--- begin forwarded text Date: 8 Aug 1997 13:12:06 -0000 From: iang@systemics.com To: e$@thumper.vmeng.com Subject: It's cool to be iang@hip97.nl Sender: <e$@vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk List-Software: LetterRip 2.0 by Fog City Software, Inc. List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=unsubscribe%20e$> List-Subscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=subscribe%20e$> Well, sometimes it takes a long time to get a network going, and sometimes it takes, well, minutes. Ten minutes ago I wandered down to the HIP HQ tent and picked up a clothes peg with an IP number on it, and a slip of paper with some details. And now I am up and running. What's more surprising is this a fast link. Traceroutes under 10ms are about the best advert I can think of for XS4ALL, the Dutch provider at the centre of it all. There's no flies on the PTT either, with dual 6Mb microwaves and a portable GSM cell linking this field in the middle of nowhere to central Amsterdam. It makes you wonder whether this privatisation business is really all it's cracked up to be. Lucky Green has done a sterling job as cypherpunk advance campmeister. When he's not building computer racks out of empty beer bottles (I'm typing on two crates of real Budweiser!), he's teasing us with a public key triple DES scrambler. We're not allowed to use it because we're not Americans. But that's cool, as long as we have our SSH and PGP and we get to empty more beer bottles. Beer is selling at 4 Hipsters. Ain't private currencies wonderful :-) Last night I walked the entire campsite. Only the clear skys and bright stars reminded me of a mis-spent youth in the outdoors. Tents piled with equipment. Not the glowflies of Anguilla, but glowing monitors and flashing leds for our lighting. Not the sounds of crickets, but keyboard clicking and "gateway's up" and "who's got address 21" in multi-lingual hip-speak. Having got this machine up and going, the only thing I can think of is to write this email. But that's ok too, because I'm about to be booted off. Squiggle is going to hook up her sonar to Brian the Brain, the cypherpunk sysadm. That's for Brian to send out 49.4kHz clicks so that he knows when to ask for food of passer's by. Which makes for two over-worked brains that I can count. It's cool to be iang@hip97.nl PS: Brian and friend are at http://www.sabotage.org/mpeg/brain1.jpeg --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/