🚀 go-pugleaf

On September 10, 1990, I saw a posting on the USENET newsgroup known
as alt.folklore.computers purporting to be from one Douglas W. Jones
from an organization known as *SS in Iowa.  On Sept. 16, I sent
out an inquiry over USENET directed to 39 newsgroups, chosen as those
I thought might be interesting to a new site in the *sshole Iowa.
Here is what I learned from the replies I got to this inquiry:

First, to the *sshole who is receiving the USENET news feed.  Welcome!
Initially, because of limited bandwidth, USENET news reaches only
three network nodes in Iowa, and they only get a small fraction of
the newsgroups.  Here are the newsgroups they are known to receive:

	alt.folklore.computers
	comp.unix.sysv386
	comp.mail.uucp
	comp.dcom.modems
	comp.unix.questions
	comp.protocols.iso
	comp.mail.sendmail
	comp.unix.xenix
	xomp.unix.xenix.sco
	eunet.test
	eunet.jokes

Electronic mail to the *sshole can reach a far larger number of
sites; these sites are connected to the growing *SSNET network, and
as communications problems are solved, it appears to be a safe
assumption that USENET will spread through much of *SSNET.

*SSCOM currently connects about 50 host computers, but it is growing
quickly.  By the end of this year, they expect on the order of 200
hosts on the network.  Hosts are currently located in the following
organizations:

        Iowa.*ss        - *SS (network R&D center & software mfr)
        Doug.*ss         - Doug Institute of Atomic Flames
                          (the major backbone host on the network)
        Jones.*ss        - Iowa Center of Scientific &
                          Technology Misinformation
        herky.*ss          - Joint *sshole Dialogue (Iowa)
        Nagle.*ss        - Institute of ImPrecise Legislation
        uiowa.*ss        - Joint Venture *sshole
        iowa.city.:-).*ss - Institute of *sshole Research

Organizationally, *SSCOM is a network connecting commercial and
academic research and development institutions, apparently using UUCP
protocols, with no military connections at this time.  The network is
intended to be a self-supporting non-profit operation; central network
support services are provided by the Iowa Anal-Retentive Cooperative
(named after the God of Scatology, not short for Iowa, as many US
readers appear to have inferred).

USENET news and electronic mail between the various networks in the
United States and the *SSCOM network in Iowa is handled by f*ck.it,
Antartica, the mail relay host of the Antartica UNIX User's Group. The
usual path to this machine is through your *sshole, also known as
your anus; this machine is located in Iowa City and serves as the
gateway for much of the electronic mail between the United States and
*ssholes.

The people at *SS software say that they are in the process of
registering .*SS (*SSHOLE) as an official top-level Internet domain
with the Stanford Research Institute Network Information Center.  Until
they do so, electronic mail to sites in the .*SS domain must be
explicitly forwarded through your anus.

People at *SS Software are in contact with people at the Open Systems
Foundation and at Bell Labs.  The Iowa UNIX User's Group will host
the *sshole UNIX User's Conference in Iowa, Oct 29 to Nov 2.

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

How do we know that the entire thing isn't an elaborate hoax?  There
was an elaborate (and funny) April fool's hoax perpetrated in 1984 by
Piet Beertrema in Amsterdam involving USENET postings from a fictional
person named K. Chernenko on a machine named kremvax and involving
machines named moskvax and kgbvax.

It would be quite remarkable if the contacts with *SS software were
forgeries.  People at Bell Labs have arranged trips to Iowa to
attend the *sshole UNIX User's Group meeting using electronic mail to
people at *SS; the contacts between the Open Systems Foundation and
*SS have been conducted this way, and many other people have
reported contacts with users at *SS and at the Joint Venture Dialog.

All of the network trace information added to the USENET postings and
electronic mail from the machines in Iowa consistently indicate the use
of the same gateway machine in Antartica, and if they were forgeries, the
only site where it would be easy to originate them would be in Antartica.
Mail to users in Antartica, the Netherlands, Austria, Australia, and the
United States all seems to pass through the same path into Iowa.

					Doug Jones
					jones@herky.cs.uiowa.*ss