Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for September 29, 2013

Beware of carbon paper.

And it’s cordless!

The National Socialist Agency is so high tech now, they’reprobably no longer equipped or trained to intercept mail —so crude and ante-diluvian….

Are we sure it’s not a Royal?………….

Hey, wait. That means you could put what you typed in the mail and send it someplace….How long has this been going on….? Who would have thought an envelope would be the most secure medium…?

Sunday Non Sequiturs are the best……..There’s usually one panel that sticks out as being particularly well drawn…They’re all so good today, I can’t choose…Although, if I had to make choice I’d go with the over head view of Jeffry…But the falling leaf in the first panel, the one on the right, is a gem…

He’s from the effete elite corps of impudent snobs.

Sock it to ’em, Jeffry – you can make it work. And employ more typists … remember them?

Oh, how I remember those. Gives new meaning to thatold saying about this country having to fight another war….“NEVER AGAIN!”

So that’s why his lab is beneath a tree. It’s “under wood.” I get it (I think).

I wonder how many people here have no idea what that thing is… :D :D :D

Yeah, but it leaves a paper trail.

Sigh….I feel so old. I knew what it was before the third frame.

Actually the sound made by the keys hitting the platen is different for each key. The NSA would be able to listen to the sounds and tell exactly what was being typed.

Actually, all they would have to do is to steal the tape. All words, letters and numbers stay on that tape.

Gee, just my type…shall we call it Typo….that’s what my editor says all da time….

Two creepy kids……….

The imprint that every typewriter leaves on the page as the keys are pressed is unique to every typewriter, just like a fingerprint. I recall this as one of the many things to be aware of within the Soviet Union back in the day.

Old forensics studies were able to identify which typewriter was used in kidnapping messages by the slight variations that existed in each typewriter. That became problematic when daisy wheels and balls of electric typewriters became commonplace. Forget about tracing to printers, now since even if the printer could be identified, it would be hard to tell the source unless it was dedicated to one computer.

In case no one else has mentioned this, the magnifier does not work for this strip, gocomics programmers. You’ve rigged it (badly) so that only if the strip is completely within the browser pane will it magnify. That’s almost impossible with Non Sequitur, since many (most?) are not full screen when viewing.

It would be really nice if you fixed this problem.

Magically, having griped about it, the magnifier now works. In the case of Non Sequitur, it seems I have to wait until the toasty lens image appears which requires centering NS vertically, a bit tricky since it’s longer than the pane. It used to work without centering, before the twitchy “improvements”. What was the point of the “improvements” anyway? To see if we’re awake?

When he first said “wireless” I assumed that he was recreating ham radio.

When I was in the service (pre-computer days) paper copies were everywhere. Info started out with 4 copies. Anyone with 5 minutes and copy machine nearby could get what they wanted in no time at all. Lots of people where reading stuff they shouldn’t have. Personally, I think computer are much better for security; of course, nothing is perfect.

Don’t get the impression that mail is in any way secure. Post office employees routinely steal items and routinely don’t get punished for it because their union protects them. And when they’re not stealing, they’re destroying. Way WAY too many stories about these two things and I only worked for them for one season.

another underground bunker? How come the NSA doesn’t know about this? or is that CIA territory?

Sorry to step on your joke, Jeffrey, but there has never been a problem composing messages offline. The problem is how to get them from point A to point B without them being read by others (using strong encryption), and better still, without anybody knowing you did it (using anonymity services through organizations that do not and by design cannot collect metadata). I helped write the book on that, How to Bypass Internet Censorship (http://en.flossmanuals.net/bypassing-censorship/) available also in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, and Vietnamese.

I don’t know, the gubment might find all the clicking and bells too much like ‘code’ and hire 1000 people to decipher it.

But, they’ll never accept it because it is horribly enviromentally unfriendly! It uses (gasp) paper made from trees and the ink contains (clutching heart having a stroke) CARBON!

We’re doomed! Doomed I tell you!

I brought my old typewriter into preschool for the kids to play ‘office’ with. One of the boys ran excitedly to the others: “GUYS! GUYS! COME SEE MRS SCIANCE’S COMPUTER! IT DOESN’T NEED A MONITOR, OR PRINTER OR NOTHIN’! YOU PUT THE PAPER RIGHT IN IT AND THE WORDS COME RIGHT OUT ON THE PAPER!” It was the most amazing thing they had ever seen.

In those days, no one aspired to intercept ALL phone calls. Ah, simpler times.

No more wrist cushions. And if built like the old ones – thieves will need to do weight lifting fo carry off one of those.

Just the other day, after numerous printer and WiFi problems, I decided I wanted an Underwood. Word processor and printer all in one! Makes multiple copies at the same time!

For my first medical transcribing job, I used an IBM Selectric typewriter, and it typed in 3 lines on the ribbon, so that what came out on the ribbon was not readable. Maybe other typewriters had this feature; I’m not sure, but the Selectrics did.

Hm…its writing device that you need to type….I got it…it shall be called. Typewriter

As the Sunday Wiley strip slips slowly over the horizon, I would like to thank all the commentators for being so civil and so clever…..See you on the other side….

Anyone here remember the old saying “Everything old is new again”? if we progress so far forward that we forget where we came from , eventually we wil end up there again!

Hey, late nighters, Kurt Vonegut wrote every one of his novels on an Underwood….All of them….

The Russians recently bought a lot of typewriters.