From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: Disobedience.
Date: 6 Oct 2000 19:29:29 -0400
Message-ID: <8rln8p$680$1@panix2.panix.com>

Jacob W. Haller <jwgh at earthlink.net> wrote:

What makes an oldbie? Is it longevity? Is it writing ability? Is it sheer ego? Is it an odd twist to the mind? Are oldbies only recognized after the fact when they stop posting? Is it the influence they have on

It has to do with their score on the Oldbie test:

--cut here--

Kludge's Usenet Trivia Test, Revision One-point Two:
  1. On what newsgroup are you most apt to get good SGI technical support?
  2. Name three sites where Carasso has lost an account.
  3. What are/were "Tonga Plugs?"
  4. Name three places where Goddess Trish has worked.
  5. If you wanted to sell a very large and bad-sounding pair of speakers, to what newsgroup would you post a for-sale ad, and why? (Special credit for mentioning Dick Pierce.)
  6. How many folks named "Elvis" are on the net?
  7. Describe a tattoo on one of them.
  8. Name three famous net personalities that Gypsy has been involved with.
  9. Explain the difference between Internet and Usenet.
  10. What would you post if you were crossposting to rec.pets.cats, soc.culture.scandinavian, and alt.psychoactives?
  11. Why was comp.sys.amiga.advocacy created?
  12. Explain the nature of the group name "alt.drugs.bongs.bongs.bongs" in a historical context.
  13. Name three groups that were discarded in the Great Renaming.
  14. Who is B1FF and where does he hail from?
  15. Name three groups where Mary Schaefer would be apt to be found.
  16. What is the difference between alt.personals.poly and alt.personals.bondage, and how does it relate to the number of forgeries to those groups?
  17. What is President Bongo's favorite method of cooking?
  18. What would President Bongo post to rec.food.cooking?
  19. Name three famous forgeries.
  20. If your machine had an account called "coke" on it, what would you assume it was intended for?
  21. Name three "pariah sites" other than PSUVM and aol.com.
  22. How did CMUA's BBOARD gateway to the net?
  23. Name three sites that used to have guest accounts for random users to read news from.
  24. What was the first site receiving news in Russia, and when did it come online?
  25. What could happen if you mention the word "rabbit" in a posting?
  26. Name a legal firm that is on the internet.
  27. What was the line eater and how did it work?
  28. Name a legal firm that you would not like to be on the internet.
  29. Now that we have Usenet newsgroups, why do mailing lists still exist?
  30. Complete the following: "A Host is a Host, but Coast to Coast..."
  31. Someone on sci.med informs you that your symptoms indicate a need for immediate and radical emergency brain surgery. What do you do?
  32. Is there anything that Henry Spencer doesn't know?
  33. What is Henry doing with that kind of compute hardware in a zoology department anyway?
  34. Is CJ male and T.S. female, or is it the other way around?
  35. What kind of a computer is ucbvax, and why doesn't it do what it used to be famous for?
  36. Why does Namibia get a lot of misdirected mail that is destined for U.S. sites, and where would you post to get exact details about the problem?
  37. What is the difference between alt.flame and talk.abortion?
  38. What is a "well-connected site" and why is/was it important?
  39. Name three members of the Backbone Cabal.
  40. At one time, most well-connected sites were owned by one company. What was the company and why was this the case?
  41. Name the band that Vint Cerf played in.
  42. Name three newsgroups that do not have an FAQ.
  43. At what time did the ".uucp" extension start showing up on site addresses, and why?
  44. Who is Elf!!! involved with, or been involved with?
  45. If you see messages posted by you some time ago being reposted with your name on it, from a fidonet site, what has gone wrong?
  46. Name three incorrect rumors about Tank Girl.
  47. Explain the mechanism by which steroids make you become gay.
  48. What is the newsreader on the Foonly called? Is it still in use today?
  49. What is the "string joke?"
  50. How much wood _does_ it take to make a woodchuck chuck?
  51. What is the first typo that appears in the "MAKE MONEY FAST" letter?
  52. Name three instructions that Herman Rubin especially likes.
  53. How old is jailbait anyway? Is he/she male or female? Where did you meet him/her?
  54. Explain the concept of scrotum self-repair.
  55. Name three tenets of kibology.
  56. Spell the names of Kibo, Xibo and ~ibo phonetically.
  57. How did Ludwig Plutonium get his name?
  58. Name something benthic and vagile.
  59. What is the ".oz" domain?
  60. Why did it exist, and during what time period?
  61. Where would you find Administratium?
  62. What is your NIC handle?
  63. Name a sick child who wants postcards.
  64. Name a religion newsgroup which has to do with text editing.
  65. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Cabal?
  66. When and why did gnu.ai.mit.edu finally drop guest access?
  67. Are there any PDP-10 machines still on the net? How are these machines kept secure?
  68. Name two "US state" domains which need to be suffixed with ".us" for routing purposes, and explain why this is the case.
  69. How did Tom "Dickless" Albrecht get that name?
  70. Which is better, Taylor or g?
  71. What is the problem with /dev/nit on SunOS? Why should you need to know this even if you aren't running SunOS?
  72. What (natural) language was most common on IRC in its early days?
  73. Who is the other parent of Gene Spafford's illegitimate love child?
  74. Explain the origin and nature of the "bizarre-people" mailing list.
  75. What does the Dm line in sendmail.cf do, and when did you first set it incorrectly? Who informed you of the error?
  76. Compare and contrast the Red Book protocols with the English practice of driving on the wrong side of the road.
  77. When was the first time you forged a message? How?
  78. What is an ICMP redirect and how did handling of it change with 4.3 BSD?
  79. Where did the Doctress Neutopia get her PhD, and in what subject?
  80. Why is DISSEMINATION of this MESSAGE ENCOURAGED?
  81. What is the line between acceptable and unacceptable for-sale postings?
  82. Where would you post if you wanted to sell an almost-new Buran?
  83. Who is the man from Xanth, and why is he?
  84. At what mental hospital was he a patient? If you know the fqdn for the hospital, that will do.
  85. What is an fqdn and why would you use one? What is a bang path?
  86. Why did some newsgroups begin with "fa." and what later replaced this prefix, before the new conventions of the Great Renaming?
  87. What was recnews? In what way was it broken?
  88. What was CSNET? When did it exist, and for what reason?
  89. What is an RFC?
  90. What is RFC 932?
  91. Why would a site choose not to use the material described in RFC 932?
  92. From what site did the original "Mouse Balls" message originate and what operating system was that site running?
  93. Who posts from "dabdpo!undershire!mhsinc!bicomp!ftroop!unused !clamath!kmart.com" and what is his real path?
  94. What were the NIC and NNSC and what have replaced them?
  95. Does anyone still use the Hello protocol today, and if so, why?
  96. Explain the how and why of trailers, touching on the vendor(s) which still ship default configurations with trailers enabled.
  97. What is a space potato and where would it be mentioned?
  98. Clay Bond.
  99. On what private mailing list was this test first released?