panel. I was the newbie
by a decade. I didn't say anything about the other panelists other
than that there was someone who'd implicitly been there at least two
decades longer.
Keith, you keep making these basic logical errors when analysing my
posts. Is it something about the way I write?
-- Charlie
Eloise Mason (nee Beltz-Decker)
> My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
I'm unapologetically a child of the Endless September (though an
early one, who got civilized by online peers fairly quickly); I first got
net access as a freshman in college, in fall 1993.
It's a very sad statement that this makes me an 'oldbie' in the
view of many people on the net nowadays, if only because I know just how
much past me the history really does stretch.
--
Eloise Mason (nee Beltz-Decker)
elo...@fishdragon.com - website: http://www.fishdragon.com/
"Usenet is like trapping angry libertarian bees
in a typewriter factory." - pred...@livejournal.com
Loren MacGregor
Yep -- but, by the time the system was dismantled (the company gave
it away to the first person who volunteered to take it apart), there
were no experts in the assembly left in the building.
I learned a lot from filching the manuals and staying after hours to
go into the woods with the system. Also from the Digital
"Introduction to Computer Systems" manuals, which were thrown away
unopened (and still in shrink-wrap) when the office closed down.
They're on the bottom shelf of my home office now, but they're no
longer shrink-wrapped.
Beth Friedman
<oprllx9i...@news.eunet.no>, wrote:
>David G. Bell <db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> I got the Green Card Spam through a BBS that was gatewaying to Usenet.
>> Back before I joined Demon, I went through a sequence of 3 BBS systems,
>> one after another, the first two of which closed when the Sysops had
>> problems with their wives.
>>
>Ah, those were the days!
>Some people were still busy flaming those newbies who relayed from Fidonet
>hosts and used the wrong kind of software.
When was the Green Card Spam? It was just hitting, either the first
or second time I got Usenet access. I even have a Green Card Lawyers
T-shirt, though admittedly that was a present.
I forgot, my very first @ address was actually one of those Fidonet
relays. I was running a point system off of Scott Raun's Fire Opal,
so it would have been 282/[whatever]/5.
I was at what was probably one of the last @ parties, but I can't
recall if it was before or after the Permanent September Crisis --
maybe at Chicon in 1991? Other possibilities were ConFrancisco and
Conadian.
I got flamed about my line breaks at least once, then started putting
them in manually.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Patrick Connors
> Arwel Parry <ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > >
> > >I remember a time when there was no spam.
> >
> > ...and when every email you received was at least potentially
> > interesting and relevant. Sigh. A la recherche du temps perdu, indeed!
>
>
> Which is why the barrage of shit that hits my inbox with every refresh
> keeps making me wish it was possible to make a career out of hunting
> down spammers and beating them to death with a tire iron.
Well, such a career -is- possible, though many governments will disapprove.
- Patrick Connors, just saying
Chris Malme
news:20030305.19...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk:
> I got the Green Card Spam through a BBS that was gatewaying to Usenet.
> Back before I joined Demon, I went through a sequence of 3 BBS systems,
> one after another, the first two of which closed when the Sysops had
> problems with their wives.
I think my FIDO BBS's first internet feed went that way, back when I was
chris...@portofc.org. Then later fido region 2:441 got it's own
dedicated and sub-domain-routed feed, thanks to Peter Burnett and Ralph
Davey, and I became mins...@filklore.seuk.com. I think that would have
been around June 1994, and I started gating alt.music.filk to the BBS, as
well as the existing FILK_UK echo I moderated back then. I got my own
personal demon account in Feb the following year.
--
Chris
Minstrel's Hall of Filk - http://www.filklore.com
Filklore Music Store - http://www.filklore.co.uk
Patrick Connors
> On Tue, 4 Mar 2003 23:32:04 -0500, "Kathy Gallagher"
> <kat...@voyager.net> wrote:
>
> >My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> >back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> >I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> >I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> >going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> >opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
> >
> >
>
> Depends on which "here" counts in your mind. It's been long enough
> that I don't -remember- all my old email addresses, though.
>
> I've been online since February 1984. My first service was Control
> Data's PLATO, accessed with a 300bps Hayes Smartmodem. I didn't stay
> there long. I spent the next few years in dial-up BBSland, including
> visits to various Fido echoes.
>
> I was on Compuserve by May 1987 (I don't know the exact date, because
> the first few months I had a freeflag)--in time for Bill and Brenda
> Sutton's Virtual Hot Tub parties, anyway. Names I remember from the
> early days: Bob Matthews, Rita McConville, Kurt Siegel, Barb Podell,
> Cheryl Peterson, Pat Mullet, Kathryn Beth Willig, Barb Delaplace, Alex
> von Thorn, Kevin Ring, Marin Paul, Chuq von Rospach, Marte Brengle,
> Marie Parsons, Kevin Standlee, Dupa T. Parrot...Mike Resnick, Joel
> Rosenberg, and Martha Soukup were around, too.
I at least lurked in that crowd as well. In fact I hosted the
Compuserve party at the '87 NASFiC. All on the built-in modem on a
TRS-80 Model 100 laptop (all 4 lines of it and no message saving
software, either - I was -broke- back then).
Spent lots of times on BBSes before that via dumb terminals. I
remember fondly the amazement we had that we could fill up a 10
megabyte hard drive so quickly.
I joined FidoNet not long after I got the Amiga, that would've been
Christmas '87. And I had an account on Bix for a long time. When Bix
added internet access, p...@bix.com became my first internet address.
No wait: my second; I did some internet from the compuserve account.
As for spam: the first spam I remember was some twit who was trying to
get message 100,000 on Compuserve's SF forum - he was uploading long
lists of
federal judges or some damn thing. He didn't get message 100,000
either - a regular who logged in live got the message without trying
to.
By the way, NPR's Morning Edition today had a story about internet
spam, complete with Monty Python Vikings. Nice surreal way to wake up.
I fully expect to hear an indignant letter from Hormel next week when
they read the mail.
- Patrick Connors, old fart in training
Karen Lofstrom
>>I was a regular reader and infrequent poster
>>well before the Great SF Newsgroup Split, whenever that was.
>
> Most of 1991. See for instance
But wasn't there something going on before that? My first glimpse into
Usenet was in the summer of 1989, when my daughter turned three. I was on
a trip to the mainland and my brother, who was a UUCP leaf node, let me
read Usenet. I opened up the sf-lovers group (I think that was it) and
there was Kent Paul Dolan flaming away at anyone who disagreed with him re
reorganizing the hierarchy. He made such a foul impression on me that I
stayed away from Usenet until 1992, I think it was. But I had GEnie until
then.
I've had people dispute this timing, but I'm sure it was 1989 and I'm
sure it was KPD napalming the group.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member #462 of the Lumber Cartel (TINLC)
Bill Higgins
> Arwel Parry <ar...@cartref.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > >
> > >I remember a time when there was no spam.
> >
> > ...and when every email you received was at least potentially
> > interesting and relevant. Sigh. A la recherche du temps perdu, indeed!
>
> I remember that as well.
>
> Which is why the barrage of shit that hits my inbox with every refresh
> keeps making me wish it was possible to make a career out of hunting
> down spammers and beating them to death with a tire iron.
Successful TV series have been built on flimsier premises.
Hmm...
*Spamkiller!*
*Man against Spam*
*Have Crowbar, Will Travel*
--
"...at the end of the 19th century. There's a | Bill Higgins
dirigible, see? And on this dirigible are all | Fermilab
these people of mixed races, and they go from | Internet:
place to place each week, places no one | hig...@fnal.gov
has discovered yet." -- Gene Roddenberry, 1963 | Bitnet:
(quoted by Christopher Knopf) | Sic transit gloria mundi
Bill Higgins
> Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr wrote:
> > In article <3E6646E2...@att.net>, Loren MacGregor <churn...@att.net> writes:
> >>
> >>I liked working on them when I was at BofA, but haven't been near
> >>one (to my knowledge) since. I think I may have finally forgotten
> >>how to configure 320 and 420 terminals, too.
> >
> > Just push the SETUP button and work through the menus. (I usually think of
> > those as VT320, etc, terminals, so for a moment I thought you were talking
> > about IBM gear.)
>
> No, if I'd meant IBM I would have said 3290 or something. Actually,
> my brain went blank as I was typing that. Of course, I know how to
> configure them; I just don't -want- to know how to configure them.
> (Although they'd be really good in inventory control.)
Shopping at Ikea, the gigantic bargain-furniture store, lately, I was amused
to see that their "cash registers" were VT320s, and messages on their
screens were obviously from a VMS system.
--
Bill Higgins | "Get the dinosaurs in, Martha,
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory | they're predicting comets."
Internet: hig...@fnal.gov | --Dr. Barry D. Gehm
Andrew Plotkin
> Various people wrote:
>>>I was a regular reader and infrequent poster
>>>well before the Great SF Newsgroup Split, whenever that was.
>>
>> Most of 1991. See for instance
> But wasn't there something going on before that? My first glimpse into
> Usenet was in the summer of 1989, when my daughter turned three. I was on
> a trip to the mainland and my brother, who was a UUCP leaf node, let me
> read Usenet. I opened up the sf-lovers group (I think that was it) and
> there was Kent Paul Dolan flaming away at anyone who disagreed with him re
> reorganizing the hierarchy.
Hrm. The Great Renaming was 1987. I arrived a year later, and the
newsgroup was rec.arts.sf-lovers. Whether in 1989 there was a post-hoc
argument going on about the Renaming, or a preliminary argument about
the sf-lovers split, I can't remember.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Bill Higgins
> Bill Higgins <hig...@fnal.gov> wrote:
> > I don't think anyone actually cares how long I've been on the Net.
>
> I do.
>
> Either you, Seth, or I is the oldbie in this thread, and I'm curious
> which of us it is.
I'm not in the running. DDB has been contributing longer than me.
But thanks for asking.
Aware of Arpanet: Seventies sometime. Jealous of those who had access.
Read Usenet net.* groups: 1983, through chinet BBS in Chicago, at 300 baud/
Got acess to wide-area network: 1984, Bitnet and SPAN/Hepnet (DECnet).
Found gateways to services on other networks.
First recorded Usenet posting: October 1986, sci.space, gatewayed from
Arpanet Space Digest.
First contribution to SF-LOVERS Digest: 1987.
Printed e-mail address on business card: summer 1987.
First flamboyant sigfile: Tue, 26 Jul 88 14:00 CDT, diagram of Tevatron
ring, Switchyard, and Meson, Neutrino, and Proton experimental areas.
Improved, more flamboyant Tevatron "zap!" sig: Fri, 14 Dec 90 01:30 CDT.
First citation in alt.fan.warlord: 7 November 1991.
Discover "-- " is recommended signature separator: 6 November 2001. Oops.
Retire from beam-jockeyhood to work in Radiation Safety: 1992.
First use of Mosaic and Lynx: 1993.
First personal Web site: Haven't really gotten around to it yet.
Actual TCP/IP connection to Internet: Not sure, late Eighties sometime.
Missionary work to promote the glorious Internet:
1991-- created Net-heavy program track for World Science Fiction Convention.
Includes Cliff Stoll, Eric Raymond, Mike Godwin, Bruce Schneier, Steve
Jackson.
1991-- First to post Worldcon program schedule to Usenet.
1992-- Co-authored paper with Jon Leech on creating sci.space FAQ, delivered
at a "Space Education" session at International Astronautical Federation
conference. Urged educators and technical people to discover and use Net
resources.
--
______meson Bill Higgins
_-~
____________-~______neutrino Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
- - ~-_
/ \ ~----- proton Bitnet: [obsolete]
| |
\ / SPAN/Hepnet/Physnet: [obsolete]
- -
~ Internet: hig...@fnal.gov
Kathy Gallagher
"Bill Higgins" <hig...@fnal.gov> wrote in message
news:Pine.SGI.4.31.0303061...@fsgi01.fnal.gov...
Slightly offtopic. Did you see Jay and Silent Bob Fight Back, a Kevin Smith
movie? Posters are badmouthing the Jay and Silent Bob movie on the net.
With the money they earn from payment for use of their images in the film
they find, hunt down and beat the crap out of every poster who bad mouthed
them. Most posters are shown as geeky fanboys.
KG
Bill Higgins
> "John R. Owens" <jowen...@ghiapet.homeip.net> writes:
>
> > Since '91, off and on. Had college access in '91, didn't know much what
> > to do with it, sent a few e-mails and used the chat on the local VMS
> > (shudder) mainframe.
>
> When did Vaxen become "mainframes"? Sheesh. Vaxen were the little
> toy systems.
Vaxen stayed the same size. Other computers shrank.
(Yes, I have used DECstations, but play along with me here...)
--
"Excuse ME, Professor Brainiac, but | Bill Higgins
I WORKED in a nuclear power plant | Fermilab
for ten years-- and, uh, I think I know |
how a PROTON ACCELERATOR works!" | Internet:
--Homer Simpson, just before the accident | hig...@fnal.gov
Tom Galloway
Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>read Usenet. I opened up the sf-lovers group (I think that was it) and
>there was Kent Paul Dolan flaming away at anyone who disagreed with him re
>reorganizing the hierarchy. He made such a foul impression on me that I
I recall ending up on door guard duty at one of the last big @! net.fandom
Worldcon parties. While an open party, the discussion was sufficiently
geeky that most people who weren't yet on the net wouldn't be interested,
so there was a door guard who'd ask people they didn't recognize something
like "What's your address?". If they replied t...@mit-ai.edu or whatever,
"Come right in". If they replied "314 Maple Street, why do you want to
know", "This really isn't a party you'd find interesting, try the Worldcon
bid down the hall".
Someone decided that year this was horribly elitist, so they put on the
party board a fake email address to say when asked the question. When I
figured out what was going on, this being either just after or at the peak
of the sf hierarchy re-org, I changed the question/challenge to:
"Word association: Kent Paul Dolan..."
And let in anyone who gave a response indicating they understood why those
words were significant.
tyg t...@panix.com
--
Currently looking for high-level tech writer/course developer/trainer work.
Extensive writing/training experience as well as software engineering skills.
Willing to do either contract or permanent work, as well as relocate.
Avram Grumer
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> Which is why the barrage of shit that hits my inbox with every
> refresh keeps making me wish it was possible to make a career out of
> hunting down spammers and beating them to death with a tire iron.
Wasn't there an argument some time back about fantasies of violence?
Anyway, I don't remember if I've mentioned my own spammer revenge
fantasy. I track down the spammer, my minions and I hold him down while
we meticulously destroy his computer (piece by piece -- smash monitor,
crack open main box, hit every major chip on the motherboard with an
electric cattle prod, pry open the hard drive, physically scrape the
drive platters, etc.), shred his backup tapes, and so on.
On our way out, we leave a card with an address he can send mail to to
get him off our list.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
They that can give up your essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety are running the US Justice Department.
Mark Atwood
> In article <m3heah8...@khem.blackfedora.com>,
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > Which is why the barrage of shit that hits my inbox with every
> > refresh keeps making me wish it was possible to make a career out of
> > hunting down spammers and beating them to death with a tire iron.
>
> Wasn't there an argument some time back about fantasies of violence?
Mia culpa. I changed my mind.
> Anyway, I don't remember if I've mentioned my own spammer revenge
> fantasy. I track down the spammer, my minions and I hold him down while
> we meticulously destroy his computer (piece by piece -- smash monitor,
> crack open main box, hit every major chip on the motherboard with an
> electric cattle prod, pry open the hard drive, physically scrape the
> drive platters, etc.), shred his backup tapes, and so on.
The problem with that is that I don't think spammers care about their
computers. That interview with the professional spammer in the WSJ a
while back, it looked more like he cared more about his handpolished
hardwood floor then he cared about the tools of his trade.
If you want to hurt somebody, you have to hit them someplace they
consider important.
There are vanishing few people who don't consider having their
endoskelton remain unbroken to be critically important.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Lori Coulson
>
> > My curiosity has the better of me. I haven't been here for years, so I'm
> > back as a neo to the group. For fun I googled all of my old email addresses
> > I could remember but could only find posts going back to 1998. I'm sure
> > I've been on the net longer than that. I can find references to my name
> > going back to 96 or 97. I"m sure I've been on the net since Compuserve
> > opened up its portals. I can't find references to that name.
>
Hmm, Google shows my first post as March 3, 1995. That's when I got my
first work computer, and my boss encouraged me to join the Columbus
Freenet to get some practice on the machine. Up until that time I'd
had a word-processor.
So, I'm a real newbie!
Lori Coulson
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<hla...@panix.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:14:09 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>Karen Lofstrom wrote:
>>> In article <b445ej$15gk$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>, David Goldfarb wrote:
>>>
>>>>My own dividing line for "old-timer" vs. "newcomer" is somewhere
>>>>in early '93; the old-timers are those who remember what things
>>>>were like before September of that year.
>>>
>>> Oh my, I've finally graduated from newbie to oldbie :)
>>
>>The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
>
>Doesn't that have something to do with Sartre, Camus, and Frank
>Sinatra?
Nope. Sinatra, yes, but another member of the trio is Hamlet.
"To Be or Not to Be."
(?)
"Do-be, do-be, do-be, doo."
And that reminds me of the story of the three Jews who defined the
world. I think that the first was Jesus, who said "All is love", the
second was Marx who said "All is capital" and the third was Einstein
who said "All is relative." Corrections welcome.
vlatko
--
http://www.niribanimeso.org/eng/
http://www.michaelswanwick.com/
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
David Goldfarb
Beth Friedman <b...@wavefront.com> wrote:
>When was the Green Card Spam? It was just hitting, either the first
>or second time I got Usenet access. I even have a Green Card Lawyers
>T-shirt, though admittedly that was a present.
Google Groups says February 1994. I have one of the shirts, too.
>I was at what was probably one of the last @ parties, but I can't
>recall if it was before or after the Permanent September Crisis --
>maybe at Chicon in 1991? Other possibilities were ConFrancisco and
>Conadian.
There definitely was an @! party at ConFrancisco in 1993. I remember
Tom Galloway saying that it was likely the last one ever: that 1994
in Winnipeg and 1995 in Glasgow would likely have too *few* net-connected
people to be worth bothering; and 1996 in LA would have too *many*.
"The @! party will be the convention."
If memory serves me right, he was wrong -- there was an @! party at
LACon III, but yes, nearly the whole convention did qualify to attend.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"It is curious that a dog runs already
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | on the escalator."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Bella Abzug
David Goldfarb
Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>On Wed, 05 Mar 2003 16:59:22 -0500, Arthur D. Hlavaty
><hla...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:14:09 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@cox.net> wrote:
>>>The important thing is: are you a Do-Bee or a Don't-Bee?
>>
>>Doesn't that have something to do with Sartre, Camus, and Frank
>>Sinatra?
>
>Nope. Sinatra, yes, but another member of the trio is Hamlet.
>
>"To Be or Not to Be."
>
>(?)
>
>"Do-be, do-be, do-be, doo."
Slightly different version. The canonical version so far as I know
is Plato, Sartre, and Sinatra.
Plato: "To be is to do."
Sartre: "To do is to be."
Sinatra: "Dooby dooby doo."
--
David Goldfarb <*>|"Understanding is a three-edged sword."
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Babylon 5, "Deathwalker"