tgtimes3.txt - tgtimes - The Gopher Times
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1
2
3
4 The Gopher Times
5
6 ____________________________________________________________
7
8 Opus 3 - Gopher news and more - Jan. 2022
9 ____________________________________________________________
10
11
12
13
14 Heaven and computers tgtimes
15 ____________________________________________________________
16
17 Before the era of smartphones, laptops, before Windows
18 and Apple, there were pioneers who took the fun of
19 computers from the hands of the few who could afford
20 computers, and shared them massively so that mere
21 individuals could afford it.
22
23 An ocean of creativity spread. Art of all kinds were
24 made on these new toys, that were permitting many to
25 try on their own, or enjoy a tune of 8-bit music, a
26 demo scene, play a video game, ASCII art...
27
28 Offering these pioneers a one-way ticket to enter the
29 legend, 8bitlegends.com builds a corner of peace,
30 making some room in our heart for the 8bit heroes.
31
32 https://8bitlegends.com/
33
34
35
36 Bitreich Radio playing auto-generated music 20h
37 ____________________________________________________________
38
39 Bitreich Radio was lacking love. The scripts were
40 bugged and outputted strange music. To change this, a
41 redesign was done. See
42
43 gopher://bitreich.org/1/radio
44
45 for the new gopherhole menu.
46
47 When you listen to
48
49 gopher://bitreich.org/9/radio/listen
50
51 you will hear music auto-generated without any
52 copyright. It is relaxing music you can listen to in a
53 background, on a toilet, all for free and forever.
54
55 The #bitreich-radio title display has been fixed too.
56
57 I hope, this increases the listening experience.
58
59 All recommendations, especially about more auto-
60 generated music, are welcome. We need to escape the
61 copyright mafia trap.
62
63 Sincerely yours, Chief Music Manager (CMM)
64
65
66
67
68 Computer that lasts forever ploum
69 ____________________________________________________________
70
71 More RAM, faster CPU, more cache size, lower latency.
72 Computer industry never sleeps while trying to raise
73 the bar over and over. It plays with the limit of
74 physics to keep the Moore's Law dream going.
75
76 By Building faster computers, hardware engineers offer
77 more resources to software makers, allowing them to
78 build more ambitious projects. The computer
79 performance discipline sure has been worked up
80 thoroughly.
81
82 If the software comsumes all the extra computing power
83 for its own goal, then we are conjointly building very
84 fast snails.
85
86 This conquest for a better cost/performance balance is
87 one direction for the evolution of computers, but it
88 is also possible to imagine a race for better
89 reliability and durability instead.
90
91 Ploum offers a vision of what computers are like when
92 maximizing durability of the hardware, but also the
93 software ecosystem, so that a computer built today
94 still be useful in 50 years, without upgrades (not
95 preventing upgrades to happen).
96
97 An old knife is still a piece of metal that can be
98 sharpened over again to be able to cut long after it
99 was built. Could this also be true for computers?
100
101 https://ploum.net/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/
102
103
104
105 Year End Meeting 2021 Recordings Online 20h
106 ____________________________________________________________
107
108 For everyone not able to join the 2021 year end
109 meeting, here are the recordings:
110
111 gopher://bitreich.org/1/end-year-meeting/2021
112
113 Thanks to everyone who contributed to bitreich over
114 the last five years!
115
116 Sincerely yours, Chief Community Manager (CCM)
117
118
119
120
121 100 years of radiodiffusion tgtimes
122 ____________________________________________________________
123
124 The Internet existed forever: books and printed press
125 have always been around for communicating ideas and
126 information, and evolved progressively to become what
127 the Internet is today.
128
129 Letters were carried by messengers riding horses,
130 postal train, or airplanes. Long-range communication
131 evolved slowly for a long time, but has accelerated
132 rapidly in recent years, until today extreme bandwidth
133 and latency.
134
135 The common pattern: a new discovery in electronics
136 permits a new way to communicate information over a
137 long-distance, with a lightning-fast adoption all
138 around the world:
139
140 1919 wireless telegraphy and music transmission in
141 Germany, Netherland and United-States
142
143 1920 daily radio programmes in England, United-States
144 and USSR
145
146 1921 radio broadcasting from Eiffel Tower with 900 W
147 power intensity
148
149 1922 foundation of the BBC and arrival of 2000 W
150 broadcastings
151
152 A few years before, the long-range communication tool
153 of choice was paper.
154
155 A few years later, the telephone and television
156 started to develop.
157
158
159
160 Bitreich University reaches 100% employment rate 20h
161 ____________________________________________________________
162
163 The first students are leaving the MEME university
164 degree programme. We, the board of meme professors,
165 would like to thank all students who participated.
166
167 All students found jobs in different careers:
168 Politics, News Reporters, Youtubers, Twitter
169 Conspiracy Trolls or Bakers. Just watch your local
170 news, radio, TV or anti-social network for them.
171
172 This means, there is a 100% employment rate!
173
174 We are so proud and hope for a new semester of
175 successful students.
176
177 Sincerely yours, Chief Meme Caretaker (CMC)
178
179
180
181
182 A world of tiny creatures tgtimes
183 ____________________________________________________________
184
185 Ants. Is that what we would look like to the eyes of a
186 giant? What if one of those giants had the curiosity
187 of looking down on our world, watching all our tiny
188 activities, our tiny trades, our tiny farming, our
189 tiny meals, our tiny families, our tiny lives?
190
191 E.O. Wilson was one of these giants, looking at the
192 ants: the real ones, the insect ones: An entomologist,
193 someone dedicated to the study of insects.
194
195 After 92 years of empassioned life, E.O. Wilson is
196 fading away, joining the soil, which he spent his life
197 observing. Closing his own book, while at the same
198 time inviting everyone to open their eyes, and look,
199 carefully, at this world of tiny creatures.
200
201
202
203
204 stagit and stagit-gopher 1.0 is released bob
205 ____________________________________________________________
206
207 I want to thank all contributors for patches and other
208 feedback.
209
210 You can find the releases on codemadness (primary) and
211 bitreich (mirror).
212
213 gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/
214 https://codemadness.org/releases/
215 gopher://bitreich.org/1/releases/
216
217 It has the following changes:
218
219 stagit:
220
221 - Print the number of remaining commits.
222
223 - Ignore '\r' in writing diffs and file blobs.
224
225 - Percent encode characters in path names, like '?'
226 and '#'.
227
228 - Encode XML / HTML entities in the project name.
229
230 - Add EXAMPLES section to the man pages.
231
232 stagit-gopher:
233
234 - Print the number of remaining commits.
235
236 - Add EXAMPLES section to the man pages.
237
238 Thanks to:
239
240 - quinq: for the remaining commits patch.
241
242 - srfsh: for suggesting to look into percent encoding
243 characters.
244
245 (cl|g)it commander Bob
246
247
248
249
250 Uxn portable assembly language 100r.co
251 ____________________________________________________________
252
253 The web is well-known for its drift toward platform
254 effect: reproducing the features of the underlying
255 operating system from one of its applications, in this
256 case, the web browser. This is largely made possible
257 through javascript, and the advent of WebAssembly can
258 only contribute more to this.
259
260 But making an assembly language a standard for
261 shipping graphical applications needs not to rhime
262 with excess and abuse of a platform. A more
263 conventional approach would be standardising high-
264 level API and protocols, for which low-level drivers
265 would be written. Instead, Uxn standardises as low as
266 the assembly language itself.
267
268 Yet, Uxn has nothing in common with Java:
269
270 >> Features were weighted against the relative
271 difficulty they would add for programmers
272 implementing their own emulators.
273
274 Say welcome to this rabbit hole, inviting you with a
275 fresh take on making computers work for end-users.
276
277 Impressive acheivements were reached, such as
278 portability of this platform on things as small as a
279 32bit microcontroller:
280
281 >> Currently, there are ports (not all are complete)
282 for GBA, Nintendo DS, Playdate, DOS, PS Vita,
283 Raspberry Pi Pico, Teletype, ESP32, iOS, STM32,
284 STM32, IBM PC, and many more.
285
286 https://100r.co/site/uxn.html
287
288
289
290 New Gopher Banner on bitreich.org 20h
291 ____________________________________________________________
292
293 To support local gopher politics, we added a banner to
294 bitreich.org gopherhole. This is there to support
295 political movement into more gopher support all over
296 the world. Please support your local gopher charity,
297 if you can.
298
299 Please do not block the banner in your gopher
300 adblocker!
301
302 +===========================================+
303 +##########[ ALL GOPHERS MATTER ]###########+
304 +##[ DONATE TO YOUR LOCAL GOPHER CHARITY ]##+
305 +##############[ CLICK HERE ]###############+
306 +===========================================+
307
308 Sincerely yours, Chief Political Officer (CPO).
309
310
311
312
313 The UNIX calendar(1) command tgtimes
314 ____________________________________________________________
315
316 It is probably there sitting in /usr/bin, the
317 calendar(1) command can offer you a fair dose of
318 flexibility that web-based or smartphone-based
319 calendars lacks.
320
321 By storing events in a single file of text edited by
322 hand, calendar(1) brings the comfort of your existing
323 text editor to manage events with a simple syntax:
324
325 - one line per event: first a date, then a tab, then a
326 description.
327
328 - A line starting with a tab implicitly has the same
329 date as the previous event.
330
331 - Empty lines are ignored, and the C preprocessor
332 brings #include and /* comments */ as needed.
333
334 No need to format everything right away: taking notes
335 at the bottom of the file, in the middle of a phone
336 call and formatting after hanging-up... It is it
337 trivial to manage a calendar file.
338
339 While the calendar(1) command is run, events for today
340 and tomorrow are printed: as a digest of what is
341 upcoming.
342
343 A command line flag permits sending this digest to all
344 users by email, making it a complete calendar software
345 suite from edition to reminder.
346
347 There is even support for weekly, monthly and yearly
348 (birthdays) events.
349
350 Sharing calendar events is as easy as sending the
351 section of the calendar file by email, and
352 synchronising the calendar across devices is a matter
353 of synchronising a single file.
354
355 By adding a few more custom syntax rules on top of
356 those supported by calendar(1), readable text can be
357 maintained with little effort.
358
359 Jan 23 09:00 Breakfast: cooked eggs and fruits
360 @ Home Sweet Home
361
362 10:30 The Gopher Times proof-reading
363 @ ircs://irc.bitreich.org/
364
365 15:30 On-call duty untill!
366 @ https://the-dull-gull.corp/login
367
368 Jan 24 12:30 Lunch break in town with folks
369 @ that small cafe that does snacks
370
371 Jan 26 19:15 Call with friends abroad
372 @ mumble://example.com/
373
374
375
376 Gopher log4j contest 20h
377 ____________________________________________________________
378
379 We hereby announce the gopher log4j contest. Anyone
380 sending in the patches to java to allow jdni gopher://
381 loading will be awarded with one year free bitreich
382 premium membership. One drink per day is free.
383
384 Please post your patch on
385
386 ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
387
388 and you will be rewarded with your membership pass and
389 a free towel for the member pool.
390
391 Sincerely yours, Leading Organisational Gardener 4
392 Java (LOG4J)
393
394
395
396
397 A Guide to Hell by J. Mickens usenix
398 ____________________________________________________________
399
400 >> As a highly trained academic researcher, I spend a
401 lot of time trying to advance the frontiers of human
402 knowledge. However, as someone who was born in the
403 South, I secretly believe that true progress is a
404 fantasy, and that I need to prepare for the end
405 times, and for the chickens coming home to roost, and
406 fast zombies, and slow zombies, and the polite
407 zombies who say "sir" and "ma'am" but then try to eat
408 your brain to acquire your skills. When the
409 revolution comes, I need to be prepared; thus, in the
410 quiet moments, when I'm not producing incredible
411 scientific breakthroughs, I think about what I'll do
412 when the weather forecast inevitably becomes RIVERS
413 OF BLOOD ALL DAY EVERY DAY. [...]
414
415 If James Mickens looks like he is a highly trained
416 soldier killing zombies in the doomed lands of System
417 Programming, that is because James Mickens is a highly
418 trained soldier killing zombies in the doomed lands of
419 System Programming.
420
421 https://usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf
422
423
424
425 Annna now on #gopherproject too 20h
426 ____________________________________________________________
427
428 With the extension of annna for multi-server support,
429 she is now able to join irc.libera.chat/#gopherproject
430 and help our gopher comrades there.
431
432 They will receive the bitreich news and have all the
433 pleasure of annna features, like memes, URI resolvers
434 etc. There is much to find out!
435
436 If you want to dig deeper, look at the annna
437 internals:
438
439 git://bitreich.org/annna
440
441 I hope this brings an influx of new ideas for
442 gopher<>IRC.
443
444 Sincerely yours, Chief IRC Officer (CIO)
445
446
447
448
449 Confessions of a thief chemla
450 ____________________________________________________________
451
452 >> Below is the beginning of "Confessions of a Thief"
453 from Laurent Chemla. He founded a major French DNS
454 registrar, but before that, was the first to commit
455 online piracy in France (from a Minitel), and worked
456 on development tools for Atari. The book is published
457 online in French and translated below.
458
459 A thief. How else to name one of the first individual
460 in France to procure itself an Internet access? In
461 1994, borrowing the clothes of a telecommunication
462 expert, that I was not yet, I obtained from an IT
463 staff employee of a parisian University that he let me
464 an access to Internet. In exchange, I brought him help
465 - relatively - to the building of a network devoted to
466 let student work from home.
467
468 I then stole, I confess, this first access to a
469 network that remained to me a mostly unexplored land
470 since my last visits in 1992, mediated by obscure
471 manoeuvres of a friend or through piracy.
472
473 This theft benefited to me, I could learn to use a
474 tool long before the majority of the IT crowd, gaining
475 an advance that still persist today.
476
477 I stole, but I plead good faith. At this epoch nobody
478 around me did understand what it was about. Would it
479 bit a thief to steal something nobody had interest in?
480 This access was to the reach of only a few testing
481 university students, this access that a small IT
482 company could not afford, I stole it, and I am not
483 ashamed.
484
485 For my relatives, I am nontheless an "IT janitor".
486 Programmer to a tiny IT company, I always have been
487 passionated by telematic networks. A passion that
488 costed me, in 1986, to be the first to be guilty of
489 piracy in France, pirated from a Minitel, yes, but to
490 each his glory. As there was not yet any law against
491 IT piracy, I have been incriminated for stealing
492 electrical power. All that ended up in an acquittal,
493 but still, here is a decent start for a thief career!
494
495 Indeed, how to name differently someone who
496 constituted its professional network by taking part to
497 associations? We have the impression to contribute
498 unpaid for the many, but we mostly get known and, time
499 after time, the clients get attracted by this
500 visibility. Of course anyone whose professional
501 occupation deals with voluntary sector end-up face to
502 its own consciousness. Not unlike, I suppose, a lawyer
503 who gain clients from the excluded folk that he help
504 graciously and daily. I ignore what its consciousness
505 would tell him, but I know mine is not at rest.
506
507 Nowadays again, my activities continue to be lucrative
508 out of Internet, at the time of Nasdaq's fall. How can
509 one earn while everyone loose, if not by cheating?
510
511 A thief is on that use to its profit else's good. To
512 me, Internet is a public good and, if serve as
513 commercial gallery for some, it must not limit itself
514 to such a deviation. Internet must first and foremost
515 be the tool that, for the first time in mankind,
516 permitted the freedom of speech, defined as a
517 fundamental human right.
518
519 This right, in all its guarantee from our
520 constitutional state, has stayed hypothetical since
521 its proclamation. In France law protects freedom of
522 Speech of syndicates and journalists but no text that
523 permit to the simple citizen to undertake justice, to
524 reach its freedom. What else since, before Internet,
525 this freedom was to the reach of some privilegied? The
526 lawyer protected them because only them needed that
527 protection. Ten years ago, noone would have been able
528 to benefit an as simple, fast and affordable way to
529 expose works, arts or ideas but by vociferating in the
530 street or by climbing the social scale rung by rung to
531 the point of having media's attention. One had to be
532 represented by others with the expression right for
533 themself. Only ersatz. The only freedom that matters
534 is the one available to all and I dont give a damn
535 about those reserved to the mighty or their
536 representatives.
537
538 Internet thereby permit to a growing number of citizen
539 to apply their fundamental right to take the parole on
540 the public place. From this point of view, it must be
541 protected such as any other necessary yet fragile
542 resource, such as water we drink everyday. It cannot
543 be reserved to anyone, neither be limited in its
544 usages if not by the common right. No exception
545 legislation must forbide the exercise of freedom of
546 speech and, as soon as possible, states must preserve
547 the common tool that became a public benefit. And as I
548 use a public good to lead my own fights, yet again, I
549 behave as a thief.
550
551 I thereby knew the Internet some time before everybody
552 else, still at the age of the Far West, Eldorado,
553 Utopia. At this era, the network was backed by public
554 money (mostly from United States), the life was
555 happier and the electronic sky bluer. We worked all
556 along, among passionated, inventing new computer
557 objects that even Microsoft did ignore, like Linux or
558 the World Wide Web (you know, the three fastidious *w*
559 we have to type in the address of your favorite porn
560 website...) that did not yet exist and that today
561 everybody mistake for the network itself.
562
563 We were far from thinking that some day, we would need
564 a plethora of lawyers to organize the network. That
565 some day, we would need interdepartmental comittees to
566 address of the question. That some day, we would have
567 to put black on white the manners not yet named
568 "netiquette" that seemd all so natural to us. Our only
569 desire, share that formidable invention with the most
570 people, make its apology, attract the most numerous of
571 passionated who shared with us their competency, their
572 knowledge and intelligence.
573
574 I remember that at this epoch, when I was saying
575 "Internet", my friends looked at me as if coming from
576 another planet. When I transfered a file from a
577 computer from one end of of the world to my own
578 machine - by cabalistic commands typed by hand under
579 an interface working without a mouse pointer - the
580 seasoned IT engineers was assisting to the
581 demonstration as to a bad movie: finding a file was
582 taking hours, reading speeds was worth a sick snail
583 and the file often revealed to be unusable... But
584 while a pal entered in my office, I would show him how
585 by typing a single command line I could share, for a
586 ridiculous price, my work, my knowledge, my files or
587 my data with pure strangers and that could live at the
588 other side of the street as the other side of the
589 world.
590
591 Besides from other passionated people, everybody was
592 laughing at me. I could tell them that this thingy
593 would be a revolution for human knowledge, they looked
594 at me in pity and went back to their work.
595
596 In the best case, I was told with lucidity "It is a
597 pirate thing.". Some was asking who would that fit,
598 beyond telematic specialists. Other claimed that
599 volontary and free sharing of resources would not
600 have, by definition, any economical future. I was also
601 asked sometimes who would dare to provide such a
602 terrible service. And when I explained them that
603 everything was entirely decentralised, with for only
604 coordination volunteership and good will of all, the
605 same ones was telling me that it could never work at a
606 large scale.
607
608 https://www.confessions-voleur.net/
609
610
611
612 Publishing in The Gopher Times you
613 ____________________________________________________________
614
615 Want your article published? Want to announce
616 something to the Gopher world? Directly related to
617 Gopher or not, reach us on IRC with an article in any
618 format, we will handle the rest.
619
620 ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
621 gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes/
622 git://bitreich.org/tgtimes/
623
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626