How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#2"Thus the first cyber-activists were able to use this decentralized architecture and Usenet (developed in the USSR in 1982) to circumvent traditional censorship."
That should read, "re-inveneted in USSR".
Tom Truscott [0] and Jim Ellis [1] are the creators of Usenet. Bnews was indeed released in '82, using UUCP to exchange between machines. [2] This was before NNTP. In '95, Truscott and Ellis received the Flame award at USENIX.[3] Guess what for?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Truscott
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Ellis_%28computing%29
[2] http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node256.html
[3] 1995: "the third Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Tom Truscott, Steve Bellovin, and Jim Ellis for their work in creating USENET." ~ https://www.usenix.org/about/flame
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#3There's a good account of the coup attempt in The Dead Hand[0] in the last 1/3 of the book. According to it, Gorbachev and family were isolated in his dacha, and his "Nuclear Football" -- the Cheget, that controlled their ICBM launch codes was taken from him.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy-eboo...
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#4I guess pretty much anybody had defied the USSR at that point.
The coup attempt was an act of desperation.
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#5Usenet probably did play some small part in taking power away from the government and Gosplan, and handing it to the people of the USSR.
This is one of the main reasons the US government and the corporations which monopolize the last mile of communications effectively killed off Usenet in 2009.
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#6Relcom and USENET indeed played a role in helping the people of Moscow and Leningrad to defeat that coup d'état: the mere fact, that it continued to operate was an indication of a weakened grip of the KGB.
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#7"All channels were blacked-out except for one; Usenet, which is the grandfather of chat-rooms and is capable or [sic] surviving without the Internet."
Do they mean Usenet doesn't require IP to work? And did that matter here? Would actually be fascinating if some alternative federated server comms played a pivotal role, but more likely this is careless writing.
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#8Relevant—here are IRC logs from the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt: http://web.archive.org/web/20090628013626/http://www.ibiblio...
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#9Relevant—here are IRC logs from the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt: http://web.archive.org/web/20090628013626/http://www.ibiblio...
Thank you for this link!
I was reading this USENET group non-stop for two days back then, retelling the posts to all my friends.
Just read this: "PLEASE STOP FLOODING THE ONLY NARROW CHANNEL WITH BOGUS MESSAGES. WITH SILLY QUESTIONS. NOTE THAT IT'S NEITHER A TOY NOR A MEAN TO. REACH TO YOUR RELATIVES OR FRIENDS. WE NEED THE BANDWIDTH TO HELP. TO ORGANIZE THE RESISTANCE, PLEASE, DO NOT (EVEN UNINTENTIONALLY). HELP THESE FASCISTS! BEFORE SENDING SOMETHING TO SOVIET UNION PLEASE. THINK TWICE (OR BETTER THRICE). THANK YOU"
Re: How a handful of geeks defied the USSR (2011)
#10"All channels were blacked-out except for one; Usenet, which is the grandfather of chat-rooms and is capable or [sic] surviving without the Internet." Do they mean Usenet doesn't require IP to work? And did that matter here? Would actually be fascinating if some alternative federated server comms played a pivotal role, but more likely this is careless writing.
Indeed, Usenet doesn't require IP to work. See UUCP[0].
Some gray beard can probably speak more intelligently than me about this, but I think people would basically specify a series of hops. Each hop would store-and-forward the message to the next hop. Nowadays people talk about delay and disruption tolerant networks, which use similar techniques.