alt.2600 Survival Guide by Voyager Will Spencer will@gnu.ai.mit.edu Last Updated: 1995/07/22 Welcome to alt.2600, the Internet newsgroup for readers of 2600 Magazine. On alt.2600 we discuss telephony (phreaking), computers (hacking), and related topics. The purpose of this guide is to help you fit into the newsgroup, and avoid being flamed (insulted and abused) by the other users of this newsgroup. When posting to alt.2600, there are many previously unwritten rules you must follow in order to receive an answer instead of a long round of abuse. The most intelligent thing you can do to avoid being flamed on alt.2600 is to read the newsgroup for approximately two months before you begin posting. This will give you a good feeling for the social climate existing in the newsgroup. When you do post, either a new topic or a response to an existing topic, try to make your post meaningful. Try to include some useful fact or bit of information. alt.2600 readers tend to be technical types, therefore chatter and opinions do not interest them. They WILL flame you. When creating a new topic, keep the topic close to other topics you have seen in the newsgroup. Do not create topics on dogs, cars, women, etc... There are appropriate newsgroups for all of those topics, so please do not bother us in alt.2600 with them. We do not care, we WILL flame you. If you are posting a question about the location of a file, state that you have done an archie search for that file and had no success. Mention all of the places you have looked for the file. If you do not, you will be flamed for wasting the time of thousands of alt.2600 newsgroup readers. As a general rule to use when posting a question, state what other methods you have used to locate the information you are seeking. alt.2600 readers pride themselves on being hackers. A hackers seeks out information by every available means. If the newsgroup readers feel that you are asking the question without having done sufficient research, you WILL be flamed. If you are posting a question about how to locate a piece of commercial software, state that you are aware it is commercial software. If you do not, you will be bombarded with replies informing you that the software for which you are looking is commercial software. This will not be terribly helpful to you. If you are posting looking for commercial software without any intention of paying for it, you WILL be flamed. While most newsgroup readers have no ethical objection to violating copyright law, software piracy is seen as a "lame" thing because of it's lack of technical content. alt.2600 is not a warez newsgroup. Before you create a new topic, read the topic names of each and every topic in the newsgroup. If you create a topic that duplicates an existing topic, it wastes the time of every participant in that topic. You WILL be flamed severly. When asking a question, make sure that the answer is not in the alt.2600/#hack FAQ. If the answer exists in the alt.2600/#hack, I WILL flame you. This document is posted regularly to the alt.2600 newsgroup. In addition, the alt.2600/#hack FAQ may be found via ftp from: rahul.net /pub/lps/sysadmin/ rtfm.mit.edu /pub/usenet-by-group/alt.2600/ ftp.clark.net /pub/jcase/ Or on the World Wide Web at: http://www.engin.umich.edu/~jgotts/underground/hack-faq.html Or on my BBS: Hacker's Haven (303)343-4053 Occasionally, you WILL be flamed for no reason at all. This happens to everyone. Some newsgroup reader with a room temperature IQ will misread your eloquent post and rant about your idiocy in a 400 line tirade. Forget about it, there is nothing you can do. It's not even worth your valuable time to try to straighten it out. One important thing to remember is that unless you are exceptionally stupid or exceptionally brilliant, few newsgroup readers will remember your name from topic to topic or from post to post. You might be screaming adversaries with another newsgroup reader in one topic, and close allies with the same newsgroup reader in another topic. And you may never notice it's the same person. It's the post that's important, not the poster. To summarize, here are a few important rules to remember: 1. Read the newsgroup for two months before posting. 2. Make posts factual and meaningful. 3. Keep your posts on topic for this newsgroup. 4. State what homework you have done before resorting to asking on alt.2600. 5. Do not use alt.2600 for software piracy. 6. Check the alt.2600/#hack FAQ before posting a question. If you keep these rules in mind and abide by them faithfully, you will still get flamed. However, you will be able to retaliate with a clear conscience that you have done everything possible to preserve the social culture of alt.2600. EOF -- /* Will Spencer / Voyager : The advancement and diffusion */ /* Member: TNO, The New Order : of knowledge is the only */ /* alt.2600/#hack FAQ Editor : guardian of true liberty. */ /* Writer, poet, hacker, human : -- James Madison */ -------------------------------