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My cousin is a girl in the 8th grade. When she came to visit for Thanksgiving, I found her reading this:

I thought this was funny as hell, and I’m bored, so here you go.  See if you can tell who the idiot is.
(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)

They called it “China red“:

Displayed at right is the web color orange-red, which has a special significance in hacker culture. The documentation for Digital Equipment Corporation’s VMS version 4 came in memorable, distinctively-colored orangish-red ring binders, and “China red” was Digital’s official name for this color.

They kept their own Documents in this color, but their scientists had let a few things slip in their calculations, and most of all, added a corrupt shade of Cyan to their formula (0xFF3F00 - 0xFB4809 = 0x03F6F7). This is why DEC dissolved in the late 1990s, when the CLIQUE placed the new AGENT ORANGE formula in its Design Document (c.1998), having published the results of its experiments only after careful testing. “China red’s” formula is the only asset of DEC whose purchase was kept from the prying eyes of the government.

The name was another important contributor to the color’s imperfection and DEC’s downfall. They chose the modifier “China” to describe their red, which, although it certainly conjures images of the last great Communist nation on Earth, does little beyond that. AGENT ORANGE, on the other hand, takes its name from the defoliant that became famous in an anti-communist military campaign in Vietnam. While the U.S. lost the war, their agent orange served its purpose well. CLIQUE’s foremost color continues this proud tradition, stripping the cover from all dark places, hearts, and minds in Mararthon, letting in CLIQUE’s light.

2008/11/14 17:26:49 <Marathoner325> What kind of state do you think the Maratho community is currently in?
2008/11/14 17:26:58 <ukimalefu> very active
2008/11/14 17:27:04 <Marathoner325> yeah
2008/11/14 17:27:19 <ukimalefu> for such an old game anyway
2008/11/14 17:27:28 <Marathoner325> The CLIQUE is kind of ruining it though :P
2008/11/14 17:27:38 <ukimalefu> clique?
2008/11/14 17:28:04 <Marathoner325> http://clique.jonirons.net/
2008/11/14 17:28:41 <g pack> hi yone!
2008/11/14 17:28:51 <yone> hey! G pack!!!
2008/11/14 17:28:56 <ukimalefu> YUCK!
2008/11/14 17:29:01 <ukimalefu> that link
2008/11/14 17:29:02 <Delphi> oh lawl
2008/11/14 17:29:08 <Marathoner325> lol
2008/11/14 17:29:22 <ukimalefu> MARATHON STORY FORUM FOREVAH!

Some help for net games:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<marathon>
  <console>
    <macro input="alan" output="Ignorance creates the diluted"/>
    <macro input="arc" output="gonzague not ARChed"/>
    <macro input="bore" output="that's boring tl"/>
    <macro input="ect" output="ect is the fun part"/>
    <macro input="fail" output="little toybox of failure"/>
    <macro input="falg" output="GERT HLIM AD GT THE FALG!"/>
    <macro input="get" output="GET MARARTHON"/>
    <macro input="hawt" output="Ehmagawd so ah-dorable!"/>
    <macro input="jfo" output="just found out"/>
    <macro input="joke" output="(No incest jokes please)"/>
    <macro input="luck" output="Best of luck to all of you in the future."/>
    <macro input="ruin" output="RyokoTK is single-handedly ruining the community"/>
    <macro input="stupad" output="so stupad"/>
    <macro input="tap" output="Taps you the eight-foot tall Burton"/>
    <macro input="web" output="I GO ON THE FUCKING WEB TO GET AWAY FROM THIS SHIT"/>
    <macro input="why" output="Why can't you see what I've done"/>
  </console>
</marathon>

Finally, ESB has useful news: Wikipedia joins the 4GET campaign.

After reading chat from the meatserver some days, I find it hard to believe people can be so retarded. But since Arrival was not functioning today, I decided to use MythChat to see if the myth guys were having any trouble. Well, it turns out they are. The server was working just fine, however. I forgot I had MythChat running and checked about an hour later, and this is ALL that had been said in that time.
(Warning: A whole lot of spam follows)
(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)

In this community, as in most others—well, never mind; I’ve never even seen others—we have a broad spectrum of members. There’s the CLIQUE personality, a grating know-it-all whose only redeeming quality is that he does actually contribute something worthwhile, even if it’s only a dash of humor. There’s the Story Forum guy, who will dissect any tidbit of information as long as it keeps him from playing ever again. A relatively new group is the horde of unwashed meatserver players, drawn here primarily by the Marathon/Halo connection.

Today, I’m going to talk about something we don’t see as often.

His nickname is AP, and he’s just had a tough time of everything. If you take a look at his site, you will notice that he has more than a few “issues.” The first is a case of loch that far exceeds my own and approaches ahuxley’s. This man has thoughts we can’t even begin to decipher:

geen paper - backside (hand written)
problems
discused /`
did...	travel to computer lab  /\/\
going on bus  n/\/\/
intendance  /\/\nn
schoolaphobic  /`´\/\	math, science, exploritory/
depended on teachers  /\/\/\
industrial arts /\/\/\
1st  Quart...  /`´\/V

This example is actually very interesting to me; I am drawn now to anything loch. AP doesn’t seem too “stable” in that bit of writing, but he is actually quite brilliant. Take a look at the language he designed, called Bare:

Sample macro code for square root:

loop with (1<<(s::)/2) ratio 2 (s/result) until +delta≤1;

The “with” parameter (1<<(s::)/2) means the result starts with a bit magnitude of half the scale of the input. The “ratio 2” means that the result is only affected by the code by one half. And the “until +delta≤1” means that the positive (absolute value) difference calculated of each result must be at most one fraction.
This is the optimized equivalent of the Newton Method of finding the square root. It is not needed, since it is built in to the Bare languagel the root symbol with no second operand, “s*/;”.

I honestly don’t understand more than 10% of that. The rest of the language definition is nearly as cryptic. But I’m honestly intrigued by what he has written.

You might be wondering what this has to do with Marathon or the community. Well, the community part is tough, but I’ll get to that later. The Marathon part comes from his engine project, Old Durandal. The project is essentially a version of the Marathon 2 engine for old Motorola 68k computers, with enhancements like those in Aleph One. What at first seems like a hoax or a failure (given AP’s own comments about how terrible or useless the project is), I have actually seen his engine work. It’s far from perfect or wonderful, but he has actually accomplished something. It’s tough going for him because he’s not only programming for an old machine, he’s programming on it.

I started this article shortly after the foundation of JFO (on May 20, 2008), and I’ve waited this long to publish it because I sent AP a few questions. He took a while to reply, but I think he gives us some insight into his misunderstood persona. Here’s a slightly edited version of the correspondence.

(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)