4 ms·

I opened up port 23 telnet and had it connect immediately to a playable Crowther & Woods' original adventure, YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SM

I opened up port 23 telnet and had it connect immediately to a playable Crowther & Woods' original adventure, YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING. AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY. In a year and a half I had logged over a million probes. No humans at all. I would have known because they would have typed something to do with the game or tried to play it. So I must conclude no one is checking the logs of the worms either.

j88439h84 7y ago
That's a really interesting idea for a test, thanks for sharing that.
- HocusLocus 7y ago
  Yes it was fun to do, though disappointing in the end. To help throttle attacks and give the right historical ambiance I limited output to 30 characters per second... just like I first played the Fortran 77 version of C&W Adventure on a Texas Instruments Silent 700 with acoustic coupler.
  - CliffStoll 7y ago
    Wow -- you've impressed me! (and yep, I also played adventure on a Silent 700...)
    - HocusLocus 7y ago
      Keep the roll all together on the ground and feed the thermal paper in again to print upside-down on the other margin! Good times. Saw your old calculator video with the 'sonic spiral memory'. I had NO IDEA such a thing existed! There is great value in the doggedly determined engineering of yesteryear, and there are some among the young who continue to carry the torch. Check this out if you have not seen it, Apollo Guidance Computer Restoration https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdlisi_x7-Ut_-w7 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdli...
liability 7y ago
In a strange way, it's a bit sad that there aren't more humans out there.
- orf 7y ago
  Of course there are. They are all over the place. But the internet is _vast_ so you narrow down your targets using tools before you waste even a second of your time connecting manually. If he had his telnet service return something that looked interesting (and no, not Crowther & Woods interesting), then he'd have a lot of people connecting.
robocat 7y ago
Or any humans didn't read English?

j88439h84 7y ago

That's a really interesting idea for a test, thanks for sharing that.

HocusLocus 7y ago
Yes it was fun to do, though disappointing in the end. To help throttle attacks and give the right historical ambiance I limited output to 30 characters per second... just like I first played the Fortran 77 version of C&W Adventure on a Texas Instruments Silent 700 with acoustic coupler.
- CliffStoll 7y ago
  Wow -- you've impressed me! (and yep, I also played adventure on a Silent 700...)
  - HocusLocus 7y ago
    Keep the roll all together on the ground and feed the thermal paper in again to print upside-down on the other margin! Good times. Saw your old calculator video with the 'sonic spiral memory'. I had NO IDEA such a thing existed! There is great value in the doggedly determined engineering of yesteryear, and there are some among the young who continue to carry the torch. Check this out if you have not seen it, Apollo Guidance Computer Restoration https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdlisi_x7-Ut_-w7 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdli...

liability 7y ago

In a strange way, it's a bit sad that there aren't more humans out there.

orf 7y ago
Of course there are. They are all over the place. But the internet is _vast_ so you narrow down your targets using tools before you waste even a second of your time connecting manually. If he had his telnet service return something that looked interesting (and no, not Crowther & Woods interesting), then he'd have a lot of people connecting.

robocat 7y ago

Or any humans didn't read English?