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. 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 ============================================================ 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. Austin remains free on bail pending sentencing. ------------------------------------------------------------ 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)