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Network Information Access 50
ZDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD? IMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM; ZDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD?
3 Founded By: 3 : Network Information Access : 3 Mother Earth BBS 3
3 Guardian Of Time 3D: 12SEP90 :D3 <DOWN> 3
3 Judge Dredd 3 : Judge Dredd : 3 See EOF If Any ? 3
@DDDDDDDDBDDDDDDDDDY : Guardian Of Time : @DDDDDDDDDBDDDDDDDDY
3 : File 50 : 3
3 HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM< 3
3 IMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM; 3
@DDDDDDDDDDDDDD6 50th Anniversary Issue! GDDDDDDDDDDDDDDY
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM<
Network Information Access. The 50th file. Well, this means a different
issue. Something odd. Causes for a celebration and other stuff like that,
nothing technical, nothing intelligent! alright!
PART 1. Nootropic Drugs [Drugs That Make You Smart]......................
PART 2. Portrait Of J Random Hacker (time for comparisons!)..............
PART 3. (censored).......................................................
PART 4. Some Thoughts....................................................
PART 5. BBS Software Review As Seen By SysOps............................
PART 6. Hellos, Congrats, and Respects To:...............................
PART 1. Nootropic Drugs ['Drugs that Make You Smart']
Centrophenoxine (Trade name: Lucidrile)
This is an intelligence booster and an effective anti-aging therapy, shown
to cause improvements in various aspects of memory function and a 30%
increase in life span of laboratory animals. Human dosage is rated at
1000-3000mg per day, Centrophenoxine takes effect VERY quickly and results
are noticable in alertness and slight stimulation.
Not available in USA, available in mexico.
Choline/Lecithin
Choline can be found in several forms including cholrine bitatrate,chorine
cholride or phosphatidyl choline. All thes forms will produce memory boosting
effects. Choline compounds have the ability to break the blood-brain barrier.
3 Grams per day in three divided doses. These drugs are considered
Nutritional supplements and can be purchased at health food stores.
Phosphantidyl Choline has some intresting effects unlike standard Lecithin
though. It functions as a source of structural material for every cell
in the human body; particularly those of the brain and nerves. It also aids
in the metabolism of fats, regulates blood cholesterol, and nourishes the
fat-like sheathes of nerve fibers.
Piracetam
Piracetam improves memory and learning functions in normal persons. Its
used in the treatment of alcholics, vertigo, stroke. It seems to promote
the flow of information between both hemispheres of the brain, and its
said to be so safe that one FDA employee has been quoted as saying that
it can't have any pharmacological effects because of its very low
toxicity even in extremely high doses.
The effect of Piracetam can be enhanced if taken with DMAE or choline.
There's a synergetic effect when taken with choline that causes a greater
improvement than the sum of each when taken alone.
Adverse effects are rare. Piracetam is supplied in 400mg / 800mg tablets
the usual dose is 2400 - 4800mg / day, in 3 divided doses. Some
literature says that you should take an high attack dosage for the first
two days. Not sold in USA. Can be purchased OTC in mexico.
Nootropics are generally considered to be any substance which (1) improves
information acquisition AND (2) protects against learning- and memory-
impairing agents (3) without having either (a) sedative or stimulant effects
on one's general behavior, or (b) dangerous toxicity. As one might
guess, we don't know of too many of these yet. Caffeine's out, for example;
too toxic.
Since we don't know the mechanisms of most of these (choline probably being
an exception), it's not really clear how to classify cognitive enhancers.
However, there's a fairly large class structurally related enhancers which
are probably the paradigm nootropics: the 2-pyrrolidinones. Of these,
piracetam is the most studied (it was discovered first, around '72), so I'll
free associate about its various quirks for a bit.
Even though piracetam et al are cyclic derivatives of GABA, they don't seem
to be involved with GABA's regulation of neurotransmission. One current
hypothesis is that piracetam (can I just call it "P," people?) activates
the cholinergic system (acetylcholine and its system are believed to be
important in memory, natch). However, cholinergic drugs typically
help episodic memory in Alzheimer's patients and P doesn't. Oddly
enough, P has no effect on adrenalectomized rats (even when given 3000
mg/kg po). P decreases 5-HT (serotonin) and increases noradrenaline at low
doses (20 mg/kg ip) in rats; yet higher (100 mg..) doses have the opposite
effect. Basically, what I'm trying to say is: everyone's clueless.
(Side note: Things like this make me recall that we've only isolated a tiny
fraction of the various neurotransmitters and systems in the brain. It
may be that trying to functionally decompose the nervous system into
separate subsystems is entirely wrongheaded. Perhaps the brain is one big
dynamical system.)
Ahem. Anyway, since we don't know how nootropics work, "we" try to find
them by artificially-inducing amnesia in rodents and seeing if various
substances reverse this "amnesia." One of the most commonly used amnesiacs
is scopolamine; others are hemicholinium-3 and cycloheximide. P reverses
the effects of these amnesiacs, but doesn't help against ketamine-induced
amnesia. As I recall, scopolamine is believed to block the transfer of
info into long-term memory only, while ketamine (which blocks the ionic
channels of the nicotinic receptor) actually prevents the formation of short-
term memory. Make of it what you will. Lest you think that these "amnesias"
are highly artificial (they are), it's good to remember that similar things
are done to study depression (and "we"'re pretty successful at finding new
anti-depressants). Besides, it's the way of science to start out with very
rough models and continually tweak and fine-tune them.
Once "we"ve found a substance with this sort of screen, "we" start to look
at its effects in other cases. I recall reading that Piracetam improves
learning (using simple T-shaped mazes with brightness as the thing the lil
guys have to pay attention to) in both normal rats and also significantly
helps rats whose parents have left them or who just didn't get enough to
eat growing up. P also helps alleviate the impairment of learning caused
by too much booze in rats as well. Oh yes, it has nice anti-ulcer activity
(based on aspirin- or immobilization stress- induced ulcer studies in
rats). This type of research is hard on rats.
As for people, wellll, they're a lot more expensive than rats. I know
there's been some success in treating vertigo-patients, elderly people
with rheumatism, and people with involutional depression (a type which
frequently precedes dementia). P does seem to increase cerebral-blood
flow, and has been used to treat people with signs of brain circulation
failure (I think at 1.5 grams/day, but am not sure). I haven't seen anything
in the literature about toxicity, although I know that it was given in
children at 170 mg/kg with no subjectively-felt problems (I don't recall
their ages, sorry).
There's been evidence (in mice) that P may increase the effects of some
antidepressants. Be wary. Some of the 2-pyrrolidinones seem to protect
cell proteins against free-radicals, but P isn't one of them.
Sitaram, Weingartner, Caine, Gillin ,"Choline: Selective Enhancement of
Serial Learning and Encoding of Low Imagery Words in Man," Life Sci.
22: 1555-1560, 1978
Bartus et al, "Age-related changes in passive avoidance retension:
modulation with dietary choline," Science (Washington D.C.) 209 (4453):
301-3, 1980
Drachman and Leavitt, "Human Memory and the Cholinergic System," Arch.
Neurol. 30:113, 1974
Beninger et al, "Effects of chronic manipulations of dietary choline on
locomotor activity, discrimination learning and cortical acetylcholine
release in aging adult Fisher 344 rats," Neurobiol-Aging. 1984 Spring.
5(1) P 29-34.
Ennaceur and Delacour, "Effect of combined or separate administration of
piracetam and choline on learning and memory in the rat," Psychopharmacology.
1987. 92(1). P. 58-67.
Fundaro et al, "Effects of chronic manipulations of dietary choline on
dynamic behavioral situations," Prog-Neuropsychophramacol-Biol-Psychiatry.
1987. 11(5). P 601-11.
Harris et al, "Effect of lecithin on memory in normal adults," Am-J-
Psychiatry. 1983 Aug. 140(8) P 1010-2.
Leathwood et al, "Phosphatidyl choline and avoidance performance in
17 month-old SEC/1ReJ mice," Life-Sci. 1982 Mar 29. 30(13). P 1065-71.
Meck et al, "Organizational changes in cholinergic activity and enhanced
visuospatial memory as a function of choline administered prenatally or
postnatally or both," Behav-Neurosci. 1989 Dec. 103(6). P 1234-41.
Meck et al, "Pre- and postnatal choline supplementation produces long-
term facilitation of spatial memory," Dev-Psychobio. 1988 May. P 339-53.
Mizumori et al, "Effects of dietary choline on memory and brain chemistry
in aged mice," Neurobiol-Aging. 1985. Spring. 6(1). P 51-6.
Mohrs et al, "Interaction of choline and scopolamine in human memory,"
Life-Sci. 1985 June 15. 37(2). P 193-7.
Prado-Alcala, "Is cholinergic activity of the caudate nucleus involved in
memory?," Life-Sci. 1985. Dec 9. 37(23). P 2135-42.
Sahley et al, "Dietary choline augments associative memory function in Limax
maximus," J-Neurobiol. 1986. Mar. 17(2). P 113-20.
Valzelli et al, "Difference in learning and retention by Albino-Swiss mice.
Part IV. Effect of some nutrients," Methods-Find-Exp-Clin-Pharmacol. 1987.
9(1). P. 5-8.
PART 2. A Portrait Of J. Random Hacker (by Eric S. Raymond TNN News)
Note: where comparatives are used, the implicit other' is a randomly
selected group from the non-hacker population of the same size as hackerdom.
General appearance:
Intelligent. Scruffy. Intense. Abstracted. Interestingly for a sedentary
profession, more programmers run to skinny than fat. Tans are rare.
Dress:
Casual, vaguely post-hippy; T-shirts, jeans, running shoes (or bare
feet). Long hair, beards and moustaches are common. High incidence of
tie-die and intellectual or humorous slogan' T-shirts (only rarely
computer related, that's too obvious). Hackers dress for comfort,
function, and minimal maintenance hassles rather than for appearance.
Very low incidence of suits or other business' attire.
Reading habits:
Omnivorous, but usually includes lots of science and science
fiction. Hackers often have a reading range that astonishes liberal
arts' people but tend not to talk about it as much.
Other interests:
Some hobbies are widely shared and recognized as going with the
culture, including: music. SF. Medievalism. Chess, wargames and
intellectual games of all kinds. Logic puzzles. Ham radio. Other
interests that seem to correlate less strongly but positively with
hackerdom include: martial arts, linguistics, bicycling.
Education:
All hackers are either college-degreed or self-educated to an
equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often considered
better-motivated and more respected than his B.Sc counterpart.
Academic areas from which people often gravitate into hackerdom
include mathematics, physics, linguistics, and philosophy.
Things hackers detest and avoid:
Most team sports. Disco. Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy listening
music. Television (except for cartoons, movies, the old _Star_Trek_ and
the new _Simpsons_). Three-piece suits.
Food:
Ethnic. Spicy. Oriental, esp. Chinese and most especially Szechuan,
Hunan and Mandarin (hackers consider Cantonese vaguely declasse). Also
high-quality Jewish delicatessen food is much esteemed.
Politics:
Vaguely left of center, except for the strong libertarian
contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely.
The only safe generalization is that almost all hackers are
anti-authoritari33, thus both conventional conservatism and "hard"
leftism are rare. Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to
either a) be aggressively apolitical, or b) entertain peculiar or
idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them
day-to-day.
Ethnicity:
Predominantly Caucasian with a strong minority of Jews (east coast)
and Asians (west cost). The Jewish contingent has exerted a
particularly pervasive cultural influence (see Food). Hackers as a
group are about as color-blind as anyone could ask for, and ethnic
prejudice of any kind tends to be met with extreme hostility; the
ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a function
of who tends to seek and get higher education.
Religion:
Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly
three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional
faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown (at least on the
east coast, more hackers wear yarmulkes than crucifixes). Even hackers
who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed about it,
hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of religious
bigotry in particular. Many enjoy parody' religions such as
Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius. Finally, many hackers
are fascinated to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism or (less commonly)
Taoism, and blend them easily with their native' religions.
Ceremonial chemicals:
Most hackers don't smoke and use alcohol in moderation if at all.
Limited use of soft' drugs (esp. psychedelics such as marijuana, LSD,
psilocybin etc) used to be relatively common and is still regarded
with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use of downers'
and opiates, on the other hand, seems to be particularly rare (hackers
seem in general to dislike drugs that dumb them down'). Many hackers
regularly wire up on caffeine and sugar for all-night hacking runs.
Geographical Distribution:
In the U.S., hackerdom revolves on a Bay Area/Boston axis; about
half of the hard core seems to live within a hundred miles of Cambridge
or Berkeley. Hackers tend to cluster around large cities, especially
university towns' such as the Raleigh/Durham area in North Carolina
or Princeton, New Jersey (this may simply reflect the fact that
many are students or ex-students living near their alma maters).
Sexual habits:
Hackerdom tolerates a much wider range of sexual and lifestyle
variation than the mainstream culture. It includes more gays. Hackers
are more likely to live in polygnous or polyandrous relationships,
practice open marriage or live in communes or group houses. In this
as in some other respects (see Dress) hackerdom semi-consciously
maintains counterculture' values.
Personality Characteristics:
The most obvious common personality' characteristic of hackers is
high intelligence and facility with intellectual abstractions. In
terms of Myers-Briggs and equivalent psychometric systems, hackerdom
appears to concentrate the relatively rare INTJ and INTP types; that
is, introverted, intuitive and thinker types (as opposed to the
extroverted-sensate personalities the predominate in the mainstream
culture). Also, most hackers are neophiles', stimulated by and
appreciative of novelty (especially intellectual novelty). Most are
also relatively individualistic and anti-conformist.
--Eric S. Raymond
PART 3. (censored)
Not Availible. (Do you feel like 2 Live Crew?)
PART 4. Some Thoughts
Just some thoughts. Non-Alcoholic Beer, why? (thats like condems w/holes).
Flag burning, why not just make it legal and then make the flag out of non-
flammable material? Lightning Rod? When they ship styrofoam, whats it
packaged in? Iraqnophobia. American Red Cross "You didn't help us, now we
won't help you". Unexpected heart attacks (are you expecting one?).
Camoflauge Walets (hmm..). One-Half Billion dollars for an invisible bomber?
(someone got ripped off..).
PART 5. BBS Software Review As Seen By Sysops
Through the course of BBS Evolution, there have been many, many clones, and
well, todays article covers some people w/ short mindeness towards software
they run.
CIRCLES IN TIME
"What C.I.T. is a HACK? Man you been smoking something funny..."
ELITE
"It aint running w/ my modem, DAMN, its cool, all the cool people are
running it.."
Em/2
"If it doesn't have Batch d/ling from New Scan of files, I don't want to
look at it!"
"Lazy sysops and lazy users, thats why I run it"
"Sure the Doors don't work, but so what? I hate Online Games"
"Well thank god that Emulex/2 batch download doesn't takes time away like
TCS does. Enjoy!"
LSD
"Thats right, only ONE copy per area code, and it must be 19.2 ONLY!"
"After all TTR runs it, it must be good..."
PcBoard
"You read the Docs?"
"Its increadible, you can do ANYTHING w/ it!, Tag? whats that?"
"You gotta check out the Lawyers Base, its funny, can you read it?"
MONARCHY
"I know the writers, and if I want a change I just call up the author and
tell him how it should be..."
"After all if it wasn't for me Monarchy would still be just another clone.."
"Thats right, updates role out weekly, isn't it amazing??"
"This is your last time to be a Monarchy Distribution Site..." (4th time)
TAG
"I'm just MAD about TAg and TAg is just Mad about me..."
"Improve TAG? WHAT you are not running TAG, well I cant believe that, there
Is NOTHING better than TAG, how can you improve perfection?"
"I dare ANYONE here, to call my system and crash it. I have said this three
days ago and not a single person has done it. That goes to show you how
TAG is supierior to any other software"
"Why look at what you can do w/ tag its super!"
"What you don't LIKE TAG?, well only people that LIKE TAG can be on my
board"
"I don't know why I run it"
"What is better? It IS FREE after all"
TELEGARD
"Hmm, that's very neat. Isn't that program "requires" you to send some $$$
to get a registered program? Well I guess you don't in this case..."
"Man TAG SUCKS! Telegard is the way to go"
"ALT-F5 is fucking cool !!! #%@@#$#@@#$^$#@^$ Its great right?"
"After all they charge money now, yes, but look at the supierior quality and
markmenship of a truly great BBS, besides that TAG sucks"
"I'm 15 and I like Telegard, after all, my best friend runs his, that is if
he passes biology this week..."
-As Quoted by Sysops of systems that run the corrosponding software.
PART 6. Hello's, Congrats and Respects to:
David Lightman and Dallas Hack Shack BBS. The Jolly Bardsman for getting me(JD)
started in telecom. Agent Orange and Oblivion BBS. The Dead Zone BBS and SysOp.
Cool Hand and Mid-Nite-Oil. Nilrem. Deathmaster of THG. Lethal Injection from
The Veiled Society. Emmanuel Goldstien and 2600 Magazine. Members of LOD/H.
Scan Man. Racer X. The Pusher. Swamp Rat. The Imortal. Night Lightning.
The Phrack people. The Oxidizer and the attempt at NARC. Kid Copy along w/PHIRE.
Mallorean and good luck w/950. Dr Ripco and Ripco BBS. The Sensei for TSR. CUD.
Dr No and MPL. Chester "the M0E god". Slice. The People of Em/2. Reb00t and
Test Site BBS. Sir Garlon from The Veiled Society. To Joe Nowack for starting
(GOT) off in telecom.
Well the list is getting too long, so thanks go out to everyone thats been
cool to us in telecom and all the people that helped us through dificult
stages of our telecom hobby. All the users and sysops who have had inteligent
opinionated contributions to make, and finally a special thanks to the readers.
Guardian Of Time
Judge Dredd
Ignorance, Theres No Excuse.
For questions or comments write to:
Internet: elisem@nuchat
Fidonet: 1:106/69.0
or
NIA FeedBack
P.O. Box 299
Santa Fe, Tx. 77517-0299
[OTHER WORLD BBS]
