Robbert, > just lurking the present: > https://trac.availlang.org/browser/avail/Avail/distro/src/examples/Lincolnshire%20Poacher.avail?rev=b455aed9506634d75c957af47d8bde3724a15457 > > the lincolnshire poacher? … sounds like a great story.
Are you familiar with the phenomenon of numbers stations? They are the subject of many conspiracy theories, though (in my opinion) the only rational explanation is that they are run by intelligence communities to communicate short messages by shortwave to foreign agents. These messages are almost certainly encrypted using one-time pads, ensuring that you need to possess the codebook in order to decipher the message. (I suppose that it is also possible that some of them broadcast counterintelligence to waste the time of rival governments. But I digress…) Anyway, the Lincolnshire Poacher was a famous numbers station that started broadcasting in the '70s and stopped broadcasting in '08. It is widely supposed that it was run by MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. If you are interested to hear a clip of an actual broadcast, then I found this one trivially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnXPqUU6fI0 Back in Edition #3 of the Avail newsletter, I developed a "numbers station" to illustrate socket I/O in Avail. I don't recall exactly why it didn't make it into /examples at the time – probably because we didn't have commands or entry points functioning yet. Anyway, I came across it this morning, dusted it off, spruced it up, tested it, and added it to /examples. As for the story? Well, numbers stations are interesting in their own right. Otherwise, I like to build weird examples, partly because it amuses me personally, and partly because I find that they stick well in the minds of others. It took me five tutorials to get around to Fibonacci, for precisely the reason that *everyone* builds Fibonacci numbers to showcase some aspect of their programming language – whereas no one thinks to mock up a booking system for the Hilbert Hotel! :D -- Todd L Smith CEO | The Avail Foundation, LLC www.availlang.org
