Build Date: Mon Oct 5 14:32:01 2026 UTC
If Zach dropped a bottle of $69 dollar liquor, I think I would kill him.
-- Johnnie Royale
Networking In a Post-Apocalyptic World
1999-10-20 11:23:01
Hey, monkey boy! Know what the RAVENING HORDES are going to do with a scrawny good-for-nothing like you after Y2K? They're going to ROAST you and EAT you. Damn straight! That is... unless you find some way to make yourself useful.
Face it, TECHHEAD, your only skills in life involve 100Base-T, IRQs, and Capture-the-Flag fragfests. But, COME the APOCALYPSE, wide-area networks are going to be few and far between (har har), since there will be A) no electricity B) no telcos and C) a general lack of enterprise commitment and leadership in the realm of information technology strategies.
Sure, maybe back in 1997 you could have started gaining some REAL skills, like how to wrangle burros or how to make a windmill. But we're 2-1/2 months before the millenium, BUB, and frankly you've never shown much aptitude with those mitts of yours, anyways. Face it: you don't have time to learn to survive on your own.
So the question becomes: when the horsemen clad in blood-crusted furs descend on the remnants of your suburban village, how can you appear USEFUL to your new BARBARIAN OVERLORD? The answer is simple, my man: PACKET RADIO!
Packet radio is a networking technology that uses ham radio frequencies to make them COMPUTERS talk to each other over long distances -- without the heavy equipment needed for land lines or microwave or satellite (if those things are still up). You can build a perfectly workable BATTLE INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE with equipment that you looted from the charred remains of the Radio Shack (TM) at the Olde Towne Centre.
Packet is an excellent technology. You should get licensed TODAY -- I'm working on mine right now. Join the POST-APOCALYPTIC TECHNO-ELITE: learn PACKET RADIO!
T O P S T O R I E S
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C L A S S I C P I G D O G
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A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
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During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
Our team of crack journalists went insane, and made the drive from Concord, California to Concord, New Hasmpshire on Interstate 80. Read the insightful observations of our intrepid travelers made on their journey into the heartland. (More...)
So I was walking around the Tenderloin looking for stray twenty-dollar-bills that might have fallen into gutters, and I was thinking, as I often do, about my mother. (More...)
