composed while at home

[dragonlady7]

Am cleaning off the Newton, Dave's antique full-keyboard PDA upon which I compose things when away from my computer, and came across a small cache of things I wrote while in Melrose last week.

Here's one.

Dave recently took a class on "Computer Crime", which was reasonably enough focused around the use of technology to commit crimes, but also covered in passing various aspects of technology's impact on daily life. During one of the lectures, the professor mentioned that computer dialects like 1337 h4x0r are hardly new: During the heyday of the telegraph, the relay operators developed not only an insider jargon and system of abbreviations, but each operator would develop his own style, a recognizable voice or rhythm that would differentiate him from other operators.

Dave mentioned this while we were home, and Dad, who is a member of a Military Intelligence unit in the Army National Guard (the unit, without him due to his age, is currently stationed in Mosul), said "Oh, yes, that happened during the Cold War too."

Apparently the American communications analysts got to know the style of individual Soviet telegraph relay operators. The Soviets frequently shifted radio and telegraph operations, reorganizing them often to keep their movements from being tracked-- but the American analysts could usually keep a pretty good handle on unit movements because they could recognize the 'voice' of the individual telegraph operators.

Comments

[amyjessica.livejournal.com]

Jeez, I still remember when we got our first Newton...my husband was still my boyfriend at that point, over ten years ago. We still have the silly thing, though it's definitely seen better days, and have replaced it about six times over since then. It's amazing to see the difference between his old Newton (roughly the size of a small tank) and his little iPaq. Technology has certainly come a long way!

Me? I still like pens and paper.