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- FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:19 Page 1
-
- Volume 2, Number 20 1 July 1985
- +----------------------------------------------------------+
- | _ |
- | / \ |
- | - FidoNews - /|oo \ |
- | (_| /_) |
- | Fido and FidoNet _`@/_ \ _ |
- | Users Group | | \ \\ |
- | Newsletter | (*) | \ )) |
- | ______ |__U__| / \// |
- | / FIDO \ _//|| _\ / |
- | (________) (_/(_|(____/ |
- | (jm) |
- +----------------------------------------------------------+
-
- Publisher: Fido 107/375
- Chief Procrastinator: Thom Henderson
-
- Fidonews is published weekly by SEAboard, Fido 107/375. You
- are encouraged to submit articles for publication in
- Fidonews. Article submission standards are contained in the
- file FIDONEWS.DOC, available from Fido 107/375.
-
- Disclaimer or don't-blame-us:
-
- The contents of the articles contained here are not our
- responsibility, nor do we necessarily agree with them;
- everything here is subject to debate. We publish EVERYTHING
- received.
-
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-
-
- Towards Better Communications
-
- There's a problem common to this sort of communication. All
- you ever see is my words. You don't see any facial
- expressions or body gestures, or even hear a tone of voice.
- The result is that it can often sound very cold and distant,
- even if the author meant to be warm and friendly. Jokes
- tend to sound like hostile insults, and wistful comments
- come across as griping complaints.
-
- The problem is one of communication. Too much of our daily
- banter is nonvocal or subvocal, and gets squeezed out when
- the words are reduced to the printed page (or the painted
- screen).
-
- So I propose a solution. I suggest that we extend the
- language, at least when used on bulletin boards, to include
- clues to all the nonverbal signals normally taken for
- granted. My idea works like this:
-
- When you want to express a subvocal noise or utterance,
- enclose it within a "(*" and a "*)". For example, to
- express a sigh at the end of a wistful comment, type it as
-
-
-
-
-
-
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- FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:21 Page 2
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- "(*SIGH*)".
-
- When you want to express a nonvocal gesture, enclose it
- within a "[*" and a "*]". For example, to indicate a non-
- committal shrug of the shoulders, type it as "[*SHRUG*]".
-
- If multiple gestures or utterances are to be indicated, they
- can be enclosed in the same "gesture brackets", but should
- be separated by a semicolon.
-
- Will this system work? [*NOD*] Yes, it should, (*SIGH*) if
- used properly. Will anyone use it? [*SHRUG;FROWN*] Beats
- me.
-
- (*YAWN*)[*STRETCH*](*BURP*)
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- FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:22 Page 3
-
- ============================================================
- NEWS
- ============================================================
- Computer Hacker Convicted of Tapping ARPANET
- By MICHAEL D. HARRIS
-
- LOS ANGELES (UPI) _ A young home computer whiz was
- convicted of illegally tapping into an international network
- linking research agencies doing work for the Department of
- Defense.
-
- Ronald M. Austin, 20, a UCLA physics major from Santa
- Monica, was found guilty Tuesday of breaking into 200
- computer files at 14 military, university and private
- research organizations from San Diego to Norway.
-
- Among the organizations whose computer systems Austin
- penetrated from July to November 1983 were the Rand Corp. a
- Santa Monica think tank; the Naval Research Laboratory in
- Washington; the Norwegian Telecommunication Agency; the UCLA
- Department of Computer Science and the Naval Oceans Systems
- Center in San Diego, prosecutors said.
-
- Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer found Austin guilty of
- 12 felony counts of malicious access to a computer system at
- the conclusion of a two-day non-jury trial, but acquitted
- him of one count of receiving stolen airline tickets that
- investigators seized from his residence.
-
- Ringer scheduled sentencing Aug. 23, when he could send
- Austin to prison or place him on probation. Austin's
- attorney said he would appeal the conviction.
-
- Austin was arrested in November 1983 after he allegedly
- used his Commodore 64 home computer to gain access to the
- Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, that
- links research organizations under contract to the Defense
- Department.
-
- When charges were filed, prosecutors said Austin not only
- had access to "very sensitive" data, but also deleted files
- and caused "hundreds of thousands of dollars damage" to the
- computer systems.
-
- But a Defense Department spokeswoman, Sherry Stetson-
- Mannix, said Austin could not have obtained any classified
- information from any members of the network.
-
- Prosecutors said Austin broke into the system at UCLA,
- one of several universities in the network, through four
- separate telephone numbers in a scenario similar to that
- depicted in the hit movie "War Games."
-
- In the film, a teenage hacker enters defense computers on
- a lark and nearly sets off a nuclear war.
-
- The ARPANET system has since been divided into two
-
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- FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:24 Page 4
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- networks making it more difficult for college researchers to
- exchange information with military users.
-
- In news interviews following his arrest, Austin admitted
- that he penetrated the system with his home computer, but
- denied any damage was done.
-
- Other members of the network whose computer systems were
- cracked by Austin included Purdue University; University of
- Wisconsin; Cornell University and UC Berkeley.
-
- Austin remains free on bail pending sentencing.
-
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- FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:25 Page 5
-
- A few FIDONEWS issues back, someone mentioned the idea
- of hooking the Fido network into the USENET network. The
- author correctly stated that the only problem with that
- was getting a USENET host to cooperate. Well, I have been
- able to take care of that problem by getting my company
- (Automatix, Inc. in Billerica, MA) to agree to letting us
- access the USENET articles of interest. Actually, since I
- am the UUCP/USENET/remote mail/telecommunications guru at
- Automatix, I gave myself this permission. It took me
- about 4 hours, and a lot of testing, but I currently have
- our VAX 11/780 running 4.2BSD UNIX sending selected USENET
- newsgroups to my IBM PC running Fido. I use KERMIT to do
- the actual file transferring. Currently, it just sends one
- very large file with the newest news from all of the groups
- batched into it. I am still working on a program to
- unbatch them at the PC end, and place them in separate news
- directories (as is done on the VAX). When that is complete
- I will have to add support for replying to the news
- articles (this will undoubtedly be the hardest part).
-
- Anyone interested in receiving any of the USENET news
- via FidoNet mail, please let me know what newsgroups you
- are interested in. Currently I only send net.micro.pc and
- net.lang.c, but that can be expanded. If you are not sure
- of what USENET is, but you might be interested in finding
- out, send me a FidoNet message, and I can send you a list
- of all of the available newsgroups, and a short description
- of what USENET is.
-
- Bob Hartman
- SYSOP: Fido # 10101 in Net # 101 (101/10101)
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