Yes, I know. I wrote it.
When we realize how much the world has changed since then, for example, the "Neutral Zone" no longer exists, nor does East Germany nor the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia is now three countries, there are many new top level domains (.info, .biz, .name, .aero, .museum, .kids), .us now allows direct domains instead of state ones only, it shows just how different things are both on the Internet and IRL (In real life).
Someone here said they were confused by "obscure Telex references" so I'll explain them.
Back in the dark ages of communications, circa 1940-1960, there were no fax machines (facsimile was invented in 1899 but really wasn't publicly available until the 1960s or early 1970s), no e-mail, and telegrams were expensive because they had to be delivered by hand. Phone service in some places was dismal to nonexistent and it was only good for voice anyway.
Businesses needed some way to quickly send written messages and not be exorbitantly expensive. So the teletype machine was developed along with a dial system to call another telex machine anywhere in the world. Teletype at 110 baud (about 11 characters per second, compare that to 5,600 character per second modem of today) uses very little bandwidth and so you can use it to send a lot of messages on the same space on a wire that you could only send one telephone conversation. To use telex, you had a machine on the network that was assigned a number just like a telephone. And you could send a written message anywhere in the world over the telex network if you knew their number, same as you can send an e-mail to anyone if you know their e-mail address.
Paul Robinson
<postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>