HAM Radio 3/hamradioversion3.0examsandprograms1992.iso/news/inham89/1056.

Text File | 1979-12-31 | 14KB | 335 lines

INFO-HAMS Digest            Fri, 22 Dec 89       Volume 89 : Issue 1056

Today's Topics:
                             HO HO HO !!!
               Interception of E-Mail by spies (2 msgs)
                   Meaningless information in QSOs?
                            Meteor Showers
           Portable scanner review - Uniden/Bearcat 200XLT
           The un-net on 10meters on Saturday (1600-1800Z)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 21 Dec 89 18:21:50 GMT
From: samsung!cg-atla!raybed2![e-mail]  (EUGENE BALINSKI)
Subject: HO HO HO !!!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, WHEN ALL THROUGH THE SHACK,
NOT A METER WAS STIRRING, NOT EVEN ON THE RACK,
THE FINALS WERE HUNG BY THE CHIMMNEY WITH CARE,
IN HOPES THAT ST. NICK WOULD TUNE THEM RIGHT THERE.

THE CHILDREN WERE NESTLED ALL SNUG IN THEIR BEDS,
WHILE VISIONS OF MOONBOUNCE DANCED IN THEIR HEADS;
AND MAMA WITH HER HANDHELD, AND I WITH A TRAP,
HAD JUST SETTLED OUR BRAINS WITH A HIGH VOLTAGE ZAP.

WHEN OUT ON THE TOWER, THERE ROSE SUCH A CLATTER,
I SPRANG FROM THE BENCH TO SEE WHAT WAS THE MATTER.
AWAY TO THE WINDOW I FLEW LIKE A HIGH TENSION FLASH,
TORE OPEN THE SHUTTERS AND THREW UP THE SASH.

THE MOON ON THE BREAST OF THE NEW FALLEN SNOW,
GAVE THE GLOW OF TUBES OF DAYS LONG AGO.
WHEN WHAT TO MY WONDERING EYES SHOULD APPEAR,
BUT A MINIATURE SLEIGH, WITH MOBILE AMATEUR GEAR;

WITH A LITTLE OLD HAM, SO LIVELY AND QUICK,
I KNEW IN A MOMENT, IT MUST BE ST. NICK.
MORE RAPID THAN McELROY, HIS KEYING IT CAME
AND HE LISTENED AND HE TUNED AND CALLED THEM BY NAME;

"NOW DASHER! NOW DAMPER! NOW PHASOR AND DX'EN,
ON COMMON! ON COUPLED! ON DONOR AND BLITZEN!
TO THE TOP OF THE SHACK, TO THE TOP OF THE WALL!
NOW DASH AWAY! DASH AWAY! DASH AWAY ALL!"

AS DRY DAYS BEFORE THE FIELD DAY DO FLY,
WHEN THEY MEET WITH THE FORECAST AND NEVER COMPLY,
SO UP ON THE SHACK TOP THE SIGNALS THEY FLEW,
WITH THE SLEIGH FULL OF GEAR, AND ST. NICHOLAS TOO.

AND THEN IN A BAND OPENING I HEARD ON THE ROOF,
ANTENNA WORK BY A HAM ON THE HOOF,
AS I DREW IN MY HEAD AND WAS TUNING AROUND,
DOWN THE FEEDLINE CAME ST. NICHOLAS WITH A BOUND.

HE WAS ALL TANGLED IN COAX, FROM HIS HEAD TO HIS FOOT
AND HIS CHECKSHEETS WERE ALL TARNISHED WITH ASHES AND SOOT.
A BUNDLE OF GEAR HE HAD FLUNG ON HIS BACK,
AND HE LOOKED LIKE A CONTESTER OPENING A SIX PACK.

HIS HANDHELD-HOW IT CRACKLED!  THE SIGNALS WOULD VARY!
HIS EQUIPMENT MADE NOISES, HIS QSO WAS QUITE MERRY!
HIS DROLL LITTLE MOUTH WAS DRAWN UP LIKE A MHO
AND THE BEARD OF HIS CHIN WAS WHITE AS SLOW SCAN SNOW.

THE STUMP OF A PIPE HE HELD TIGHT IN HIS TEETH,
AND THE SMOKE IT ENCIRCLED HIS HEAD LIKE A WREATH.
HE HAD A BROAD FACE AND A ROUND LITTLE BELLY,
THAT SHOOK WHEN HE LAUGHED, LIKE THE ROLL OF A TELE.

HE WAS CHUBBY AND PLUMP, A RIGHT OLD ELF,
AND I LAUGHED WHEN I SAW HIM, IN SPITE OF MYSELF;
A WINK OF HIS EYE AND A TWIST OF HIS HEAD
SOON GAVE ME TO KNOW I HAD NOT TO QR-ZED.

HE SPOKE NOT A WORD, BUT WENT STRAIGHT TO HIS WORK,
AND TUNED ALL THE FINALS, THEN TURNED WITH A JERK,
AND KEYING HIS FINGER ASIDE OF HIS NOSE
AND GIVING A NOD, UP THE FEEDLINE HE ROSE.

HE SPRANG TO HIS SLEIGH, HIS HANDHELD GAVE A WHISTLE,
AND AWAY THEY ALL FLEW, LIKE THE DOWN OF A THISTLE.
BUT I HEARD HIM EXCLAIM ERE HE FADED OUT OF SIGHT;


"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

                   AND TO ALL

             A GOOD NIGHT"



     -----------------------DE KB1MZ ------------------------

------------------------------

Date: 16 Dec 89 03:58:10 GMT
From: newstop!grapevine![e-mail]  (Steven Grimm)
Subject: Interception of E-Mail by spies
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Brad Pierce) writes:
>In article <7C`2N^@rpi.edu> [e-mail] (Jochen M. Fritz) writes:
>**             I was just told by a friend that the
>**      government moniters and intercepts E-Mail
>**      messages that may contain information that may be
>**      detremential to "National Security".
>Which agencies are responsible for this? Don't they also
>monitor long-distance phone conversations, international
>mail, etc? How much does this "service" cost the taxpayer?

Jeez, not THIS again.  Tell me where the spies are, please:

$ Mail -s "missile plans" hissite!hersite!oursite!vladmir

Anyone who knows anything about mail routing can safely laugh at the
original message.  (a) The NSA or whoever would have to have a tap,
running continuously, on every inter-computer connection, which (with
UUCP) means every phone line, in the country.  They'd have to transmit
all the mail messages back to some central location.  I wish I was selling
them the disks they'd need to hold a day's worth of E-mail traffic.

On the Internet, the picture is about the same, except that instead of
a 9600-baud UUCP link, the spies now have to sift through a continuous,
10-megabit-per-second (and higher -- they have to get ALL the local
connections at a site) stream of data, and figure out what's mail and
what's not.  A really competent enemy agent isn't going to use the
standard mail transport system, so they'd have to monitor all the network
traffic and figure out what's important and what's someone designing an
XTank.  Not to mention encryption -- compress the data, encrypt with a
simple character-shift code, and suddenly it looks like random binary
data.

In other words, there are as many spies monitoring E-Mail as there are
10-foot-long alligators in the New York City sewers.

---
"                                                  !" - Marcel Marceau
Steven Grimm        Moderator, comp.{sources,binaries}.atari.st
[e-mail]    ...!sun!ebay!koreth

------------------------------

Date: 22 Dec 89 13:02:45 GMT
From: [e-mail]  (Steve Lamont)
Subject: Interception of E-Mail by spies
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steven Grimm) writes:
>Anyone who knows anything about mail routing can safely laugh at the
>original message.  (a) The NSA or whoever would have to have a tap,
>running continuously, on every inter-computer connection, which (with
>UUCP) means every phone line, in the country.  They'd have to transmit
>all the mail messages back to some central location.  I wish I was selling
>them the disks they'd need to hold a day's worth of E-mail traffic.

... any idea how many Crays NSA has?  The answer is "many."  They now admit to
having at least one of "each" -- that is, at least one X-MP, one Cray-2, and
one Y-MP, although my primary sources indicate that there are many more.  All
you have to do is to count the missing serial numbers.  They certainly have a
sufficient amount of disk space -- my primary source considers our 40 GBytes
of rotating storage in our installation "tiny."  I'll leave you to draw your
own conclusions.

Remember, you don't have to store *everything*, just the "interesting"
messages, and these can be in compressed form -- text will compress quite
nicely with a number of algorithms.

As far as shoving bits from one places to another, conversations with my
primary sources indicate that the NSA is on the forefront of high speed
networking.

NSA is certainly on the network.  Ever wonder what super.super.org is?  It is
the overt arm of the NSA, the Supercomputing Research Center.

Now, all of this is not to say that NSA or any other organization is actually
doing any monitoring of either Email or USENET, but it does indicate that they
have both the means and the opportunity.  Again, I'll allow you to draw your
own conclusions.

If the NSA is monitoring network traffic, I'd guess that they're probably not
too worried about messages in plain text, but are probably looking for
messages encrypted and inserted in the messages.  For example, if you take
every word in this message with a prime number of characters, concatenate them
all together, select every fifth or sixth letter in that string (depending on
the phase of the moon), write them down backwards and look at the result in a
mirror, you'll find the plans for Star Wars.

                            spl (the p stands for
                            probably should have
                            rot13'd this message
                            to foil the NSA)
--
Steve Lamont, sciViGuy            EMail:    [e-mail]
NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
"Reality involves a square root"
            Thomas Palmer

------------------------------

Date: 21 Dec 89 17:18:00 GMT
From: hpda!hpcupt1!hprnd!hprmokg![e-mail]  (Barry Fowler)
Subject: Meaningless information in QSOs?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

QSL means "Acknowledge receipt of message" and used to be used solely
with CW.  Now, it has been bent, usually over "repeater lingo" to mean
"I agree" sometimes.

I prefer saying "I agree".

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 22 Dec 89 08:45:39 EDT
From: Mike Owen W9IP <[e-mail]>
Subject: Meteor Showers

Jim  (AD1C) posted a listing of predicted peak times for major
and minor meteor showers for 1990.  This listing is very useful,
but users should be cautious about some of its data.  Joe Reisert
made a great contribution to VHF meteor scatter when he described
a means of predicting shower peaks by use of Ecliptic Longitude (EL).
However, the values of EL used in Jim & Joe's tabulations are out of
date and so several predicted peak times do not agree with those
of modern radar-based meteor astronomers.  Below are peak date/time
data based on recent scientific literature:

Quadrantids     03 Jan    1806 UTC        Slow
Lyrids          22 Apr    0900            minor
Eta Aquarids    05 May    0900            Very good
Arietids        07 Jun    1400            daytime, slow
Perseids        12 Aug    1800            very good
Orionids        22 Oct    0600            very good
Taurids         05 Nov    0600            minor
Leonids         17 Nov    1547            minor
Geminids        14 Dec    0000            Good but slow
Ursids          22 Dec    1700            minor

Note that most times are rounded to the nearest hour.  This is because
it is impossible for anyone to accurately predict peak times more
precisely than that.  Only for the Quadrantids and the Leonids are
peak EL values sufficiently well known for to-the-minute predictions
(and even these are actually good to only about +/- 30 minutes, I'll bet).

All peak predictions are inherently "iffy" because of uncertainty in EL,
perturbations by major planets to the meteor stream, uneven distribution
of material within the stream, and the basically broad nature of meteor
showers in the first place.  How can anyone confidently predict the peak of,
say, the Delta Aquarids whose meteors fall to Earth during a period of over
2 months?

Lastly, predicted shower peaks are mostly useless anyway.  This is
because the probability of making meteor-burst QSOs is MUCH more controlled
by the position of the shower radiant in the sky, which is continuously
changing (although highly predictable).  For example, the predicted peak
may occur when the shower radiant is below your horizon and so it'll do
you no good.  This is called "diurnal variation" and it's much more
important than "peak time."

Several computer programs are available to predict diurnal variation.  They
are a good investment if you're serious about meteor scatter (woops - meteor
burst).  Thanks again to Joe and Jim for stimulating VHF meteor work.

Happy trails -

------------------------------

Date: 22 Dec 89 04:08:07 GMT
From: tank!cps3xx![e-mail]  (Usenet file owner)
Subject: Portable scanner review - Uniden/Bearcat 200XLT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bob Parnass, AJ9S) writes:
>             UNIDEN/BEARCAT 200XLT SCANNER REVIEW
>                     by Bob Parnass, AJ9S

Bob:
    Exactly what frequencies/bands does this scanner cover?
[Otherwise - an excellent review.  Thank you.]

In the rare case that original ideas   Kenneth J. Hendrickson    N8DGN
are found here, I am responsible.      Owen W328, E. Lansing, MI 48825
Internet: [e-mail]                  UUCP: ...!uunet!usc!pollux!kjh

------------------------------

Date: 22 Dec 89 07:27:45 GMT
From: cadnetix.COM!cadnetix![e-mail]  (Rusty Carruth)
Subject: The un-net on 10meters on Saturday (1600-1800Z)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Perry Scott) writes:
>I tried the un-net last Saturday, and got assaulted by contesters.  It
>also seems that each 5 KHz multiple is busier than the in-betweens.
>
>...
>Perry (Down with Contest QRM) Scott
>KF0CA


Well, sorry about that.  :-)


I'll probably be gone next 2 weeks from the un-net, but that does
not mean  you cannot go and talk to each other anyway!  so don't let
my absence keep you from un-netting away!

Also, when I get back (first weekend in Jan, probably), lets move the
time later an hour (1700-1900Z),as I got 2 positive replies, and no
negative replies to my query.

Thanks, 73, happy holidays, and cu after Jan 1!

(And, anybody who does not know otherwise and who has not received
their callsign database tape - I'll get to your tape when I get
back!  And if I don't contact you Real Soon after the 1st,
email me to be sure I' have not lost you!)

Thanks again!

from rusty n7ikq (alias mr un-net, alias mr callsign project :-) )

---Join the usenet un-net, 28.410 and/or 28.390(+-) 1600Z to 1800Z saturdays!
Rusty Carruth.                  Radio: N7IKQ                 ^^ or later :-)
DOMAIN: [e-mail]      UUCP:{uunet,boulder}!cadnetix!rusty
home: POB. 461, Lafayette CO 80026

------------------------------

End of INFO-HAMS Digest V89 Issue #1056
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