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How the name "Antipope" came from a drunken usenet feed bribe in 1991

By

turadg

15d ago· 2 min readenOpinion

Summary

A personal anecdote explaining how the name "Antipope" originated from a drunken mistake in 1991. The author recounts bribing a sysadmin with alcohol to get a UUCP usenet feed in the UK before ISPs existed, and when asked for a sitename, drunkenly blurted out "Antipope" — a name that stuck ever since.

Key quotes

· 4 pulled
Back in the mists of pre-history, I wanted an email and usenet feed very badly.
The only way to get one was to cough up a sum of money comparable to the price of a car, or to bribe a sysadmin who could give you a downstream feed via UUCP over modem.
I found a sysadmin who was willing to be bribed with alcohol, and by and by the subject of a UUCP feed came up.
"What sitename do you want?"
Snippet from the RSS feed
Back in the mists of pre-history, I wanted an email and usenet feed very badly. However, usenet feeds were kind of hard to come by in the UK in 1991. Indeed, the only way to get one was to cough up a sum of money comparable to the price of a car, or to b

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