HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: atman@rahul.net (Visceral Clamping Mechanism)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: MEMES (was: RE: Cybrspc Grvty, Def of Cybrspc)
Date: 26 Jan 93 19:42:39 GMT
Organization: a2i network

(Once again, an article that didn't make it out of the site I posted it on.)

In article <HURH-200193203017@131.225.123.13> HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick Hurh) writes:
>
>I'm not saying that talking and hypothesizing about the flow of information
>is impossible (it's necessary for survival) but that a model in
>mathematical terms (and in any qualitative terms) is impossible.

It is difficult to analyze the flow of information through a network, but it
is relatively trivial to analyze the flow of data.  This does give you a bit
of leverage; if you know that a node in the network has no users and is an
archive site specializing in X, you can reasonably subtract the amount of
input data from the amount of output data, (thereby subtracting pass-through
data) and be fairly sure that the rest is information concerning X.  A sudden
jump in information concerning X can be correlated manually with other events,
such as a similar site going down, the release of an album by a popular band
that is a member of set X, a new release of software that is a member of set 
X, an environmental disaster such as an oil spill, from which data in X is
useful, etc.  

Another example is the set of regularly-posted articles regarding readership 
and traffic of Usenet Newsgroups.  That set of articles alone provides a
pretty good general indication of information flow, at least at the topical
level.  More detailed analysis would be time consuming, but could be done
via monitoring of email list traffic, say.  Much of Usenet is now available
on CD ROM, so correlating an unexpected rise or fall in traffic dealing
with a subject could be done simply by popping in the correct CD ROM and 
looking at the articles in the newsgroup in question.  

Finally, however, I would suggest that even the analysis of Usenet by the
above method wouldn't cover the majority of "interesting" information, 
which is probably be sent via email person to person.  I know I use email 
much more heavily than news, and deal with far more detailed issues there 
than I do when using Netnews.  

(BTW, that was a great article, Pat.)  

@Man
Up The Line CD-ROM Guy


-- 
atman@rahul.net  ||  "Burn hollywood burn!"

Sync ye to the beat, and become it; once you understand it, you can destroy it.
From: Chris.Young@f78.n130.z1.fidonet.org (Chris Young)
Sender: FredGate@ocitor.fidonet
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: The Inner Circle Book
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 14:05:46

I haven't heard back from you about the book yet I was just wondering if you changed your mind??



 * Origin: This Message Leached from CyberVille... (1:130/78)
From: russell@alpha3.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Russell Schulz)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Out of the Inner Circle (was: The Hacker Crackdown)
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 12:26:43 MST
Organization: Private System, Edmonton, AB, Canada
X-Newsreader: rusnews v0.99

Chris.Young@f78.n130.z1.fidonet.org (Chris Young) writes:

> I purchased Bruce Stirling's book The Hacker Crack Down today at the bookstor
> e and I hope it was as good as everyone suggest.  I'm still however looking f
> or a book called The Inner Circle.  It was published in 1986 and has a pictur
> e of a teenage boy on th

(everyone: PLEASE hit return every line)  (and: `Sterling')

> ng to pay for the book or any leads to help me find this book would be very a
> ppreicated.

apparently, Chris has not received my mail on this, so I will post here:

the copy of `Out of the Inner Circle' that I have (the Microsoft Press
edition with the bar over the eyes) is by Bill Landreth, and has the
isbn 0-914845-36-5.  also look for isbn 0-914845-45-4 (the cloth cover)
and isbn 0-14-087-139-X (the Penguin edition).  it's distributed by
Simon and Schuster, and their order numbers are 0-671-30942-0 for the
paper and 0-671-30949-8 for the cloth.  (both of _those_ numbers are valid
isbns, but they don't actually use that terminology there)

I've also seen it under a different cover much later than in '85 (when the
book was first published), but don't have details on that.

if you need to, be sure to call Microsoft Press, or Simon and Schuster.
-- 
Russell Schulz  russell@alpha3.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca  ersys!rschulz  Shad 86c
From: srl@terminus.ericsson.se (Steve Langstaff)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Loki Trickster x 2 (was Re: MEMES)
Date: 28 Jan 93 10:07:34 GMT
Reply-To: srl@terminus.ericsson.se
Organization: Camtec Electronics (Ericsson), Leicester, England

In article uupcb@digund.uucp, loki.trickster@digund.uucp (Loki Trickster) writes:

[snip]

|Sounds to me like there are quite a number of us here who have entirely
|too much free time.

[snip]

                                                                                                       Infact enough free time to post facetious articles... twice!

---

| Steve Langstaff - Ericsson CAMTEC |
From: rezabek1037@iscsvax.uni.edu (Will be President for Food)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: Benedikt's Cyberspace
Date: 22 Jan 93 13:08:43 -0600
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

> You may be interested to know he is very wary of the entire movement -- he
> tends to "disown" the cyber-punk culture. Most of them have missed the point
> of his book (and of many SF novels) -- Science Fiction doesn't predict the
> future, it attempts to avoid it. Gibson has had people approach him with
> machines they built inspired by his book. In the interview he expressed the
> opinion that such people have obviously missed "the point" of his book.
> 
> In other words, before you embrace this shiny gritty nasty glamourous
> dangerous (and embarrAsingly cinematic) underbelly of technology, take a step
> back and see what it's really about!

yup yup yup!! he spawned a meme, and it got away! and now, it's something else.
it really IS going to be a nasty trip if it's not in some way harnessed. that,
i guess, is what i'm interested in. it's here, it's already developing; i want
to posit ways that it can actually be turned, AGAINST ITS GRAIN, almost, into
something USEFUL FOR/TO HUMANITY. we'll see. but i CAN't disown it, because
it's already having an effect. my only option, as i see it, is to hunt for ways
for me to *nudge* it in the here & now.

> I doubt it. If he had Trade Marked the word, maybe. I think it has become a
> piece of contemporary language -- like Cyberpunk, or Star Wars.

yup. once a meme's out there, there's no way to call it back. but at the same
time, the sort of "urban sprawl" state of "cyberspace" at this point is not HIS
fault; it's ours and anyone who doesn't try to change it. 

> Question: WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN MIND? I'm not out to steal your ideas, I'm just
> curious about the feasibility (or necessity) of something called
> "Cyberspace".

what i have in mind is re-appropriating "cyberspace" for the utility of culture
as a whole (hah! oxymoron there!), directing it away from the state of
collapsing in on itself that it's currently engaged in. and, i guess, of 
suggesting useful tools & ideas for people who have similar desires.
 
> Also, do you know anything about "Tupple-space"? It's a system for sharing
> computers in a paralell processing system, but I'd like more details if you
> have them.

ummm... i for one don't know. anyone? anyone? we can ALWAYS use more details!!
that should be an axiom of virtuality if it weren't so infuriating! :)

-     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -
"one's noise is another's information...
 there IS no noise, only signal. there IS no signal, only noise."
From: rezabek1037@iscsvax.uni.edu (Will be President for Food)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: MEMES (was: RE: Cybrspc Grvty, Def of Cybrspc)
Date: 24 Jan 93 22:45:33 -0600
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <>, "William C. Hulley" <bhulley+@CMU.EDU> writes:
> 
> rez, can you or someone else point me to something more formal on memes 
> and memetics. i am having some trouble figuring out if this "theory" is a
> real set of tools that we can use to recon cspace or just a distraction.

well, there's always the place where the formalisation itself first cropped up,
in Richard Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene." there is only one chapter, however, on
the MEME in this text. i just found a text, however, which takes a much more
formalised approach. i haevn't started reading it yet; it's called "Genes vs.
Memes" by Walter A. Koch. it's published by STUDIENVERLAG BROCKMEYER . BOCHUM,
1986. it's apparently a single text within a project, "Bochum Publications in
Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics." there's also an essay i have lurking in my
archives which i could send to any interested parties. write to me with a
SUBJECT LINE saying: "MEME ESSAY" and it's off to you. i'll even send it to
you, william, off the bat (since you asked).

it's a very interesting topic to me because i first heard of the notion itself
SOMEWHERE on the Net. of course, i can't remember exactly where. it makes
sense, the Net is a very volatile (fast-paced) environment for spreading ideas.
the proof will be in the pudding, as they say...
 
.rez
From: loki.trickster@digund.uucp (Loki Trickster) 
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: MEMES (was: RE: Cybrs
Date: 23 Jan 93 20:05:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Digital Underground - PRIVATE
Reply-To: loki.trickster@digund.uucp (Loki Trickster) 

  >> its OTHERS. as paulhz said, those whose memetic feedback loops weren't
  >> reinforced would decay of un-use, and those which were memetically success
  >> would increase in use and re-inforce their links.
PH>sounds more like information evolution than cyberspace gravity to me...

Sounds to me like there are quite a number of us here who have entirely
too much free time.

Loki the "I only use an alias because my sysop MAKES me" Trickster
---
 . QMPro 1.0 41-2003 . Don't worry; the brontosaurus is slow, and placid.
                                                                                                                   
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
From: ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu (a dimension of sight and sound)
Subject: Meta-Memes
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 19:15:18 GMT


Does it/they exist in cspace?

--

    ahawks@nyx.cs.du.edu	        FutureCulture:  In/f0rmation
    ahawks@mindvox.phantom.com		future-request@nyx.cs.du.edu
From: ruiter@rulfsw.leidenuniv.nl
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: representing Ice?
Date: 26 Jan 93 20:14:02 GMT
Organization: Leiden University Faculty of Social Sciences

While I find it easy to *imagine* cyberspace when reading, for
instance, "Neuromancer" or anything similar, the idea itself,
on closer inspection, is rather naive. 

Take for instance the "Ice" concept of Neuromancer, to stick
with the classics. In order to know that something is somehow
'protected' you must first *try* to break that protection;
otherwise you don't have any information about the "breakability"
of security systems. In that case, you cannot hope to represent 
it. 

At present, the only way to find out how far you can break into 
a secured network/database is to try it yourself, and that (as
we all know) involves a lot of clever hackerism. I could imagine
a 'sensory system' trying to log in as guest in any connected
network it can find, and representing the ones that do not 
allow guest logins as 'Ice'. That would be unsatisfactory, however,
since there wouldn't be a noticeable difference between the 
Pentagon and my colleague's unix account. 

As an example, consider trying every lock you can locate with the
same key. Normally, no lock will open with that key. The only way
to find any *difference* between the security of locks is to have
a professional burglar try them all, and have her make a report
about the 'hardness' of the locks involved. 

To go back to cyberspace, representing "Ice" would involve automating 
(to a high degree) the process of trying to break into a system.

Maybe I'm mistaken (in which case I'd like a pointer to the relevant
software) but I believe that this is not possible.


Jan P. de Ruiter
ruiter@ruls41.LeidenUniv.nl
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
From: hurh@fnal.fnal.gov (Patrick Hurh)
Subject: Re: MEMES (was: RE: Cybrspc Grvty, Def of Cybrspc)
Followup-To: alt.cyberspace
Organization: fnal
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 13:58:15 GMT

In article <HURH-200193203017@131.225.123.13>, HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick
Hurh) wrote:
dunno.
> 
> I'm not saying that talking and hypothesizing about the flow of information
> is impossible (it's necessary for survival) but that a model in
> mathematical terms (and in any qualitative terms) is impossible.
>                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
sorry, meant to say quantitative...

> My $.02                  Pat          (Boy I'm being parenthetical today)
From: dlytle@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU (Don Lytle)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: The Association for the Study of Play conference
Date: 21 Jan 93 16:34:27 GMT
Reply-To: dlytle@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU
Organization: California State University, Chico
NNTP-Posting-Host: oavax.csuchico.edu

ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

TASP 1993 - St. Paul, MN
The Association for the Study of Play
April 22 - 24, 1993 % The St. Paul Hotel % St. Paul, Minnesota

       The Association For The Study of Play (TASP) will hold its 1993 annual meetings in St. Paul, Minnesota.  The conference will begin Thursday and continue until Saturday, April 24.  There will be featured speakers, playshops, and forums for the discussion and presentation of research papers on all aspects of play research, theory, performance and behavior.
	TASP conferences traditionally have provided a mechanism by which researchers in diverse fields have the opportunity to share ideas and interact in a friendly and collegial atmosphere.
       Papers and proposals for panel sessions or tutorials related to the broad study of play are invited.  Sessions include, but are not limited to:
 - Humor, laughter
 - Computer and cyperspace play
 - Folklore
 - Children's play behavior
 - Cross-cultural play
 - Body work and play art
 - Performance 
 - Anthropology of festive play
 - Sport
 - Literary playfulness

Deadline for submission of abstracts is February 5, 1993.

Send abstracts (100 word maximum), audio-visual needs, and registration fees ($60 professional and $20 student made payable to TASP) to:

Dr. Don Lytle
Department of Physical Education
California State University, Chico  95929-0330. 
Bitnet/E-Mail: DLYTLE@OAVAX.CSUCHICO.EDU; FAX: 916 898-4932; 
Phone: {916} 898-6617 or 898-6373 {message}/894-5028 {evening}.
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
From: shaun@octel.com (Chocolate Flavored Clorox)
Subject: Re: MEMES (was: RE: Cybrspc Grvty, Def of Cybrspc)
Organization: Octel Communications Inc., Milpitas Ca.
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 17:10:24 GMT

In article <HURH-200193203017@131.225.123.13> HURH@FNAL.FNAL.GOV (Patrick Hurh) writes:
>
>I'm not saying that talking and hypothesizing about the flow of information
>is impossible (it's necessary for survival) but that a model in
>mathematical terms (and in any qualitative terms) is impossible.

It is difficult to analyze the flow of information through a network, but it
is relatively trivial to analyze the flow of data.  This does give you a bit
of leverage; if you know that a node in the network has no users and is an
archive site specializing in X, you can reasonably subtract the amount of
input data from the amount of output data, (thereby subtracting pass-through
data) and be fairly sure that the rest is information concerning X.  A sudden
jump in information concerning X can be correlated manually with other events,
such as a similar site going down, the release of an album by a popular band
that is a member of set X, a new release of software that is a member of set 
X, an environmental disaster such as an oil spill, from which data in X is
useful, etc.  

Another example is the set of regularly-posted articles regarding readership 
and traffic of Usenet Newsgroups.  That set of articles alone provides a 
pretty good general indication of information flow, at least at the topical
level.  More detailed analysis would be time consuming, but could be done
via monitoring of email list traffic, say.  Much of Usenet is now available
on CD ROM, so correlating an unexpected rise or fall in traffic dealing
with a subject could be done simply by popping in the correct CD ROM and 
looking at the articles in the newsgroup in question.  

Finally, however, I would suggest that even the analysis of Usenet by the
above method wouldn't cover the majority of "interesting" information, 
which is probably be sent via email person to person.  I know I use email 
much more heavily than news, and deal with far more detailed issues there 
than I do when using Netnews.  

(BTW, that was a great article, Pat.)  

@Man
Up The Line CD-ROM Guy
-- 
shaun@octel.com  ||  You can fix that throat with a pair of pliers.

''Sometimes sysadmins can be cool, sometimes they can be living in a totally
alternate dimension where the parameters of "right" and "wrong" are mixed
all up in a high-speed blender.''  -- Mr. K. Cheeseball of Brandon, Manitoba
From: atman@rahul.net (Visceral Clamping Mechanism)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: FAQ please!
Date: 26 Jan 93 20:46:09 GMT
Organization: a2i network

In article <kim3.727235336@husc.harvard.edu> kim3@husc10.harvard.edu (Jason Y. Kim) writes:
>Where can I ftp the FAQ (if there is one) for this group, and any other
>archived articles, essays, papers, etc. on the concept of cyberspace?

I maintain an anonymous ftp site at ftp.rahul.net in /pub/atman/UTLCD-preview
that contains the latest version of the FAQ, Agrippa, the future-culture
archives, and other neat stuff.  It doesn't contain any technical papers
at the moment, although I'm willing to place some there if anyone has any
to contribute.

The tree currently looks like this:

1020	./future-culture   <- futurecultue digest archives
104	./mind-candy       <- contains acidwarp for msdos
21	./unarjers/vms
36	./unarjers/unix
209	./unarjers/msdos
65	./unarjers/mac
6	./unarjers/amiga
339	./unarjers        <- unarj program for various platforms
254	./fli-players
159	./jessee-flis     <- dangerous FLIs by the Jessee brothers
50	./assorted-text   <- Alt.cp FAQ, Agrippa, difference engine info
95	./xdz-reviews     <- Transdimensional Zebra's techno reviews
11	./crackage        <- VCRPlus encoding info
2033	.

About 2 megs of stuff, total.

@Man
Founding father of the Bass Bin Surveillance Squad.

-- 
atman@rahul.net  ||  "Burn hollywood burn!"

Sync ye to the beat, and become it; once you understand it, you can destroy it.
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
From: pfox@sdf.lonestar.org (David M. Cawthon)
Subject: Re: The Hacker Crackdown
Organization: sdf public access Unix, Dallas -- 214-436-3281
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 22:43:39 GMT

In article <727432442.F00003@ocitor.fidonet> Chris.Young@f78.n130.z1.fidonet.org (Chris Young) writes:
>I'm still however looking for a
>book called The Inner Circle.  It was published in 1986 and has a picture of a 
>teenage boy on the cover with a black bar covering his eyes.  The storie is
>about these four kids who turned into a Super Hakcer of the 80's a moder day
>Cyper Punk.  I don't know the author or the publicer and I can find it in any
>of the new or used book stores.  I'm willi
>ng to pay for the book or any leads to help me find this book would be very
>appreicated.

Yeah, I have that book.  Sort of interesting I guess.

Here's some info:

Landreth, Bill.  _Out_of_the_Inner_Circle_.  Washington:  Tempus Books, 1989.

My book seems to be a second edition; it is white with a picture on the
front which looks like the door of a safe ajar to reveal an electronic circuit
board behind the door.  The subtitle of the book is "The True Story of a
Computer Intruder Capable of Cracking the Nation's Most Secure Computer
Systems".
-- 
David M. Cawthon       /// "
pfox@sdf.lonestar.org ///                                        " - Anonymous
From: bf248@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jerry Renault)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: The Hacker Crackdown
Date: 23 Jan 1993 23:07:47 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bf248@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jerry Renault)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, pfox@sdf.lonestar.org (David M. Cawthon) says:

>My book seems to be a second edition; it is white with a picture on the
>front which looks like the door of a safe ajar to reveal an electronic circuit
>board behind the door.  The subtitle of the book is "The True Story of a
>Computer Intruder Capable of Cracking the Nation's Most Secure Computer
>Systems".

(not very secure if a teenager can crack them =) )

i remember reading a blurb in the San Jose Mercury that said that
the author of the book was missing.  he apparently was depressed and
just dropped out of sight.  he was apparently supposed to meet his
parole officer and never showed up.   

in the book, if i remember correctly, there's a mention in passion of 
Dark Dante who worked at SRI in menlo park.   when i was there doing a
little internship thingie, he too dropped out of sight and the feds
were looking for him.

maybe both went and joined Elvis, Jim Morrison and Bruce Lee on that
remote desert island.   or maybe there's a serial killer hacker.

j.

-- 
+----+ +----+ +   + +----+ +----+       Jerry Renault
!    ! !    ! !\  ! !      !    !       bf248@po.cwru.edu
!----+ !    ! ! \ ! ! ---+ !    !       
!      !____! !  \! !____! !____!
From: mustang@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Paul Christopher Miranda (I love Cheese))
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace
Subject: Re: Benedikt's Cyberspace
Date: 25 Jan 1993 16:28:25 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
NNTP-Posting-Host: sylvester.cc.utexas.edu

In article <1993Jan24.015105.17676@news.ysu.edu> ah759@yfn.ysu.edu (Ken Wronkiewicz) writes:
>
>i am cold to texture coding, and color coding. 
>hypermedia style... like i always present things...
>-- 
I suggested texture and color coding as one way of conveying meaning visually
and directly without having to go down into the guts of everything to find
the info you want.. you would  have the program do all the dirty work for you
and flag useful info at the uppermost level of the interface (color and texture
are two possible ways to do it.)  I have noticed that the biggest problem with
many "hypermedia" programs is the inability to do anything without traversing
their tree structure. While this does let you access and cross reference a
huge (infinite?) amount of data, sometimes there is no way of getting a feel
for data you know is out there, but you have  no idea where to go within the
structure.. this is when it is nice to be able to step out of the structure
and see the whole enchilada..  Naturally, once you have found the area you
are interested in, you want to get the full benefit of the structure, so you
return to the tree environment..  When you are lost in the streets, you pull
out a map, figure out where you are and where you want to be, and then start
traversing the streets to get there.. (of course, in computers, we get to
jump right to the place :)

So.. any ideas for better coding methods than color  and texture ?
(And if anyone ever sees a map of internet... show me!)


-- 
"I have feelings too, I just choose to  | Paul Miranda  likes cheese 
 to hide them underneath bitter denial" | mustang@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
-- Ms. Musso on "Parker Lewis" (FOX TV) | -- THIS SPACE FOR RENT --