320 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
320 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
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___ ___ __ ___ __ ___
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| \ |_ | \ |\ /| |_ |\ | /\ / |_
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|__/ |__ |_/ | \/ | |__ | \| |~~| \__ |__
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| \ | |
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-=and=- __
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//
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// // // //\\ // // \\ \\ _____ //\
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//\\ // \\// //__>> //__// \\ _// ~//~~// \\
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// \\ //\\ \\ //~~~~ //~~// \\ ~ // \\ //
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// \\/ \\ \\// // // // \\ // \\/
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\\ \/
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/\ __ //
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// // //\\ //|| || || //|| ||~\\ \\//
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//\\ //\ //__\\ // || || || //_|| ||_// \\
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// \\ // \\ // \\ // || || /| // //~~|| ||~\\ \\//
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// \\/ \\ //___|| ||//|// // || || \\ \/
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\\ ~~~~
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submit to you:
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Mr. Pez's Rambling about Textfiles
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which naturally leads to a discussion
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about Leeching.
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by:
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Mr. Pez
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~~~ ~~~
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Written:
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13 March 1987
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10:55pm
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i. opening rambling/background
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Well, here I am again. All the boards I feel like calling are busy, and I
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felt this needed to be done. I just realized that I now have roughly 1400
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textfiles, which puts me as the person with the second-largest collection of
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textfiles in our nation. The person with the most textfiles is one Jason
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Scott, and he's responsible for at least half of my textfiles. He runs a
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board called the Works!, whose number will be posted at the end of this
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exercise in creative rambling. So sit back, and enjoy this file, if it
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turns out to be the kind of thing you dig.
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I'd like to point out that this is what I listened to while writing this
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textfile.
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"Duty Now For The Future" Devo
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"Celebrate The Bullet" The Selecter
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"Say Yes To Another Excess" Yello
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"Abraxas" Santana
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ii. textfiles and related discussions
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I think the textfile is on the rise. While Anarchy inc. may have disbanded,
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their legacy of fine and humorous files lives on, especially on Jason
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Scott's board (whose number, as previously stated, will be at the end of
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this file. So hold yer horses!), where there is an entire section devoted
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to them. (Devoted...reminds me of last year in school, when I wrote "I am
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devoted to darkness" on all the desks that I sat at. You'd be surprised at
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how many people have a great aversion to Satanic stuff, especially when the
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writing is accompanied by evil drawings. "Satan is my pal" was another fave
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of mine. Someone wrote, "Well, God's mine!" after that, which gave me many
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rich laffs. I was a sick freshmen. But I digress...) Now, who remains? The
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Neon Knights aren't seen around too much anymore, either. But without a
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doubt, the most well-known of all textfiles is the Phrack. Started by Taran
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King, it's just grown incredibly. The next issue will be number 12. I was
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very annoyed to get Phrack 11 quite soon after it came out, and was all set
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to start u/ling it everywhere, when I noticed Thomas Covenant did the same.
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So he stole any recognition I might get from u/ling the latest Phrack.
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Another thing that proves my point about the textfile world. There's a mad
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race, when something new comes out, to distribute it. Much like the "new
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warez" of a couple of years ago. Only, it's looked upon in rather poor
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taste to add your board number and stuff to the end of a Phrack, or an LOD/H
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Technical Journal, like you could once do with games you cracked or
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distributed. (Speaking of the LOD/H TJ - I was very early in getting it, and
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began uploading it to places quickly. This one I beat both Thomas Covenant
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and Jason Scott to, since it was only out in 'packed' format for Apples.
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This thrills the hell out of you, I'm sure.) Anyway, the textfiles world is
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pretty tough. I do think, however, that the quality of the work coming out
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is improving. Take a look at "Sex Change" from Thomas Covenant of Phido
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Phreaks - now THAT is some excellent work. Let's not forget Tristan Farnon,
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either. Anything from him can be expected to be of a very high quality.
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The fact that he's the only member of his group, Starry Night Productions,
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could serve as evidence that even groups like my two (which I did make up,
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although there is one other person in it), which are made up by the only
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member can produce high quality stuff. I'm not sure this stuff I'm coming
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out with is of any great quality. There are some who think I'm funny, and
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others who find me to be like a pesky parasite, what with 50-line paragraphs
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like this one I'm currently writing. Personally, if you don't like this
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file, I wish I could say I didn't care, but it really will bother me a
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little if you, the reader, vote this a bomb. You'll notice that while I
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write this, I use big words, and write like a textbook. That's just the way
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I write, especially on essays, but sometimes on textfiles and occasionally
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messages. Right now, it's 11:26, and I still haven't really said anything
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of value. That's why I get such great grades in English, since the
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requirements for a 450 word essay can be met in just the opening paragraph
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sometimes. I think I'll start another paragraph now, just to break the
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monotony. (And if you don't think this is monotonous, bless you!)
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Three groups to watch are Phido Phreaks, OctoThorpe Productions, and this
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one (if I may be so immodest). They're all new (well, Octothorpe just
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started doing stuff), and have some good writers in them. Phido Phreaks has
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Thomas Covenant as well as the Silver Ghost, who has to be mentioned for the
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sheer volume of stuff he puts out. Pretty good stuff, too, unlike this file
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which I'm starting to realize is getting more and more disjointed. That's
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entropy, you know. The natural tendency for things to drift towards
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randomness and chaos. An idea which I think will replace anarchy in a
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matter of months. I was going to change my group(s) to Entropy Associates
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(which was on a dump truck in this filmstrip I saw in Chemistry supposed to
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illustrate the concept of entropy. That name really had an effect on me.),
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but I thought it'd be pretty lame, since you might have already seen RM/MM
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on that other file I wrote (which I won't name, since I'm not Captain
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Goodnight). Although, when I write 10 files, if such an event happens, and
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am met with some success, I might change the name to Entropy Associates
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(e.a.) if I actually get some members besides my friend Zack. OctoThorpe is
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the group started by Jason Scott (the Slipped Disk) when he started his
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board up. It sat there, in file directory 1, for at least 10 months, until
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Jason's friend, The Mathematician, discovered modeming and textfiles and
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writing textfiles. Some of his stuff is pretty good, too. And Jason's
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stuff, with the backing of having read all 1500 textfiles of his, is good,
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too. Then The Cruiser started writing for Jason's group, and it began to
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get some members. The Cruiser has written some fairly good stories, but
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also some unabashed edits of existing files. On The Works! (home of
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Octothorpe, Jason's board. But you know that by now, right, genius?), my
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file (um, what was that called?) was distibuted under the Octothorpe banner
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as "Uncut, Unedited, and Unwanted". Which afforded me a couple of laffs.
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Lastly, my group, of which it's too soon to tell. See if this file helps
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you.
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Shit, my word processor just asked me if I wanted to save the file. And
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upon doing so, it wrote 8,400 bytes. Which is a fucking lot. My last file
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was 15,000 bytes, though...let's see how long this one turns out to be.
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Actually, I should probably be doing my social studies, which is a report on
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Aztec History, which I could frankly give a flying fuck about. But it's
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only 11:50, the night is still young...
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The thing I hate are "anarchy" textfiles that are formulas for how to make
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drugs and stuff. I really could not care less about how to make DMT from
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banana peels or whatever. I also don't like countless typed-in portions of
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the book "The Poor Man's James Bond" by Kurt Saxon. The anarchy files that
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I like are the kind that make me laugh. The ever-present (at least in this
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discussion) Anarchy inc. wrote good stuff like that. And I was laughing my
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ass off (if such a thing is, in fact, possible) at the file "Random
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Senseless Violence" by Count Nibble (his board, Terrapin Station, will be
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included at the end of this file), which was great. I also like his file
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"Spray Paint" (or whatever...I can't remember the exact title, ok?), which
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had me a'chucklin'. I also like 'l00zer' files to a point, but then they
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start repeating themselves, as the Silver Ghost succinctly satirized in his
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file "Parodies". It's 12:05, and I'm getting kind of tired, so I'll get
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some sleep and start a fresh new part tomorrow. Part III. Look for it.
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But not too hard. (Note about parts: I have not written three files called
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"Ramblings", I've just separated this file into several parts just to be
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interesting.)
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iii. 9:57 am on the 14th and time to talk about text graphics
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I think they're making a comeback, personally. I dig them. Take a look at
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the cover of this file. (Unless you're V)iewing it on some AE, in which the
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text graphics won't look very nice. (Due to the fact that the pseudo-Xmodem
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adds linefeeds, so the whole file is double-spaced.) But let me assure you
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that they look pretty cool, especially the "Red Menace" one.) I like that
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sort of stuff. In fact, I basically like text graphics. For instance:
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/ \ ||| ||||||||| |||||||||
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| o o | ||| ||| //||| ||| //|||
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\ ~~~~~~~ / ||| ||| |||/// ||| |||/// ||| ||| |||
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\_________/ ||| ||| |||/ ||| |||/ ||| ||| |||
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m r . l i d d y |||||| ||||||||| ||||||||| ||||||||||
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Well, that was damn fulfilling. I'm sure it looks really spiffy on the ol'
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AE, too. Um, anyway, maybe text PICTURES aren't that great. But I really
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like those graphics I put in the beginning of my textfiles. For some
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reason. Anyway, it's now 10:45 exactly, and I still haven't said anything
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of merit. So, what should I talk about? Perhaps another section is in
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order? Yeah, that'll work. One on leeching, which is how I got all my
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textfiles.
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iv. mr. pez and leeching
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Leeching. It still exists, trust me. It will always exist. There are just
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some boards which are destined to be leeched from. The Works! is one. I
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have sysop access there, so I get to read the callers log. I see: BRUCE
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GOLDMAN downloads about 50 files or so, until his time (99 minutes a day) is
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up. I look at bulletin 5. He's downloaded 532 files, uploaded 8. Which is
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damn bad. But then again, I downloaded 350 from the Works!. But my
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difference is that I contributed with messages, so I wasn't just clogging
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the board, leeching. (I was contributing to the message base and leeching.)
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Similarly, AE's will ALWAYS be leeched from. I mean, if you don't have to
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give a name, why upload? Or, if sysops can't see what you're doing, who
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knows what you download? (They do know what you upload.) On AE's, since I
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can't get programs since I have a veryfine IBM, I V)iew a lot of stuff.
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That, in itself, is sort of leeching. It assures me of a supply of AT LEAST
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three new textfiles a day. I have to edit them, but that's no problem. A
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scary new kind of AE is something called "TransPhor", which is in itself, an
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AE. I mean, the guy who wrote it, Brew Associates, wrote his own AE
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program. Anyway, this thing takes note of what you download, upload, and
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(get this) V)iew. Is that a riot or what? That's how I get my AE
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textfiles, through V)iewing! Oh well.
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Of course, when you leech, you have to think about disk space. I don't,
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though. Well, I'm starting to, since my hard disk slowly grows smaller...
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less and less space free every day. (Since I get a couple new files a day.)
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You know, on a PD board I'm on, I just got my access lowered because my
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ratio fell below 5 downloads to one upload. And the damn sysop has a 20 to
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1 ratio on The Works!, which is kind of funny. I pointed this out to him.
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Haven't seen his reply yet. I posted it at 12:30 (pm - yes, I am starting
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this at night again because all the boards are busy.), and it's only 1:00
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(exactly) now. (The 12:30 was an approximation, it is now exactly 1:00.
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Wow, this must really pump yer 'nads.) Still, what's the limit for sysops?
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I mean, you have to be somewhat tolerant of leeching (see, look what I've
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grown to be by leeching!), but what's the limit? Jason Scott is awful
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lenient about his board, but the sysop of that PD board was too tough about
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it. There's at least three boards better than his in the area. (spiteful,
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vindictive.. isn't it fascinating, the leeching mentality?) Anyway, I just
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cleaned up my hard drive some. I have the things that must stay on the
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drive, which take up about 5 megs. That includes Procomm (my communications
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program), DOS, the Norton Utilities, the ARC programs and other file
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utilities in \DOWNLOAD, my father's stuff like Lotus 1-2-3 and the programs
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he's working on (he paid for the drive, I have to put up with his stuff.
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Only takes about a meg, anyway.). But I have the ARCs of all Jason's
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textfiles on the drive, which take up about 5 megs (which I haven't put on
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disk for a very simple reason - I don't have any disks.), and I have a few
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games on disk, too. Also, I have two BBS systems online, ARCed in suspended
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animation, until I get around to testing them. [Editor's note - This has
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gone on long enough. What ARC is is a utility that will allow you to take a
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bunch of files and put it into one. It also compresses files, and textfiles
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crunch to about 50% of what they were - another reason why textfiles are so
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great!] I have a code hacker program (Brew Associate's CodeThief v2.2) in
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\DOWNLOAD\UPLOAD [ed's note - \ is a path.] and three word processors, one
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in its own directory. Well, now that I've given you my whole fucking hard
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drive map, I might as well start talking more about leeching. My
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communications program, Procomm, has a command file language which'll let
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you program it to do stuff like log on to BBS's, and download stuff (which
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is the relevance of this line of thought). That's why I can have passwords
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like "f#duq!53" and not have to write them down. Also, I have a different
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password for nearly every BBS I'm on. Pretty safe, eh? The other great
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thing about command files is their effects on leeching (and uploading, when
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it is advisable). I don't want to bother doing it on AE's (where I'd have
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to open a log for everything, and then WAITFOR "(>" to close the log.
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(WAITFOR is a command which does almost exactly what you think.) But PCBoard
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software, which is what The Works! runs on, is very easy to leech from.
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Just WAITFOR the line "Main Board Command?" and send "d;" plus the file you
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wish to download, then waitfor whatever it prints when it's ready to send,
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and download it. (Shit. Just had to save this file again. It's 17k
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already.) And then onto the next line. Of course, I haven't figured out how
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to allow for errors, like the file isn't there, or line noise obliterates
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the words, so Procomm doesn't recieve them as they should. But I have
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trouble programming in BASIC, even. Boo. Anyway, I've leeched about 100
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files from The Works! that way. But my leeching from The Works! is
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irrelevent now, since Jason came over to my house when I had my going-away
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party (which wasn't too radical, as can be imagined, because Andrew Swartz
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was acting really hyper because there were X-rated movies and he had never
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seen one. I was listening to The DataMaster talking about phreaking, and
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didn't spend too much time watching "Looking Good" or "A Cry For Cindy".
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Andrew bothered me about it, but I'll just bet he took the words of the
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Michael Jackson song and "Beat It" after seeing the movies. I'll just bet.)
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in hopes of trading his textfiles for my guitar (bet you had to look back to
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the beginning of the parentheses!) along with some dough. My guitar is a
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"Harmony" and worth about $50. Jason wanted to give it to a girl named
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Donna who he feels something hormonal for. (If I may be so bold.) He was
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copying the files onto my hard drive while trying to cajole me into giving
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him my guitar. It was a gift, so I never did. But I still have the
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textfiles, and read a few every day. It's harder than you think. DOS's
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default white-on-black starts jittering around (on the CGA) and your eyes
|
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|
|
start doing the funky chicken. (Who knows where I got that phrase.) But
|
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|
|
they're mostly pretty good. There's a 44k file of taped conversations
|
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|
|
between this guy and important people he met at TAP meetings. Sounds like
|
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|
|
something I would do. I occasionally tape my conversations, if they sound
|
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|
|
like they're going to be interesting. (Now it's 1:33, and my word processor
|
|||
|
|
just saved the file...it was 19k. Bloated. Plus, you must be going crazy
|
|||
|
|
from staring at this huge paragraph.) But I never type them in. Another
|
|||
|
|
file is a 220k file about D&D. w0w. Another is a 70k file of a Howard the
|
|||
|
|
Duck comic book script. Which doesn't really interest me. But could
|
|||
|
|
interest someone. Anyway, I have more than enough textfiles to set up a
|
|||
|
|
board, but I don't think I have the disk space, if I still want to use
|
|||
|
|
programs on my hard disk. I was going to set it up at my own line (yes, I
|
|||
|
|
have my own line, and pay the bills, which are not that much.), but never
|
|||
|
|
got around to it. Too late now, eh? (I'm moving to Michigan in about 5
|
|||
|
|
days.) I can still leech there, I'm sure. Should be even better, since that
|
|||
|
|
house is really cool. Maybe the other line (my family's line) will be even
|
|||
|
|
closer, so I can talk to people while calling boards. The other (family)
|
|||
|
|
line was in the other room, but my father disconnected it, because I made a
|
|||
|
|
few calls on it, when I "have [my] own line and should use THAT, fer
|
|||
|
|
crissakes!" or something to that effect. Now, I can only make calls by
|
|||
|
|
going into the kitchen or upstairs, which is not good for short files. But
|
|||
|
|
long files, like Phracks, or the LOD/H Technical Journal, can be uploaded
|
|||
|
|
while carrying on a fairly lengthy conversation.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
v. is it the end? at last?
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The preceding paragraph is 87 lines long - more than a printed page. This
|
|||
|
|
leads me to end this file, and soon. Well, if you're not asleep, tell me
|
|||
|
|
what you think about it. I mean, don't you have to wonder about someone who
|
|||
|
|
can ramble on for 8 fucking pages? (That's how long this file is.) Well,
|
|||
|
|
these boards below earn the official "PEZ" stamp o' approval. W0W, fer
|
|||
|
|
sure.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
____N_a_m_e______ ___N_u_m_b_e_r__ __Software__ ___S_y_s_o_p_____ _Baudrate_
|
|||
|
|
The Works! ! [914]-238-8195 ! PCBoard ! Jason Scott ! 300/1200 !
|
|||
|
|
The Darque Side ! [408]-245-SPAM ! WaffleNET ! DS^3 Club !3/12/2400 !
|
|||
|
|
Thieve's World ! [616]-344-2718 ! FIDO ! Thomas Covenant ! 300/1200 !
|
|||
|
|
Terrapin Station ! [505]-865-0883 ! AE:TAC ! Count Nibble ! 300/1200 !
|
|||
|
|
The Brewery ! [314]-394-8259 ! WWIV/Forum ! Beer Wolf ! 300/1200 !
|
|||
|
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~
|
|||
|
|
vi. info
|
|||
|
|
author: mr. pez
|
|||
|
|
date: 13 march '87 10:55pm to 15 march '87 2:09am
|
|||
|
|
size: 22,227 bytes
|
|||
|
|
for: red menace, mephisto madware, octothorpe, phido phreaks
|
|||
|
|
system: IBM PC, PC-Write WP software (perhaps)
|
|||
|
|
music: see beginning (what a stupid category)
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
-signifying official PEZ file
|
|||
|
|
"look for more, but not too hard."
|
|||
|
|
|