Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxw.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!ihuxw!pector From: pector@ihuxw.UUCP (Scott W. Pector) Newsgroups: net.followup Subject: Re: RE: Russia on the Net Message-ID: <790@ihuxw.UUCP> Date: Tue, 10-Apr-84 10:01:20 EST Article-I.D.: ihuxw.790 Posted: Tue Apr 10 10:01:20 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Apr-84 05:39:32 EST References: <56@infopro.UUCP>, <7083@unc.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL Lines: 39 Congratulations, once again, to the perpetrator of the joke. When I read it, I was thinking initially: Is this a joke! Then I looked at the first line of text and it said 840401 in it. It had to be a prank when I saw that! So much for the Saskatchewanan who implied that since he didn't get the article on 4/1, he had no indication it was a prank. For those who were fooled: c'mon and 'fess up! No more of this whining about how poor the joke was and how it must be an indication of a breach of Net security and how a new beginning in international communications was about to unfold, etc.! All of this is an attempt to save face over being fooled. One of the most popular authors in the eyes of Netters, Mark Twain, was known to play a hoax now or then. I gave an example of one of his in net.books last November. That one involved a nonsensical, physically impossible description of a nature scene in one of his stories. People in the 1890s and 1900s completely ignored that paragraph or 90% of it at that time, taking it as plausible. Practically all the Netters who responded to my article failed to pick up 90% or more of the errors in that paragraph! No one whined when I gave the correct answer there. Another prank that Twain pulled was in 1864 in Nevada. He wrote a story for a local newspaper about the amazing "Petrified Man" found in some local mountain cave. There, too, he defined a location which even the locals should have known did not exist, but everyone fell for it. Further, he had the Petrified Man thumbing his nose in a frozen pose! The article got circulated in many parts of the US and an expedition was almost taken up to recover the fake fossil before the prank was revealed! As W. C. Fields said: There's a sucker born every minute. Last comment: After reading the joke, I thought that no one would fall for it for more than a second or two. In fact, I thought that the author of it should have used a leading Russian scientist as his spokesperson, instead of Chernenko, to make it more believable. Boy, did I overestimate Net intelligence! Scott Pector