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<H4 ALIGN="center">
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more <STRONG>SCARY!</STRONG></I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<H1><font color="maroon">The Back Page</font></H1>
<ul>
<li><a HREF="#nottag">Not The Answer Gang</a>
<li><a HREF="#notbytes">Not News Bytes</a>
</ul>
<a name="nottag"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">Not The Answer Gang</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">Cracking Slackware Linux</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Iron
</strong></FONT></p>
<STRONG>
Sir,
I have just read your articles. It is really
interesting and that's why i dare to send you this
email. Sir, can you tell me any way to enter(hack)
into slackware linux (through any program or
shellscript whatever).
Sir, I am eagerly waiting for your reply. Please send
me the reply as quick as possible.
</STRONG>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> Choose your favorite reply.
<OL>
<LI> Push the 'Hack' button on your keyboard.<P>
<LI> Sir, are you stoned or were you always this way?<P>
<LI> Real hackers wouldn't have to ask.<P>
<LI> Start by cracking something simple, like DOS 3.0.<P>
<LI> The square pegs go into the square holes, and the round pegs go into
the round holes.<P>
<LI>
<PRE>
Hi, you've reached the Linux Gazette Answer Gang....
Linux ::::::::: a modern operating system not much like any of:
--- DOS -- Windows -- Solaris -- MacOS -- alien starships ---
... except occasionally, an ability to run on the same hardware.
Gazette ::::::: published more regularly than "almanac." In our case:
--- a monthly web-based magazine, home: www.linuxgazette.com
Answer Gang ::: Not the "lazy college student's UNstudy group"
--- nor the "hey d00dz help me cRaK my neighBoorZ klub"
</PRE>
</OL>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">Small sharp tools vs Bloatware</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By John Karns, Iron, Ben Okopnik
</strong></FONT></p>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [John]
<P> On several occasions I've read mention of the unix philosophy where each
program concentrates on doing a few things and doing them well. Thus
MTA's don't generally handle POP'ing, etc. The example given of Eudora,
Netscape and Outlook are phenomena of a different OS. In the case of
Netscape, its roots were closely tied to unix, but most of the development
was targeted for users of the other OS - and its unfortunate that some of
the ISP's are designing their configurations assuming that virtuall all
subscribers will be using that platform.
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> And don't forget how much Netscape Mail changed the landscape. Prior to
Netscape, most Unix people read mail from shell accounts, and the local
machine had its own sendmail. Windows users depended on mail gateways
between Internet and their Novell/Windows/Vines/whatever network, so they
as users never had to configure anything. Of course, there were a few
POP users here and there, but relatively few. Then Netscape Mail
appeared, and suddenly ISPs and LANs were faced with large numbers of
e-mailing users on Windows boxen that didn't have their own mail transport
agent, so they had to rely on an upstream POP/SMTP server. Nowadays, it's
just assumed that most users will connect this way. (Well, *most* users
use Hotmail or one of the other webmail services....)
<P> There's a fascinating book <EM>Digitopia</EM> that talks about how
computerization has changed our society a lot more than people realize, because
of the human mind's tendency to adapt to new situations and forget how things
used to be. The author points out that each time a new Playstation or software
update comes out, people get excited and then bored, but they forget that the
new version is causing the same about of excitement and boredom as the previous
version did. We think about Netscape 2 now and wonder how people could have
been excited about such a crappy application, but that's because we're
forgetting what the situation was like then.
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">AOL knights</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Iron, John Karns, Ben Okopnik
</strong></FONT></p>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> AOL became the biggest [ISP in the US]
through a massive marketing campaign, sending millions of "try me out"
CDs.
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [John]
<P> .. and before those, floppies. I used to receive at least one of those in
the mail every week. I remember a humor piece circulating on the 'net
along the lines of "Creative uses for AOL floppy disks", which was quite
funny.
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
<P> Heh. A FoF has made a <EM>suit of armor</EM> out of the CDs. There's also some
fascinating stuff you can do with them after microwaving... Very useful,
that AOL. &lt;grin&gt;
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">The two sides of a VPN</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Jim Dennis
</strong></FONT></p>
<STRONG>
Do both sides of a VPN [Virtual Private Network] need special hardware to make
a secure connection or can one side have nothing but an internet connection and
the other side handle all the VPN stuff?
</STRONG>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Jim]
<P> I know this is going to come across as a flame; but I have
to observe that this question is so clueless that I'm truly
befuddled as to what sort of muddled thought process could
lead to this question.
<P> The basic question, "do both sides of a VPN need special hardware?",
is flawed. Neither side of a VPN needs special *hardware*.
Both sides of a VPN connection need "special" (and interoperable)
hardware *or* software.
<P> The remainder of the question is the muddled part: "... can one
side have nothing but an internet connection".
<P> That's almost like asking, "Do both ends of a phone conversation
need to have phones, or can one end do all the phone stuff and
on the other end have nothing but a wire?"
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">Bad Boy</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Thomas Adam, Iron, Ben Okopnik
</strong></FONT></p>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Thomas]
<P> Damn,
<P> This e-mail was sent as in-line HTML.
<P> Hey Heather....don't look at me like that. There's no
need to shoot the "message-forwarder/replier"
<IMG ALT=":)" SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" WIDTH="20" HEIGHT="24">
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> Ben's the one who usually looks at people menanicingly.
He's our honorary "bad boy" because he's a KGB spy.
<P> [Note to US FBI: Hi there! I see you're monitoring our
e-mail. That Carnivore program sure is something, hey?
That comment about Ben being a spy was a joke. Later doodz.]
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Thomas]
<P> Surely "linux-questions-only" means just that? So
where does psychology enter into it??
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> Obviously the address was harvested by a program and no human
ever saw it. The most outrageous pieces of spam, off-topic
questions or homework questions we ridicule on linux-questions-only
or tag-admin, and then I publish them anonymously in Not The Answer
Gang on the Back Page.
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
<P> &lt;/me lowers KGB-issue shades&gt;<BR>
&lt;glares at Mike menacingly&gt;
<PRE>
# Special Carnivore-disabling code. Does a DoS on the government's
# computers which expend all their cycles trying to break the code...
ISTHAY ISWAY OTNAY ETHAY ESSAGEMAY YOUAY'ERAY OOKINGLAY ORFAY
</PRE>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">Streaming</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Iron, Ben Okopnik
</strong></FONT></p>
<STRONG>
Hi Ben!<BR>
P.S.: You don't happen to stream the courses you give, do you ? Would
be really interesting...
<IMG ALT=":)" SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" WIDTH="20" HEIGHT="24">
-Robos
</STRONG>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> A stream-of-consciousness rendering of Ben's mind? Now, that's scary.
<P> Maybe in a thousand years somebody will be channeling that Ben Okopnik
wisdom....
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
<P> You have discovered my secret plan!
<P> Damn. *Another* good idea down the drain. Back to the CAD program...
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">Ambassador</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Ben Okopnik, Iron
</strong></FONT></p>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
<P> ... head is still spinning from Heather's explanation of how DNS works (I
think I've got it, though!) which she was gracious enough to give me while I
was out there on the Left Coast,
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Iron]
<P> We've got quite the little network going. I met Heather and Jim last
March. Now you've met Heather. When I get back to England next
year, maybe I'll meet some other TAG ppl.
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
<P> Hey, what with me travelling all over the country for work (mostly
California, lately, but I just got a class in Atlanta and one in North
Carolina), I could be the LG ambassador.
<IMG ALT=":)" SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" WIDTH="20" HEIGHT="24">
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3 ALIGN="center">Life on a boat</H3>
<p align="right"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><strong>Answered By Ben Okopnik
</strong></FONT></p>
<P>
<IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" ALT="(!)"
HEIGHT="28" WIDTH="50" BORDER="0"
> [Ben]
<P> It didn't help that Ricochet went down,
and that my boat was hauled out in an area of Maryland where the hoot owls
trod the chickens and TCP/IP packet routing is done by snails in their
spare time. I've got a Merlin PCMCIA card now (&lt;gag&gt; 19200bps, when
Ricochet was up to 128k...), and this gives me at least <EM>some</EM>
connectivity. Certainly e-mail access, which is what's needed.
<a name="notbytes"></a>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--====================================================================-->
<center><H3><font color="maroon">Not News Bytes</font></H3></center>
<P> <HR> <P>
<!--======================================================================-->
<P>
<H3><IMG ALT=" " SRC="../gx/bolt.gif">
<FONT COLOR="green">Football
</FONT>
</H3>
(Or as Irving Welsh would say, "Fitba".)
<P> The Register
<A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/22385.html">pokes fun</A>
at an
<A HREF="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18516-2001Oct18.html">article</A>
in the Washington Post,
which tongue-in-cheekly says Baltimore Ravens' coach Brian Billick
blames his team loss October 14 on "the Linux operating system".
<HR> <!-- ************************************************************** -->
<P> Happy Linuxing!
<P> Mike ("Iron") Orr<br>
Editor, <A HREF="http://www.linuxgazette.com/"><i>Linux Gazette</i></A>, <A
HREF="mailto:gazette@ssc.com">gazette@ssc.com</a>
<BR CLEAR="all">
<!-- *** END Not Linux *** -->
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<H5 ALIGN=center>
Copyright &copy; 2001, the Editors of <I>Linux Gazette</I>.<BR>
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 72 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, November 2001</H5>
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