Folklore of the internet: let's get this going again
Joel K. Furr
jump-start and here's one such.
If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
complete list should have, what would you list?
The Internet Worm is one such; the Great ARMM! Massacre is another; the
Canter and Siegel spam is a third. What are some others?
If you can dredge up memories of great outbreaks of strangeness, please
post them here. One thing I noted was that the ones most often talked
about are fairly recent; perhaps there are some to be shared from
pre-USENET days? Memories, please.
Charles S Henkel
him money to help pay for college because he was having a hard time, what
with his BMW payments and all.
Ken Meltsner
wrote:
> If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
> to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
> complete list should have, what would you list?
There's always the great Chain Letter Epidemic, which started when an
email chain letter, circulating harmlessly within MIT, was forwarded out
into the real world, taking over disk spaces and crashing weak mailers....
I was in the first round of distribution, a peculiar distinction. A copy
with all the headers intact from years of distribution was more than ten
pages -- too bad I didn't save it.
Ken
David C. Brower
chernenko@kremvax. This demonstrated graphically the fragile nature
of news ids. (I may have this on hardcopy somewhere.)
B1FF.
The "stargate" copyright implosion of 1985 or 1986, which prompted
lots of people to put 'not for redistribution' copyrights in their
signatures.
The birth of nntp, and how it took over the world.
-dB
Matthias Neeracher
> I'd like to get this newsgroup going again; it needs an occasional
> jump-start and here's one such.
> If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
> to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
> complete list should have, what would you list?
The soc(?).religion.islam.ahmaddyia(?) jihad.
The newsgroup reorganizations conducted by Kent Paul Dolan (comp.sys.amiga.*
and I think the SF groups).
The time when Australia was first hooked up to alt.flame.
Remembering flame wars, I suddenly recalled that five years ago, I found
alt.flame quite amusing to read, with occasional outbursts of brilliance.
Nowadays, it seems to have deteriorated into uninspired exchanges of
profanity by posters never seen outside of a.f. Has anyone else noticed
this phenomenon, or is it just me getting older?
Matthias
Taki Kogoma
<39qobk$c...@news.duke.edu> in comp.society.folklore:
>If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
>to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
>complete list should have, what would you list?
Usenet/netnews:
The Great Renaming (1986) (Mass chaos and source of many still-existing
namespace arguments.)
*.aquaria (198?) (Reinforcement of the namespace arguments.)
The formation of alt.* (1989?) (Ongoing source of much net.weirdness.)
rec.arts.sf-lovers meltdown / 1991 Usenet Olympics (Summer-Fall 1991)
soc.religion.islam.ama(whatever) (1993)
(These two are largely responsible for the UVV becomming - de facto -
an integral part of the Newsgroup creation process.)
E. Larry Lidz
Joel K. Furr <jf...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
>to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
>complete list should have, what would you list?
Kibo.
(I still want to see a spam with "Kibo" in it.)
Melinda Shore
>As I remember it, alt.* was formed much closer to the time of the
>great renaming. Both happened before I fell of the net (which was
>late 80's and lasted a few years).
I think that this is correct. I was job-hopping at the time, so I can
place things to within about a year by where I was when they happened.
A couple of other things:
When nntp really started to catch on around 1987, or so, Erik Fair decided
to try to reduce the mailing list traffic across the NSF backbone by using
nntp to distribute them, which was the origin of the "inet" distribution.
"inet" newsgroups were not originally intended to appear as newsgroups,
per se.
Usenix loaned Rick Adams the money to start UUNET, which was not the first
wholly commercial site but was the first site whose purpose was to sell
feeds to other commercial sites.
Earlier than either of those (around 1985 or 1986 as I recall), AT&T
announced that it would no longer pass uucp mail along. That was the
origin of the "rule" that you can't get news unless you're willing to
carry mail.
Joel K. Furr
Huh? Can you explain? When was this, and how widespread were his
requests? I don't recall ever hearing of this.
--
Joel Furr(ian): Armenian crook/criminal/wacko. Big Kahuna of alt.fan.lemurs.
Moderator of alt.folklore.suburban and comp.society.folklore. Co-moderator of
alt.humor.best-of-usenet. King of alt.config. Purveyor of net.collectibles.
URL: http://www.duke.edu/~jfurr/index.html. Will create newsgroups for food.
James Kibo Parry
What, you've forgotten all about Roger Bryner's "Warning: This thread
has been invaded by known Kibologists" spam?
-- K.
More humor-impaired than
almost anyone else! Hi, Roger.
Eugene N. Miya
(David C. Brower) writes:
>The first great forgery: the April 1st 1984 message from
>chernenko@kremvax.
I still have a copy.
That was kremvax!chernenko in those days (routed thru kgbvax, courtesy of
nsavax and ciavax).
Fee fifo fum. I smell the blood of Joel Hanes in this group...... 8^)
Roland Hutchinson
>Do you remember BOB WEBBER (mostly in the news.* area), and his
>campaign for the creation of comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac (I think)?
Around here, we do:
/njin/u4/rhutchin 2% host bobwebber
bobwebber.rutgers.edu is a nickname for dziuxsolim.Rutgers.EDU
dziuxsolim.Rutgers.EDU has address 128.6.7.3
dziuxsolim.Rutgers.EDU has address 128.6.21.17
dziuxsolim.Rutgers.EDU mail is handled by dziuxsolim.Rutgers.EDU
(no extra points given for guessing where our news spool is kept)
Joel K. Furr
>The "stargate" copyright implosion of 1985 or 1986, which prompted
>lots of people to put 'not for redistribution' copyrights in their
>signatures.
Never heard of it. Can you provide more information?
Karl_Kl...@cs.cmu.edu
> >him money to help pay for college because he was having a hard time, what
> >with his BMW payments and all.
> Huh? Can you explain? When was this, and how widespread were his
> requests? I don't recall ever hearing of this.
Rob Noha <j...@portal.com> "spammed" (by today's terminology) much of
then-Usenet with a "send me $1 for my college education" scam.
It didn't take long for people living in his physical vicinity (Omaha,
Nebraska?) to look him up and determine that he was not exactly poor.
He caused quite a bit of net.bad.blood over "Portalettes" poor
netiquette, though they've long since weathered that.
Chris Gray
In article <39qobk$c...@news.duke.edu>, jf...@acpub.duke.edu (Joel K. Furr) writes:
> I'd like to get this newsgroup going again; it needs an occasional
> jump-start and here's one such.
> If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
> to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
> complete list should have, what would you list?
The newsgroup reorganizations conducted by Kent Paul Dolan (comp.sys.amiga.*
and I think the SF groups).
Hmm. I don't recall the amiga stuff being that much of a problem. Of course,
people STILL post to comp.sys.amiga.
How about Joel's continuing attempts to rmgroup the groups he has
replaced? :-) (Like rec.games.mud and alt.mud)
Doug Sewell
My vague recollection was that Stargate was a satellite usenet distributor,
and they charged healthy bucks for the service.
Initially they were distributing only moderated newsgroups. I don't know
if it went past that.
It sounds like first verse of the the "not for distribution on CD ROM" deal.
Jim Jewett
>If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
>to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
>complete list should have, what would you list?
I think that these two predate me, but I would like to know more, if
possible.
(1) What was mes@... (Mark Ethan Smith)
Its (Niether he nor she seems quite right when giving reasons for the
fame) fame derived from its insistence on being addressed as a male yet
considered a female, or some such. (Biologically, it was female, but it
was a radical ultra-feminist.) I think postings were from Berkeley and
later Ann Arbor.
I have never seen an actual post, and would like to. I would also like
to know if this person ever posted anything _other_ than "I am female,
but insist upon being addressed as male." For instance, did (s)he
participate in the sf newsgroups (mailing lists?) or the technical
groups, or would it not have really existed absent flames?
(2) Does anyone have the full story on Mark V. Shaney?
>From what I've heard, Mark was one of the most successful ELIZA-style
AI programs. They took a batch of soc.singles postings and created
a Markov chain. They then used this to construct new posts which
were posted under the name Mark V. Shaney. It had a little trouble
with grammar (especially maintaining tense) but there were apparently
quite a few posters who took it quite seriously. (I've also heard
it had a predilection for talking about fingernail clippings or
something equally odd, which could have been a quirk of the training
set amplified by positive feedback.)
Eventually, the ruse was revealed and a number of people were (supposedly)
quite upset.
So, does anyone know the facts? Who did this research, from where?
Was it published? Is the code available? How often did they reset
the probabilities for the state transitions? (Was it in fact subject
to positive feedback when people responded to it, and these responses
were added to the training set?) How much of the work was automated
and how much was due to human help? (See Jorn Barger's <jo...@mcs.com>
Racter-FAQ for one explanation of the importance of human intervention.)
Karl_Kl...@cs.cmu.edu
Detroit Direct Marketing, Inc <ddmi.com>, Tygra, Michigan.com, Rabbit Net,
virtual lawyers, threats of involving the FBI regarding "unauthorized
changes to [his] news system" due to a rmgroup war in alt.*, and so forth.
(1990ff.)
Mark Ethan Smith and her rabid ("Hey! You used a diminutive pronoun! I'll
sue!") perspectives on imaginary sexual harassment. (1988?)
B1FF and the "cowabunga" spam (May 1990).
Joel K. Furr
>How about Joel's continuing attempts to rmgroup the groups he has
>replaced? :-) (Like rec.games.mud and alt.mud)
I haven't replaced rec.games.mud and alt.mud. The rec.games.mud.*
reorganization of 1992 was the work of Scott Goehring, if memory serves.
My interest in stamping out the superseded rec.games.mud and alt.mud
groups is in cleaning things up, if even a little bit. It's peevesome to
wander past a superseded group and see people plaintively asking "Why
isn't anyone responding to my question?"
David C. Brower
Some known net.celebrity (whose name escapes me) had the bright idea of
putting a news feed in the vertical interval of some CATV superstation --
WTBS I believe. In conjunction with a relatively cheap decoder and some
small monthly fee, this could provide a continuous 9600 baud news feed.
At the time, this was fast enough to recirculate a full feed once an hour
or so! The problems were First, that stargate enterprises (or whatever
they were to be called) wanted to protect their revenue stream, and so
wanted to put a compilation copyright on the feed, and prohibit
redistribution. Second, they contemplated some form of moderation, which
led to the usual littany of censorship/libel debate. (See the current
lawsuit against Prodigy).
The copyright/no redistribution position got many people in a huff, and
started a craze of "copyright 19xx by me, no restriction on redistribution
allowed." signatures. After a short trial period, I think StarGate gave
up.
I suspect there were discussions/papers/announcements at some of the
Usenix conferences of the period. Someone who still has them might check
their archives and report back with the correct details.
The idea of sending data in the blanking of cable-video is still
interesting, but no-one has figured out what to put on it to make any
money. The data rate is low enough that it might not be worth the effort.
cheers,
-dB
--
Joel Furr(ian): "Armenian" crook/criminal/wacko. Big Kahuna of alt.fan.lemurs.
Moderator of alt.folklore.suburban and comp.society.folklore. Co-moderator of
alt.humor.best-of-usenet. King of alt.config. Enemy of Canter and Siegel.
Will create newsgroups for food. URL: http://www.duke.edu/~jfurr/index.html
Melinda Shore
>(1) What was mes@... (Mark Ethan Smith)
>Its (Niether he nor she seems quite right when giving reasons for the
>fame) fame derived from its insistence on being addressed as a male yet
>considered a female, or some such. (Biologically, it was female, but it
>was a radical ultra-feminist.) I think postings were from Berkeley and
>later Ann Arbor.
Mark said he was disabled and couldn't work. As far as I know, he's not a
technologist. MES is/was, oddly enough, a raving homophobe, and
occasionally came out with witticisms like "Suck AIDS and die."
Bruce Ediger
>If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
>to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
>complete list should have, what would you list?
I didn't ever see "BI...@BIT.NET" or "Classic BIFF", but BIFF would have
to be one, including the possibly apocryphal attribution of both BIFFs
really being an "insider cabal".
The "Serdar Argic" Entity, and his offspring, the "Arif Kiziltug" Entity,
the "Murat Kutan" Entity and "Yalin Ekici" Entity and the "Suha Artun"
Entity, May Allah Torture their little, mechanical souls.
The Kibozing phenomena: I believe this is oft overlooked. Well-known
kibozers include Kibo, Larry Wall, Peter Trei, and Roy Radow, of NAMBLA
fame. There are probably others.
Melvin Gladstone (mel@rotweiler.???.edu): He's been trolling since at
least the spring of 1990. Anyone remember his ultra-weird "Hi! Let's
Be Friends - I have No Email" postings?
John "_-_" Winston, who probably led to portal.com's fall from grace.
Clarence Thomas IV: the world still hasn't ended, Old Son.
Craig Dickson
|(1) What was mes@... (Mark Ethan Smith)
MES used the accounts era1987@<various>.berkeley.edu and rea...@well.com.
|Its (Niether he nor she seems quite right when giving reasons for the
|fame) fame derived from its insistence on being addressed as a male yet
|considered a female, or some such.
No, no, no. MES was physically female but insisted on being regarded as a
man. I don't know whether he really believed that this made men treat him
better than they would have otherwise, or if he was just playing semantic
games to try to get people to think about the question of how gender
identity relates to cultural status.
|I think postings were from Berkeley and later Ann Arbor.
MES, at last report, still lived in Berkeley, California. The Ann Arbor
aspect was probably via a telnet connection, I would guess.
Tom Lane
> In article <3ad9vg$5...@news.duke.edu> you wrote:
> : dbr...@us.oracle.com (David C. Brower) wrote:
> : >The "stargate" copyright implosion of 1985 or 1986, which prompted
> : >lots of people to put 'not for redistribution' copyrights in their
> : >signatures.
> My vague recollection was that Stargate was a satellite usenet distributor,
> and they charged healthy bucks for the service.
> It sounds like first verse of the the "not for distribution on CD ROM" deal.
Yah, that's pretty close. Back then, netnews was distributed by uucp,
ie, system-to-system dialup. The folks highest in the pecking order
were those who transferred news to the most systems over the longest
distances (and thus had the highest phone bills). The whole thing
survived on good neighborliness and ideals of community service.
Stargate was an outfit that proposed to distribute news via satellite
downlinks. And to *charge people for receiving news*. That was
heretical, to put it mildly. Some people started putting copyright
notices on their posts intended to prevent Stargate from transmitting
their articles. AFAIK Stargate never got up and running, but the
flamewars over it were numerous and long-lived.
>From the viewpoint of the Republicanized nineties, the whole argument
looks rather quaint. Too bad. I liked that morality better than the
Canter & Siegel one that seems to prevail now.
regards, tom lane
then newsadmin for CMU
Joel B Levin
If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
complete list should have, what would you list?
Do you remember BOB WEBBER (mostly in the news.* area), and his
Don Freeman
: > I'd like to get this newsgroup going again; it needs an occasional
: > jump-start and here's one such.
: > If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
: > to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
: > complete list should have, what would you list?
I'd like to see an examination of the Serdar Argic phenomenon. When it
first showed up, how extensive were its postings, different theories on
what caused it and its true form, etc...
-Don
D. Glenn Arthur Jr.
>The Great Renaming (1986) (Mass chaos and source of many still-existing
> namespace arguments.)
As I remember it, alt.* was formed much closer to the time of the
great renaming. Both happened before I fell of the net (which was
late 80's and lasted a few years).
Let's see ... the backbone, or at least major chunks of it, refused
to carry a drugs newsgroup. Other people complained that that was
censorship. The backbone cabal said, "Look, if you want to be the
ones to justify the spool space and modem time for a drugs newsgroup
to your bosses, _you_ make your _own_ backbone and distribute it."
Some folks did so, and alt.* was born. Eventually, between the
creation of major distribution pathways other than the backbone
and the increasing use of TCP/IP instead of UUCP, the backbone
became an outdated concept.
Also, if I remember right (I do hope someone is going to check me
on this) seismo was one of the sites refusing to carry the drugs
group, but shortly thereafter uunet was created and took over
seismo's connections (and sysadmin?) and being a commercial entity
existing to distribute news, had every reason _to_ carry all of alt.*.
So the first alt.* group was alt.drugs. The second, I think, was
alt.sex. _Very_ soon after alt.sex was newgrouped, someone created
alt.rock-and-roll. The first message in there was "Well, someone
had to do it." The second was "Huh? Why do we need this when we
already have rec.music.rock-and-roll?" The third was "Somebody
didn't get it, did they?" Those are paraphrases, not quotes.
Johanna Draper
>The "stargate" copyright implosion of 1985 or 1986, which prompted
>lots of people to put 'not for redistribution' copyrights in their
>signatures.
I haven't heard this one; could someone explain?
Johanna
Joel Hanes
> post them here.
The Brahms Gang, starring weemba and gws (and who else?)
Outstanding flamers of yore; Matthew Wiener and Gene Ward Smith
are still on the Net, and can still be seen torching the
occasional newbie in talk.origins and elsewhere.
Stefan Hartmann has been pushing videotapes and MPEG movies of
the Testatika Free Energy Machine for lo these many years.
Alexander Abian: not only a net.kook who wants to rewrite physics
_his_ way, but a real live Iowa State math professor too!
(I actually took senior-level statistics from him back in 1980.)
The kremvax hoax on April Fools' Day (Jargon File again)
HASA in the early days.
Herman Rubin, statistics prof at Purdue, who spent years and years
whining in the C language and computer architecture groups.
John McCarthy, one of the founders of AI, has been all over the Net
for years; mostly posts little knee-jerk "conservative" ideological
soundbites, sneering at environmentalists and liberals of all stripes.
The incomparable Patricia O'Tuama
B1FF WUZ REEL C00L, D00DZ!
(See The Jargon File for details).
Colonel G.L. Sicherman (The Colonel) used to show up,
post one witty and erudite response in a thread, and
disappear again for months or years. I haven't seen
him around in a long time. Signature quote on this post
is stolen from him. Is the Obfuscated C contest still
running each year in comp.lang.c? As I remember, The
Colonel was one of the early winners.
Joe Green, who has, at wide intervals, posted strange and
and beautiful stuff in rec.arts.books and rec.arts.poems --
the best writing I've seen on the net.
INFIDEL (John Wojdylo, I think)
on rec.arts.books; seemed to confuse the scatalogical
with wittiness. Jarringly crude for no apparent reason;
language and thought both so ugly it was weird.
Recent fave wierdos: Doctress Neutopia, walter alter.
Current most boring: Ted Holden, Dave Talbott, Ev Cochrane.
Some time ago, I replied to a similar question
on alt.horror.shub-internet, thusly:
==========================================
Newsgroups: alt.horror.shub-internet
Subject: Re: Other Gods
Date: 13 Apr 93 16:55:44 GMT
elas...@daimi.aau.dk (Lars R{der Clausen) writes:
> I have heard about the dreadful Shub-InterNet ...
> I have also heard ... about the digital evil NyarLathoTeX ...
>
> ... I feel the need for knowing
> the names of the other old net.elder.gods,
> that I may avoid their attempts at
> befouling this world.
Ask not! for the answer to such a question darkens full day;
and in the byways and forgotten corners of the Net lurks
the doom of the clueless, and of the newbie.
Rouse not the net.gods, at your peril!
For I have seen victims sacrificed to the Disdainful One,
weemba@brahms, wailing and rending their egos,
heaping fuel on the very flames that burned them.
And I was there when the Colonel, laying about
him with quotes and steely irony, did smite the
host and retire, to await the millenium before
again emerging from his lair; some call him,
therefore, the Sicherman.
Add to these the Foul One, ted@grebyn, who in these
latter days seeks to disguise himself as news@fedfil:
the Fountain of UnTruth, the Master of Evasion. And
Parry, known as Kibo, who attends to all those who
call on him. Spafford too, and mash@mips, and
the departed one that mortals knew only as BIFF;
fearful indeed shall be the day of his returning, D00D.
Yet some among the highest are wise and
fair-spoken -- among these, henry@utzoo has
imparted his wisdom in the form of Commandments,
these written in a terse and weakly-typed language; and
the holy monk jik@athena, who endlessly repeats the Net
Testament, ceaselesly changing and always the same.
Some are incomprehensible - who can understand the utterances
of the Nobuyo, Eugene of NAS, the net.god of granite
and of the high places of the West, who speaks to men
always from the Rock of Ages, yet feeling words left out?
Who can appease the insatiable hunger of Rubin, the
quarrelsome one of Purdue, who demands always a new
language in which to cast his vile statistical spells?
O, the net.gods are numberless, and their name is
Legion, and all faceless, all merely aspects of the
duality of one and zero, and yet alive, omnipresent,
their email addresses a rumor of dread and flammage.
Yet even the mighty among them,
yea, even the terrible Shub-Internet,
blench and turn aside at yet another Ayn Rand thread.
> Can anyone help me?
Alas, it is too late.
Gene Ward Smith
: In article <39qobk$c...@news.duke.edu>,
: Joel K. Furr <jf...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
: >If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
: >to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
: >complete list should have, what would you list?
: I think that these two predate me, but I would like to know more, if
: possible.
: (1) What was mes@... (Mark Ethan Smith)
: I have never seen an actual post, and would like to. I would also like
: to know if this person ever posted anything _other_ than "I am female,
: but insist upon being addressed as male." For instance, did (s)he
: participate in the sf newsgroups (mailing lists?) or the technical
: groups, or would it not have really existed absent flames?
My favorite Mark Ethan Smith episode came when (s)he posted something
shortly after the Challenger disaster, saying the government allowed it to
happen since there was a female aboard. (S)he was on soc.motss posting
somewhat homophobic stuff for a while.
Jim Jewett
Doug Sewell <do...@cc.ysu.edu> wrote:
>: dbr...@us.oracle.com (David C. Brower) wrote:
>: >The "stargate" copyright implosion of 1985 or 1986, which prompted
>: >lots of people to put 'not for redistribution' copyrights in their
>: >signatures.
>My vague recollection was that Stargate was a satellite usenet distributor,
>and they charged healthy bucks for the service.
>Initially they were distributing only moderated newsgroups. I don't know
>if it went past that.
So at recently as this year, they were still mentioned as a "might
happen soon, but don't tell people" possibility in the info sent to
new moderators...
When I read that, I thought it was probably an anachronism, but I didn't
have enough context to realize that it was a _particular_ historical
incident...
Karl_Kl...@cs.cmu.edu
> Some known net.celebrity (whose name escapes me)
Lauren Weinstein, a major net.entity for most of all past eternity -- you
can find his commentary often in the early 1980s, e.g., in then- net.news,
arguing with Brad Templeton over the possibility of opening up commercial
ventures within Usenet. See the Usenet History archives, someplace within
ucsd.edu, I've forgotten the exact hostname. Interestingly, Brad started
his commercial venture much later than Lauren tried his -- observe which
one succeeded. (One of their early arguments, with Mark Horton chiming
in, was whether it was advisable to get CompuServe to connect -- Lauren
was horrified at the prospect, just horrified, convinced that the
bandwidth issues would eat Usenet alive. How times change.)
Lauren's still around sometimes, but not much on Usenet. If you want
details, ask him directly, he's <lau...@vortex.com>.
> I suspect there were discussions/papers/announcements at some of the
> Usenix conferences of the period. Someone who still has them might check
> their archives and report back with the correct details.
In some way-back issue of Usenix' ;login magazine, you will find a report
from the Association's legal counsel on the issues of content control,
liability, and so forth, in the context of Usenix possibly sponsoring such
activities.
Ed Falk
>In article <39qobk$c...@news.duke.edu>,
>Joel K. Furr <jf...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>
>(1) What was mes@... (Mark Ethan Smith)
>
>Its (Niether he nor she seems quite right when giving reasons for the
>fame) fame derived from its insistence on being addressed as a male yet
>considered a female, or some such. (Biologically, it was female, but it
>was a radical ultra-feminist.) I think postings were from Berkeley and
>later Ann Arbor.
MES wasn't so much a radical feminist as a flake who everybody identified
as a feminist. Many of MES's ideas were as much anti-feminist as
feminist.
MES's main theory was that everything society attached to women was
degrading -- "diminutive" was MES's favorite phrase. For instance,
women's clothing was drag when a woman wore it as much as when a man wore
it.
(Interesting point, actually. If women's clothing looks ridiculous on a
man, why do we accept it on a woman? Both women and men look perfectly
reasonable in men's clothing. Is traditional women's clothing (short
skirts, high heels, etc.) a form of belittlement that's so pervasive that
we take it for granted unless men wear it?)
In a similar vein, MES thought that female names and pronouns were also a
form of belittlement (this follows naturally from the "male as default
human" argument), and refused to use a traditionally female name or be
referred to as "she".
MES never pretended to be a man, and would tell anybody who asked that
"he" was a woman, but did insist on using the name "Mark" and being
referred to with male pronouns.
MES tended to drift from just having unconventional ideas, to being
outright hateful -- mostly towards men. MES was one of the only two women
who were actually misandrous enough to make it into my KILL file, and then
only for short terms.
Melinda Shore
>Some known net.celebrity (whose name escapes me) had the bright idea of
>putting a news feed in the vertical interval of some CATV superstation --
>WTBS I believe.
That was Lauren Weinstein.
Dr. H.J. Kooy Jr.
..
: The idea of sending data in the blanking of cable-video is still
: interesting, but no-one has figured out what to put on it to make any
: money. The data rate is low enough that it might not be worth the effort.
Actually, the TeleText (CeeFax) in Europe works like that (CNN even has
it). The only problem is that sometimes it takes a little while to get the
page you want, but otherwise you can get to see the weather/plane arrival
times/... There is even a WWW site which has the dutch TT pages (in dutch)
Paul Tomblin
>In article <3adj24$4...@zip.eecs.umich.edu> ji...@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Jim Jewett) writes:
>>(1) What was mes@... (Mark Ethan Smith)
>>Its (Niether he nor she seems quite right when giving reasons for the
>>fame) fame derived from its insistence on being addressed as a male yet
>>considered a female, or some such. (Biologically, it was female, but it
>>was a radical ultra-feminist.) I think postings were from Berkeley and
>>later Ann Arbor.
>
>Mark said he was disabled and couldn't work. As far as I know, he's not a
Wait a minute! I remember a post from a "coworker" of MES's pleading with
us to please stop responding to it, because it was hard enough to work
with at the best of times and this was just making it worse.
>technologist. MES is/was, oddly enough, a raving homophobe, and
>occasionally came out with witticisms like "Suck AIDS and die."
Not too suprising when you consider that at the time, AIDS was only
killing men, and MES seemed pathological towards men...
Tom Wilson
Bruce Ediger <bed...@teal.csn.org> wrote:
>In article <39qobk$c...@news.duke.edu>, Joel K. Furr <jf...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote: >
>>If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
>>to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
>>complete list should have, what would you list?
Johnathan E. D. Richmond, who sued or threatened to sue over jokes in
rec.humor.funny that he found offensive - which led to the acronym JEDR
for Joke: ethnic, denominational, racist. As is, "what did the first JEDR
say to the second JEDR?"
J. Porter Clark
>If you were telling people about Internet and USENET folklore, and wanted
>to list the landmark outbreaks of net.weirdness, the ones that any
>complete list should have, what would you list?
1. There was some guy in the U.S. military--I can't recall his
name--who posted some strong, threatening stuff with religious
overtones or content. Would have been 1993, I think, but I haven't
found anything I might have saved from that time. He outraged a lot of
people for posting trash from a .mil site. Anybody remember that one?
2. While I'm on the subject of religion, there's christnet. Need I say
more?
3. Similar to the military guy mentioned previously--and probably about
the same time--there was someone who posted stuff from a .sun.com site
and offended Sun (and probably lots of other people). I can't remember
what he posted that upset people so much. Porno? I remember seeing a
magazine or newspaper article about him.
4. What about that idiot who issued a bunch of newgroups with the AT&T
"You will" banner in ASCII graphics, a row per newsgroup? That wasn't
long ago.
5. The ".cabal" newsgroup.
6. The kay-eye-bee-oh election, referred to in Net Legends only as
"don't ask." I remember it well, unfortunately.
I wish I could remember more about 1 and 3. I'm 41 and losing it
rapidly.
dpl...@3do.com
>>The "stargate" copyright implosion of 1985 or 1986, which prompted
>>lots of people to put 'not for redistribution' copyrights in their
>>signatures.
>
There was a company called Stargate which started distributing USENET news
via a subcarrier on a TV channel carried by a satellite. They provided it
to their customers under a contract which forbade redistribution of the
articles received by that channel (so that you couldn't, for example, buy
one Stargate receiver and then feed twenty of your USENET neighbors via
modem).
A lot of people resented this (saying "How dare they take the articles we
post, which they receive at no cost to them via a public-spirited free
distribution network, and then feed them to customers and take their money
and refuse to let those readers honor the USENET conventions of free
distribution?" People started to put copyright notices in their signature
which said "Free distribution encouraged; distribution for a fee is
permitted only if you do not restrict the rights of the recipients to
redistribute for free." This put Stargate in the position of either
having to back down on their policy, or start filtering out all such
articles from their outbound feeds (and thus not providing the "full
USENET feed" that they said they were offering), or being in violation of
the copyrights on the articles.
Joel K. Furr
>6. The kay-eye-bee-oh election, referred to in Net Legends only as
>"don't ask." I remember it well, unfortunately.
In late January, 1994, James "Kibo" Parry announced that he was leaving
for the Moon and not coming back. He then disappeared; fingers of his
account showed that he hadn't logged in since January 25. In mid-February,
with speculation rife that Kibo had basically 'left the Net' and not
bothered to announce it in a more direct fashion, Andrew Bulhak held an
election to replace him.
Parry, as it happened, was sick and very busy at work, so he didn't post
or even log in while nominations were being gathered. Midway through the
election, he returned and denounced it, but by that time, it was too far
ahead to stop.
I'd been nominated and was amused by the whole mess, so I declared the
Parry that had returned to be an evil clone of the original and pressed
forward with my bid to replace him. Several others also campaigned
vigorously. Parry, of course, knew better than to give any legitimacy to
the election by campaigning himself.
When the votes were counted, I won with a very sizable margin, 80-odd
votes out of something like 136 cast. Parry came in second, with around
30. Others were in the range of 15 all the way down to 1 or 2 votes.
When the results were announced, the predictable occurred: a few people
hailed the new Kibo; some people declared a schism; the losing candidates
generally pledged to form an opposition. Parry of course denounced
everything. I waited a couple of days, and then generously thanked my
opposition for their hard-fought campaigns, yada yada, and pledged to
serve well in the office to which I'd been elected. I went around for a
week or so signing my messages 'Joel "Kibo" Furr' and so forth.
Parry started sending me long, whiny messages which I mostly ignored,
babbling about how I was ruining his commercial endorsement value by
imitating him. I paid these no need because, come on, WHAT endorsement
value? When he started emailing me over and over again about how he was
serious and investigating legal action, and gave me a phone number to
call, I finally called to settle it. Parry told me that he really had been
asked by some local computer store to endorse their products, and that
they were peeved about there being more than one Kibo. So, he said, would
I please cut it out?
I didn't need that kind of grief. I hadn't planned to keep the joke going
much longer anyway, but it wasn't worth it to keep getting his mail.
Struck by the irony of the master jokester proving unable to take a joke,
I said "Fine" and publicly swore off any further Kibozing.
Much later in 1994, while in a flamewar in news.groups, I "passed on" the
title of Kibo to Daniel M Silevitch (dms...@athena.mit.edu) for no reason
at all. And that's the end of it.
David C. Brower
>In article <39tofl$r...@dcsun4.us.oracle.com> dbr...@us.oracle.com
>(David C. Brower) writes:
>>The first great forgery: the April 1st 1984 message from
>>chernenko@kremvax.
>>(I may have this on hardcopy somewhere.)
>
>I still have a copy.
>
>That was kremvax!chernenko in those days (routed thru kgbvax, courtesy of
>nsavax and ciavax).
>
>Fee fifo fum. I smell the blood of Joel Hanes in this group...... 8^)
Gee, now that I think about it, if I were guessing at a perp, Eugene
would have been high, high, high on my list of usual suspects.
Curious that he still has a copy online eh?
-dB
Jason Bennett
t...@netcom.com (Tom Lane) wrote:
> Stargate was an outfit that proposed to distribute news via satellite
> downlinks. And to *charge people for receiving news*. That was
> heretical, to put it mildly. Some people started putting copyright
> notices on their posts intended to prevent Stargate from transmitting
> their articles. AFAIK Stargate never got up and running, but the
> flamewars over it were numerous and long-lived.
Rather interesting. I'm not sure how many of you are famliliar with
the workings of Fidonet, but most of its mail now goes out by satellite via
a commercial company.
Fido SysOps are used to paying to recoup LD charges, so paying a
commercial carrier isn't much of a change, but it has caused a lot of
controversy (since it's completely inept).
jason
Erkki Ruohtula
...
>The idea of sending data in the blanking of cable-video is still
>interesting, but no-one has figured out what to put on it to make any
>money. The data rate is low enough that it might not be worth the effort.
An idea that is in widespread use in Europe. It is called Text-TV and here
it is ancient stuff (as such things go, it first appeared in late
seventies as far as I know). To an user of a TV set that has the Text-TV
capability, it looks like a mode where you can use your remote control to
select text screens numbered 100-999. The actual number of screens
available depends on what the broadcaster puts there, and you often have
to wait a while for the requested screen to turn up (advanced sets speed
this up by continuously buffering incoming screens in memory). These
contain text (I think it is 40 columns by 24 lines or something like that)
and block graphics. Colour and blinking effects are available (it looks
much like what was available in early home computers, not surprising,
considering its age). The data that is usually broadcast includes program
schedules, captioning foreign language programs (the system can overlay
text on video), news bulletins, viewer's letters and advertisements. Note
that this is a strictly one-way system.
I dimly recall seeing someone on the Net claim that using Text-TV for
distributing software has been tried in some countries, but I don't have
any details. Anybody know? Distributing Usenet would be a straightforward
extension, except for the missing speed. Here is a quick
back-of-the-envelope calculation (note that I do not know the exact
technical specs):
If we assume that the Text-TV screen has exactly 40x24=960 bytes, and you
can send a new screen 50 times a second (that's the field rate in Europe),
you get 48000 bytes per second, about equal to a 4800 bps modem line
(assuming that you can grab all the screens of the channel). That would
have been enough when Usenet was young, but now it really is inadequate
for a news feed, even with compression.
Ian G Batten
Erkki Ruohtula <e...@tnso04.tele.nokia.fi> wrote:
> I dimly recall seeing someone on the Net claim that using Text-TV for
> distributing software has been tried in some countries, but I don't have
In Britain, some software for the BBC Micro was distributed this way.
It stopped, to much wailing from those affected, a couple of years ago.
ian
Eugene N. Miya
>There was a company called Stargate which started distributing USENET news
Lauren Weinstein's company was and still is called Vortex Technology.
Pete Biggs
>
> I dimly recall seeing someone on the Net claim that using Text-TV for
> distributing software has been tried in some countries, but I don't have
> any details. Anybody know? Distributing Usenet would be a straightforward
> extension, except for the missing speed. Here is a quick
> back-of-the-envelope calculation (note that I do not know the exact
> technical specs):
>
The BBC did this for software on the Acorn BBC Micro - the programs were
on known pages (700+ if I remember) and you needed a special TeleText
adapter for your computer. The BBC Micro ran largely on BASIC (an
extremely good version BTW), and so most of the programs that were
available were tokenised BASIC ones. The programs were mostly
"educational" with a few games thrown in for good luck - some of them
were linked to the BBCs Schools Computer Education programme.
In general each program was about 10 to 20 pages long, so nothing
mind-shatteringly brilliant was ever available. But at least it was a
novel use for Teletext.
Pete
David E A Wilson
>(2) Does anyone have the full story on Mark V. Shaney?
If you read chapter 20 of "The Tinkertoy Computer" by A.K. Dewdney
ISBN: 0-7167-2489-8 or 0-7167-2491-X (pbk) you will get some (but not a great
deal of) info on this subject.
According to this book Mark V. Shaney was the brainchild of Don P. Mitchell
& Bruce Ellis, then with AT&T Bell Labs.
Gregory Bond
(2) Does anyone have the full story on Mark V. Shaney?
So, does anyone know the facts? Who did this research, from where?
Was it published? Is the code available?
Mark V. Shaney was written up in Scientific American a number of years
ago (91? 92?) in the "Amateur Scientist" section from memory. The
work was done by a collection of troublemakers from Sydney Uni, though
which of the Basser Boys it was I don't exactly remember (probably
Boyd Roberts).
Greg, who remembers when "mod.sources" was a neat idea.
Jonathan Jones
If I remember rightly, there was also distribution over the radio - You
could record the horrible screeching sounds on a tape, and then read them
at 300 baud.
Regards
Jonathan
han...@quantime.co.uk
>>The idea of sending data in the blanking of cable-video is still
>>interesting, but no-one has figured out what to put on it to make any
>>money. The data rate is low enough that it might not be worth the effort.
>
Teletext is quite a big business here in the U.K. Each channel (the two
BBC channels, ITV, and Ch4) has its own set of Teletext screens.
The BBC ones are, as befits the BBC's public broadcaster status, non-
commercial and feature up-to-the-minute news, weather (with maps that
are fairly accurate and readable), public affairs, and the like.
The two commercial channels, on the other hand, offer sketchy news
coverage but lots of items which depend upon 0891 numbers (= 900-numbers
in the US) for more information. When the sucker^Wviewer calls the
number, voila, we have money.
There is a One-To-One service on ITV which is lonely-hearts ads,
tastefully separated by the desired result (Men seeking Women, Women
Seeking Men, and Lesbian/Bi/Gay), which require you to call an 0891
number for the actual details.
As for distributing software, one of the commercial page-sets has to
do with computer software and its uses, and of course you can call or
write for more information and/or orders.
There are games of 'skill' which require you to answer questions posed
on the Teletext page. Call the 0891 number with the answer and you get
a prize of some sort.
I often use the subtitles (always page 888) because the accents on some
shows are somewhat difficult for a USan to understand. They often bear
little resemblance to the spoken dialogue.
The result is: the Teletext is so slow that it cannot do much itself to
make money. However, with the advent of the 0891/900 number, it can
be the window to lots of money.
Someone once said: "Radio [and television] should be more than an
antenna attached to a cash register." Oh.
Anthony DeBoer
>... serve well in the office to which I'd been elected. I went around for a
>week or so signing my messages 'Joel "Kibo" Furr' and so forth.
>
Is your middle initial a souvenir of this episode, or do you have a middle
name that coincidentally begins with "K"? Inquiring minds want to know.
Joel K. Furr
My middle name is Keith; I was thus named after my father, Aaron Keith
Furr. Unfortunately, though I don't like my first name, I can't use my
middle name either, because Dad already goes by Keith, since he doesn't
like HIS first name.
That being said, I'm curious: who was the first net.personality, famous
for being famous and not for actually DOING anything? Kibo? Or was
there some ur-Kibo back in the ARPANET days or late-70's-early 80's?
L.Detweiler
: >From what I've heard, Mark was one of the most successful ELIZA-style
: AI programs. They took a batch of soc.singles postings and created
: a Markov chain. They then used this to construct new posts which
: were posted under the name Mark V. Shaney. It had a little trouble
: with grammar (especially maintaining tense) but there were apparently
: quite a few posters who took it quite seriously. (I've also heard
: it had a predilection for talking about fingernail clippings or
: something equally odd, which could have been a quirk of the training
: set amplified by positive feedback.)
ah, the real trick is to get a posting program that replies to real
posts and is not merely autonomous but capable of "interacting" like
a real human being.
alas, that would seem to require successful AI, at least under Turing's
definition.
maybe someday an ingenious software engineer will invent it. do you think
he would let the rest of the world in on it? or use it as a private joke
in cyberspace for as long as it went undetected? could be an awful lot
of fun seeing how people react psychologically to an AI program in the
loose in cyberspace.
an even more delightful joke than the Morris Worm
and perhaps even more ubiquitous.
(morris miscalculated. it was SUPPOSED to be ubiquitous and harmless
at the same time. oh well, live and learn.)
Richard M. Alderson III
writes:
>That being said, I'm curious: who was the first net.personality, famous for
>being famous and not for actually DOING anything? Kibo? Or was there some
>ur-Kibo back in the ARPANET days or late-70's-early 80's?
Some might nominate Jerry Pournelle, for his role in bringing down the Wrath of
the Net.Gods (TM) on MIT for allowing a non-researcher an account on an ARPAnet
system...
NB: I've met him, I like him, and I still wish he'd kept his mouth shut...
Simon Trew
#In article <3adv6o$p...@dcsun4.us.oracle.com> dbr...@us.oracle.com (David C. Brower) writes:
#...
#>The idea of sending data in the blanking of cable-video is still
#>interesting, but no-one has figured out what to put on it to make any
#>money. The data rate is low enough that it might not be worth the effort.
The ITV's Teletext system in Britain carries adverts, so presumably it
pays, although I realise that this is not quite making money in the sense
you mean (i.e. by providing services). Ads are most common on, say, the TV
listings pages, although several bookmakers (e.g. Joe Coral's) rent pages
in the racing sections to bring up prices etc. - presumably these are
linked into Uncle Joe's own teletext-like system which you get in the
betting shops.
#this up by continuously buffering incoming screens in memory). These
#contain text (I think it is 40 columns by 24 lines or something like that)
I believe it's 40x25, in eight colours (red, green, blue, yellow, magenta,
cyan, black, white). Each character can have a separate background and
foreground colour, and the foreground can blink. There is also a "mixedd"
mode where the background colour is made transparent so that the TV
picture shows through.
#and block graphics. Colour and blinking effects are available (it looks
#much like what was available in early home computers, not surprising,
#considering its age). The data that is usually broadcast includes program
#schedules, captioning foreign language programs (the system can overlay
#text on video), news bulletins, viewer's letters and advertisements. Note
#that this is a strictly one-way system.
Not forgetting subtitles for the deaf. Basically, one screens' worth of
data is transmitted each frame. A logical "page" (000-999) can contain
many screens, e.g. a TV listing for the entire day might be five screens
all on page 300. Obvioulsy the screens are transmitted, roughly in order,
in a continuous loop, and for multi-screen pages each alternative screen is
transmitted at that page in the loop. However certain pages, e.g. the index
pages, subtitles etc. are transmitted more frequently.
#I dimly recall seeing someone on the Net claim that using Text-TV for
#distributing software has been tried in some countries, but I don't have
#any details. Anybody know? Distributing Usenet would be a straightforward
#extension, except for the missing speed. Here is a quick
#back-of-the-envelope calculation (note that I do not know the exact
#technical specs):
#
#If we assume that the Text-TV screen has exactly 40x24=960 bytes, and you
#can send a new screen 50 times a second (that's the field rate in Europe),
#you get 48000 bytes per second, about equal to a 4800 bps modem line
#(assuming that you can grab all the screens of the channel). That would
#have been enough when Usenet was young, but now it really is inadequate
#for a news feed, even with compression.
But there are problems. The BBC tried this to send programs, mostly for
the BBC micro (quel surprise), on special Teletext pages. However, if you
have a poorish TV signal the data loss is quite atrocious. This doesn't
matter too much for human use, if you see "and now the n@ws in br_f" you
can probably understand it. The speed for things nowadays, e.g. progs of
megabytes rather than a few K as was the case for micros 15 years ago,
makes it unworthwhie.
The Beeb also tried transmitting programs on the radio at one time, after
the late-night closedown, but with equally unsuccessful results. But you
must give them credit for trying - they've given us RDS too, plus radio in
tunnels (although nobody seems to want to take this on commercially).
I have an enormous text-book on all this somewhere if anybody is that
bored. Free to first person dull enough to pay postage,
Simon.
David Hembrow
>If I remember rightly, there was also distribution over the radio - You
>could record the horrible screeching sounds on a tape, and then read them
>at 300 baud.
We also had a strange scheme which used photodiodes taped to the TV screen
to load a program while a TV programme about computers was on. I never tried
it. 50 baud, I guess ( given that we have 50Hz TV over here ) though they
may have transmitted >1 bit at a time as I seem to remember more than one
flashing blob on the screen.
David.
Olaf Titz
> I dimly recall seeing someone on the Net claim that using Text-TV for
> distributing software has been tried in some countries, but I don't have
> any details. Anybody know? Distributing Usenet would be a straightforward
> extension, except for the missing speed. Here is a quick
This system (here called Videotext) is used in Germany for distributing
software by a company named (surprise :-) Videodat. Don't ask me about
specs, but AFAIK the net rate is about 9600bps. Distributing Usenet over
this sort of channel has already been thought of, but it would be (a)
expensive (hardware, renting "space" from TV stations) and (b) a bandwidth
problem.
Olaf
D. Glenn Arthur Jr.
> jf...@acpub.duke.edu (Joel K. Furr) writes:
>> post them here.
>The Brahms Gang, [...]
Ah yes, I remember the Brahms Gang.
Another outbreak of strangeness that comes to mind is the flurry
of accusations of impersonation that eventually came down to the
conclusion that "We are _all_ Rich Rosen". I don't recall how
many newsgroups that involved or whether it was before or after
the Great Renaming.