Date: 8 Aug 1997 13:12:06 -0000
From: iang@systemics.com
To: e$@thumper.vmeng.com
Subject: It's cool to be iang@hip97.nl

Well, sometimes it takes a long time to get a network going, and
sometimes it takes, well, minutes.  Ten minutes ago I wandered
down to the HIP HQ tent and picked up a clothes peg with an IP
number on it, and a slip of paper with some details.

And now I am up and running.  What's more surprising is this a fast
link.  Traceroutes under 10ms are about the best advert I can think
of for XS4ALL, the Dutch provider at the centre of it all.  There's no
flies on the PTT either, with dual 6Mb microwaves and a portable GSM
cell linking this field in the middle of nowhere to central Amsterdam.

It makes you wonder whether this privatisation business is really all
it's cracked up to be.

Lucky Green has done a sterling job as cypherpunk advance campmeister.
When he's not building computer racks out of empty beer bottles (I'm
typing on two crates of real Budweiser!), he's teasing us with a public
key triple DES scrambler.  We're not allowed to use it because we're
not Americans.  But that's cool, as long as we have our SSH and PGP and
we get to empty more beer bottles.

Beer is selling at 4 Hipsters.  Ain't private currencies wonderful :-)

Last night I walked the entire campsite.  Only the clear skys and bright
stars reminded me of a mis-spent youth in the outdoors.  Tents piled
with equipment.  Not the glowflies of Anguilla, but glowing monitors
and flashing leds for our lighting.  Not the sounds of crickets, but
keyboard clicking and "gateway's up" and "who's got address 21" in
multi-lingual hip-speak.

Having got this machine up and going, the only thing I can think of
is to write this email.  But that's ok too, because I'm about to be
booted off.  Squiggle is going to hook up her sonar to Brian the Brain,
the cypherpunk sysadm.  That's for Brian to send out 49.4kHz clicks
so that he knows when to ask for food of passer's by.  Which makes for
two over-worked brains that I can count.

It's cool to be iang@hip97.nl

PS: Brian and friend are at http://www.sabotage.org/mpeg/brain1.jpeg