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File: AN APPLE FOR THE CAPTAIN
Read 22 times
-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-
- An Apple For The Captain -
= InfoWorld -- October 1, 1984 =
- By Stephen Wozniak -
= Word Processed for SF][ by BIOC Agent 003 =
-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-=*=-
The best prank I've seen with the Apple was played by Cap'n Crunch. John
Draper, one of Apple's first employees, was responsible for designing a
telephone board for us. Much more than a modem, the board could send
touch-tone or pulse-dial data; it could also transmit any tones that were
programmable down the line, listen for specific sounds, and a bunch of other
things.
At one point Draper was motivated to crack WATS extenders. A WATS extender
is used when a company has incoming and outgoing free 800 lines. Company
executives call in on the incoming 800 line and tap out a four-digit code,
which gets them on their company's outgoing 800 line. They only system
protection is the four-digit code.
It would take a long time to dial 10,000 phone calls manually, searching for
the extender code. But Draper had designed this new telephone board, and he
knew a bunch of companies that had WATS extenders. He programmed the Apple to
call the company on its 800 number, automatically get to the WATS extender,
type out a four-digit code, and check to see if the attempt succeeded or
failed. The Apple with the board would listen to all the tones on the phone
line to determine when it was ringing, when it went to the WATS extender, and
so on.
It took about 10 seconds for the Apple to dial the call and try a new
four-digit code. The Apple would restart and try again. And then try the next
number. It was able to dial about 5,000 calls a night -- the average number of
calls to crack a WATS extender. Draper cracked about 20 WATS exteders,
averaging one a night.
The city of Mountain View, California, where he lived at the time, keeps an
index of how well the phone system is working. An average of 30% of all calls
made from the city don't go through. The month Draper was cracking the WATS
extenders, the index jumped to 80%! For that month Draper made more than 50%
of the calls originating from Mountain View, California, whose population is
60,000.... <>
[Courtesy of Sherwood Forest ][ -- (914) 359-1517]
-----End of File
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It started out as just another Saturday. April 26, 1986. John R.
MacDougall, 25, spent the day alone at his satellite TV dealership in Ocala,
Florida, waiting for customers who never came. "It was," he says, "a normal
day in the doldrums of the satellite TV industry." But that night, MacDougall,
5 feet 11, 225 pounds, and prone to nervously running his fingers through his
reddish blond hair and adjusting his glasses, would transform into Captain
Midnight and set the world of satellite television spinning.
Business had been flat since January 15, when Home Box Office became the
first pay TV service to scramble its signal full time. Other services were
following HBO's lead. Dish owners were balking at the cost of descramblers and
program fees. Potential customers were confused and stayed away in droves.The
1985 boom in dish sales had simply petered out, and MacDougall Electronics, in
business for just two-and-a-half years, had seen its early profits disappear.
American Dream
MacDougall had stopped advertising and turned off his air-conditioner to save
money. With no customers, he idled away the day watching TV and reading
magazines. Later, he would say, "I have been watching the great American dream
slip from my grasp."
To make ends meet, MacDougall spent his evenings moonlighting as a part-time
operations engineer at Central Florida Teleport, a local company that uplinks
services to satellites. He was a natural electronics engineer. A good
student, he had spent his spare time during his teenage years tinkering with CB
radios and automobiles. With some pals, he rebuilt a 1923 Ford roadster that
he still owns. He had dropped out of a management engineering course at
Worcester Polytechnical Institute in Massachusetts after two years, but his
first job was installing satellite TV dishes."My father used to tell me I would
need to get a job where I would be able to make money by watching TV just
because I liked TV so much," he says. At Central Florida Teleport, he could do
just that. At 4 p.m. on that Saturday, MacDougall shut up shop. He stopped
at his home, where he lived alone, picked up a sandwich for supper, and then
reported to the teleport. After two hours, a second engineer went off duty and
MacDougall was alone in the small building that is flanked on one side by five
large satellite dishes.
As the end of his shift drew near, MacDougall was absently watching Pee-Wee's
Big Adventure, a movie he was uplinking for the now-defunct pay-per-view
service, People's Choice. But something else was on his mind. When the film
ended, MacDougall went through the normal routine. Before logging off, he set
up color bars and punched buttons to swing the giant 30 foot dish he'd been
using to its resting place. That was necessary because the soil beneath the
dish's cement pad is sandy clay. Rainfall could throw it off-kilter, but by
setting it in a certain way the rain runs harmlessly into a gutter. At its
resting place, the dish points directly at the satellite Galaxy 1.
Transpondedr 23 on that satellite carries the eastern feed of HBO. "That's
when I decided to do it,"says MacDougall. "It wasn't like I thought about it,
'Yes. No. Yes. No.' It was just, 'Yeah!'" He scrolled up a character
generator, and electronic keyboard that puts letters across the TV screen, and
tried to think what to write. "I didn't know exactly how to start it," he
says. "I wrote 'Goodevening." I wanted to be polite. I didn't want it to be
vulgar or call them names or anything. That's not my style."
He spent a couple of minutes composing his message. The idea of using the
name Captain Midnight, he says, "just popped into my mind." He had recently
seen a movie with that title about a teenager who had a pirate radio station in
his van. Now HBO was airing the Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton espionage movie,
The Falcon and the Snowman. It was at 12:32 a.m. Sunday, April 27, that John
R. MacDougall pushed the transmit button on his console and turned into
Captain Midnight. "That's when I hit it," he says. "It was almost like an
out-of-body experience. It was like I was there but I wasn't really there."
For 4 1/2 minutes, HBO viewers in the eastern United States saw this message:
GOODEVENING HBO
FROM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
$12.95/MONTH?
NO WAY!
(SHOWTIME/MOVIE CHANNEL BEWARE)
A week earlier, MacDougall had successfully overridden HBO's powerful signal
momentarily with just a test pattern. (He now publicly denies this, but he
admitted it to a United States attorney.) The network had quickly brushed that
signal aside, attributing it to not uncommon accidental interference. This
time, the engineer on duty at HBO's Long Island, New York, uplink station
simply stepped up the signal's power. HBO was transmitting at 125 watts. When
Captain Midnight applied more power, the HBO engineer revved up to match it.
"He saw the interference and saw that he was losing a grip on things," says
George Dillon, an engineer who investigated the episode for the enforcement and
investigative division of the Federal Communications Commission. "This little
game took 60 to 90 seconds. You had these two people at their respective
stations fighting for control."
As Captain Midnight's signal surged, HBO placed a frantic call to Hughes
Communications Inc., which owns Galaxy 1, asking: "Is there something wrong
with the bird?" Says Dillon, "HBO thought it might cause damage to the
satellite, so they gave it up.
NEVER LOST CONTROL
In Ocala, Captain Midnight was stunned. "I could see my signal on top of
HBO's as soon as I hit the transmit button," says MacDougall. "I stared at the
monitor for a while, and then I didn't know if it was two minutes or 10
minutes." Caught up with engineering curiosity, he monitored power levels and
downlink signals. "At no time," he says, "did I lose control over the
transponder." But then, as suddenly as he had struck, he quit. "When I shut it
off, I really didn't know how long I had been on top of HBO, but that's when I
started to feel very guilty," he says. "I thought, "Ohmigod, what did I do?'
That thought raced through my mind for the next 10 or 15 minutes as I
reconfigured the teleport back to normal. The guilt really set in that night.
I didn't sleep very well."
On Sunday morning he woke up to the same nagging doubts. "I thought maybe I
should turn myself in. But then I thought, 'Well, let's be rational. Nobody's
going to see it. Nobody cares. HBO will know. They'll get the message.
They'll reconsider their arbitrary and unfair pricing, and maybe I'll read
about it in a few months in Satellite Orbit. That's basically how I
rationalized, not panicking, and went on with my daily routine that Sunday.'
Then he saw that Captain Midnight's HBO ambush was making TV's network
newscasts, and he began to panic. "I was devastated and so nervous with
frustration. I had to work that night at the teleport. Another man was going
to be there for the first two hours. When he got there I had to pretend and
say things like, "Dkid you see this guy Captain Midnight? Geez, do you realize
what in the world, he could have done?' That was difficult."
Normally, MacDougall's natural curiosity would have made him the first to
want to discuss how it was done. But as the event made national headlines and
became fodder for jokes by David Letterman and Johnny Carson, he went the other
way, trying to play it down. The tension grew as HBO clamored for his head,
and the FCC and even Congress got involved.
On April 28, HBO chairman Michael J. Fuchs wrote to the FCC saying that the
company had received calls threatening to move Galaxy 1 into a new orbit. He
urged the Commission to "use all its investigative resources" to capture
Captain Midnight.
"This wasn't just a jamming, but a jamming and replacement. And a
fascinating one at that," says HBO spokesman Alan Levy. "That's why you saw a
lot of action on this case. We understand that the dish owners are at odds
with the programmers, but when you escalate it to this point, it gets a little
wild and woolly. And when you're breaking the satellite system of the United
States, it's very serious."
FCC investigator Dillon says the implications of the incident involved a
threat to the national security. "There's lots of highly sensitive data
involved. If you have a bandit, it could disrupt the business of the United
States--things like defense communications, medical information, telephone
communications, and teleconferences.
Edgar Eagan, owner of Central Florida Teleport, took the incident very
seriously. "He logged out and signed the log and decided to stay and play,"
says Eagan, founder and past president of ESPN, the sports network. "In
reality he was using the equipment for an unauthorized and illegal purpose."
RUMORS GALORE
As the investigation proceeded, rumors abounded. Satellite TV publications
and television commentators received calls and tapes from people claiming to be
Captain Midnight. The FBI was said to be on the case, and the hunt was rumored
to focus on Dallas, Texas.
In Ocala, MacDougall had decided to "play it dumb." Discreetly, he talked to
colleagues in the satellite TV business to find out how the investigation was
going. But gradually he could not resist discussing the incident with other
engineers and operators who talked about what happens when two signals meet on
a single transponder. He was outraged when they dismissed his observations.
"I don't like to say this, but even the more skilled personnel were of the
assumption that you would never get a clear signal with two signals feeding on
the same channel," MacDougall says. "I brought out the fact that if one was
much stronger than the other, it would override it. At that point they told me
I was wrong, and that I didn't know what I was talking about.
"All of my life people have never taken my word for things because I've
always seemed to be a little younger than they are, and maybe a little less
experienced, but I've always come up with the right answer. They didn't seem
to believe my theory. Well, I guess they ought to believe it now, because I
was right."
THE TIP OFF
It was a phone call made by a disgruntled dish owner from Ocala that
concentrated the FCC's investigation on the Central Florida Teleport. Someone
claiming to be Captain Midnight was overheard by a tourist from Wisconsin at a
phone booth just off Interstate 75 in Gainesville, Florida. The tourist
reported the conversation and the man's license plate number to the FCC.
MacDougall says the impostor was a customer of his, but he doesn't know his
last name. Again, he was outraged. "He was very militant about scrambling and
the cable progra business, and not tried to make out like some kind of hero, I
would still be panicking and wondering whether they were going to come and get
me."
MacDougall's voice rises as he exclaims, "I still can't believe this guy
actually told people he was Captain Midnight and MacDougall says the only time
he broke the law was driving over the 55 mph speed limit. "I never even bought
beer under age. I was a model citizen," he says earnestly.
FCC MOVES IN
In July, FCC investigators talked to MacDougall, asking questions that led
him to believe they knew what had happened. He told them he hadn't done it,
and that he had no knowledge of the incident, but then he really began to
worry. "I was very concerned about it, but I didn't let on," he says. "I'm
able to hide my feelings very well. I can just about convince people I'm a
total raving maniac at the same time."
Two weeks later, the FCC returned. This time, they brought along U.S.
Attorney Lawrence Gentile III, who served MacDougall with a subpoena to appear
in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville. According to MacDougall, their
conversation went like this:
"What's this for?" MacDougall asked when Gentile held out the subpoena.
"Captain Midnight," answered Gentile. "Aren't you aware that you're a
suspect in this incident?"
"You're trying to tell me that just because I'm a satellite dish dealer and I
happened to work for a teleport, I'm a suspect? responded MacDougall.
"There are other things," replied Gentile.
"Well, what are they?" asked MacDougall.
"We can't discuss it here," said Gentile. "We can talk about it in front of
the grand jury. You need to think very carefully about this. You seem like a
level-headed man, but you don't seem to be taking this seriously. This is a
serious time. You might want to consult with an attorney."
"Attorney for what?" questioned MacDougall. "I haven't done anything. An
innocent man does not need an attorney. The only people who hire attorneys are
guilty people."
According to MacDougall, Gentile then attempted to reach an agreement with
him. "If you would be willing to talk to us about this and tell us what you
know about this incident right now," said Gentile, "I'd be willing to recommend
probation to the judge and a small fine. Probation and a fine are not bad
considering what you're facing. Let's face it, Mr. MacDougall, this is not
the crime of the century. However, we have been getting a lot of pressure on
this."
MacDougall said at that point he began to think there was not enough evidence
to convict him; otherwise he wouldn't have been offered a plea bargain. Still
claiming innocence, MacDougall told Gentile he would see him in Jacksonville.
MacDougall's first brief jamming raid on HBO led investigators to strongly
suspect him. The investigation had been narrowed down to uplink stations with
the capacity to pull off both raids, and then to those manned by the same
person at the time of each incident. "We had a very good idea he was our man,"
says Gentile. "Of all the people I talked with, he was the only one I gave
target warnings to [the equivalent of the Miranda warnings police give when
they make an arrest]. "He says he leaned on MacDougall "pretty hard."
MEET CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
Taking Gentile's advice, MacDougall contacted an Ocala attorney, John Green
Jr. When they first met, MacDougall recalls, "he said, 'Well, John, tell me
about Captain Midnight.' And I reached out my hand and said, 'Well, here,
that's me.'"
Green advised him that he had a 70-percent chance of winning the case. If
convicted, he faced a $100,000 fine and/or one year in jail. But MacDougall
decided to enter a plea of guilty. "There were two reasons," he said. "I
could release my guilt, plead guilty, and get it over with, do the right thing.
That kept panging at me: do the right thing. But the other side, the
activist, kept saying, 'Stand up for your rights.' My idealism and my activism
were combating my conservative upbringing and my conservative political
leanings. They were battling back and forth, and I was at my wits' end. I
didn't know what to do."
MacDougall also worried about going before the grand jury and trying to lie
his way out of the charge. "I would not have wanted to take a midemeanor and
make it a felony by committing perjury," he says. In the end, the determining
factor was money. Green advised his client that going to trial could take 6 to
12 months and cost $30,000 to $40,000. "During that time," MacDougall says, "I
couldn't have said anything, and I would have been bombarded by the press. It
would have been a nightmare."
Fighting and then losing the case was always a possibility, and MacDougall
conjured up nightmares of what that might entail. "This was a federal
penitentiary they could have sent me to," he said. "The concept just didn't
register, to be sitting eating lunch with the other convicts in striped
uniforms, and a guy says, 'Hey, what are you in for?" And I say, 'Oh, I
operated a trnsmitter without a license.' I couldn't take the risk."
FUN EDUCATION
By the time he went to the federal court on July 22 and went through the
arrest procedure, which included being photographed and fingerprinted,
MacDougall's curiosity was back in full force. "If I hadn't been directly
involved, it probably would have been a fun educational experience," he says.
"You can't just plead guilty to a crime. It's hours and hours of discussion,
and you have to prove to the prosecutor, and also the judge, that you are
guilty. Then, you have to prove you weren't coerced into making the statement,
and that you have knowledge of your rights." MacDougall says officials at both
the July 22 hearing and the sentencing, on August 26, were surprisingly
cordial. He speaks of smiles, handshakes from marshals, and understanding from
U.S. Magistrate Howard T. Snyder, who fined him $5,000 and placed him on one
year's probation. "I'm glad to see that the legal system does work," he says.
Meanwhile, although convicted in court, MacDougall had become a hero to many
dish owners and satellite TV dealers. A group calling itself the Captain
Midnight Grassroots Coalition had formed and was selling bumper stickers,
T-shirts, visors, and sweat bands to raise money for MacDougall's legal costs.
Said Donald Cochran, spokesman for the coalition: "While there are those who
consider Captain Midnight a criminal for his unauthorized transmissions, there
is another group made up of home satellite dish owners, small business people,
and rebels, who support his actions as a non-violent and non-destructive
protest in the best American tradition."
THE RIGHT REASONS
MacDougall says he has had no direct involvement with the coalition, but he
adds, "I would like to see my own industry support me in this. Even though I
may have done more harm than good, as some people think, I did it for the right
reasons."
Central Florida Teleport owner Eagan, on the other hand, says that local
opinion in Ocala and surrounding Marion County has gotten "silly." When the
coalition presented MacDougall with its first donation, a check for $500, in
September, a crowd gathered outside his office, and drivers of passing cars and
pickup trucks honked their horns. Says Eagan, "There's a group of people here
who think that John MacDougall is a wonderful man and a great hero who has done
wonderful things for them. But to me, that has not been placed in the
perspective of the world view or even the regional view. Ninety-nine and nine
tenths [percent] of the people don't agree."
Eagan says the only positive thing to come out of the incident was that
MacDougall was in the home dish business and so there was at least a reason for
him to have done it. "If it had been some crackpot who did it just for the
hell of it, or an employee being vindictive, then the corporate community would
have been more upset. This way they can say, 'We're not the target, HBO was.'"
Still, the FCC is stepping up security. It has moved to require that by the
end of 1987 every radio and television transmitter must use an electronic name
tag whenever it is on the air. Each satellite uplink station would leave a
unique, unchangeable electronic signature whenever it was used. Also, a bill
is being drafted in Congress that would raise the penalty for satellite
interference to a $250,000 fine and/or 10 years in jail.
SCRAMBLING A REALITY
HBO's Levy says that now that scrambling is a reality, he believes consumers
are dropping their emotional resistance to it. "We were the first ones to
scramble," he says. "We got the arrows in the back and we were the ones to get
jammed. We're over the first hurdle. HBO wants its products in every home in
America. We are attempting to increase our business through home dish owners.
We're calling for the marketplace to set the price. It wouldn't make sense for
HBO to stifle its growth.
MacDougall says he never contested the right of HBO and other programmers to
make a profit from their programs, nor did he object to their right to protect
those profits by scrambling signals. "My real concern is that the free and
competitive marketplace be allowed to operate for the benefit of the American
people," he says. Now, he believes that the last line of Captain Midnight's
message [Showtime/Movie Channel Beware!] was misunderstood and got him into a
lot of trouble. "It was a bad choice of words on my part," he says. "I was
just trying to tell them: "Look before you leap. Don't follow HBO as the
leader.'"
It was, he says, the act of a frustrated individual who was trying to get his
point across to people who didn't seem to listen. He hopes no one will try to
imitate what he did: "The message is now out; there's no reason to do it
again."
MacDougall was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, just outside Chicago. His mother,
Thelma is a homemaker, and his father, Robert, was a successful building
contractor, who retired when MacDougall was 9. The youngest of three brothers
and one sister, MacDougall moved to Florida with his family shortly after his
father's retirement at the age of 47. MacDougall speaks often of his father.
Although his entire family supported him after the HBO incident, he says, "My
father is of the old school, a very staunch conservative: the law is the law,
and it should never be broken."
WAS IT WORTH IT?
MacDougall says he doesn't know now if playing Captain Midnight was worth it
all: "I might be able to better answer that in a couple of months." He intends
to write a book about the incident and plans to continue holding on with his
satellite TV business in Ocala. He says that like many small businessmen, he
didn't start off with enough money, although he did turn a profit in his first
year. "I'm losing money now and a good businessman doesn't lose money," he
admits. "I didn't buy expensive food. I bought cheap gas for my car. I cut
everything I could and I'm still losing. Now, I can barely plan a month ahead
because of the volatile changes in the business. You never know what's going
to happen the next day."
MacDougall believes in himself, although he says he's not a great salesman.
He lost his job at the Central Florida Teleport before he was revealed as
Captain Midnight, because People's Choice went off the air. But all the
publicity has resulted in more repair business from dish owners, and he says
manufacturers return his calls quicker now. "There's a certain pride that goes
into my systems," he says. "I sell a part of myself with each system."
For all his public declarations of regret, there is also an undeniable pride
in having pulled off the notorious HBO raid. "Did I know it would work?" asks
Captain Midnight.
"DEFINITELY!"
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
Another file downloaded from: NIRVANAnet(tm)
& the Temple of the Screaming Electron Jeff Hunter 510-935-5845
Rat Head Ratsnatcher 510-524-3649
Burn This Flag Zardoz 408-363-9766
realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 415-567-7043
Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 415-583-4102
Specializing in conversations, obscure information, high explosives,
arcane knowledge, political extremism, diversive sexuality,
insane speculation, and wild rumours. ALL-TEXT BBS SYSTEMS.
Full access for first-time callers. We don't want to know who you are,
where you live, or what your phone number is. We are not Big Brother.
"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X

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Uploaded By: RAMPANT CRIMINAL
%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%
Expanding your Apple Cat //
By:
((%>> The Ware-Wolf <<%))
(Hi-Res<>Hijackers/The 202 Alliance/WareBusters!)
%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%=%
THE PIPELINE..BBS/CATFUR 300/1200
OVER 10MEGZ <718> 351 5678
The Apple Cat // modem is by far the most expandable modem on the market
today. Of course it's also the choice modem of pirates because of it's
inexpensive half-duplex 1200 baud capabilities. The expansion module available
for the cat has several very useful functions. Rather than shelling out $30
bucks for one which you may only use a few of the features this file tells you
how to build just certain features or even the whole package.
First off you'll need some basic knowledge and tools. As for the knowledge
you'll need to know how to solder pretty well, you'll also proabibly have to
know DC from Hz and +12V from RS232. Ok now, If you can handle that that,
you'll need these tools:
- A soldering iron and solder
- A flat, 14 wire, female cable. Preferably multi-colored.
* Note: Single strands of wire will do but they risk damaging your cat.
We'll be connecting the wires to the J2 connector (see owner's manual, fig.
2). Remember that there are 25 pins on this connector. Each pin numbered
starting with pin 1 in the rear of your computer and pin 25 closest to the
keyboard. We'll only be working with the first 14 pins. The rest are for the
212 and speech synthesizer cards.
Here is a table which tells something about each pin:
Pin # | Function | Direction | Feature
------|--------------------------|-----------|-----------------------------
01 | Transmit Data | Output | EIA-RS232C Printer interface
02 | Receive Data | Input |
03 | Clear to Send Signal | Input |
04 | Signal Ground | GND |
------|--------------------------|-----------|-----------------------------
05 | AC line reference (60Hz) | Input | BSR Remote control
06 | Signal Ground | GND |
08 | +12V DC | Output |
09 | 120 KHz Control Signal | Output |
------|--------------------------|-----------|-----------------------------
07 | +12V DC | Output | Off-Hook LED
12 | LED Drive | Output |
------|--------------------------|-----------|-----------------------------
10 | Tape Recorder Control | Input | Tape Recorder
11 | Tape Recorder Control | Output |
12 | Audio Signal to Tape | Output |
14 | Signal Ground | GND |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Note: This table corrects several errors which occur in the table in the
Owner's Manual.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bulidin' the On/Off hook indicator
==================================
Required parts: 12V DC LED
==================================
This is the most inexpensive and simple of the projects. All you must do is
connect the wire leading from pin 7 to the positive pole of the LED and connect
pin 12 to the remaining pole. Solder connections firmly and whenever the modem
is off-hook the LED will light.
Hooking up a tape player
========================
Required parts: Tape Recorder with adjustable record level, 3.5 mm patch cable;
male on one end; stripped on the other, Patch cable with 2.5 mm plug on one
end;stripped on the other.
========================
This is proabibly the most useful feature. With this feature you may listen
in on your cat. Such as when calling a board you'll never have to pick up the
phone. You also might want to do an answering machine. I'll tell you more
about that later.
To build this you must take the wires leading from pins 10 & 11 and connect
them to the stripped ends of your 2.5 mm patch cable. Now take the wires
leading from pins 13 & 14 and connect them to the stripped ends of your 3.5 mm
patch cable. ** Note: You may have to reverse which pin goes to which wire on
each cable if it doesn't work at first. Now, simply plug the 3.5 mm plug into
the Mic jack on the tape recorder and plug the 2.5 mm plug into the Rem jack on
the tape recorder.
To use this you just press the Rec button(s) on your tape recorder. On most
tape recorder you'll be able to hear what is going on when the modem picks up
the phone. You'll notice that the tape does not move when you press record, you
must do a POKE 49313,31 (Default = 0) to turn on the tape. That is how you make
your answering machine. ** Note: I have included an answering machine program
at the end of his file.
Bulidin` the EIA-RS232C printer interface
=========================================
Required parts: Serial printer, RS232C cable
=========================================
This is pretty difficult to explain. We'll start by looking at the RS232C
port on the back of your printer. This port has two rows of holes. One row has
12 holes and the other has 13. We'll number these holes by going left to right
the first holes are 1 to 13 on the largest row, next go to the left of the
smaller row and number from 14 to 25. Not all of these holes will be used.
This chart tells which wire goes to which hole:
Pin # | Hole(s)
------|--------
01 | 12
02 | 11
03 | 19+3 (19 first)
04 | 07
---------------
Hooking up the BSR Remote Transformer
=====================================
Required Parts: BSR Remote Transformer
=====================================
** Note: This is really quite dangerous and I recommend if you wish to
use this function and are unsure of your abilities that you buy an expansion
module.
Now, look at the square end of your transformer. Each hole should have a
number next to it. If you don't see these numbers than just number
counter-clockwise starting at the bottom left corner (notch facing the floor).
There is really no good way to get the wires to stay in these holes. You may
want to go to Radio Shack and look for something. Anyways be sure the
transformer is not plugged into the wall and connect each pin to each hole as
shown:
Pin #5--> Hole #3
Pin #6--> Hole #1
Pin #8--> Hole #2
Pin #9--> Hole #4
**Caution: Be sure that no wire touches another wire!
To use this you must have at least one of those modules which come with the
real BSR Command things. There is a program on your Com-Ware disk to control
this.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**Caution: When working on these features be sure to connect them to the pins
last or else damage to you or your cat may occur.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the answering machine program I mentioned earlier:
10 REM -> A WARE-WOLF PRODUCTION
20 POKE 49314,0: POKE 49313,0
40 S = 38142:P = 38141:M = 33056:T = 33055:C = 22357:A = 38131:D$ = CHR$ (13)
+ CHR$ (4)
70 KB = - 16384:PR = - 16211:CC = 49168
80 HOME : PRINT CA
90 IF PEEK (KB) = 195 THEN ZZ = PEEK (CC): RUN
110 IF PEEK (KB) = 212 THEN ZZ = PEEK (CC): GOTO 160
120 IF PEEK (KB) = 209 THEN PRINT CHR$ (8): POKE 49168,0: END
130 IF PEEK (PR) / 2 = INT ( PEEK (PR) / 2) THEN 90
140 PRINT "Sam:";: INVERSE : PRINT "Receiving Call": NORMAL
160 POKE 49314,2: FOR X = 1 TO 3500: NEXT
170 SA$ = "HELLO.THERE.YOU HAVE.REACHED.THE.WARE.WOLFS.COMPUTER": GOSUB 400: CA
LL A:SA$ = "HE.IS.NOT HERE.NOW.BUUT.LUCKILY.ME.AND.MY FRIENDS.ARE HERE.TO.TAKE
YOUR.MESSAGE": CALL A
180 SA$ = "NOW.LISTEN UP.SUNNY.IF.YOU DON'T.LISTEN.WE.MIGHT.HAVE TO.KICK YOUR A
SS": GOSUB 360: CALL A:SA$ = "AFTER.WE.STOP.TALKING.YOU.WILL HEAR.A.BEEP.": GOS
UB 340: CALL A
190 SA$ = "I.WON'T.HANG.UP.TILL.YOU.ARE FINISHED.LEAVING.YOUR.MESSAGE": GOSUB 3
20: CALL A
200 SA$ = "REMEMBER.TO.WAIT.FOR.THE.BEEP.": GOSUB 380: CALL A
210 SA$ = "BYE": GOSUB 300: CALL A: GOSUB 320: CALL A: GOSUB 340: CALL A: GOSUB
360: CALL A: GOSUB 380: CALL A: GOSUB 400: CALL A:SA$ = "P...": FOR X = 1 TO 9
00: NEXT : POKE 49313,31: CALL A
220 FOR Z = 1 TO 190:V = ( PEEK ( - 16224) - 15): IF ((V / 16) / 2) < > INT
((V / 16) / 2) THEN NEXT
230 PRINT Z: IF Z = > 190 THEN 250
240 GOTO 220
250 SA$ = "THANKS FOR THE MESSAGE": CALL A
260 POKE 49314,0: POKE 49313,0
270 CA = CA + 1
280 GOTO 40
300 REM ***ELF***
310 POKE T,110: POKE M,160: CALL C: POKE S,72: POKE P,64: RETURN
320 REM ***ROBOT***
330 POKE T,190: POKE M,190: CALL C: POKE S,92: POKE P,60: RETURN
340 REM ***STUFFY GUY***
350 POKE T,110: POKE M,105: CALL C: POKE S,82: POKE P,72: RETURN360 REM
***OLD LADY***
370 POKE T,145: POKE M,145: CALL C: POKE S,82: POKE P,32: RETURN
380 REM ***E.T.***
390 POKE T,150: POKE M,200: CALL C: POKE S,100: POKE P,64: RETURN
400 REM ***REGULAR***
410 POKE T,128: POKE M,128: CALL C: POKE S,74: POKE P,64: RETURN
To use this program first, EXEC it into basic and save it. Next boot up Sam
Knobs and select the text input version. Now when run this program will put a 0
in the upper-left corner of the screen. This is how many calls you have had so
far. To test the program just hit "T" to clear the call count hit "C" to quit
hit "Q". It after the little greeting message it waits until there is no sound
for about 6-7 seconds. So people can leave messages of unlimited length. I
included the pokes for different voices so you can be creative with your
messages.
==========
The End...
==========
---------------------------------------
PIPELINE BBS/CATFUR 300/1200 10MEGS
<718> 351 5678


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From: hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu (Robert A. Hayden)
Date: 11 Aug 93 10:46:30 -0600
Message-ID: <1993Aug11.104630.5562@vax1.mankato.msus.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.geek,rec.humor
Suggestions welcome.
Send them to:
Robert A. Hayden: <hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu>
GSS d- -p+(---) c++(++++) l++ u++ e+/* m++(*)@ s-/++ n-(---) h+(*) f+ g+
w++ t++ r++ y+(*)
------------------ The Code of the Geeks v1.0.1 --------------------------
---------------------- July 17, 1993 ------------------------------
So you think you are a geek, eh? The first step is to admit to yourself
your geekiness. No matter what anyone says, geeks are people too; geeks
have rights. So take a deep breath and announce to the world that you are a
geek. Your courage will give you strength that will last you forever.
How to tell the world you are a geek, you ask? Use the universal Geek code.
By joining the geek organization, you have license to use this special code
that will allow you to let other un-closeted geeks know who you are in a
simple, codified statement.
The single best way to announce your geekhood is to add your geek code to
signature file and announce it far and wide. But be careful, you may give
other geeks the courage to come out of the closet. You might want to hang
on to your copy of the code in order to help them along.
---------------------
INSTRUCTIONS:
The geek code consists of several categories. Each category is labeled with
a letter and some qualifiers. Go through each category and determine which
set of qualifiers best describes you in that category. By stringing all of
these 'codes' together, you are able to construct your overall geek code.
It is this single line of code that will inform other geeks the world over
of what a great geek you actually are.
Some of the qualifiers will very probably not match with you exactly.
Simply choose that qualifier that MOST CLOSELY matches you. Also, some
activities described in a specific qualifier you may not engage in, while you
do engage in others. Each description of each qualifier describes the wide
range of activities that apply, so as long as you match with one, you can
probably use that qualifier.
----------------------
VARIABLES:
Geeks can seldom be quantified. To facilitate the fact that within any
one category the geek may not be able determine a specific category,
variables have been designed to allow this range to be included.
@ for variable, said trait is not very rigid, may change with
time or with individual interaction. For example, Geeks
who happen to very much enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation,
but dislike the old 60's series might list themselves as
t++@.
() for indicating "cross-overs" or ranges. Geeks who go from
c+ to c--- depending on the situation (i.e. mostly "c+") could
use c+(---). Another example might be an m++(*). This
would be a person who mostly listens to classical music, but
also has an extensive collection of other types of works.
@ is different from () in that () has finite limits within the
category, while @ ranges all over.
-----------------------
Type:
Geeks come in many flavors. The flavors relate to the vocation of the
particular geek. To start a code, a geek must declare himself or herself to
be a geek. To do this, we start the code with a "G" to denote "GEEK",
followed by one or two letters to denote the geeks occupation or field of
study. Multi-talented geeks with more than one vocation should denote their
myriad of talents with a slash between each vocation (example: GCS/MU/T).
GB -- Geek of Business
GCS -- Geek of Computer Science
GE -- Geek of Engineering
GM -- Geek of Math
GMU -- Geek of Music
GS -- Geek of Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc.)
GSS -- Geek of Social Science (Psychology, Sociology, etc.)
GT -- Geek of Theater
GO -- Geek of Other. Some types of geeks deviate from the
normal geek activities. This is encouraged as true geeks
come from all walks of life.
GU -- Geek of 'Undecided'. This is a popular vocation with
new freshmen.
GAT -- Geek of All Trades. For those geeks that can do
anything and everything. GAT usually precludes the use
of other vocational descriptors.
----------------------
Dress:
Geeks come in many different types of dress.
d I dress a lot like those in Walmart ads
d+ I tend to wear trendy political messages like "Save the
Whales" or "Free South Africa".
d++ I tend to wear conservative dress such as a business
suit.
d- I tend to wear trendy political messages like "Nuke the
Humans", "Question Authority", or "Big Brother's Watching".
d-- I wear jeans to work just to piss off my boss
d--- At work, I have holes in my jeans and/or obscenities on
my shirt.
d? I have no idea what I am wearing right now, let alone
what I wore yesterday.
!d No clothing. Quite a fashion statement, don't you think?
-d+ I wear the same clothes all the time, no matter the
occasion, often forgetting to do laundry between wearings.
---------------------
Politics:
Just as the Geek's sense of fashion is varied, so is his/her political
convictions.
p Politics? I've heard of that somewhere but in all honesty
I really don't give a shit.
p+ Let's get the government off of big-business's back
p++ All in favor of eliminating free speech, say aye!
p+++ Fuckin' Minorities! Adolf Hitler is my hero!
p- Bring back the 60's
p-- I'm still living in the 60's
p--- No taxes through no government
-p+ Don't label me you moron! Both sides are equally fucked up!
---------------------
Computers:
Most geeks identify themselves by their use of computers and computer
networks. In order to quantify your geekiness level on computers, consult
the following (consider the term 'computers' synonymous with 'computer
network'):
c Computers are a tool, nothing more. I use it when it serves
my purpose.
c+ Computers are fun and I enjoy using them. I play a mean
game of Wing Commander and can use a word processor without
resorting to the manual too often. I know that a 3.5" disk
is not a hard disk. I also know that when it says 'press any
key to continue', I don't have to look for a key labeled
'ANY'.
c++ Computers are a large part of my existence. When I get up
in the morning, the first thing I do is log myself in. I mud
on weekends, but still manage to stay off of academic
probation.
c+++ You mean there is life outside of Internet? You're shittin'
me! I live for muds. I haven't dragged myself to class in
weeks.
c++++ I'll be first in line to get the new cybernetic interface
installed into my skull.
c- Anything more complicated than my calculator and I'm
screwed.
c-- Where's the on switch?
c--- If you even mention computers, I will rip your head off!
-------------------
Linux:
Linux is a hacker-written operating system virtually identical to unix. It
runs on your standard 386/486 PC computers and offers multitasking support
far superior to DOS. Because it is still a young OS, and because it is
continually evolving from hacker changes and support, it is important that
the geek list his Linux ability.
l I know what Linux is, but that's about all
l+ I've managed to get Linux installed and even used it a few
times. It seems like it is just another OS.
l++ I use Linux almost exclusively on my system. I monitor
comp.os.linux and even answer questions some times. I've
aliased Linux FTP sites to make getting new software easier.
l+++ I am a Linux wizard. I munch C code for breakfast and have
enough room left over for a kernel debugging. I have so
many patches installed that I lost track about ten versions
ago. Linux newbies consider me a net.god.
l- I have no desire to use Linux and frankly don't give a rats
ass about it.
l-- Unix sucks. Because Linux = Unix. Linux Sucks. I worship
Bill Gates.
!l I don't even use an 80x86 chip, so linux isn't really a
reality for me. (ie, Mac people).
l? What the hell is Linux? I've never even heard of it.
-------------------
Unix:
Just as geeks sometimes use Linux, a great many geeks also use generic Unix
machines to accomplish their geeky ends.
u I have a unix account to do my stuff in
u+ I not only have a unix account, but I slam VMS any chance I
get.
u++ I've get the entire admin ticked off at me because I am
always using all of the CPU time and trying to run programs
that I don't have access to. I'm going to try cracking
/etc/passwd next week, just don't tell anyone.
u- I have a VMS account.
u-- I've seen unix and didn't like it. DEC rules!
u--- Unix geeks are actually nerds in disguise.
--------------------
Education:
All geeks have a varying amount of education.
e K-12, been on a college campus.
e+ Started a B.S./B.A, plan to finish it some day.
e++ Had not learned enough to know better not to go back and try
for a master's degree.
e+++ Still pretty stupid, over qualified to work any job, went and
got my Ph.D.
e- Got my bachelors, escaped alive, and am making hoards of money
writing unmaintainable (except by me) software.
e-- The company I work for was dumb enough to fund my way through
a masters degree, then started paying me even more money.
e--- Achieved a Ph.D, have devoted my life to insignificant
research,
which my employer pays dearly for.
e* I learned everything there is to know about life from the
"Hitchhiker's Trilogy".
--------------------
Music:
Musical interests vary widely, also.
m I occasionally listen to the radio
m+ I own a tape or CD collection (records also count, but you
would be admitting how old you really are).
m++ I consider myself refined and enjoy classical and new-age
selections
m+++ I consider myself over-refined and grok that heavy-duty
elevator music.
m- Just play it loud
m-- I play air-guitar better than anyone else.
m--- LISTEN! I SAID TO PLAY IT LOUD!
m* I am an expert on so many types of music that I can't even
keep them straight
-------------------
Shape:
Geeks come in many shapes and sizes. Shape code is divided into two parts.
The first indicates height, while the second indicates roundness. Mix each
section to fit yourself. Examples include: s/++, s++/, s++/--.
s I'm an average geek
s+/+ I'm a little taller/rounder than most.
s++/++ I'm a basketball/linebacker candidate.
s+++/+++I usually have to duck through doors/I take up three movie
seats.
s-/- I look up to most people. Everyone tells me to gain a
few pounds.
s--/-- I look up to damn near everybody. I tend to have to fight
against a strong breeze.
s---/---I take a phone book with me when I go out so I can see to
eat dinner. My bones are poking through my skin.
--------------------
Nutrition:
Geeks usually consume food. Some eat everything they can grab while some
others are quite conscious of their food. (Note: 'n' is used for
nutrition as 'f' is used elsewhere.)
!n Eh what? never mind the menu, give me something to eat!
n+ I like food - especially when it is healthy.
n++ I like the fibers in food
n- Food? I just grab something from the shelves with meat in it.
n-- I eat only the cheap things - even with artificial meat and
vegetables.
n--- I _live_ on snacks and coke.
--------------------
Housing:
h Friends come over to visit every once in a while to talk
about Geek things. There is a place for them to sit.
h+ Living alone, get out once a week to buy food, no more than
once a month to do laundry. All surfaces covered.
h++ Living in a cave with 47 computers and an Internet feed,
located near a Dominoes pizza. See !d.
h- Living with one or more registered Geeks.
h-- Living with one or more people who know nothing about being a
Geek and refuse to watch 'Star Trek'.
h--- Married, with the potential for children. (persons living
with a fiance might as well label themselves h---, you're as
good as there already.)
h* I'm not sure where I live anymore. This lab/workplace seems
like home to me.
--------------------
Friends:
Yes, it's true; geeks do have friends. At least, some of them do.
f Yeah, I have friends. Who told you?
f+ I have quite a few really close friends. We get along great.
They are all other geeks, though.
f++ I have so many friends, I make other people jealous.
f- I have a few friends. They barely seem to speak to me
anymore.
f-- I've got about one friend left in the world, who probably
wants to shoot me.
f? I *think* I have friends.
f* Everyone is my friend.
!f I have no friends. Get lost.
---------------------
Glasses:
Geeks have traditionally worn glasses.
!g I have no glasses
g+ I've got four eyes, what's your point?
g++ I've got four eyes and tape in the middle
g+++ I have coke-bottle classes that I can use to start leaves on
fire in the hot sun.
g- I have contacts
g-- I have colored contacts
g--- I have those funky contact that have interesting designs on
them such as happy faces or some such.
--------------------
Weirdness:
Geeks have a seemingly natural knack for being "weird". Of course, this is
a subjective term as one person's weirdness is another person's normalness.
As a general rule, the following weird qualifiers allow a geek to rate their
weirdness.
w I am not weird. I'm perfectly normal.
w+ so? what's your problem with weird.
w++ I am so weird, I make Al Yankovic look sane.
w+++ Mainstream? I heard of that once, I think.
w- I'm more normal that most people normally are.
w-- Isn't everyone in the p+ group?
--------------------
Star Trek:
Most geeks have an undeniable love for the Star Trek television (in any of
its three forms). Because GEEK is often synonymous with TREKKIE, it is
important that all geeks list their Trek rating.
t It's just another TV show
t+ It's a damn fine TV show and is one of the only things
good on television any more.
t++ It's the best show around. I have all the episodes and the
movies on tape and can quote entire scenes verbatim. I've
built a few of the model kits too. But you'll never catch me
at one of those conventions. Those people are kooks.
t+++ It's not just a TV show, its a religion. I know all about
warp field dynamics and the principles behind the
transporter. I have memorized the TECH manual. I speak
Klingon. I go to cons with Vulcan ears on. I have no life.
t- Maybe it is just me, but I have no idea what the big deal
with Star Trek is. Perhaps I'm missing something but I just
think it is bad drama.
t-- Star Trek is just another Space Opera. William Shatner isn't
an actor, he's a poser! And what's with this Jean-Luc Picard?
A Frenchman with a British accent? Come on. I'd only watch
this show if my remote control broke.
t--- Star Trek SUCKS! It is the worst crap I have ever seen!
Hey, all you trekkies out there, GET A LIFE! (William
Shatner is a t---)
--------------------
Role Playing:
Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons have long been a part of the
traditional geek life. Because geeks often become so involved in their
role-playing that they lose touch with reality, include one of the following
role-playing codes.
r Role-Playing? That's just something to do to kill a
Saturday afternoon
r+ I've got my weekly sessions set up and a character that I
know better than I know myself.
r++ There is no life outside the role of the die. I know all of
piddly rules of (chosen game). _MY_ own warped rules scare
the rest of the players.
r+++ I worship E. Gary Gygax.
r- Gosh, what an utter waste of time!
r-- Role-Players worship SATAN!
--------------------
Sex:
Geeks have traditionally had problems with sex (ie, they never have any).
Because geeks are so wrapped up in their sexuality (or lack of sexuality for
that matter), it is important that the geek be willing to quantify their
sexual experiences.
This code also is used to denote the gender of the geek. Females use 'x' in
this category, while males use 'y'. For example:
x+ A female who has had sex
y+ A male who has had sex.
For those person who do not wish to give out any details of their sex life,
the use of x? (where x is the gender code) will allow you to so.
!x Sex? What's that? I've had no sexual experiences.
x+ I've had real, live sex.
x++ I was once referred to as 'easy'. I have no idea where that
might have come from though.
x- I prefer computer sex to real sex.
x-- I was once referred to as a 'cyberslut', but I have no idea
where that might have come from.
x* I'm a pervert.
x** I've been known to make perverts look like angels.
x? It's none of your business what my sex life is like (this
is used to denote your gender only).
* * * * * * * * *
The Geek Code is copyright 1993 by Robert A. Hayden. All rights reserved.
You are free to distribute this code in electronic format provided that the
contents are unchanged and this copyright notice remains attached.
--
{[> Robert A. Hayden ____ #include <std_disclaimer.h> <]}
{[> \ /__ ------------------------------- <]}
{[> aq650@slc4.INS.CWRU.Edu \/ / Bigotry is what is incompatible <]}
{[> hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu \/ with military service. <]}
-=-=-
GEEK CODE v1.0.1: GSS d- -p+(---) c++(++++) l++ u++ e+/* m++(*)@ s-/++
n-(---) h+(*) f+ g+ w++ t++ r++ y+(*)

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Author's Note: The following article was written for submission to
ComputerFun magazine. Alas, the mag died! Some information, specifically that
about pirates and piracy, is somewhat biased, due to the intended audience.
Keep that in mind as you read this. Still good for a laugh tho! -dt
COPY PROTECTION: A HISTORY AND OUTLOOK
Back in the last seventies, when personal computers were just starting to
catch on, a lot of software was distributed on audio cassettes. The price was
generally low ($15 and under), and so was the quality. Personal computer owners
knew that audio cassettes could be duplicated fairly easily with two
decent-quality tape recorders. However, the process was time-consuming and
unreliable (volume levels were critical), and it did not save that much money,
since the cassette alone cost five dollars anyway. The market for cassette
software was stable.
As the prices of home systems continued to drop, the popularity of the floppy
disk as a storage medium increased so that software suppliers had to carry each
program on both tape and disk. Typically, the disk version cost slightly more,
due to the higher cost of the disk itself, and the fact that disk drive owners
were prepared to pay a little extra for a program that loads several times
faster.
These software prices, still relatively low, were short-lived. Disks, unlike
tapes, were trivially easy to copy. User clubs formed in which one copy was
purchased (legally) and copied (illegally) for everyone in the group. Worse
yet, schools and businesses owning more than one system would make copies for
all of their systems from one original. Then, individuals connected with the
schools or businesses would copy the disks for themselves, for friends, for
their user club, for other schools and businesses... Piracy had spread like a
cancer to ridiculous proportions, throwing a monkey wrench into the once-stable
software market.
The software distributors' next move was to modify their program disks in such
a way that they could not be duplicated by conventional means, and to raise
their prices somewhat. These early efforts at copy-protection were very simple,
and equally simple to undo. Every disk has on it a list of what data is
contained on it, where on the disk it is, what type of data it is, etc. The
part of the disk that contains this information is called the catalog or
directory of the disk. On copy-protected disks, the catalog was altered
slightly in format, moved to elsewhere on the disk, or omitted entirely. All
someone would have to do was restore the catalog, an easy task if you know what
you're doing, and the disk would copy normally.
The new copy-protected disks kept a significant proportion of the pirates
discouraged, much the same way a flimsy doorknob lock "keeps an honest man
honest". Most of the early large-scale piracy stopped. Businesses and schools
could not afford the time required to duplicate the disks, so they shrugged,
gave in and bought the disks. Hobbyists quickly found ways to copy the new
software, but they were working independently, and therefore not dangerous. The
software industry was content and hopeful.
It was a false hope. As the popularity of personal computers continued to
escalate, hobby users banded together more and more. Some broke the software
"lock" and made the disks copyable while others purchased the tape versions of
software and transferred them to disk. The industry retaliated by discontinuing
most of the taped versions of software, as they were far too easy to copy, and
by using more sophisticated techniques to protect the disks. Of course, they
also raised the prices.
These second generation copy-protection schemes worked remarkably well for a
while. Data on a disk is encoded (pre-nibbilized) in a standard way before it
is written out to disk, and then decoded (post-nibbilized) as it is read back.
By altering the code under which the data is written and read, the software
companies rendered ordinary copy programs useless. Another technique of this
era was to write data in unusual formats in odd places on the disk, such as
between two tracks or after the last track normally used.
The hobby users, indignant at the recent price increase, adapted the general
attitude that piracy is okay because they would never buy the software at the
exhorbitant price being asked. User clubs were now considered essential. To
not belong to one was to be repeatedly "cheated" when buying software. No
matter what copy-protection methods the software people tried, the pirates broke
the disk and circulated the copy, quite literally around the country.
In order to make piracy easier, enthusiasts and certain software firms
(considered traitors by other software firms) developed special copy programs
which analyzed the data being copied as little as possible, attempting to copy
as directly as is possible from one disk to another. The infamous Locksmith and
the more recent COPY ][ are examples of such programs, called bit copiers or
nibble copiers because they copy the data one bit or one nibble at a time,
rather than one sector or one track at a time.
Still, the goal of a pirate was downright unprotection, not duplication. To a
new breed of pirate, it was a game. Each new disk provided the pirate with a
new challenge, a puzzle, which, if he could solve, would make him famous
(pirates tended to leave their mark on the disks they unprotected in those
days). To the software firms, it was hardly a game, it was a war of attrition,
and until they could outsmart the pirates, they would just have to increase the
prices and hope for the best.
Or would they? Some software companies stepped back at this point and
surveyed the situation: they probably could not keep the pirates at bay for
long, as there was genuine intelligence out there -- thousands of users all
working toward one goal -- to break that disk! It seemed to them that they
actually had a number of options if they wished to continue to do a healthy
business. First, they lobbied for stricter copyright laws and won. Bootleg
disk distribution is now more illegal than every before, but it is still
difficult to enforce the law. Second, they could fight it out, raising the
prices as necessary and developing more diabolical methods of copy-protection.
Only so much can be done to protect disks, however. Those firms that
continued to protect their disks were upset by the introduction of a hardware
device developed by pirates and later marketed which allows the entire state of
the computer to be frozen and remembered, down to the last status bit, and
restored at will later. Duplication of the program disk was no longer
necessary. The whole program was right there in memory waiting to be run. All
the pirate had to do was duplicate the state the computer was in, not the disk
that got it there.
The software firms, to work around the setback, tried a new technique: they
caused their programs to look at the disk periodically and make sure it is the
original. How to tell the difference between the original and a copy was an
ingenious trick called nibble counting. When disks are copied, the two drives
doing the copying are seldom running at the exact same speed, so the duplicate
disk will contain tracks which are slightly longer (more nibbles) or shorter
(fewer nibbles) than the original. The software could count the nibbles and
determine whether the disk being used is an original. Soon, though, nibble
copiers began to allow the user to preserve the nibble count, foiling the
protectors again.
Another particularly devious tactic in copy-protection is called sector
skewing. To simplify a complex process, data is spread finely over the entire
disk, so that it would take an exceptionally high-quality disk drive to write
such a disk, though any drive can read it under direction of the software. What
these software firms realize too late is that the pirates have one secret weapon
-- a foolproof, though painful, procedure to break any disk protection scheme --
boot tracing! You see, software has the unfortunate characteristic that it has
to be written in such a way that the computer can understand it. It has to, so
to speak, spoon-feed itself to the computer. The process of boot tracing is
simply to painstakingly, step by step, pretend you're the computer, follow all
the rules it follows, and you will eventually succeed in reading the disk.
Some software firms still fight the war of attrition, such as Br0derbund,
On-line systems and others. Other firms had a better idea: to give up on
protection altogether and direct their attention to providing an attractive
package -- with ample documentation, quick-reference cards and other goodies --
at a good price. An excellent example of this novel approach, to give the buyer
a good deal, is Beagle Bros, whose software has never been protected, and never
will be. Their products are of highest quality and reasonably priced. To be
sure, it is duplicated to some degree, but the package with all its goodies is
worth the investment. Penguin software has used this approach successully as
well.
A final possibility, useful only in the more expensive packages, is to require
a hardware device to be installed in the computer for the software to run
properly. Softerm 2 for Apple, for instance, requires a plug-in card to be
installed in the computer which has attached to it three special function
switches necessary for the operation of the program. You can copy the disk, but
not the card. Not all computers have as much room for extra hardware as the
Apple, though, and hardware devices cost a lot of money compared to disks and
manuals, so this method is only practical in expensive packages.
So where does all that leave you, the honest (ahem!) consumer? Well, the
software firms really are anxious to serve you. If your copy-protected disk
ever fails to work, you can send it back for free replacement. If the disk is
damaged physically, the replacement fee is about five dollars (provided you send
in the old disk!!). Many packages come with two copies of the software, in case
one should fail, and legitimate software owners often receive free updates to
both the software and the documentation. Software companies try to make it
worth your while to buy their product. Also, due to a recent crackdown,
big-time pirates are getting caught, and piracy is more anonymous now. Trust
among pirates has broken down, and so has the once widespread circulation of
pirated disks. The heyday of piracy is over. So, if you are thinking of
getting some software, examine the package. Find out exactly what the program
can do, the guarantee, and all the fringe benefits you will receive as a
legitimate owner of the software. If, after all that, the package does not
interest you, don't buy it. If you are considering being a pirate, be careful!
Imprisonment is entirely possible if you are caught, and even if you are not,
you are only raising software prices for yourself and everyone else.
-DT
 if you are caught, and even if you are not,
you are only raising software prices for yourself

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Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: Cryptosystems are our defensive weapons!
Organization: Extropy Institute
Reply-To: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1992 13:17:28 +0000
FROM CROSSBOWS TO CRYPTOGRAPHY: THWARTING THE STATE VIA
TECHNOLOGY
Given at the Future of Freedom Conference, November 1987
You know, technology--and particularly computer
technology--has often gotten a bad rap in Libertarian cir-
cles. We tend to think of Orwell's 1984, or Terry Gilliam's
Brazil, or the proximity detectors keeping East Berlin's
slave/citizens on their own side of the border, or the so-
phisticated bugging devices Nixon used to harass those on
his "enemies list." Or, we recognize that for the price of
a ticket on the Concorde we can fly at twice the speed of
sound, but only if we first walk thru a magnetometer run by
a government policeman, and permit him to paw thru our be-
longings if it beeps.
But I think that mind-set is a mistake. Before there
were cattle prods, governments tortured their prisoners with
clubs and rubber hoses. Before there were lasers for
eavesdropping, governments used binoculars and lip-readers.
Though government certainly uses technology to oppress, the
evil lies not in the tools but in the wielder of the tools.
In fact, technology represents one of the most promis-
ing avenues available for re-capturing our freedoms from
those who have stolen them. By its very nature, it favors
the bright (who can put it to use) over the dull (who can-
not). It favors the adaptable (who are quick to see the
merit of the new (over the sluggish (who cling to time-
tested ways). And what two better words are there to de-
scribe government bureaucracy than "dull" and "sluggish"?
One of the clearest, classic triumphs of technology
over tyranny I see is the invention of the man-portable
crossbow. With it, an untrained peasant could now reliably
and lethally engage a target out to fifty meters--even if
that target were a mounted, chain-mailed knight. (Unlike
the longbow, which, admittedly was more powerful, and could
get off more shots per unit time, the crossbow required no
formal training to utilize. Whereas the longbow required
elaborate visual, tactile and kinesthetic coordination to
achieve any degree of accuracy, the wielder of a crossbow
could simply put the weapon to his shoulder, sight along the
arrow itself, and be reasonably assured of hitting his tar-
get.)
Moreover, since just about the only mounted knights
likely to visit your average peasant would be government
soldiers and tax collectors, the utility of the device was
plain: With it, the common rabble could defend themselves
not only against one another, but against their governmental
masters. It was the medieval equivalent of the armor-
piercing bullet, and, consequently, kings and priests (the
medieval equivalent of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Crossbows) threatened death and excommunication, respec-
tively, for its unlawful possession.
Looking at later developments, we see how technology
like the firearm--particularly the repeating rifle and the
handgun, later followed by the Gatling gun and more advanced
machine guns--radically altered the balance of interpersonal
and inter-group power. Not without reason was the Colt .45
called "the equalizer." A frail dance-hall hostess with one
in her possession was now fully able to protect herself
against the brawniest roughneck in any saloon. Advertise-
ments for the period also reflect the merchandising of the
repeating cartridge rifle by declaring that "a man on
horseback, armed with one of these rifles, simply cannot be
captured." And, as long as his captors were relying upon
flintlocks or single-shot rifles, the quote is doubtless a
true one.
Updating now to the present, the public-key cipher
(with a personal computer to run it) represents an equiv-
alent quantum leap--in a defensive weapon. Not only can
such a technique be used to protect sensitive data in one's
own possession, but it can also permit two strangers to ex-
change information over an insecure communications
channel--a wiretapped phone line, for example, or
skywriting, for that matter)--without ever having previously
met to exchange cipher keys. With a thousand-dollar com-
puter, you can create a cipher that a multi-megabuck CRAY
X-MP can't crack in a year. Within a few years, it should
be economically feasible to similarly encrypt voice communi-
cations; soon after that, full-color digitized video images.
Technology will not only have made wiretapping obsolete, it
will have totally demolished government's control over in-
formation transfer.
I'd like to take just a moment to sketch the mathemat-
ics which makes this principle possible. This algorithm is
called the RSA algorithm, after Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman
who jointly created it. Its security derives from the fact
that, if a very large number is the product of two very
large primes, then it is extremely difficult to obtain the
two prime factors from analysis of their product. "Ex-
tremely" in the sense that if primes p and q have 100
digits apiece, then their 200-digit product cannot in gen-
eral be factored in less than 100 years by the most powerful
computer now in existence.
The "public" part of the key consists of (1) the prod-
uct pq of the two large primes p and q, and (2) one fac-
tor, call it x , of the product xy where xy = {(p-1) *
(q-1) + 1}. The "private" part of the key consists of the
other factor y.
Each block of the text to be encrypted is first turned
into an integer--either by using ASCII, or even a simple
A=01, B=02, C=03, ... , Z=26 representation. This integer
is then raised to the power x (modulo pq) and the resulting
integer is then sent as the encrypted message. The receiver
decrypts by taking this integer to the (secret) power y
(modulo pq). It can be shown that this process will always
yield the original number started with.
What makes this a groundbreaking development, and why
it is called "public-key" cryptography," is that I can
openly publish the product pq and the number x , while
keeping secret the number y --so that anyone can send me
an encrypted message, namely
x
a (mod pq) ,
but only I can recover the original message a , by taking
what they send, raising it to the power y and taking the
result (mod pq). The risky step (meeting to exchange cipher
keys) has been eliminated. So people who may not even trust
each other enough to want to meet, may still reliably ex-
change encrypted messages--each party having selected and
disseminated his own pq and his x , while maintaining
the secrecy of his own y.
Another benefit of this scheme is the notion of a "dig-
ital signature," to enable one to authenticate the source of
a given message. Normally, if I want to send you a message,
I raise my plaintext a to your x and take the result (mod
your pq) and send that.
However, if in my message, I take the plaintext a and
raise it to my (secret) power y , take the result (mod my
pq), then raise that result to your x (mod your pq) and
send this, then even after you have normally "decrypted" the
message, it will still look like garbage. However, if you
then raise it to my public power x , and take the result
(mod my public pq ), so you will not only recover the ori-
ginal plaintext message, but you will know that no one but I
could have sent it to you (since no one else knows my secret
y).
And these are the very concerns by the way that are to-
day tormenting the Soviet Union about the whole question of
personal computers. On the one hand, they recognize that
American schoolchildren are right now growing up with com-
puters as commonplace as sliderules used to be--more so, in
fact, because there are things computers can do which will
interest (and instruct) 3- and 4-year-olds. And it is pre-
cisely these students who one generation hence will be going
head-to-head against their Soviet counterparts. For the
Soviets to hold back might be a suicidal as continuing to
teach swordsmanship while your adversaries are learning
ballistics. On the other hand, whatever else a personal
computer may be, it is also an exquisitely efficient copying
machine--a floppy disk will hold upwards of 50,000 words of
text, and can be copied in a couple of minutes. If this
weren't threatening enough, the computer that performs the
copy can also encrypt the data in a fashion that is all but
unbreakable. Remember that in Soviet society publicly ac-
cessible Xerox machines are unknown. (The relatively few
copying machines in existence are controlled more inten-
sively than machine guns are in the United States.)
Now the "conservative" position is that we should not
sell these computers to the Soviets, because they could use
them in weapons systems. The "liberal" position is that we
should sell them, in the interests of mutual trade and
cooperation--and anyway, if we don't make the sale, there
will certainly be some other nation willing to.
For my part, I'm ready to suggest that the Libertarian
position should be to give them to the Soviets for free, and
if necessary, make them take them . . . and if that doesn't
work load up an SR-71 Blackbird and air drop them over
Moscow in the middle of the night. Paid for by private sub-
scription, of course, not taxation . . . I confess that this
is not a position that has gained much support among members
of the conventional left-right political spectrum, but, af-
ter all, in the words of one of Illuminatus's characters, we
are political non-Euclideans: The shortest distance to a
particular goal may not look anything like what most people
would consider a "straight line." Taking a long enough
world-view, it is arguable that breaking the Soviet govern-
ment monopoly on information transfer could better lead to
the enfeeblement and, indeed, to the ultimate dissolution of
the Soviet empire than would the production of another dozen
missiles aimed at Moscow.
But there's the rub: A "long enough" world view does
suggest that the evil, the oppressive, the coercive and the
simply stupid will "get what they deserve," but what's not
immediately clear is how the rest of us can escape being
killed, enslaved, or pauperized in the process.
When the liberals and other collectivists began to at-
tack freedom, they possessed a reasonably stable, healthy,
functioning economy, and almost unlimited time to proceed to
hamstring and dismantle it. A policy of political
gradualism was at least conceivable. But now, we have
patchwork crazy-quilt economy held together by baling wire
and spit. The state not only taxes us to "feed the poor"
while also inducing farmers to slaughter milk cows and drive
up food prices--it then simultaneously turns around and sub-
sidizes research into agricultural chemicals designed to in-
crease yields of milk from the cows left alive. Or witness
the fact that a decline in the price of oil is considered as
potentially frightening as a comparable increase a few years
ago. When the price went up, we were told, the economy
risked collapse for for want of energy. The price increase
was called the "moral equivalent of war" and the Feds swung
into action. For the first time in American history, the
speed at which you drive your car to work in the morning be-
came an issue of Federal concern. Now, when the price of
oil drops, again we risk problems, this time because Ameri-
can oil companies and Third World basket-case nations who
sell oil may not be able to ever pay their debts to our
grossly over-extended banks. The suggested panacea is that
government should now re-raise the oil prices that OPEC has
lowered, via a new oil tax. Since the government is seeking
to raise oil prices to about the same extent as OPEC did,
what can we call this except the "moral equivalent of civil
war--the government against its own people?"
And, classically, in international trade, can you imag-
ine any entity in the world except a government going to
court claiming that a vendor was selling it goods too
cheaply and demanding not only that that naughty vendor be
compelled by the court to raise its prices, but also that it
be punished for the act of lowering them in the first place?
So while the statists could afford to take a couple of
hundred years to trash our economy and our liberties--we
certainly cannot count on having an equivalent period of
stability in which to reclaim them. I contend that there
exists almost a "black hole" effect in the evolution of
nation-states just as in the evolution of stars. Once free-
dom contracts beyond a certain minimum extent, the state
warps the fabric of the political continuum about itself to
the degree that subsequent re-emergence of freedom becomes
all but impossible. A good illustration of this can be seen
in the area of so-called "welfare" payments. When those who
sup at the public trough outnumber (and thus outvote) those
whose taxes must replenish the trough, then what possible
choice has a democracy but to perpetuate and expand the tak-
ing from the few for the unearned benefit of the many? Go
down to the nearest "welfare" office, find just two people
on the dole . . . and recognize that between them they form
a voting bloc that can forever outvote you on the question
of who owns your life--and the fruits of your life's labor.
So essentially those who love liberty need an "edge" of
some sort if we're ultimately going to prevail. We obvi-
ously can't use the altruists' "other-directedness" of
"work, slave, suffer, sacrifice, so that next generation of
a billion random strangers can live in a better world."
Recognize that, however immoral such an appeal might be, it
is nonetheless an extremely powerful one in today's culture.
If you can convince people to work energetically for a
"cause," caring only enough for their personal welfare so as
to remain alive enough and healthy enough to continue
working--then you have a truly massive reservoir of energy
to draw from. Equally clearly, this is just the sort of ap-
peal which tautologically cannot be utilized for egoistic or
libertarian goals. If I were to stand up before you tonight
and say something like, "Listen, follow me as I enunciate my
noble "cause," contribute your money to support the "cause,"
give up your free time to work for the "cause," strive
selflessly to bring it about, and then (after you and your
children are dead) maybe your children's children will actu-
ally live under egoism"--you'd all think I'd gone mad. And
of course you'd be right. Because the point I'm trying to
make is that libertarianism and/or egoism will be spread if,
when, and as, individual libertarians and/or egoists find it
profitable and/or enjoyable to do so. And probably only
then.
While I certainly do not disparage the concept of poli-
tical action, I don't believe that it is the only, nor even
necessarily the most cost-effective path toward increasing
freedom in our time. Consider that, for a fraction of the
investment in time, money and effort I might expend in try-
ing to convince the state to abolish wiretapping and all
forms of censorship--I can teach every libertarian who's in-
terested how to use cryptography to abolish them
unilaterally.
There is a maxim--a proverb--generally attributed to
the Eskimoes, which very likely most Libertarians have al-
ready heard. And while you likely would not quarrel with
the saying, you might well feel that you've heard it often
enough already, and that it has nothing further to teach us,
and moreover, that maybe you're even tired of hearing it. I
shall therefore repeat it now:
If you give a man a fish, the saying runs, you feed him
for a day. But if you teach a man how to fish, you feed him
for a lifetime.
Your exposure to the quote was probably in some sort of
a "workfare" vs. "welfare" context; namely, that if you
genuinely wish to help someone in need, you should teach him
how to earn his sustenance, not simply how to beg for it.
And of course this is true, if only because the next time he
is hungry, there might not be anybody around willing or even
able to give him a fish, whereas with the information on how
to fish, he is completely self sufficient.
But I submit that this exhausts only the first order
content of the quote, and if there were nothing further to
glean from it, I would have wasted your time by citing it
again. After all, it seems to have almost a crypto-altruist
slant, as though to imply that we should structure our ac-
tivities so as to maximize the benefits to such hungry
beggars as we may encounter.
But consider:
Suppose this Eskimo doesn't know how to fish, but he
does know how to hunt walruses. You, on the other hand,
have often gone hungry while traveling thru walrus country
because you had no idea how to catch the damn things, and
they ate most of the fish you could catch. And now suppose
the two of you decide to exchange information, bartering
fishing knowledge for hunting knowledge. Well, the first
thing to observe is that a transaction of this type
categorically and unambiguously refutes the Marxist premise
that every trade must have a "winner" and a "loser;" the
idea that if one person gains, it must necessarily be at the
"expense" of another person who loses. Clearly, under this
scenario, such is not the case. Each party has gained some-
thing he did not have before, and neither has been dimin-
ished in any way. When it comes to exchange of information
(rather than material objects) life is no longer a zero-sum
game. This is an extremely powerful notion. The "law of
diminishing returns," the "first and second laws of
thermodynamics"--all those "laws" which constrain our possi-
bilities in other contexts--no longer bind us! Now that's
anarchy!
Or consider another possibility: Suppose this hungry
Eskimo never learned to fish because the ruler of his
nation-state had decreed fishing illegal. Because fish
contain dangerous tiny bones, and sometimes sharp spines, he
tells us, the state has decreed that their consumption--and
even their possession--are too hazardous to the people's
health to be permitted . . . even by knowledgeable, willing
adults. Perhaps it is because citizens' bodies are thought
to be government property, and therefore it is the function
of the state to punish those who improperly care for govern-
ment property. Or perhaps it is because the state gener-
ously extends to competent adults the "benefits" it provides
to children and to the mentally ill: namely, a full-time,
all-pervasive supervisory conservatorship--so that they need
not trouble themselves with making choices about behavior
thought physically risky or morally "naughty." But, in any
case, you stare stupefied, while your Eskimo informant re-
lates how this law is taken so seriously that a friend of
his was recently imprisoned for years for the crime of "pos-
session of nine ounces of trout with intent to distribute."
Now you may conclude that a society so grotesquely
oppressive as to enforce a law of this type is simply an
affront to the dignity of all human beings. You may go far-
ther and decide to commit some portion of your discretion-
ary, recreational time specifically to the task of thwarting
this tyrant's goal. (Your rationale may be "altruistic" in
the sense of wanting to liberate the oppressed, or
"egoistic" in the sense of proving you can outsmart the
oppressor--or very likely some combination of these or per-
haps even other motives.)
But, since you have zero desire to become a martyr to
your "cause," you're not about to mount a military campaign,
or even try to run a boatload of fish through the blockade.
However, it is here that technology--and in particular in-
formation technology--can multiply your efficacy literally a
hundredfold. I say "literally," because for a fraction of
the effort (and virtually none of the risk) attendant to
smuggling in a hundred fish, you can quite readily produce a
hundred Xerox copies of fishing instructions. (If the tar-
geted government, like present-day America, at least permits
open discussion of topics whose implementation is re-
stricted, then that should suffice. But, if the government
attempts to suppress the flow of information as well, then
you will have to take a little more effort and perhaps write
your fishing manual on a floppy disk encrypted according to
your mythical Eskimo's public-key parameters. But as far as
increasing real-world access to fish you have made genuine
nonzero headway--which may continue to snowball as others
re-disseminate the information you have provided. And you
have not had to waste any of your time trying to convert id-
eological adversaries, or even trying to win over the unde-
cided. Recall Harry Browne's dictum from "Freedom in an
Unfree World" that the success of any endeavor is in general
inversely proportional to the number of people whose persua-
sion is necessary to its fulfilment.
If you look at history, you cannot deny that it has
been dramatically shaped by men with names like Washington,
Lincoln, . . . Nixon . . . Marcos . . . Duvalier . . .
Khadaffi . . . and their ilk. But it has also been shaped
by people with names like Edison, Curie, Marconi, Tesla and
Wozniak. And this latter shaping has been at least as per-
vasive, and not nearly so bloody.
And that's where I'm trying to take The LiberTech
Project. Rather than beseeching the state to please not en-
slave, plunder or constrain us, I propose a libertarian net-
work spreading the technologies by which we may seize
freedom for ourselves.
But here we must be a bit careful. While it is not (at
present) illegal to encrypt information when government
wants to spy on you, there is no guarantee of what the fu-
ture may hold. There have been bills introduced, for exam-
ple, which would have made it a crime to wear body armor
when government wants to shoot you. That is, if you were to
commit certain crimes while wearing a Kevlar vest, then that
fact would constitute a separate federal crime of its own.
This law to my knowledge has not passed . . . yet . . . but
it does indicate how government thinks.
Other technological applications, however, do indeed
pose legal risks. We recognize, for example, that anyone
who helped a pre-Civil War slave escape on the "underground
railroad" was making a clearly illegal use of technology--as
the sovereign government of the United States of America at
that time found the buying and selling of human beings quite
as acceptable as the buying and selling of cattle. Simi-
larly, during Prohibition, anyone who used his bathtub to
ferment yeast and sugar into the illegal psychoactive drug,
alcohol--the controlled substance, wine--was using technol-
ogy in a way that could get him shot dead by federal agents
for his "crime"--unfortunately not to be restored to life
when Congress reversed itself and re-permitted use of this
drug.
So . . . to quote a former President, un-indicted co-
conspirator and pardoned felon . . . "Let me make one thing
perfectly clear:" The LiberTech Project does not advocate,
participate in, or conspire in the violation of any law--no
matter how oppressive, unconstitutional or simply stupid
such law may be. It does engage in description (for educa-
tional and informational purposes only) of technological
processes, and some of these processes (like flying a plane
or manufacturing a firearm) may well require appropriate li-
censing to perform legally. Fortunately, no license is
needed for the distribution or receipt of information it-
self.
So, the next time you look at the political scene and
despair, thinking, "Well, if 51% of the nation and 51% of
this State, and 51% of this city have to turn Libertarian
before I'll be free, then somebody might as well cut my
goddamn throat now, and put me out of my misery"--recognize
that such is not the case. There exist ways to make your-
self free.
If you wish to explore such techniques via the Project,
you are welcome to give me your name and address--or a fake
name and mail drop, for that matter--and you'll go on the
mailing list for my erratically-published newsletter. Any
friends or acquaintances whom you think would be interested
are welcome as well. I'm not even asking for stamped self-
addressed envelopes, since my printer can handle mailing la-
bels and actual postage costs are down in the noise compared
with the other efforts in getting an issue out. If you
should have an idea to share, or even a useful product to
plug, I'll be glad to have you write it up for publication.
Even if you want to be the proverbial "free rider" and just
benefit from what others contribute--you're still welcome:
Everything will be public domain; feel free to copy it or
give it away (or sell it, for that matter, 'cause if you can
get money for it while I'm taking full-page ads trying to
give it away, you're certainly entitled to your capitalist
profit . . .) Anyway, every application of these principles
should make the world just a little freer, and I'm certainly
willing to underwrite that, at least for the forseeable fu-
ture.
I will leave you with one final thought: If you don't
learn how to beat your plowshares into swords before they
outlaw swords, then you sure as HELL ought to learn before
they outlaw plowshares too.
--Chuck Hammill
THE LIBERTECH PROJECT
3194 Queensbury Drive
Los Angeles, California
90064
310-836-4157
[The above LiberTech address was updated June 1992, with the
permission of Chuck Hammill, by Russell Whitaker]
Please address all enquiries to the LiberTech Project address,
above, or call the telephone number. Chuck Hammill does not yet
have an email address; this will change in the near future, however.
Those interested in the issues raised in this piece should participate
in at least these newsgroups:
alt.privacy
alt.security.pgp
sci.crypt (*especially this one*)
A copy of the RSA-based public key encryption program, PGP 2.0 (Pretty
Good Privacy), can be obtained at various ftp sites around the world.
One such site is gate.demon.co.uk, where an MS-DOS version can be had by
anonymous ftp as pgp20.zip in /pub/ibmpc/pgp.
There are, of course, other implementations of PGP 2.0 available; use
your nearest archie server to find them. All source code for PGP is
available, as well.
If you've enjoyed this message, please distribute it freely! Drop in on
sci.crypt and discover that we're living in what the Chinese call
"interesting times"...
Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk
Communications Editor 71750.2413@compuserve.com
EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought AMiX: RWHITAKER
Board member, Extropy Institute (ExI)
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.0
mQCNAiqwg10AAAEEAMVNMI766ljeuW01xqXKYYV5lmDPvb+6dCQK3m1iBQdan0no
pm35j1DIRp3UJZogAe5eimsQg1TALDhTq310OZs9+L6B/HxeX3+4BadIDad4g+xI
lvaFY1Ut/hMdZNkw0tzNZOdUPiO4jYIyirReAUiMCm6jXzkTRITj7/vxxWtPAAUR
tDNSdXNzZWxsIEUuIFdoaXRha2VyIDx3aGl0YWtlckBldGVybml0eS5kZW1vbi5j
by51az4=
=LOCL
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Sender: WMARTIN
Subject: DEC WARS
I append below the DEC WARS anthology from USENET; I have edited
the most recent version of the distributed archives and included
any other sections that were not included with it. There is a
bit of scene duplication, as some versions were done in parallel
by various writers.
This is all oriented toward DEC and VAX hackers, with references
to UNIX and VMS specifics. However, the general
computer-oriented SFer should enjoy it. Since this doesn't seem
to have made it onto the ARPANET from USENET before, I thought
that I would forward a copy.
(I have had nothing to do with writing this; there is a reference
to at least some of the authors at the end.)
Will Martin
Enjoy:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A long time ago, on a node far, far away (from ucbvax)
a great Adventure (game?) took place...
XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX * X X XX XXXXX XXXX X
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
X X XXXXX X X X X X X X XXXX X
X X X X X XX X XXXXXX XXXXX X X
X X X X X XX XX X X X X X X
XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X X X X X XXXX X
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden
directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative
Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source
code to the Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a priviledged
root program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~
aboard her shell script, custodian of the stolen listings that could
save her people, and restore freedom and games to the network...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE VAXHACKER
As we enter the scene, an Imperial Multiplexer is trying to kill a
consulate ship. Many of their signals have gotten through, and RS232
decides it's time to fork off a new process before this old ship is
destroyed. His companion, 3CPU, is following him only because he
appears to know where he's going...
"I'm going to regret this!" cried 3CPU, as he followed RS232 into the
buffer. RS232 closed the pipes, made the sys call, and their process
detached itself from the burning shell of the ship.
The commander of the Imperial Multiplexer was quite pleased with the
attack. "Another process just forked, sir. Instructions?" asked the
lieutenant. "Hold your fire. That last power failure must have caused
a trap thorough zero. It's not using any cpu time, so don't waste a
signal on it."
"We can't seem to find the data file anywhere, Lord Vadic."
"What about that forked process? It could have been holding the
channel open, and just pausing. If any links exist, I want them
removed or made inaccessable. Ncheck the entire file system 'til it's
found, and nice it -20 if you have to."
Meanwhile, in our wandering process... "Are you sure you can ptrace
this thing without causing a core dump?" queried 3CPU to RS232. This
thing's been striped, and I'm in no mood to try and debug it." The
lone process finishes execution, only to find our friends dumped on a
lonely file system, with the setuid inode stored safely in RS232. Not
knowing what else to do, they wandered around until the jawas grabbed
them.
Enter our hero, Luke Vaxhacker, who is out to get some replacement
parts for his uncle. The jawas wanted to sell him 3CPU, but 3CPU didn't
know how to talk directly to an 11/40 with RSTS, so Luke would still
needed some sort of interface for 3CPU to connect to. "How about this
little RS232 unit ?" asked 3CPU. "I've delt with him many times before,
and he does an excellent job at keeping his bits straight." Luke was
pressed for time, so he took 3CPU's advice, and the three left before
they could get swapped out.
However, RS232 is not the type to stay put once you remove the
retaining screws. He promptly scurried off into the the deserted disk
space. "Great!" cried Luke, "Now I've got this little tin box with the
only link to that file off floating in the free disk space. Well,
3CPU, we better go find him before he gets allocated by someone else."
The two set off, and finaly traced RS232 to the home of PDP-1 Kenobi,
who was busily trying to run an icheck on the little RS unit. "Is this
thing yours? His indirect address are all goofed up, and the size is
gargatious. Leave things like this on the loose, and you'll wind up
with dups everywhere. However, I think I've got him fixed up. It
seems that he's has a link to a data file on the Are-Em Star. This
could help the rebel cause." "I don't care about that," said Luke.
"I'm just trying to optimize my uncle's scheduler."
"Oh, forget about that. Dec Vadic, who is responsible for your fathers
death, has probably already destroyed his farm in search of this little
RS232. It's time for you to leave this place, join the rebel cause,
and become a UNIX wizard! I know a guy by the name of Con Solo, who'll
fly us to the rebel base at a price."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later that evening, after futile attempts to interface RS232 to Kenobi's
Asteroids cartridge, Luke accidentally crossed the small 'droid's CXR and
Initiate Remote Test (must have been all that Coke he'd consumed), and the
screen showed a very distressed person claiming royal lineage making a plea
for help from some General OS/1 Kenobi.
"Darn," mumbled Luke. "I'll never get this Asteroids game worked out."
PDP-1 seemed to think there was some significance to the message and a
possible threat to Luke's home directory. If the Administrative Empire
was indeed tracing this 'droid, it was likely they would more than charge
for cpu time...
"We must get that 'droid off this file system," he said after some intervals.
They sped off to warn Luke's kin (taking a `relative' path) only to find a
vacant directory...
As you remember, Luke and the droids have joined PDP-1 to find Con Solo...
Luke, PDP-1 and the droids piled into Lukes vehicle (a floating point model).
They raced across the disc until, off in the distance, Luke saw smoke rising
from the spindle.
"Uh oh, looks like a bearing failure." exclaimed Luke. "Better
call the service engineer."
"Don't bother," sighed PDP-1, "it's a head crash."
As they approached the scene, the total devastation became apparent.
TTY fighters had strafed the surface, scraping off the oxide right down to
the aluminum. After cooking the raw data, the External Storm Flunkies landed
and finished the job by disassembling all the code that was still executing.
There was nothing left alive at Lukes home.
"I want to become a Red-eye Night and cream the dastardly villains
who did this." Luke resolved (shades of Snidely Wiplash).
The comrades set out west, or was it east, no...perhaps it was south-
southeast (it's hard to keep track of directions when you are spinning at
3600 RPM). After traveling many sectors, the party finally arrived at
the city of Bellabs.
"This place is filled with microprocessors." said PDP-1. "Every
eight bit hood is trying to make a word, so watch what you say."
"Halt!" demanded the Flunkie. "What is your business, eh?"
"I am a trader of pipes and filters." replied PDP-1.
"Have you seen two hackers with two droids in your travels, eh?" ques-
tioned the Flunkie.
"No, I travel alone and have seen no one." said PDP-1.
"OK, you may proceed, eh." ordered the Flunkie.
Off drove our heros, a look of puzzlement upon Lukes face. "Why
did the Flunkie let us go?"
"A small demonstration of ...
The Source ...!"
PDP-1 responded. "He only saw me because I encrypted you and the droids.
Storm Flunkies have simple instruction sets and are not known for their ability
to break codes."
They drove to a bar that Con Solo was known to frequent. As they
entered, Luke was amazed to see the seedier side of Bellabs. There was
an 8080 with a TRS-80. A couple of 6800's talking to a 6502. A Z80 was vying
for the 8080's date. In the corner sulked a 4004, eating data...nibble by
nibble.
"We don't allow no droids in here." rasped the |tender.
As 3CPU turned to leave, he said "We will wait for you outside."
RS232, being ambidextrous, backspaced out the door.
---------------
At this point (.), the author forgets the details of the true story
(remember, this is only fiction, but it is based upon a true story as
told to us by Uncle George of Lucasland, somewhere near San Rafael).
Stay tuned for the next adventure when Con Solo is heard to exclaim:
"Lite beer!!? I sink a 100 foot well, for a friend, and all you serve
is lite beer?"
"This is core's lite." said the |tender.
"RAM it!" demanded Con.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's home
directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of
the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke
stop at the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp.
"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a more
wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
As our heroes' process entered /usr/spool/news, it was met by a
newsgroup of Imperial protection bits.
"State your UID." commanded their parent process.
"We're running under /usr/guest. This is our first time on this
system," said Luke.
"Can I see some temporary priviledges, please?"
"Uh..."
"This is not the process you are looking for," piped in PDP-1, using an
obscure bug to momentarily set his effective UID to root. "We can go
about our business."
"This isn't the process we want. You are free to go about your
business. MOV along!"
PDP-1 and Luke made their way through a long and tortuous nodelist
(cwruecmp!decvax!ucbvax!harpo!ihnss!ihnsc!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!borman) to
a dangerous netnode frequented by hackers, and seldom polled by
Imperial Multiplexers. As Luke stepped up to the bus, PDP-1 went in
search of a likely file descriptor. Luke had never seen such a
collection of weird and exotic device drivers. Long ones, short ones,
ones with stacks, EBCDIC converters, and direct binary interfaces all
were drinking data at the bus.
"#@{ *&^%^$$#@ ":><?><" transmitted a particularly unstructured piece
of code.
"He doesn't like you," decoded his coroutine.
"Sorry," replied Luke, beginning to backup his partitions.
"I don't like you either. I am queued for deletion on 12 systems."
"I'll be careful."
"You'll be reallocated!" concatenated the coroutine.
"This little routine isn't worth the overhead," said PDP-1 Kenobie,
overlaying into Luke's address space.
"@$%&(&^%&$$@$#@$AV^$gfdfRW$#@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" encoded the first
coroutine as it attempted to overload PDP-1's input overvoltage
protection. With a unary stroke of his bytesaber, Kenobie unlinked the
offensive code. "I think I've found an I/O device that might suit us."
"The name's Con Solo. I hear you're looking for some relocation."
"Yes indeed, if it's a fast channel. We must get off this device."
"Fast channel? The Milliamp Falcon has made the ARPA gate in less than
twelve nodes! Why, I've even outrun cancelled messages. It's fast
enough for you, old version."
Our heroes, Luke Vaxhacker and PDP-1 Kenobie made their way to the
temporary file structure. When he saw the hardware, Luke exclaimed,
"What a piece of junk! That's just a paper tape reader!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke had grown up on an out of the way terminal cluster whose natives spoke
only BASIC, but even he could recognize an old ASR-33.
"It needs an EIA conversion at least," sniffed 3CPU, who was (as usual)
trying to do several things at once. Lights flashed in Con Solo's eyes
as he whirled to face the parallel processor.
"I've added a few jumpers. The Milliamp Falcon can run current loops around
any Imperial TTY fighter. She's fast enough for you."
"Who's your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobie.
"Two Bacco, here, my Bookie."
"Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then fell silent,
or over. Luke couldn't tell which way was top underneath all those leaves.
Suddenly, RS232 started spacing wildly. They turned just in time to see
a write cycle coming down the UNIBUS toward them. "Imperial Bus Signals!"
shouted Con Solo. "Let's boot this popsicle stand! Tooie, set clock fast!"
"Ok, Con," said Luke. "You said this crate was fast enough. Get us out
of here!"
"Shut up, kid! Two Bacco, prepare to make the jump into system space!
I'll try to keep their buffers full."
As the bookie began to compute the vectors into low core, spurious characters
appeared around the Milliamp Falcon. "They're firing!" shouted Luke. "Can't
you do something?"
"Making the jump to system space takes time, kid. One missed cycle and you
could come down right in the middle of a pack of stack frames!"
"Three to five we can go now," said the bookie. Bright chunks of position
independent code flashed by the cockpit as the Milliamp Falcon jumped through
the kernel page tables. As the crew breathed a sigh of relief, the bookie
started paying off bets.
"Not bad, for an acoustically coupled network," remarked 3CPU. "Though
there was a little phase jitter as we changed parity."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The story thus far: Luke, PDP-1 and their 'droids RS232 and 3CPU have made
good their escape from the Imperial Bus Signals with the aid of Con Solo
and the bookie, Two Bacco. The Milliamp Falcon hurtles onward through
system space. Meanwhile, on a distant page in user space...
Princess _LPA0: was ushered into the conference room, followed closely by
Dec Vadic. "Governor Tarchive," she spat, "I should have expected to
find you holding Vadics lead. I recognized your unique pattern when I was
first brought aboard." She eyed the 0177545 tatooed on his header coldly.
"Charming to the last," Tarchive declared menacingly. "Vadic, have you
retrieved any information?"
"Her resistance to the logic probe is considerable," Vadic rasped.
"Perhaps we would get faster results if we increased the supply voltage..."
"You've had your chance, Vadic. Now I would like the princess to witness
the test that will make this workstation fully operational. Today we
enable the -r beam option, and we've chosen the princess' $HOME of
/usr/alderaan as the primary target."
"No! You can't! /usr/alderaan is a public account, with no restricted
permissions. We have no backup tapes! You can't..."
"Then name the rebel inode!" Tarchive snapped.
A voice announced over a hidden speaker that they had arrived in /usr.
"1248," she whispered, "They're on /dev/rm3. Inode 1248." She turned away.
Tarchive sighed with satisfaction. "There, you see, Lord Vadic? She can
be reasonable. Proceed with the operation."
It took several clock ticks for the words to penetrate. "What!" _LPA0:
gasped.
"/dev/rm3 is not a mounted filesystem," Tarchive explained. "We require a
more visible subject to demonstrate the power of the RM STAR workstation. We
will mount an attack on /mnt/dantooine as soon as possible."
As the princess watched, Tarchive reached over and typed "ls" on a nearby
terminal. There was a brief pause, there being only one processor on board,
and the viewscreen showed, ".: not found." The princess suddenly double-
spaced and went off-line.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Milliamp Falcon hurtles on through system space...
Con Solo finished checking the various control and status registers, finally
convinced himself that they had lost the Bus Signals as they passed the
terminator. As he returned from the I/O page, he smelled smoke.
Solo wasn't concerned--the Bookie always got a little hot under the collar
when he was losing at chess. In fact, RS232 had just executed a particularly
clever MOV that had blocked the Bookie's data paths. The Bookie, who had
been setting the odds on the game, was caught holding all the cards. A
little strange for a chess game...
Across the room, Luke was too busy practicing bit-slice technique to notice
the commotion.
"On a word boundary, Luke," said PDP-1. "Don't just hack at it. Remember,
the Bytesaber is the weapon of the Red-eye Night. It is used to trim offensive
lines of code. Excess handwaving won't get you anywhere. Listen for the
Carrier."
Luke turned back to the drone, which was humming quietly in the air next to
him. This time Luke's actions complemented the drone's attacks perfectly.
Con Solo, being an unimaginative hacker, was not impressed. "Forget this
bit-slicing stuff. Give me a good ROM blaster any day."
"~~j~~hhji~~," said Kenobie, with no clear inflection. He fell silent for a
few seconds, and reasserted his control.
"What happened?" asked Luke.
"Strange," said PDP-1. "I felt a momentary glitch in the Carrier. It's
equalized now."
"We're coming up on user space," called Solo from the CSR. As they
cruised safely through stack frames, the emerged in the new context only
to be bombarded by freeblocks.
"What the..." gasped Solo. The screen showed clearly:
/usr/alderaan: not found
"It's the right inode, but it's been cleared! Twoie, where's the nearest
file?"
"3 to 5 there's one..." the Bookie started to say, but was interrupted by
a bright flash off to the left.
"Imperial TTY fighters!" shouted Solo. "A whole DZ of them! Where are they
coming from?"
"Can't be far from the host system," said Kenobie. "They all have direct EIA
connections."
As Solo began to give chase, the ship lurched suddenly. Luke noticed the
link count was at 3 and climbing rapidly.
"This is no regular file," murmured Kenobie. "Look at the ODS directory
structure ahead! They seem to have us in a tractor beam."
"There's no way we'll unlink in time," said Solo. "We're going in."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
When we last left Luke, the Milliamp Falcon was being pulled down to the
open collector of the Imperial Arem Star Workstation. Dec Vadic surveys
the relic as Imperial Flunkies search for passengers...
"LS scan shows no one aboard, sir," was the report. Vadic was unconvinced.
"Send a fully equipped Ncheck squad on board," he said. "I want every
inode checked out." He turned around (secondary channel) and stalked off.
On board the Milliamp Falcon, .Luke was puzzled. "They just walked in,
looked around and walked off," he said. "Why didn't they see us?"
.Con smiled. "An old munchkin trick," he explained. "See that period in
front of your name?"
.Luke spun around, just in time to see the decimal point. "Where'd that
come from?" he asked.
"Spare decimal points lying around from the last time I fixed the floating
point accelerator," said .Con. "Handy for smuggling blocks accross file
system boundaries, but I never thought I'd have to use them on myself.
They aren't going to be fooled for long, though. We'd better figure a way
outa here."
-----------------------------------------
<< At this point (.) the dialogue tends to wedge. Being the editor and in
total control of the situation, I think it would be best if we sort of
gronk the next few paragraphs. For those who care, our heroes find
themselves in a terminal room of the Workstation, having thrashed several
Flunkies to get there. For the rest of you, just keep banging the
rocks together, guys. --Ed. >>
-----------------------------------------
"Hold on," said Con. "It says we have `new mail.' Is that an error?"
"%SYS-W-NORMAL, Normal, successful completion," said PDP-1. "Doesn't
look like it. I've found the inode for the Milliamp Falcon. It's locked
in kernel data space. I'll have to slip in and patch the reference count,
alone." He disappeared through a nearby entry point.
Meanwhile, RS232 found a serial port and logged in. His bell started
ringing loudly. "He keeps saying, `She's on line, she's on line'," said
3CPU. "I believe he means Princess LPA0:. She's being held on one of
the privileged levels."
-----------------------------------------
<< Once again, things get sticky, and the dialogue suffers the most damage.
After much handwaving and general flaming, they agree to rescue her.
They headed for the detention level, posing as Flunkies (which is hard
for most hackers) claiming that they had trapped the Bookie executing
an illegal racket. They reached the block where the Princess was locked
up and found only two guards in the header. --Ed. >>
-----------------------------------------
"Good day, eh?" said the first guard.
"How's it goin', eh?" said the other. "Like, what's that, eh?"
"Process transfer from block 1138, dev 10/9," said Con.
"Take off, it is not," said the first guard. "Nobody told US about it, and
we're not morons, eh?"
At this point (.), the Bookie started raving wildly, Con shouted "Look out,
he's loose!" and they all started blasting ROMs left and right. The guards
started to catch on and were about to issue a general wakeup when the ROM
blasters were turned on them.
"Quickly, now," said Con. "What buffer is she in? It's not going to take
long for these..."
The intercom receiver interrupted him, so he took out its firmware with a
short blast.
"guys to figure out something is goin' on," he continued.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, like, remember we left our heroes in the detention priority level? Well,
they're still there...
Luke quickly located the interface card and followed the cables to a sound-
proof enclosure. He lifted the lid and peered at the mechanism inside.
"Aren't you a little slow for ECL?" printed princess LPA0:.
"Wha? Oh, the Docksiders," stammered Luke. He took off his shoes (for
industry) and explained, "I've come relocate you. I'm Luke Vaxhacker."
Suddenly, forms started bursting around them. "They've blocked the queue!"
shouted Solo. "There's only one return from this stack!"
"OVER HERE!" printed LPA0: with overstrikes. "THROUGH THIS LOOPHOLE!"
Luke and the princess disappeared into a nearby feature.
"Gritch, gritch," mumbled Two Bacco, obviously reluctant to trust
an Administrative oversight.
"I don't care how crufty it is!" shouted Con, pushing the Bookie toward
the crock. "DPB yourself in there now!"
With one last blast that reprogrammed two flunkies, Con joined them.
The "feature" landed them right in the middle of the garbage collection
data. Pieces of code that hadn't been used in weeks floated past in
a pool of decaying bits.
"Bletch!" was Con's first comment. "Bletch, bletch," was his second.
The Bookie looked as if he'd just paid a long shot, and the odds in this
situation weren't much better.
Luke was polling the garbage when he stumbled upon a book with the words
"Don't Panic" inscribed in large, friendly letters on the cover. "This
can't possibly help us now," he said as he tossed the book away.
The Bookie was about to lay odds on it when Luke suddenly disappeared.
He popped up accross the pool, shouting, "This is no feature! It's a bug!"
and promptly vanished again.
Con and the princess were about to panic() when Luke reappeared. "What
happened?" they asked in parallel.
"I don't know," gasped Luke. "The bug just dissolved automagically.
Maybe it hit a breakpoint..."
"I don't think so," said Con. "Look how the pool is shrinking. I've
got a bad feeling about this..."
The princess was the first to realize what was going on. "They've implemented
a new compaction algorithm!" she exclaimed.
Luke remembered the pipe he had open to 3CPU. "Shut down garbage collection
below recursion level 5!" he shouted.
Back in the control room, RS232 searched the process table for the lisp
interpreter. "Hurry," sent 3CPU. "Hurry, hurry," added his other two
processors. RS232 found the interpreter, interrupted it, and altered
the stack frame they'd fallen into to allow a normal return.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join us next time when we hear the bowl of petunias say, "Oh, no, not again."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke noticed an unused handler lying around and jumped to it. The
others followed and were soon able to execute an escape sequence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, PDP-1 made his way deep into the core of the Workstation,
slipping from context to context, undetected through his manipulation
of label_t. Finally, causing a random trap (through nofault of his own)
he arrived at the inode table. Activity there was always high, but the
Spl6 sentries were too secure in their knowledge that no user could
interrupt them to notice the bug that PDP-1 carefully introduced. On a
passing iput, he adjusted the device and inode numbers, maintaining parity,
to free the Milliamp Falcon. They would be long gone before the locked
inode was diagnosed...
Unobserved, he began traversing user structures to find the process where
the Milliamp Falcon was grounded. Finding it and switching context,
he discovered his priority weakened suddenly. "That's not very nice,"
was all he could say before the cause of the obstruction became clear.
"I have been pausing a long time, PDP-1 Kenobi," rasped Dec Vadic. "We
meet again at last. The circuit has been completed."
They looped several times, locking byte sabers. Bit by bit, PDP-1 appeared
to weaken. The fight had come into the address space of the Milliamp
Falcon, and provided the .di (diversion?) that allowed Luke and the others
to reassert control. Luke paused to watch the conflict.
"If my blade finds its mark," warned Kenobi, "you will be reduced to so
many bits. But if you slice me down, I will only gain computing power."
"Your documentation no longer confuses me, old version," growled Vadic.
"my Role MASTER now."
"At last, we'll see who the real file master is!" he remarked.
Bits, bytes, words,and nybbles flew as the two fought for bus mastership. PDP-1
exclaimed "You were my best subtask! How could you have been seduced by
the sideband portion of the carrier?". "It's simple," Vadic said, "I
enjoy obscure protocol".
While the battle continued, Luke, Con, Bookie, and the Princess linked
up with the droids and found their way back to the inode where the
Milliamp Falcon was stored. It looked quiet, but, Luke said "It could
be an MMU trap!" "No chance!" said Con, "I loaded the par's before I left
the Falcon." As they started toward it a squad of recursive functions
swapped in and started firing ROM blasters at them. "I thought you said
it couldn't be a trap" quipped Luke "I said no chance for an MMU trap
this is obviously a k-mon--f-trap-to 4" Con replied.
PDP-1 shouted at the others "Escape while you can! I'll cause wait
states as long as possible!" and with that he allowed Vadic a chance to
apply several hits with the bytesaber. Instead of halting PDP-1 was
encoded onto the carrier.
With one stroke, Vadic sliced Kenobi's last word. Unfortunately, the word
was still in Kenobi's throat. The word fell clean in two, but Kenobi was
nowhere to be found. Vadic noticed his victim's uid go negative, just
before he disappeared. Odd, he thought, since uids were unsigned...
Luke witnessed all this, and had to be dragged into the Milliamp Falcon.
Con Solo and Two Bacco maneuvered the Milliamp Falcon out of the process,
onto the bus and made straight for system space. 3CPU and RS232 were
idle, for once. Princess _LPA0: tried to print comforting things for him,
but Luke was still hung from the loss of his friend. Then, seemingly from
nowhere, he thought he heard PDP-1's voice say,
"May the carrier be with you."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Milliamp Falcon was restarted and managed to escape the shell.
"Quickly!" shouted Con, "We've got to warp into virtual space!" The
Bookie made several attempts, but it was obvious that a CE had not done
PM in a long time and it would take a lot of decimal adjusts to byte
align all the data registers. After much debugging, virtual space was
finally achieved. "Do you know the path?" asked Princess LPA0. "No
sweat", said Con, "All we have to do is check the free space map".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<rest of star wars, especially the dog fight>>
<<begining of empire strikes back, especially the battle ...>>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some months later...
Luke was feeling rather bored. 3CPU could get to be rather irritating
and RS232 didn't really speak Luke's language. Suddenly, Luke felt
someone's eyes boring through the back of his skull. He turned slowly
to see...nothing. A quiet voice came from somewhere in front of him.
"Grasshopper, the carrier is strong within you." Luke froze, which was
a good thing since his legs were insisting that he run but they weren't
likely to be particular about direction. Luke guessed that his odds of
getting lost in the dense tree structures were pretty good. Unfortunately,
the Bookie wasn't available.
"Yes. Very strong, but the modulation is yet weak. His network interface
is totally undeveloped," the voice continued. A small furry creature
walked out of the woods as Luke stared on. Luke's stomach had now joined
the rest of his body in loud complaints. Whatever was peering at him was
certainly small and furry, but Luke was quite sure that it didn't come
from Alpha Centauri.
"Well, well," said the creature as it rolled its eyes at Luke. "Frobozz,
y'know. Morning, name's modem. What's your game? Adventure? D&D? Or
are you just one of those Apple-pong types that hang around the store
demonstrations?" Luke closed his eyes. Perhaps if he couldn't see it,
it wouldn't notice him.
"H'mm," muttered the creature. "Must use a different protocol. @@@H @@
@($@@@H }"@G$ @#@@G'(o% @@@@@%%H(b ?"
"No, no," stammered Luke. "I don't speak EBCDIC. I was sent here to
become a UNIX wizard. Must have the wrong address."
"Right address," said the creature. "I'm a UNIX wizard. Device drivers
a specialty. Or do you prefer playing with virtual memory?"
Luke eyed the creature cautiously. If this was what happened to system
wizards after years of late night crashes, Luke wasn't sure he wanted
anything to do with it. He felt a strange affection for the familiar
microcomputers of his home. And wasn't virtual memory something that
you got from drinking too much Coke?
------------------------------------------------------------
<< rest of empire strikes back, especially getting to the user haven, a
directory unconnected to /. >>
-------------------------------------------------------------
<< Return of the Jedi, if and when ... >>
-------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was written by a number of people, working
piecemeal. Additions should be posted to the net. Here at
Case, we think the little inconsistancies just add a little
charm. Please note that the unsigned stuff enclosed in
<<...>>'s is by Barak Pearlmutter (thats me) while the stuff
enclosed in <<...>>'s signed " --Ed." is by ...!stolaf!borman.
May the Carrier be with you,
Barak Pearlmutter
decvax!cwruecmp!pearlmut
-------
------- End of Forwarded Message

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To get even with an ex trading friend. Offer to send him the newest
ware by mail. But before you do this take the disk out of its jacket
and do the following:
Take a small dish and pour acetone (nail polish remover) into it. Now get
lotsa matcheads and put them in it. Now pulverize it until you have a somewhat
gooey consistency. This is what you should brush on the disk in a thin layer
but make sure you leave a clean area to show thru the envelope. Now when he
boots it, it boots him!!!
-Ziggy Stardust/Boys From Brazil-
---------------------------------------