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IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

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Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#61

Post by madaxe_again »

melloclello wrote: post #7

Archived SomethingAwful thread from 9/11/2001: http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/ http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/wtc01.html > WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

Fascinating. I was in Dominica at the time. They threw a national street party for the day to celebrate "the big house falling down". I guess there's something of a grudge to be borne there, from hundreds of years of slavery.

Re: the thread, it's saddening quite how many were immediately desperate to go to war - with bin laden, nonetheless. This is generally a bit odd, given that OBL was only really known in the west for the Kenyan embassy bombings in 98 - and before that knocking off a German spook.

So, I guess my question is: Why we're folks so quick to choose OBL as the perp, even while every group on the planet was taking credit? Why this relatively unknown group who've done little in 3 years?

I suppose it's just odd that many seemed primed to have the same response, of "let's bomb Afghanistan".

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#62

Post by taejo »

jdong wrote: post #55
anaphor wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most clients will break it up into multiple messages no?

IIRC at least znc crashes, other clients like xchat start having rendering issues and some (I think irssi) completely disregard content after the 512th byte

On the receiving side, yes, but iirc xchat will break up messages on send.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#63

Post by gaius »

cperciva wrote: post #39
TeMPOraL wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the thread: > Now this is weird, since last week was the first showing of that X-files spin-off "The Lone Gunmen" in Austalia. The plot of the first one was that some government group was going to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre. Life imitates art? Eee... WHAT? I always read that WTC was the kind of event that no one ever imagined it could possibly happen until after the incident.

I always read that WTC was the kind of event that no one ever imagined it could possibly happen until after the incident. There were two aspects to 9/11 which surprised people. First, that it was four planes which were hijacked: For security screeners to allow one armed hijacker onto a plane may be poor luck, but for armed hijackers to get onto four planes looks like carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde.) Sec…

It was nothing to do with security screening, it was a philosophical attack. The hijackers knew that SOP in the event of a hijacking was everyone sit tight and let the negotiators deal with it. Everyone thought that the only reason to hijack a plane was to take hostages. The "weapons" they used were blades less than an inch long. The passengers that did react, overpowered them quickly (tho' by the time it was too late).

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#64

Post by jpgvm »

pling wrote: post #53
icpmacdo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there will be a service that hits the sweet spot of cool community instant messaging over a large group of people in the next generation of technology, I think so.

Well Twitter is where everyone goes now when something is broken. I'm not sure its the right solution but it's part of the way there.

Twitter and all of these other commercial services lack the sheer resiliency of IRC.

Taking down an IRC network (assuming DNS is not affected or users have cached list of servers in their client) is incredibly difficult.

Twitter doesn't fail-whale as often but it's still centralised and not overly reliable or robust in comparison.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#65

Post by jlcummings »

cperciva wrote: post #39
TeMPOraL wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the thread: > Now this is weird, since last week was the first showing of that X-files spin-off "The Lone Gunmen" in Austalia. The plot of the first one was that some government group was going to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre. Life imitates art? Eee... WHAT? I always read that WTC was the kind of event that no one ever imagined it could possibly happen until after the incident.

I always read that WTC was the kind of event that no one ever imagined it could possibly happen until after the incident. There were two aspects to 9/11 which surprised people. First, that it was four planes which were hijacked: For security screeners to allow one armed hijacker onto a plane may be poor luck, but for armed hijackers to get onto four planes looks like carelessness. (With apologies to Oscar Wilde.) Sec…

I suspect in some dark, obscure corners, ghastly scenarios far worse have been conceived and considered for contingency purposes. But given supposed reasonable assumptions, many such scenarios are filed somewhere between the circular bin, and long term storage in an nondescript, largely forgotten warehouse, much to the same affect.

The most unfortunate thing about this whole mess is that doubt about otherwise reasonable assumptions has been magnified. It is akin to running continuous integration tests for things such as disk space and basic standard output ... things that normally should be allowed to be taken for granted and should not require such extensive devotion of resources to largely unproductive activities.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#66

Post by andor »

jpgvm wrote: post #64
pling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Twitter is where everyone goes now when something is broken. I'm not sure its the right solution but it's part of the way there.

Twitter and all of these other commercial services lack the sheer resiliency of IRC. Taking down an IRC network (assuming DNS is not affected or users have cached list of servers in their client) is incredibly difficult. Twitter doesn't fail-whale as often but it's still centralised and not overly reliable or robust in comparison.

Taking down an IRC network (assuming DNS is not affected or users have cached list of servers in their client) is incredibly difficult.

Yes, but remember that DDoSing individual servers and taking over channels through the resulting netsplits was a favorite pastime of bored teenagers around the world.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#67

Post by glomph »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #17
icegreentea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly they meant the general public thought it was outside the realm of things that would actually happen, as opposed to realistic seeming (yet safely 'impossible') things of fiction. For example Tom Clancy's Debt of Honour wraps up with a Japanese airliner flying into the Capitol Building killing off the majority of the US Government.

No, I believed that it was outside the realm of imagination , that the concept of flying a passenger plane into a building as a form of suicide attack never entered the collective mind of the society. I stand corrected though, thank you and shepardrtc for the Tom Clancy reference. I guess one gets to learn something new every day ;).

You may also be interested to see the originally intended album cover for this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Music that was planned for release in september 2001.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#69

Post by randallsquared »

madaxe_again wrote: post #61
melloclello wrote: post #7

Archived SomethingAwful thread from 9/11/2001: http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/ http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/wtc01.html > WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

Fascinating. I was in Dominica at the time. They threw a national street party for the day to celebrate "the big house falling down". I guess there's something of a grudge to be borne there, from hundreds of years of slavery. Re: the thread, it's saddening quite how many were immediately desperate to go to war - with bin laden, nonetheless. This is generally a bit odd, given that OBL was only really known in the west…

Oddly enough, I was also in Dominica at the time. I don't remember hearing anything about that "national street party", but everyone I came in contact with immediately after 9/11 was incredibly kind and most seemed more emotionally affected than I myself felt.

Re: IRC logs from the beginning of the Gulf War (1991)

#70

Post by TeMPOraL »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #10
melloclello wrote: post #7

Archived SomethingAwful thread from 9/11/2001: http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/ http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/wtc01.html > WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

From the thread: > Now this is weird, since last week was the first showing of that X-files spin-off "The Lone Gunmen" in Austalia. The plot of the first one was that some government group was going to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre. Life imitates art? Eee... WHAT? I always read that WTC was the kind of event that no one ever imagined it could possibly happen until after the incident.

(writing this as a comment since I'm past the edit window for the previous one)

Thank you all for those references. I learned a lot today.

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