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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
FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:21 Page 2
"(*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*)
FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:22 Page 3
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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
FIDONEWS -- 01 Jul 85 00:00:24 Page 4
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.
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)
