Thursday, February 03, 2011

Kill the Kill Switch

Get Internet Access When Your
Government Shuts It Down

Can you tell I don't trust gummint?


  In the land of no Internet connection, the man with dial-up is king. Here are a few gadgets that you could use to prepare for the day they cut the lines.

BB Throwback

I posted the headline before I read the article.  Now that I have read it I'm still left with no clear understanding of how I'm going to reach Casca if Obamunists kill the internet.  I have an old 56K modem, but what do I do with it?  I used to log onto text only bulletin boards that used all type of esoteric key strokes,  now long forgotten.  Is there a thing like fidonet out there?  I'd like to set up a  bb that we all could try, and rely on.  Any suggestions? There are some in the article comments.   Let's do it! 

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just figured we'd meet up at the sound of the gunfire.

Casca

Anonymous said...

Yes, fidonet is still around. There are plenty of other "old school" networks still around, or at lease sitting on someone's old hard drives or backups.

Networking was usually part of the BBS software and doesn't have to belong to a network. You could in fact start RogerNet if you wanted. You just need two computers to exchange messages.

Anonymous said...

@Casca -- I'll meet you there. What's your preference -- 7.62 NATO or 5.56?

Brigadier Major Mike
Heavily Armed Pacifist

toadold said...

Dang, I've got a 1000 rounds of Wolf 7.62 X 39 mm and nothing to put them in. Of course with these bozos a brick of .22 LR and a soft drink bottle would be sufficient to give them the idea.

Anonymous said...

Usenet (those old news groups like alt.seduction.fast) used to propogate over the entire country before ISP's and high spped connections by compters with modems calling each other and exchanging files. Email could also transverse the country by one computer forwarding it to the next, etc.

All you need is a computer, one or more modems connected to it and some sort of software that moves files from one computer to another.

If you are running a "typs of unix" like linux, fedora, ubutu it already has uucp (unix to unix copy) which will do the file moving. You can configure "sendmail" the unix email transport program to use uucp for transport of some or all of your email. There are also programs for receiving, sending and organizing USENET news (the program is like a big bulliten bord system). Again it can be set to use uucp for the movement of news from one computer to another.

Then you just need the phone number of a few neighbor computers who agree to exchange with you and forward on to their neighbors for more distant transport. I think there was a USENET newsgroup of uucp maps where people shared what systems were reachable through their system so you could do a map of the country - like a map of interconnecing rail lines - to reach anwhere with your data.

On Windows/DOS you probably want to get BBS software and a fidonet plugin to do similar. You would have news groups there any article posted one place is propogated to every member of fidonet and email can be sent from one registered user of any BBS to another registered user of any other BBS belonging to the net.

ISP's used to be a mom and pop business all over America, I know I started one. I'll bet most like me still have 20-60 modems in their basement and all the software required to connect customers and call neighbor computers to exchange files.

Kristophr said...

USENET pre-dates the world wide web. In fact, it almost pre-dates the internet.

UUCP works just fine over SLIP.

pdwalker said...

Setting it all up again would be an exercise in digital archeology - finding the modems, software and knowhow that fallen by the wayside.

Yes, all the information is out there, but the time to do it and get it working is best done before your internet is switched off when you have access to all the current archives of information.

Afterwards? Except for a few hard core geeks who live and breathe this stuff, it take a long time for others to get it working.

Anonymous said...

@toadold -- bring it anyway, there'll be some to pick up shortly. We'll let the Cong be our supply seargant.

I'll bring a claymore bag full of HK-91 magazines. The plinking will be fun.

Brigadier Major Mike
Recovering History Teacher

w/v: juggrode -- as in cowboy drunk and Navaho crazy

Virgil Rogers said...

Good idea Rodger...

I used MCI Mail back in the day in the early 1980's before AOL and Yahoo and Hotmail...I guess a dial up modem as a back up plan makes sense...

Anonymous said...

Mike, I knew there was something I liked about you. Alas, I sold my HK-91 during the great divorce war for almost four times what I paid for it. Originally purchased in California in the early '80s, it was a thing of beauty.

I have since gone old school... 30-06, and of course I have a commie shooter for the ubiquitous 7.62 x 39.

Casca

Anonymous said...

@Casca -- Selling a firearm is rather like seperating from your child.

I traded my AKM for a Ruger P-89. No specific reason, just got tired of the AK and wanted to simplify my ammo logistics.

My sympathies on the loss of your HK.

Brigadier Major Mike
Recovering History Teacher

Anonymous said...

There's another fly in the ointment...ATT and many cable providers have encouraged subscribers to "bundle" their phone/internet/cable TV into single service packages; these packages use VOIP (voice over internet protocol) for phone service, meaning that when the internet is cut, phone service goes away as well.

How many people still rely on "twisted pair" phone service?

Anonymous said...

I guess that I am actually ahead since I am still using dial up and a 56K modem at home. I vagely remember the old bulletin board days and I believe that servers located at universities were used as a focus point, but I am not sure. I was wondering how we were going to get around this Communist idea.

DE644

Hell_Is_Like_Newark said...

Is it possible to combine TCP/IP and shortwave radios?

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Who wants to volunteer? You can use my resources.

Kristophr said...

Newark: Ity's being done right now.

Packet radio is how folks in Antarctica and on the space station get email.

Just keep your bandwidth down. Some retard on the International Space Station tied it up all day trying to send a photo home. It took that long for Russian mission control to tell the token third world cosmonaut to knock it off before the base personnel at McMurdo Sound sends up a lynch mob.

Post a Comment

Just type your name and post as anonymous if you don't have a Blogger profile.