Date: Fri, 9 Jul 93 19:07:40 PDT
Reply-To: <surfpunk@osc.versant.com>
Return-Path: <cocot@osc.versant.com>
Message-ID: <surfpunk-0089@SURFPUNK.Technical.Journal>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
From: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (menya zavoot cmpuk)
To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal)
Subject: [surfpunk-0089] PROJECTS:  MIMEPNQ forming?

/          //   From: Bruce Sterling <bruces@well.sf.ca.us>
           //   To: surfpunk@versant.com
           //
           //   Nice to see your list back in operation, d00d.  
           //   I missed it.

Thx, bruce.   It's been sporadic lately.  That summer thing.  
Is it better to have a life than a zine?

I don't know how you authors do it.  I started to write a book (on C++
and object databases) but I never wanted to work on it, so I told the
publisher I would have to cancel it.  Maybe someday.

I didn't finish my latest C++ Report article this week, (I do a 3x/yr
column on Object Databases) so I'm gonna be carrying the PowerBook to
Munich with me next week...

           \\   From: gt0269b@prism.gatech.edu (David D. Clark)
           \\   Subject: Smurfpunk?
           \\   To: strick@versant.com (Strick)
           \\ 
           \\   I know, I know.  But you probably should put one 
           \\   out before you leave.

Yeah, I'm going to be traveling now for a month, so after this,
no Smurfpunk until August.  Maybe I'll find a telnet port in Budapest.  
Maybe I won't try.  When the article's done, I'm gonna stash the 
PowerBook somewhere in Bavaria.

           **   From: (a punk in .ch)
           **  
           **   I tried the code on surf86.
           **   Took me an hour to debug the 'un-hex-dump' I wrote
           **   especially for the occasion (bug was '<' instead of '<=' )
           **   to find out the stuff needs another phrase.
           **   I tried to guess, to search back issues,
           **   even to finger you. Nothing.
           **   Since I did 50% of the job. Could you tell me
           **   your secret?

That C code at the end of the article produced the mumbojumbo, 
but unfortunately it won't unproduce it.

The program takes a bunch of filenames as arguments,
reads in the first 9999 characters of them, XORs all the
files together, as "xor pads", and spits out the result.

You could use it to implement a "one time pad" -- it will
xor a file with a "one time pad" file.  If the pad is generated
purely randomly, and is kept secret, you have a perfect encryption.

The way I used it, I xored a whole directory full of junk
together.  I have no way of decoding it.  However if you look at
the mumbojumbo with cryptanalytic tools, histograms and bigraph
frequencies, etc., you will surely find corralations, which
would be a real tease.   But I doubt much anything is recoverable from it.

Compile the program and name it "xor".

Pick a source file text.txt.
Pick a random file random.jnk

If these files are less than M=9999 bytes,

        xor text.txt random.jnk > text.xor
        xor text.xor random.jnk > text.rec

By XORING twice with the same file, you recover "text.rec",
which will be the same as "text.txt" ( except that it is exactly
9999 characters long, and has been padded with NUL characters (char 0). )




The point of it is, sometime soon, I could be arrested for sending
that, if encryption is outlawed.  Since I sent a garbled message, and
couldn't possibly give anyone the key to unencrypt it, obviously I'm
up to no good and should be in jail ...

See also ... Tim May's joke in surfpunk-0088.

See also ... "Use a random number, go to jail", by Dundee Friedman,
Mondo 2000 #10, p42.



That you expected to find a message in there, and spent time trying
to decode it, that says something.  For a moment I thought I should
have put something there for you to find.  But that would miss the point.
If I had encrypted something, or if Tim May had posted a Mapplethorpe
to a.b.p.e.c, it would not be nearly so interesting...


           !!   WIRED, JulAug93, p88
           !!
           !!   Supergroup U2 has been using
           !!   interactive media technology in its
           !!   live performances, where giant
           !!   screens depict synthetic drummers,
           !!   replicas of band member Bono, and
           !!   another band thousands of miles 
           !!   away.  

and I've personally answered over 500 email messages.


  ##  Date:    Fri, 25 Jun 93 01:38:48 CDT
  ##  To:      surfpunk@versant.com
  ##  From:    Jason Asbahr <Asbahr@UH.EDU>
  ##  Subject: Bathtub Computing
  ##  
  ##  Greets, surfpunks and striq...
  ##  
  ##  I'm back, computing from the bathtub, how else?  There are plenty of
  ##  oranges and Calistoga (which is not an easy water to find in Houston,
  ##  btw)...  Unfortunately, I am stuck using some random kludge of
  ##  a terminal program "Pop-Modem", which was all I could scrape up from 
  ##  the collection of dusty PC 3.5s...  I recently nuked my laptop
  ##  hardrive with the base distribution of Linux, but never bothered to
  ##  put anything on the five megs grudgingly left for MSDOG...  The
  ##  result?  No decent term emulation, but I do get to practice emacs
  ##  line-editing commands...  :-)  Now I need to install the REST of
  ##  linux...

I still haven't revived my sun3.  If it doesn't revive, I'll have to
figure out linux, I reckon.    I totally like the idea of having the
entire source code for our UNIX, like we did in the old days...

Who is unix a trademark of, these days?

  ##  Enough rambling, at least on that thread.  I have NeXTSTEP running
  ##  on one of the psych lab's clone 486s...  The 486/33s are  s l o w
  ##  anyway, but cramming NeXTSTEP into 8megs of PC ram does nothing to
  ##  speed it up...  When not swapping, the speed is tolerable, good
  ##  for a single user, perhaps a slow secretary, or a process control
  ##  app that doesn't control much...  :-)  It's much nicer over in 
  ##  engineering, with Gateway 486/66 machines with 16megs of ram and
  ##  local bus video (16bit color, with nice Postscript dithering)...
  ##  No fear, psychology is ordering a truckload (quite literally) of
  ##  new, fast, heavily stacked PCs...   
  ##
  ##  "Desert Solitaire" soothes on the CD player...
  ##  
  ##  I made the mistake of wandering into a Bookstop today...  Escaped
  ##  after purchasing only $20 worth of "must have" magazines...  Perhaps
  ##  I'm a bit slow, but I only just now picked up the latest Mondo...
  ##  The Crunch article is cute, with him in his favorite sweater...  

you know it took me several weeks to happen across the new mondo.
somehow it escaped me.

  ##  Oh, damn...  :-)  He's talking about me!  I should have read this
  ##  sooner...  "There's something I'm working on with a student at the
  ##  University of Houston.  What we want to do is a virtual cyberspace.
  ##  Where you have a machine on the Internet called a "virtual world
  ##  server".  If you enter the server, you select which of the virtual
  ##  worlds you want to go into.  After selecting one, you enter that
  ##  virtual world and you have other people or entities in there you
  ##  can play around with.  Your digital identity could be a knight
  ##  in shining armor -- you render that with an artist.  It has
  ##  a certain size and weight, certain characteristics." ...
  ##  
  ##  Cute...

yeah, I think Crunch is on a roll.   I saw him at the 
Survival Research Labs show on Howard St a few weeks go; 
he had cut his hair.  We're going to see him everywhere...

  ##  It's true, but it's on the backburner...  Too many other things 
  ##  running at the same time...like setting up a corporation (unrelated),
  ##  writing the object stuff at JSC (related), doing the laser show 
  ##  (unrelated), and writing a "toy" VR using a NeXT, QuickRenderman,
  ##  multiple kludges, and a $600,000 Evans and Sutherland Digistar
  ##  high-rez (8000x8000 addressable points), ultra-bright fisheye lens
  ##  planetarium dome vector graphics projection system...  :)
  ##  
  ##  Related.
  ##  
  ##  Think Mondo would be interested in the specs of the completed gizmo?
  ##  It would be better than the silly "Slacker Factor" articles...

Get some good pictures.  Tell a good story.

  ##  If anyone wants to talk about "InterWorld" protocols, please speak
  ##  up...  (Techwood viewers, this is your cue...:)

I've got my latest Kudzu Protocols running, in a TCL interpreter I
ported to the Macintosh under Think C ansi emulation, but I'm afraid 
before I get a chance to email them to anyone,  I'm gonna be gone...

  ##  What is it about design magazines that is so difficult to resist?
  ##  Even if they cost outrageous amounts?  Check out "Design World",
  ##  only $8.00 US, there is a nice non-vector non-monochrome Evans &
  ##  Sutherland ad along with a good article on Computer Aided Industrial
  ##  Design...  CAID is the true promise of CAD, if that makes sense at
  ##  this hour...  
  ##  
  ##  Yay!  "Processed World 31" is here...  I always have a hard time
  ##  believing in the American Way after reading my favorite anti-work
  ##  mag...  Time to watch TV again, I guess...

Don Webb writes about an upcoming Utopian Future issue of Processed
World.  I'll nando it below...

  ##  I think I'll put the "No Life" sign (pg 11) on my office door...  
  ##  
  ##  Finally, "MIT Tech Review", always enough interesting articles to 
  ##  make it worth buying....  Great article by Seymour Papert on
  ##  Kids and Computers...heretical!
  ##  
  ##  The UH Architecture profs want to get into VR.  Any advice?  
  ##  
  ##  Striq, when are you coming to visit?  It's looking like I may be
  ##  going to Kansas soon, to check on the farm/harvest/legal weirdness.
  ##  Maybe July-ish...  If something really strange happens, like I'm
  ##  buried in an avalanche of money (or $100 courier opportunities pop up),
  ##  I may be going with John to Amsterdam in August...unlikely, though...

Get pictures of any strange circles you find in the crops...

  ##  I was up last night designing business cards.  I'll fax you one,
  ##  as soon as the details are settled, and I buy a fax modem for the
  ##  NeXT.  :)  A month, tops, hopefully...
  ##  
  ##  
  ##  Ok, enough rambling on all threads...  Time to sleep, or at least to
  ##  dry off...
  ##  
  ##  Till later,
  ##  
  ##  
  ##  Jason Asbahr                           116 E. Edgebrook #603
  ##  asbahr@uh.edu                          Houston, Texas  77034
  ##  asbahr@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTmail)      (713) 941-8294  voice
  ##  asbahr@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov         UH NeXT Consultant

Don't say sleep.  I'm gonna be up all night packing.  Especially
if I don't finish this surfpunk.   7am flight from SFO tomorrow morning.

 



Date:    Tue, 06 Jul 93 12:10:09 PDT
To:      Justin Mason <jmason@iona.ie>
cc:      menya zavoot cmpuk <strick@versant.com>,
	 zzzen@pax.eunet.ch (Nimrod S. Kerrett), ian <iansmith@cc.gatech.edu>,
	 keith <keith@cc.gatech.edu>, jason <asbahr@uh.edu>,
	 joe germuska <j-germuska@nwu.edu>
From:    menya zavoot cmpuk <strick@versant.com>
Subject: MIMEPNQ forming......................................................!

LIKE zzzen@pax.eunet.ch (Nimrod S. Kerrett) ONCE SAID:
@ Funny papers:
@ I was thinking of doing a MultiMedia comic-strip for
@ an E-Mag (e.g. SurfPunk).

LIKE Justin Mason <jmason@iona.ie> WRITES:
# 
# >If you'd like to help with it, I could probably find some other
# >collaborators as well.  
# 
# Yeah, sign me up, definitely!

I'm going off to Europe (Bavaria and eastward) this weekend, 
and will be incommunicado for three weeks, till like 3 AUG.

What I think I'll do is ask on SURFPUNK for people interested, 
and create a temporary non-list of people, simply a CC:  chain of people 
who would be interested, to let you be chatting while I'm gone.

When I get back, I'd like to start a MIMEPNQ list for real.  
SURFPUNK has already found a niche and a lot of readers (>300).
We need a new list if we seriously go high-bandwith MIME now.
We can experiment among ourselves at first, to get a "format" down, 
then launch globally.

[ If you're interested in this project, send a message with MIMEPNQ 
  in the subject line, to <strick@versant.com>, and a human-readable
  comment about what/why you're interested in doing.  Don't expect
  a reply until the first week of August.  ]

# >Actually I need to survey what's happening in the alt.binaries
# >newsgroups, what others are doing; I don't like to start things
# >in a vacuum.  Do you have these groups?  any other multimedia lists?
# 
# Yep, I do. They have so many non-hacker users that they're stuck with
# the usual uuencode/split sort of file transmission technique, at least
# until MIME becomes properly accepted and supported at the newsreader
# level. newsreader development seems to be moving very slowly; very few
# readers support MIME, and those that do only support the metamail
# toolkit implementation, which has a pretty lousy user interface, and
# isn't likely to be used much, if there's a choice. MIME tool
# development is proceeding quite slowly too, but hopefully something
# useful should be out soon enough.
# 
# The MHN tutorial paper is the one to read; mhn(1) really puts MIME to
# work.

Because MIME readers are not yet ubiquitous, what would be useful in
the next month is to gather lists of resources, MIME freeware for unix,
mac, pc, and create a prototype FAQ of sorts, for MIMEPNQ readers.
Also collect in advance some material for use in the publication, to
experiment with.

Perhaps even someone fluent with macintosh and PC could at least build
some "filters" from the MIME sources, such as the base64
encoder/decoder, using ANSI/UNIX/POSIX support libraries -- just to get
something up and running where there is currently nothing.

I've been told that all the major vendors will be coming out with MIME
products this year, so we'll have real support before too long...
but by that time we should be using new media that they've never even
heard of!(!)!

BTW: joe germuska <j-germuska@nwu.edu> has some kind of magazine BLINK
which I think uses multimedia.  Joe, can you give a status report?
(subscribe me, too) I don't see BLINK in the WWW server 
at "http://antioch.acns.nwu.edu/".



                                               menya zavoot cmpuk
                                               strick@versant.com


LIKE germuska@antioch.acns.nwu.edu (Joe Germuska) WRITES:
# menya zavoot cmpuk wrote:
# It's true, we're there... (although http://www.acns.nwu.edu/ is the
# preferred URL)  We're only a little bit Multimedia -- we have one GIF, a

The Vatican exibit you can get to from the home page "http://www.acns.nwu.edu/"
is REALLY cool.  Gifs of latin, aramaic, and other linguistic erotica.

thx, joe!


# but I'm always interested in doing more, and glad to be on this mailing
# list, even if I don't know what the PNQ part of the MIMEPNQ acronym means!

Just prounounce it "mime pnq", a pun on surfpunk.
That's just a temporary name.  I'm open to suggestions...



  @@  Date:    Tue, 06 Jul 93 21:53:52 +0200
  @@  From:    zzzen@pax.eunet.ch (Nimrod S. Kerrett)
  @@  
  @@  > and will be incommunicado for three weeks, till like 3 AUG.
  @@  You're back from Europe one day before the hacktic.nl HEU
  @@  convention/rave starts? What a shame. Try to find an excuse
  @@  to stay in Europe another week.
  @@  
  @@  > (subscribe me, too) I don't see BLINK in the WWW server
  @@  Got #1 via ftp. Joe sez it might take a long time before
  @@  #2's out since lots of staff graduated/turned-busy.
  @@  BTW. He offered to put my CommX on FTP/WWW. Maybe he did.
  @@  Currently I don't have time to check.
  
 
  @@  I'm sure that when I'm old I'll roam the Matrix via NeuroJack
  @@  and find pleasures beyond our current imagination-capacity tagged
  @@  with 8-letter names for DOS compatibility.
  @@  
  @@  Come to think of it, 8-letter words replaced 4-letter words.
  @@  THAT'S progress.


  %%  Date:    Thu, 08 Jul 93 10:12:06 EDT
  %%  From:    keith@cc.gatech.edu (Keith Edwards)
  %%  Subject: Re: MIMEPNQ forming..........................................
  %%   
  %%  
  %%  Hey Strick,
  %%  Just FYI about MIME.  For people on Suns running Solaris, there is
  %%  already a supported MIME-compliant mail reader that comes on the
  %%  system for free.  The Sun mailtool, as of OpenWindows 3.2 (the
  %%  version that ships with Solaris 2.2), does MIME.
  %%  
  %%  It's probably the only MIME mailer available for OPEN LOOK junkies,
  %%  and probably the only one that's actually supported by the hardware
  %%  vendor.
  %%  
  %%  I never got Montage to speak MIME (wouldn't have been hard, just
  %%  never found the time...sigh...)
  %%  
  %%  -keith
  %%  
  %%  
  %%  PS - I've been running Solaris 2.2 for a while now and I'm *very*
  %%  impressed.  It's snappy, very featureful, and pretty bug free (once I
  %%  installed the 34 patches that are out :-)  And *most* of my SunOS
  %%  4.1.x binaries just run on it (even big stuff, like my window manager
  %%  and FrameMaker).  I can't wait for 2.3...



  {}  Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime,comp.sys.mac.comm,comp.mail.multi-media,
  {}		comp.protocols.appletalk
  {}  From: Alberto Steindler <Steindle@gnbts.univ.trieste.it>
  {}  Date: Tue Jun 22 11:02:55 PDT 1993
  {}  Organization: DEEI - Universita' di Trieste
  {}  
  {}  Iride, an implementation of a MIME user agent for the Macintosh is
  {}  now available via anonymous FTP from:
  {}  
  {}  GNBTS.Univ.Trieste.IT
  {}  
  {}  in the directory:
  {}  
  {}  /mime
  {}  
  {}  This is a beta version implementing a subset of  MIME (RFC1341).
  {}  
  {}  Comments and bug reports will be really appreciated!!
  {}  
  {}  This application was originally developed in a project of Gruppo
  {}  Nazionale Bioingegneria of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche for
  {}  the integration of multimedia messaging systems in the medical
  {}  environment, in particular for the distribution of bioimages.
  {}  
  {}  For any comment and information please contact:
  {}  
  {}  Alberto Steindler
  {}  Steindle@GNBTS.Univ.Trieste.IT
  {}  
  {}  

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine
originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern
California matrix.  Quantum Californians appear in one of two states,
spin surf or spin punk.  Undetected, we are both, or might be neither.
________________________________________________________________________

Send postings to <surfpunk@osc.versant.com>, subscription requests 
to <surfpunk-request@osc.versant.com>.  My fingers are too wired into vi.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________





	Mani Varadarajan <mani@hpclbis.cup.hp.com> might own these words:
	! 
	! 4. After lunch on Wednesday I went to the main technical session for
	! a bit (there was a talk from a Legato person on a file-motel-like
	! tertiary storage system) but after a bit I switched to the alternate
	! track, where there was a sort of panel discussion to compare various
	! text editors.  Jim Blandy was arguing for emacs, Tom Christiansen
	! for vi, and Rob Pike for a mouse-based editor he wrote called "sam".
	! Rob of course had the most humorous insults, and Tom displayed an
	! amazing ability to make vi do things I'd never have guessed it could
	! do (I can't even understand half of the tricks he put up on his
	! slides).  The most interesting part was when they asked for a show
	! of hands to see who was using each editor.  About 55% were using
	! vi (!!!), 40% emacs, and 5% other.  I was *very* surprised how many
	! people were using vi.  My conclusion from the talks is that all 3
	! editors are really obsolete these days.  It seems to me that there's
	! an opportunity for someone to write a really good mouse-based code
	! editor (not a word processor) for the 1990's.  I'm not sure what
	! research there would be in such an activity, or even whether there's
	! fortune to be had, but maybe there's at least fame to be had.  It
	! sure seems like it's time for something new.  A few people tried the
	! lame excuse "I'll never be able to change because my fingers are
	! too wired into vi", but not many people bought it.
	! 

