The Fall of the Modem World Part 1 When I got my first computer I felt as if I had walked onto a episode of Star Trek and somehow gotten lucky. Unlike some people I had never had access to a mainframe and this was my first time using a real computer. I was amazed and happy. I learned to program and met other people who had bought Apple's and eventually found out about modems and got one. After that it was as if another world had opened up to me, there were all these people all over the country doing interesting things with secret names and secret groups and I felt like I had just been cast in some kind of comic book. That is how I felt when I first started out, naturally I was hopelessly naive but that didn't make it any less fun, it made it more fun. I'm just writing random thoughts right now and not really sure how to start this just yet, I should have the flow of it going in a few more paragraphs, just hang in there for a minute. Having gotten my start in 1981 I think I qualify as an "old" pirate/phreak or whatever you want to call me. I'm actually neither but have done both. The only thing I really have to say about the "old days" is that they weren't much different from the "new days", just on a much smaller scale with much worse software. The main difference was that the real person to asshole ratio was greater since a computer still wasn't passe, and you couldn't walk into toys r us and plunk down $50 for a c64. If you had a computer, you either were serious about it or had rich parents. The second group is where the early "rodents" would have come from. Now you don't need rich parents, all you need is some allowance or 1 weeks work at a minimum wage job mopping floors at the local 7-11 to get set up with lot's of computer gear. Until everything gets to the point where it is today: total saturation. There are 500 new "elites" every 3 months. It's like a cycle, 4 times a year a bunch of people you never heard of show up on all the current "elite" boards, become the new generation of "elites" and then either move up into the larger, stagnating "old elite" groups, or get bored and move onto something else. Each person or group thinks they are going to change the world or really accomplish something, of course this never happens the most that happens is that the group somehow manages to stay together for a few years instead of falling apart. The main difference between the old days & the new days is Population: instead of being small, it is huge now. Outlook: instead of caring about technology it's just a get together. Software: instead of being pissed off at comware, you can be pissed of at cat-fur not working right instead. Martyrs: the "old people" running around trying to "bring back the past" or just cry about it everywhere. Notables include Chief Surgeon & Skip Rooney. It's funny but tCS & Skip are the only people who actually whine about it all over the place. The other old guys who are still around have taken up other ways to entertain themselves (like The Gonif). This brings me to the question Why are people in the modem world to begin with? To have fun of course. I just think it's sad that some people don't understand that maybe rodents want to be rodents and are that way by choice. The "rodents" think that the pirates and phreaks are rodents, while the phreaks think the "rodents" and pirates are rodents and so on. Meanwhile the software companies and long distance services think all of the above are rodents. I think The Gonif has the right idea about all this. Here is his qoute on the subject "I really think all the 'elite' people should retire and become rodents forever. Take it from one who's been there and back, being a rodent is a lot more fun!" I'm really getting sick of the words: Rodent, Moe, Lose, Lame, Leech, and all the others. It used to be funny, now it's just getting old. Who has the right idea? The pirate who proves he's elite by splashing 43 title pages on a copya ware. The cracker who can de-protect the trickiest protection, is a good programmer and not a member of new wares groups. The distributor (self proclaimed pirate) who spends all his time calling one cat-fur after another and uploading or downloading new wares. The phreak who spends all his time copying manuals and uploading them all over all the board$ to fulfill his ego. The phreak who does none of that, is a member of no group, and just learns. The hacker who manages to guess his way into some system and then writes a 2900 sector, 43 part file, on how he did it. The crasher who's version of entertainment is knowing that he has destroyed some system. None of it makes any difference, everyone is doing what makes them happy, so who cares! The people from the "old days" who want all the new people to go away or revert to the early 1980's care. Nobody else. Even the writers of humor files don't care. At last count a few were from the Gonif, a few were from people who just hate everyone, or have pulled a massive joke that nobody else got (Atom: do it! 1985 loserlist guy, the world is waiting), files from the remnants of every group or organization in the world (Tap, 2600, etc) written by one of their ex members, or files like this one just being written by people who have something to say and want to put it down in a file. Waltzing through all this are a pack of media people, who have realized that you can make a buck and become famous by writing about the "Computer Underground", willing to stroke the ego's of neophytes (generally speaking neophytes are the only people willing to talk to them, other then those in some deaply rooted need to have their names in magazines and in this way become even more "elite", but we won't mention them). Their articles are easy to spot, they usually appear in A+, InCider, Macworld, world, or some other rag targeted at non-technical people, who will "oooh and ahhh" and not wonder about the pile of shit the "writer" has just given them to read. A perfect example of this are Russ Lockwood's columns in A+, I get the feeling he's talking to men from mars. You could call this guy up, tell him that you can bring down the world's phone systems by repeating the latin mass backwards, while praying to satan and performing oral sex on a leperous yak and it would appear as the lead story in next months issue as: "Satanic hackers use black magic sex rites to destroy phone system." Saying he has no idea of what he's talking about and the people he talks to have no idea what they're talking about, is being generous. The guy is a complete moron and if he's not affiliated with Globe or National Enquirer (No relation to National Enlightener, heh nice job G00nif), he should apply right away. Then there are the endless, pointless discussion on BBS systems. Here is a example of a typical BBS. If it's elite, you may add the word "ELITE" after the bbs name: Welcome to the Dildo Fiend's Secret Lair System with 500 megs. All these systems are running on "HEAVILY" modified Telecat 3.9123243.09+E03 Generally meaning that the sysop's have changed the print statements. The following sections will be on the bbs, each of these sections may be split up into even more subsections (phreak section 1-5, elite phreak section 1-5, the weather in nairobi section 1-5, etc) depending on how confused the sysop is. Paraphrased here is what will appear on all the sections: The general board will contain 10-15 bbs ads, following each bbs ad will be a msg from the sysop telling the person to put those on the bbs ad's board, because next time he will delete it. Then there will be a few rags on the people who posted the bbs ads in the wrong place, eventually both of these will move to the bbs ad's and the war board respectively, ending up in some discussion about the price of rice in china during the year of the dung heap. After the debate on this is over, the msg's will stop altogether, except for 1 new msg. every 3 or 4 days, saying "post dudes". Eventually the sysop will make everyone post a msg. before going to Cat-Fur, in this way filling up the general section with even more dumb and useless msg's then before, posted by people who want to go leech or upload the latest. The bbs ads sub will contain BBS/AE/CATFUR/20MEG ad's. Inbetween those someone will rag on someone else for being dumb enough to forget posting the number of the board they're advertising for. The commodore and IBM sections will each have 1 msg. stating "this is the sub, post all msg's releating to here". After 4 months pass with no posts on either of these, the sysop will warn everyone to post, or else he will delete them. 5 months later, he'll delete them. The Amiga/St sub. This sub will contain a war over which machine is gods gift to mankind. Inbetween all this will be rumors of the forthcoming "AMIGA Ranger 2000 PC2!" that will come out next week, providing of course that Commodore doesn't go under by that time. Every 3 or 4 msg's will be one proclaiming that the Amiga is the greatest machine ever built and how happy the poster is to own one. The Apple sub will be totally concerned with when the //x will come out, and what exactly it will be capable of when it does come out. Every few msg's will be a post by a Amiga groupie declaring that it will never measure up, followed by a post that Steve Wozniak is working on it and since the Woz is as close to god as mortal man can get, it will rock. Then 20 different people will wonder if the Apple Cat will work in the new machine. And all this will too, eventually move to the war board. The Wares sub (not to be confused with the War sub). This sub actually serves no purpose at all, since the board you're on has a transfer section with Cat-Fur 1.0-99.99E99 and 23 versions of AE. It's more of a statement on ELITE new wareserz current position, rather than a request for any software. eg: I've Got So & so & so & so, posting the catchy euphanism: "i've got em all!!!1!!" is generally frowned upon, as the Gonif & others have thouroughly dragged it through the dust by now. The rest of the messages will be full of people you never heard of, saying things to other people you never heard of, using their first names. Which is the current hip thing to do if you're a elite pirate. After they've used up at least 10 first names of other elite pirates, they will tell you about the secret and elite thing they were just doing, eg: "Arnold and I held a piratez party and talked to Kracowicz the other night, he says he is coming back and gonna call our board next week!" None of this is ever true, but that doesn't make any difference as far as I can tell it's just a kind of tradiation to do that in every post they put up. Of course the really hip pirate bbs's will have a |First Name|:, |Group|:, mod built right in, so you can be hip too and find out everyones first name. After the first name's and elite retired people part of the post is over with, they'll get to the meat of the post. Which means dropping tidbits about a "secret upcoming new ware". The author of this "secret upcoming new ware" just happens to be good friends with the msg poster and is working on Cat-Fur 5.09F or DDD 5.2 and it's really cool but he can't tell you what it does yet because it's a secret and he only posted about it to begin with because it's the hip thing to do. Like this: "So like I wuz sayin, Biff and I were talking to Melvin the other night about his latest mod to his upcoming transfer program that is in a beta version which Clark is testing out and let us use. It's cool as cool can be, but I can't tell you what it does yet, or even if it will ever come out. After this Herbert and Biff and I called up Softsel to find out the latest warez out and got a copy of "Professional arm wrestling part ]I[" which wuz just cracked by Herbert's friend- Wok Syung Fchai Kek, he's cool and he's new, his handle is "Cre-8-ive Te No, it's just a market economy. I don't force them to buy, it's not really crime, because I take nothing from no one. They are suckers, but if they want to kill themselves and make me rich at the same time, far be it from me to stop them. Are you doing to quit this? I mean you're rich, why not stop? > It's not that easy. I can't stop right now. I have to get out of NY before I can stop. If I quit people will think I've informed on someone, and if it's true or not, they'll get me killed. Why did you start doing this? > I didn't decide to be a drug dealer, it just happened. I had a oppurtunity, and the amounts I'd be making just blotted out everything else. So I became a drug dealer. I'm smarter than most of them, so I got further, but It's just a matter of time before I will get busted if I don't get out. So what are you going to do? > I'll be out of it this summer. Where are you going to go? > Wherever Patrick ends up going. That's your only plan? > His final plans are the same as mine, so why not travel with him. And those are? > You wouldn't understand. It doesn't really matter anyway. Why not just go sit on a Island for the rest of your life and party? > Because I don't want to. There are more interesting things I can do with my life. This is paraphrased, I'm not Richard and don't carry a walkman around with me and go looking for these oppurtunities. The "final plan" is something that comes up from time to time. There is a entire group (SR) devoted to this final plan. I don't know that much about it, except I really think that some of these guys have read 1 book too many and can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy anymore. Their answer to this is that there is no such thing as reality and then it gets quasi-religous. Pat won't talk about it and when he won't talk about something it either means he is very serious or more than very serious. A LOT of these guys are very religous, except instead of Christ they bow down and pay homage to Satan or whatever. That's exagerating it, John is the only "real" Satanist, but most of them believe in something pretty deaply, whatever the fuck that "something" is. My personal opinion is that they're all bored, have too much money and too much time to waste, so they are starting to take all this seriously. Yuri (The Plague) Yuri is another guy that I never met. I've only heard about him from Patrick, who was impressed with him. This isn't as small as it sounds, because when Pat is impressed, the sky opens and angels descend to sing this bi-centinial occassion. When he says someone is "impressive", that's the highest compliment he's ever given anyone to my knowledge. He is supposed to be this ultimate Apple programmer, writes in machine langauge when he wants to experiment (not assembly, MACHINE LANGAUGE, call-151 and start typing hex). According to Pat he knows his roms by heart, never uses any kind of reference, instead he looks at everything for himself and deems it "adeqaute", he also is the author or thousands of subroutines that people end up using in their programs. One day he's probably going to be a rich professional programmer. I never asked, but the impression I got was that he's around 13 or 14 now. His expertise also extends to hardware, chemistry and operating systems for other machines. I can't do him credit because I don't know him, but from what I hear, he is worth knowing. From what he sounds like, he is even better then Charles. Charles (Charged Particle). Is Joe's version of Paul. He's a faithful sidekick. He also happens to be a child prodigy who was going to college at age 10. He spends most of his time programming or building strange devices. A few examples were "The Reaver" his "modem of death". He looked at tesla coils and decided to see what would happen if he made a atom smasher and hooked it into his phone line. Would the Atom Smasher work inductively and fry something in his CO, etc. He also takes apart Stun Guns, hooks up tranformers in serial and makes "killer stun guns" with 200,000 volts instead of 45,000. The last thing I saw him make was a DC/AC convertor and he was running his stereo off his phone line. His best creation is probably "the Python" which is a big tube that fits over the trunk that carries all the phone lines into apartment buildings and gives you access to all of the cable pairs inside of it. Both he and Joe have access to something like 500 phone lines at any given time, so they sit around listening to people or using other peoples phone lines or whatever. All in all, he is a very weird kid, he's 15 now. I don't know what Charles is really like, because whenver he talks what he says is either average to the point of boredom, or using so many terms I don't understand that it's eqaully forgettable. It's hard to get to know him, because he is just weird. For whatever reasons he is friends with Joe, who is the one who puts most of Charles's gadgets to use. John (many names) John is the Dungeon Master of the campaign that we have all been playing in for close to 5 years. Personally he is the son of some senator who is studying to be a cs/eee. He is like a slightly less intelligent version of Charles all grown up with rich parents to support his spending habits. Which is pretty good for "us", since his house is like electronic wonderland. Robots turn things on and off, he has every computer I can think of including a Symbolics workstation and a complete Kurzweil system. But the area in which I give him most credit, is in managing to run 2 seperate campaigns, built around his own totally realistic worlds, somehow manage to keep the system going even when people like Joe, Pat and Paul are running around with demi-god versions of anti-paladins and assassins, and do all this in his spare time... He has my deepest respect. People who have never played in a "Serious" AD&D campaign, won't know what I am talking about. But when you get a group who has been playing for that many years, is filled with smart people who have read just about every book concering fantasy/sf/and AD&D, and still keep it interesting, you are doing something very right. He is also the master dm on the ncar gaming system. I give Patrick a lot of credit for setting up that system too, it does beat the only comparable system (Scepter) by a long shot, but electronic AD&D will never come close to the "real" thing, at least not until everyone has the equivalent of a Cray at their fingertips. John is also like the rest of "them" in another respect. He is very strange. He is the only person I have ever met who is a "real" Satanist. He has the mark of the beast tattooed onto his right palm and when he begins talking about his religion it escalates upwards a few decibels until the guy is almost shouting his beliefs. People like Dave pretend to be Satanist's and Nazi's and all kinds of things, because they want to shock or offend people. John is totally serious about it. I've seen him logged into Compuserve on the religion SIG and take on a huge group of Christians about their faith. He brings up weak points and inconsistancies in the bible phrase by phrase and when they start quoting their scripture at him, he typed up the entire text of Book of the Levithian and The Master of the Earth and uploaded it into the Christian reading section. All this on a real account that belongs to him. Those are the main background people, there are a lot more of them but I'm not going to type about 20 more people, just the major ones that I just covered. Part 6 A lot of people came up with a lot of reasons why so many of "them" took off from bbs's and just dropped out of it all. It gets boring and all that shit and everyone eventually pulls out, but most people are still on 4 or 5 systems that they call maybe once a week to get mail or just keep in touch, completely dissapearing doesn't happen that often, because after all you do still have a computer with a modem sitting there doing nothing, and can manage to find 30 mins a week to get your mail. Well they +didn't+ dissapear, they just shifted to another set of systems where nobody knows who they were. And a +lot+ of them are reachable there. Some background on the systems (Which are called Scepter's): In 1983 there was a guy on Osuny named AEK who was at the time in his 2nd year of college I think so at least. Anyhow a couple of us (Myself, Joe, Patrick, Alex , Eric and a few more) got friendly with him and he showed us this game he was working on on a system called MECC (Mnpls, something). It was written in Pascal and was a multi-user online D&D game, which was really great for the time, MegaWars had just come out on CIS and this was like a FRP equivalent. We all ended up playing on it for almost a year when Aek rewrote the whole thing in C, brought a s-100, INC'd himself and started Gambit Multi Systems, which were commerical gaming systems. The first (and only one at the time) of these was in 612 and lasted until Jan of 1986. Aek eventually liscenced copies of the game for about $20,000 and the systems went up in 8 more states, Canada and some people from Switzerland brought their own private one. The systems are huge, have a minimum of 12 lines, 300/2400 baud, a talk system, mail system, board system and the game. And all of us ended up with sysop powers on there. That (for me) was the last break with bbs's. I never called another board after that unless it was just to screw around, and even if they were getting bored of boards, I think it's the same reason Pat and everyone else pulled out in 1984. The system went well, while it never made too much money (it was only a screw around, have fun system for Aek's friends, the main reason he put it up was to charge money to people who wanted to play the game at rates comparable to CIS prime time), but the bucks kept rolling in from all his liscencing fees. So this was great for almost another year. By this time Aek had written 5 more games, none of them had the appeal that Scepter did, and nothing but Scepter spin-offs ever made any money. Eventually a company in Washington outright brought all rights to his most complex Scepter system called "Fiction", CIS brought his mainframe version called "Screenplay : Scepter ][" and in 1986 a company affiliated with TSR in California finally brought out Scepter itself and Aek took his system down, and retired about $300,000 richer than he started. There was going to be a final Scepter to end all Scepter's, something very much like the one Patrick put up on ncar's Cray. It fell through because Aek did all the development work on a Cray he had access to and when he got about halfway through it, he realized that it could never run on anything but a Cray because it was so big and processor intensive, that anything slower than a Cray would bog it down to the point of non-playability. Deciding that he wouldn't be happy just writing more revisions that weren't his idea of perfect, he scrapped it all and sold out to the companies mentioned in the previous paragraph. Gambit was sold to the CA company and renamed InterPlay, for a few weeks they had a system up on telenet called Protocall which went down for whatever reason and hasn't been heard from since. According to them it never be back. They ended up getting people from TSR to rewrite all the rooms into a D&D map that would be the same as TSR's offical world and instead of selling systems and giving people a liscence, they now offer co-ownership to people who want to run a Scepter for $9,000. All this sounded good, but at the moment Interplay is almost bankrupt, and will in all probability go chapter 11 sometime this year. Because as Aek found out: It sounds good, but you can't make money off it. MegaWars worked because it was just another feature given to users by CIS, it wasn't the main attraction and people eventually became addicts on there. But the target audience of Scepter are AD&D players, the problem with that is that most of them don't have a modem and computer, out of the small percentage that do, most don't know about Scepter, out of the even smaller amount that do (facing reality): Scepter does not compare to real AD&D, most people are not willing to pay something like $3 an hour to play something "almost as good". Out of the AD&D people who find it, only about 3% stay and play (about 3 people on each Interplay). That leaves a target audience of "normal" game players. Most of those give up, because the game is much simpler than D&D but still much more complex than MegaWars. This leaves about 20 steady players on any Interplay, most of who end up as DM's who don't pay anyway and in the end the system makes just enough to keep itself running, but takes your original $9,000 investment down the tubes. Most people are not willing to spend $9,000 to own a system that makes no profit, so the systems change owners a lot, and the main Interplay in CA tries hard to sell new systems and all of it is not working out. That leaves the 8 original "private" systems. None of them made any money and there is not 1 system that is owned by the original owner, all of them have changed hands many times. The company that brought fiction was never heard from again, and CIS had some beta of Scepter ][ running for a while and then it was closed off for some reason. By far the biggest problem with Scepter is backdoors and bugs. There are plenty of both in all the versions, what's more Aek never sold anyone the source code so there is no way to take them out. There are only 2 or 3 people with Scepter source code, and none of the companies that brought the game have it. Anyhow, here's a dump of msg's from one of the last original Scepter's. private> msg#: 19278 date: may 14 1986, 4:13am from: Lucifer subj: that's it.... for me anyway. As of now, I am taking off from all the Gambits/Interplays. If you think about it you should realize that this is more or less over. When you first played, it was a great game, but the reason it was great; was because you didn't really know what you were doing. Now we have all the backdoors, every bug, every trick on the system. If we actually play it's 5 hours from 1st lvl to 21st lvl and the most powerful characters on the system. I have always played chaotic neutral or chaotic evil characters, but most of you (with very few exceptions) began as lawful something. At this time there is not one person left who is anywhere near good aligment. If you weren't as tired of it as you are, you wouldn't deviate between aligments so much. You can have master dm on every system in the world, our characters are demigod like in power at any time you want, infinite credits, use of resources, but who really cares, it is no longer fun and hasn't been since sometime in 1985. Suggestion: Let the other systems develop, you know you can have master dm or even destroy everything from a guest account. But what's the challenge, there's nothing left to prove and the only reason you have all the backdoors is because I gave them to you to begin with. So use some discretion and don't cast the master dm spell on every single guest account. Without a total rewrite every Interplay/Gambit is crashable, a total rewrite will never happen because AeK doesn't care about any of this anymore and will not be doing any more games. His contracts expired, he has no more legal obligations, and TSR is going to be very sorry they ever had anything to do with the Gambits. [> Leave CIS alone, they are annoying me about all this shit and are under the impression that I'm responsible for everying you do on there. Calm down and stop rampaging. I've lost everything but 1 sysop account on there and I keep getting threats about how they'll shut that one off as well. Of course they never will, because they're scared of us taking down their entire gaming section, but it's annoying, so take it easy... Rob; stop calling Typo and reading back his current credit cards. He has already changed them 3 times and thinks you are me. I don't really care what he thinks, but last week he served papers on my drop in 303 which will lead them to 213, which costs me money when all those places realize they had 0 real information on me and pocket all my deposits. I am getting tired of this, so either leave him alone or go through the hassle of opening new drops. I have finished the rewrite, all bugs are out, all backdoors are out, all that and it's running on a Cray/Chen-xmp. It now features: o 35 jobs. o No more pauses, everything is always real time. o 10 slots per person. o 150,000 room overhead. o Most of the NY 79-85 campaign is being integrated by John. o Food, drink, light, sleep, heat, cold, air, etc. are all needed now. o ICE critical hits combat system. o Revised psionics. o Missile weapons. o True terrain types + water. o Immortals rules for levels above 39th, to reach actual demigod status. ...etc Take a look at it, basically imagine adding every good feature of SuperRogue, Hack, and Fiction to Scepter and throwing in the AD&D/ICE rules. You can branch off at the syslink to #5. There are 12 Cray's total, 4 run all classified shit, 2 are satelite monitoring, the 6 that are online include 2 of the old models that are used for mail, memos, and utterly boring crap. These have no security to speak of, if you wish to fuck around. They know they're full of `hackers' at any rate, as the idiots who wander into them, make no intelligent efforts to hide themselves, and usually deduce that there are only 2 Cray's and assorted low-tech machines online; when in fact there are 6 of them. None of this really matters, `just though you'd like to know.' Before you get too excited; NOTHING classified is ever kept online. Try not to login before 5pm Moutain time as the adms tend to wonder why there are 35 jobs all linked into my father's account. It is not real money, but they still like to get hysterical over it when I do things of this nature. If you want to use it Twilight's Peak is back up,so just select the application /bbs.tp. Within tp there is an option which automagically reads in the latest data from the uucp link to Los Alamos, so you can read up the latest on high energy laser weaponary, and particle beams. Phoenix (Dave's favourite victim from art) has finally been released from the mental hospital and allowed to go back to playing as long as he stays away from Foul and hence has no need to want to kill himself. Apparently he was not joking when he left that time and said he was going to kill himself for real. He is also (like half the world) putting up his own system which his parents are buying him in the hopes that he won't want to kill himself if he can make his character godlike and exempt from death by Foul. For anyone attempting to reach me; my normal line moved with me when my mother moved, so it still works, but all my data lines are gone. My father's numbers have not changed, but he has added a lockcode system, mine is: 666. So just use that to leave messages on the machine. In europe I will be alternating between the # in Linz and the # in Prague. Do not call me unless it's very important. Well I think that's about it, if you need the 6.6 version of Phantom Access and have Eric's modem modifications and all the attendant hardware you need to run it (fully documented in the last system set-up file), Eric has a copy. To fully utilize all options you will need to give it about 2 mb on a hard disc, so it can feed off it as a sort of virtual memory. If all you need is the final 5.7Kx version, Dave has copies with the 6.6 lookup and more features than the old one had, I realize that many of you want to make use of it without going out of the way with all the modifications, so the enhanced 5.7K should make you happy, all it needs is the standard Cat and 2 disk drives or a single UniDisk. Darkness falls, :Lord Digital msg#: 19279 date: may 14 1986, 4:47am from: Shadow_thief subj: utterly great! What can I say? Loadstone is amazing! very nice. I've been on there since last night when it went up & am now 19th lvl, so you can all bow down or be dead. muahahahahahahaahahaaa. )Shadow-Thief) Dude... why don't you open it for paying people? or sell the software even? I mean if TSR liked gambit, they're gonna shit when they see Loadstone. msg#: 19280 date: may 14 1986, 9:23am from: Scythe2 subj: idiot. I never did like phoenix. If he puts up his gambit I am going to take it down on a hourly basis. I hope the little shit manages to kill himself correctly the next time too. [> You enter town square. obvious exits are North, South, East, West, Down. You see the Town Hall and a Well. Shadow_thief is also here. [> loo sha You see Shadow_thief, the 19th lvl Thief. He looks pale [> fei ste Shadow_thief drops his weapon and shield and runs away like a blithering idiot. You're such a stud Bill. Guess who's a DM? Guess who got all his characters back? der...... Der pat..... why don't you sell the software? der.... they'll only sue you & throw you in jail!!!!1!! Where did Patrick get the Scepter source? What's that? he got a pirated copy of it from AeK? What's that? he didn't pay 20K for scepter? Could that be illegal!!???!! . What's that? you say he ripped the combat system out of ICE & stole more gaming mechanics from AD&D, Travellar & T&T? if he sold it, or let paying people on.... Gambit, TSR, ICE, GDW, and probably Typo, just because he's such a putz. Would sue him. Der..... did we leave our mind on hold Bill? +mod pla Sha int= -18. let's make it more like real life? ok billy? And you all know who is utterly free! moohahahahahaahhahaaahhahahaaahahahhaha off to loot, murder and pillage. Scythe2/Dead of Knight/Scourge Staffers, moooahhahahahhaahahaahahahhahahaahahah 127 charges on it too, roasted ruggies galore. Part 6 msg#: 19281 date: may 15 1986, 6:19pm from: Thanatos subj: is it just me. or do other people want to set Joe on fire? Patrick, how could you! Anti-Paladin's?????? this is like giving him a loaded gun. A 21st lvl Assassin/Anti-Paladin? If he doesn't calm down, I fucking quit, I mean it! no really, I'm serious now! Pissed off Than. At least take away his dm status, this is worse than when he had dm with Shatter. All his stats are 25's, tell me this is rnd? his ss is %90! where the fuck did 90 come from??!? also, very funny with Lucifer. If you're going to leave him on automatic for the next 4 months while you bum around europe, then at least make him friendly. "Wake up, time to die" followed by a disin with 127 int is not my idea of friendly. I ran with 2 vit points left you scumbag. If you guys ever run a real online game business, good fucking luck finding suckers dumb enough to pay you money for being abused. Aughghgh. msg#: 19282 date: may 15 1986, 10:42pm from: Al subj: Scythe, do shut up why don't you..... Kill me Joe. You've never done anything without Lucifer backing you up, one on one, you can't kill me. It's a standstill, so shut up and go die. -Al msg#: 19283 date: may 15 1986, 11:12pm from: Frob subj: Shout, shout, let the blood spill out. Mad Frob the sysop slayer is at large once again. hah hah! 714 Gambit just went to shell, hah hah, 612 Gambit just ate it's userlist, hah hah, canada gambit exit: go *&^!@# <-- exactly. bahahahhahahahahahahahhahahaah I too am free. Scythe, go impress mommy, I don't care! Fearless Frob The all powefull all knowing, all seeing. you get the idea. Pat, in all due respect... go to hell! if I wanna get my kicks destroying gambit's, then you can't stop me, nyah nyah nyah. but I, like everyone else, has pulled out of all of them with my real accounts. You are right in that respect, I think it's time for us to withdraw into valhalla and legend and ... well, who gives a shit anyway. I might end up taking up Dane on his offer, he already has a company going to sell this shit & if Time Lord makes bucks off shit like Proving Grounds, Imagine what my game would do for single user Apple systems? It would rock totally.... and make me money too. FrOb the FeArLeSs msg#: 19284 date: may 15 1986, 11:29pm from: Havok subj: hello.... ?? LD, i need to talk to you, I have complete manhattan datakit stuff & the new docs for all that stuff and a new (working out of npa even!) ROUS! so call me or give me a # that doesn't end in the answering machine to nowhere. msg#: 19285 date: may 15 1986, 11:56pm from: Scythe2 subj: You all suck dead armadillo spew EVERYONES DEAD. fuck it all. hav0k.... if you have his answering machine, it's a indirect way of saying: No I will never talk to you. I have left a thousand msg's on there before seeing what he does with it... which is: hit rewind without playing it. So you can pour your heart out to it and it will go to the twilight zone forever. If you want some chance of reaching him call the # with the lok-sec. if you don't have a code for it, too fucking bad dudey. First 20 people I meet are DEAD, so like run doodz, run... moohahahahahaa. Scythe (You can call me god) 2 In case you haven't noticed, Patrick's account on here did a suicide this morning, so you are typing all this shit for I don't know what reason. The only reason I am even here is to have 1 final rampage before doing a suicide. Leave new hate mail on Twilight's Peak. -S2 And you'd be surprised how much shit people will take, still give you money and say thank you. Don't believe me? Then why did I last for sooo long on ridge? i've been murdering people since day one, everyone knew I had free credits and was a dm with another account, why didn't anyone stop me? msg#: 19286 date: may 16 1986, 2:23am from: Pip subj: why do you need to be so offensive? Joey Joey Joey... you dick. Havok is a 32 yr. old systems analyst from AT&T. You really know how to pick people to rag on. Wait... I'm sorry, I forgot, you're a pain to everyone equally right? jeez. Greg & if I remember right, you were thrown off ridge no less than 10 times! let's be accurate. 1. For hacking 12 accounts. Not to prove it could be done, but to go on and suicide their chars after leaving everyone hate mail. Scythe is bounced first time. You are restored after agreeing to fix each one of the players you fucked up. 2. Posting Technic's phone # on every board. Scythe is bounced second time. You are restored after promising never to do that again, and to never call Technic's mother a "ugly old bitch" again. 3. For carding 5 fake accounts and starting the first rogue assassins guild with yourself instated as every member. Scythe is bounced a third time. You are restored after promising Lisa that you would ask for more accounts in the future if you wanted them, instead of carding them and screwing up the accounting and putting them into a situation where they have to lie to security in order to protect you (god knows why). 4. For murdering everyone at the end of Patrick's original quest & then going on a spree and killing 12 new users, who quit in a huff after having just made 4th lvl, only to have big bad Scythe come in and kill them all. Scythe is bounced a fourth time. You are restored after agreeing to only verbally assualt anyone below 8th lvl. 5. For proving to everyone that you have Patrick's Master-dm account, by making yourself a bunch of cards and teleports devices and then scattering them all over the countryside for people like Stryper and Vadic to pick up. And then turning 5 peoples dm bits on. Scythe is bounced a fifth time, this time taking Lucifer along with him for a total lack of discretion on Pat's part. Patrick calls up Lisa and somehow manages to explain to her satisfaction why you had his dm accounts, why you proved you had it so Pat was actually logged in as 3 people AT THE SAME TIME in full view of all the normal players, and explained why Lucifer should be turned back on. As far as I'm concerned, it should have ended for you right there, because the only reason you made it back on was because of Pat's social engineering. 6. For somehow having your 10-20 Blade of Death, turn into a 127-127 weapon, for suddenly having 4 containers instead of your only one (The case of uppers), for speeding up Mordor to 40 times it's normal rate, so when Technic walks in, he dies 5 seconds later, for creating 63rd lvl, invisible level draining laborers 1 move west of TS, for coming up with a wonderful new treasure type (The (10) armor) that was really a 1 way trip to hell, all combined together, to make Lisa mad and make 100's of people dead. Scythe is bounced a sixth time. Since Lisa has long ago given up any hope that Pat will stop giving you his DM accounts, you are let back on under the condition that you will never touch anything but your own file with the editor. 7. This in my opinion was the best one. For starting a huge rag war, spanning every single board, with the co-OWNER of the gambit you are on, including the posting of his credit cards, # and address (Are you utterly stupid or what? what did you think Rob would do? thank you?). This would be like posting your own parents credit cards (Not that I doubt you'd do it), what did Rob ever do to you? He's the reason you even had a place to be such a asshole, if it had been my Gambit you would have been off the first day. Scythe is bounced a seventh time. You are re-instated after You, Pat, and 4 of us have a 3 hour conference with Rob and convince him to give you your accounts back. Why I was nice that time, I'll never know, maybe I was just dumb. God knows you didn't appreciate it, You turned around and killed me 4 hours later for no reason. 8. For finally bringing Trk's entire tunnel/secret entrance system to the notice of the sysops. You sit there with the guest account going back and forth from completely unaccessible areas for 3 hours. Did you think they wouldn't notice a guest account teleporting from unreachable area to unreachable area, and killing 5 normal players? The sewer/tunnel system could have lasted forever, instead it was turned off and those of us who didn't have teleport devices like you, were cut off from easy magical weapons. Scythe is bounced a eighth time. You are restored after promising to delete all the tunnels (which you never did anyway, you just moved them and cut off everyone else from them) because people like Snurt and Technic were trampling all over them. 9. For moving the acolytes death room to hell, thereby trapping anyone there in a infinite loop of deaths until they hit 1st lvl or hang up. Scythe is bounced a ninth time. You are restored after saying you're real sorry. Why Lisa belives you, I don't know. By now it's obvious you could care less, and the rest of us think that Lisa must be turning into a surrugate mother for you, because being honest, with all the shit you've pulled, you should have ended up thrown off a long time ago not to mention on trial for all kinds of fraud. 10. For getting Eric to turn phantom access onto a SYSOP account, getting it, and renaming every single file and print on the entire system to something clever, editing peoples messages to say things they didn't say. And in general utterly fucking up the entire gambit so Lisa is forced to use a 2 month old backup, because you've fucked up so many things, including deleating the entire playerlist without which, there are no accounts left and no way to enter the game. And leaving a final $ msg. with every single backdoor and bug listed in it, so anyone who reads it can crash all the gambits. Thankfully this was deleated before anyone read it because you know nothing about unix and manage to strand the board on some whacked out subdirectory named "losfer", the game can't find it's eperson files and the entire hard disk is blown. Scythe is bounced a tenth and final time. What he said I don't know, but somehow Pat gets you your account back yet another time. The only reason you didn't get bounced a 11th time is because you voluntarily suicided and became a legend instead of being thrown off a few weeks in the future for doing something else stupid. I'm sorry Pat, but I blame you for most of this. I know you don't care about anything, but if it wasn't for you Joe couldn't harm shit, he also isn't good enough to be able to bullshit like that. With the way it was going Scythe could have shot Lisa's son, had you call up and say he was really sorry, and the next hour Scythe would have his account back. I know YOU didn't do anything, but you know what a asshole Joe is, and not only do you fail to control him (Don't give me this "I'm not his keeper" shit, if you "suggest" that you want him to do something, you know he'll do what you tell him to), but by bailing him out of everything he gets himself into, encourage him to become a bigger and bigger asshole. Joe: You are a total asshole. It's taken me many years to stop thinking "he's just a kid", because I finally realize you are totally aware of everything you do, and STILL don't care. I also blame you for destroying a lot of the "feel", don't tell me you didn't, because when you were "into" playing, you had a Blade of Murder, Tensor's Shiled, and the cloak of the Giants. Just because YOU are bored is no reason to destory the feel of it, I'm not going to tell you that all the new lusers always looked up to you, since you already know that. But when you begin walking around with: A Contagious Disease (12) A Giant Condom (8) Earl the Dead Cat (+8) A Tire Iron (+5) A Leperous Sheen (8) as well as barrel's of Agent Orange, Jack Daniels and Vials of Crack, 2 days later a 100 of your groupies are doing the same thing and fuck up the game for those of us that were serious. Seeing: ### Scythe2 was just thrown in jail for attacking a maiden with a tire iron. ### Scythe2 just killed Valerious in cold blood with Earl the Dead Cat. ### Scythe2 just murdered Trasher with a condom. every 5 minutes, totally destroy's the "feel" of the game. Well kids, that certainly was heavy handed wasn't it? Summed up I think your (Joe) entire problem is the fact that you can't differenciate between a 2 drive board and someone's mainframe legitimate business. You treat the business as your own personal toy, have no second thoughts about all the things like accounting, records, etc, you are fucking up by playing games with it. & Pat's problem is a lack of discretion in giving you any information or program that you want, when he KNOWS that the only thing you could possibly use anything for is to fuck something up for someone else. It's also funny how you FULLY REALIZE what you're doing, you NEVER do anything to any of Pat's boards or systems, you only hurt people who have done nothing to you except made the mistake of being dumb enough to trust you. I'm forwarding this entire thing to Twilight's Peak, so you can respond to it there. I know you won't care.... thinking back on it... neither do I, fuck it. Off to suicide I go. -Greg msg#: 19287 date: may 16 1986, 4:32am from: Count_zero subj: have insomnia do we greggy? greg.... shut up. call george, you're starting to sound just like him. It's probably hard for you to understand the concept, but maybe Patrick is friends with Joe? (no!) and doesn't view this shit as important? (Which it's not.) face it, do you give a shit? NO, what really pisses you off is Joe killing you all the time. Paul/Stamp out rich whiteboys society. (jes kiddin massah) Joe - just because i agree with you at this moment, doesn't mean i like you. In fact I dont, & you do that to me & I'm coming to your house with my (+127) fist, which will put a nice dent into your 21st lvl face. ps: give Cathy a feel for me, since I'm not there in person to use her like everyone else. .....that was pretty cruel wasn't it... hmmmm....... nah..... I don't feel bad.... ......well maybe a little, her only crime is poor taste in boyfriends. today's George fable: George the born again buddist explains why he has no qualms about carding, selling crack and stealing cars. George: Well.... there's nothing in there that says I shouldn't make money ya know, I mean this isn't christianity ya know, I mean you understand right? When George is faced with the prospect of eating a hamburger on the other hand: That's against my religion..... Hmmm...... maybe he's got something there. and the Final Famous Franki qoute: upon hearing Falco's "rock me amadeus" Frank: Did Amadeus really write that? I thought he was dead. msg#: 19288 date: may 16 1986, 9:54pm from: Paradox subj: role playing. I think it all comes down to what role playing really is... I will forward this message to Twilight's Peak so everyone can reply to it, but I would like to get some replies to this, as I've spent some time thinking about it. First of all, when is the last time you guys (Mostly I'm talking to Lucifer, Scythe, Darnkess, Al, and Murder) played? I mean really played like all the other users have to? It's been about a year hasn't it? your last real Lucifer was in 85 that is the final time you actually played him to 21st, but that was the end because you set up some quest with a dm account and made yourself a demi-god with 127 int. But at 21st lvl it doesn't matter anymore, there is no- where left to go, so you might as well. Frob has never played, one day he is 1st lvl, and 15 minutes later he is 21st lvl with NO train's in dayfile, it's more than obvious that he's using the backdoors. Scythe, same thing as Lucifer I know you made it on 2 systems before that, but what about all the other Scythe's? You have 1 character cloned across a 100 Scepter's. You only made 21st lvl twice, yet have at least 50 incarnations of Scythe at 21st lvl all over the place. Role playing one deeper: I think I can conclude that the reason most of you are good at social engineering, is because you've spent so many years role playing and pretening you are a thousand different people on a thousand different worlds, that you are able to translate this to reality and lie so well. Because at the moment you are pretending to be Head of security, or a operator, or a bank tellar, or anything else, you actually beleive you are, act like you are, and are 100% sure of yourself. With that kind of attitude other people also beleive you. We could all be great actors or criminals (not that some of us aren't already). But this goes on forever... I am not a moral person, but do you ever think about the people you hurt along the way? all these owners and administrators, and others, that take you at face value, because they have no reason not to, and actually think they are friends with "you", when there is nothing there but another "fake" personality, and they have no idea who "you" really are. I think the funniest thing is: at this point, neither do you. I have seen you guys answer questions from other people who you've known all your lives. How old are you? how did you spell your last name? where do you live now? .... it's not automatic anymore, you pause and have to think about it. After so many years of pretending to be other people, you are losing your own identity. When people ask you a normal question, your automatic response is to give them the data on your current fake personality, and to revert back to the "real" you, takes some thought. I don't mean we've entered the twilight zone and you are lost, the real "you" that was born and exists on your real birth certificate and has real parents, went to school somewhere, and did things, lived and lives, is still there. But that is purely physical, it's the same slab of meat, but: YOU DON'T HAVE A REAL PERSONALITY LEFT. I thought about this and it scared the shit out of me, because it's true and it's come very close to happening to me. (From Websters) Personality: 1. The quality or fact of being a person. 2. The quality or fact of being a particular person; individuality. 3. Distinctive individual qualities of a person, considered collectively. YOU'VE LOST THIS. You have been playing so many people over such a long period of time, that you don't have a real personality left. The same things happened to me. I noticed this when my parents suddenly came to the conclusion that I was a perfect son. I thought about it, and the simple reason was: I stopped caring. If I did certain things, my parents would be happier, and I would have less problems with them. So I did them and my parents thought I had finally seen their viewpoint, when all I had seen was the glorious path of least resistance. I began role playing their ideal son. And when you end up doing this ALL THE TIME like most of you (and me) are doing, where does that leave the real you or me? nowhere, because it's gone. I realize that we make perfect criminals, we don't even have any personal habits left, but I didn't grow up wanting to be a criminal, I don't know what I wanted, but it wasn't to become a empty void that can become any personality while having none for myself. I don't even remember what used to make me mad, or even happy for that matter. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but all of you are the same way if you realize it or not. Paradox That's it for the Scepter messages, the last one is weird but true for most of them, but I don't think it's really a right description. They just care about different things now, than they used to. Not that I understand the things they do care about. Part 7 So much for that. That's all I planned on typing, but since I'm in the mood, I'm going to give you my own opinion on a lot of this. First of all, I want to say this right now: Tap was the biggest waste of my life ever, second only to AD&D, but I don't consider AD&D a waste. I went to this place for 3 years, just to see Tap get bounced out of one restaurant after another, seeing a bunch of people madly scrambling through the latest phone magazines available at the nearest newstand. There WERE exceptions, but Pat I could talk to anytime, the only thing he ever did at Tap was fall asleep (for real). Paul Muad'Dib seemed like a smart guy, but yet another one of the group that is in love with himself, the only people he would ever talk to were Agent 6, Pat and Chesire Cat. Everyone else he just ignored until he also fell asleep or left 5 minutes into the meeting. And I am not joking, 30 minutes into any meeting Pat would be sliding off his chair and looking at the ceiling and Paul went one further by falling asleep slumped over the table. The story I got on all that was that neither one of them got too much sleep the night before, but this is not what I drag my ass down to greenwhich village for every week. Then there was 6 who IS a smart guy, in his late 30's or early 40's, but he will never answer a simple question, he always answers a question with another question, and he sits there scribbling on this little pad, I'm sure he must have 5,000,000 of those little pads stored somwhere by now. After Patrick and Paul ended up asleep, he usually begins staring into his soup hoping the meaning of life will be revealed to him there, or looking at a wall. Then there is Chesire, who as someone said "is a tired old man". He is neither impressive or very interesting anymore. Then there are a bunch of what Richard termed "the 950 kode kids" who come and go, a Russian immigrant who's gay, a bunch of people who don't realize the 60's were 20 years ago, and this weird french guy who is always walking around with a bunch of locks and camera's. This group might have changed somewhat, since my last Tap meeting was 4 months ago and now I just go once every few weeks to see if anything will happen (It never does and it never will). The best Tap meeting I ever had was when Dave and Yuri showed up. That was pure magic, by the end of the meeting half the people wanted to kill Dave & the other half were begging Yuri for his phone # or some way to reach him for help on their hardware projects. I think that 212/718 and 714 are the two most unique areas in the US. These are the places where most of the original pirates, hackers and phreaks started out. And there is now such a huge population of them that people whose only desire is to write files about them come up. I could be defined as one of them I guess but I was never really a pirate or phreak or hacker, my main association with all these people was playing D&D. So every few weeks a new 714 pirate review comes out, or a new exposing file about what all the people were really like at Tap comes out. I don't know about 714 because I don't live there, but I started thinking about who would be writing all this stuff in the 212/718 area. Now I know who wrote Tap.Interviews, that was Richard, if you used to go to tap, then you know him. But there have been so many files since then, and before that, especially the Atom's. Now I started thinking about how the Atom who lives in 512 would manage to collect so much (mis)information about so many people. The pirates he probably knew through trading new warezzzzzz, but where did all the phreaks come from? I thought about the National Enlightener stuff too, but the Gonif has the unique position of having gone from rodent, to elite and back to 'rodent' again, so he probably knew all those people, or had mutual friends who knew them, besides which his files weren't expose' files, they were just buffers of msg's from boards, and his own humor. So as much as it hurt me to do it, I re-read Famous Losers and came up with this gem at the end, I quote the Atom: "It was ridiculously easy to collect information on these people, some of them even have fan clubs devoted to them." I'm sure all of them have enemies who would tell anyone anything about them, but that left the question of where he dug up information on Criminal Element and Broadway Hacker. Broad- way was a pain in a lot of peoples ass' around that time, so he might have left the Commodore world of which he is a part and made waves in even the Apple world. But where did he get Criminal Element from? A lot of people from the old 1200 Club and Untouchables hate Carl, because he used to login to their systems a long time ago trailing in on Lord Digital's name to get access, and then turn the entire board against himself. But he never told anyone anything about him- self, Carl is a asshole at times, but he is not dumb. This left the NY fan club who would naturally know all about Carl. When I re-read the Atom's file it finally clicked, there was a real fan club of people who idolized Lord Digital in NY. This was really funny and sad, because the members weren't even 12 yr. old geeks, most of them were closer to 18. So they used to sit around and collect information on him and all his friends and call the local boards of that day and post all this shit, and even had their own board up. Then there was another collection of "local losers" The losers I specifically remember from that time are: Captain John, Media Master, Professor Hacker, I/O Error, ?Syntax Error, King Arthur, The Galactic Knight, Disk Rigger (using Disk Raper then) Red Ghost, Steve Zap, The Cursor and more people who I've forgot. Most of the people I just listed have gotten out of computers, but the people who were into all this rumor mongering shit, were total losers and still call boards are: King Arthur, The Galactic Knight (Now called Dead Lord), Disk Rigger (Rodent to the stars), and Captain John and Media Master are also around under new names which change all the time. Another one of what I term "dingbats of 85" was Lockness Pirate, who is now Sigmund Fraud. I didn't believe this when I saw someone post this on Direct Connect, but then he came on and admitted that he used to be Lockness Pirate. Well personally I offer my congratulations to Siggy who has become literate since his Lockness Pirate days, almost every member of the "dingbats" still hasn't managed to accomplish that little trick. A little background info, Direct Connect always was and still is a pretty lame board in NY. It's not lame because of the Sysop, who started with a modified NW and ended up writing his own software which is like a telecat for Prodos with a few more mods, a good job. It's lame because of what he has for users, who are mostly more dingbats. The board has been up for almost 3 years and has gone through a few name changes, at one time it was another Criminal Element co-run bbs during the NYPA/EPG stupidity that CE, along with Captain Avatar and half of NY were in. More background: In 1984 (yes, ancient history!) Lord Digital, Joe (with what ever name he was using), his brother, and Finious Fingers (from the 1200 club, now the owner of a mail order chain), were all out in long island dragging up and down some highway. The guy who was driving was Finious, and the final story I got on why he did what he did, was that he had only 1 point left on his liscence, and that if he got busted for doing 90 in a 55 mph zone, his drivers liscence would be taken away for a year. So when a cop pulled up behind him, he floored it and took off. He was driving a Corvette so he managed to get away from the cop chasing him, but ended up doing something like 85 off a off- ramp that was iced up, he lost control and the car flipped over the edge and smashed all over another car underneath it. To make a long story short, they all ended up in the hospital, Finious ended up with a fucked up car and no drivers liscence, and the smashed car ended up in a bunch of newspapers as "4 teenagers almost killed in high speed car chase" with a photo of their car, the car they hit, and a bunch of spectators in the background. None of them had more then some broken fingers, but Patrick dissapeared for almost a month during a time when he was going to Tap every week and still on boards, for some reason, during this exact time Paul Muad'Dib also dissapeared for about a month, and everyone came up with "Lord Digital & Paul Muad'Dib died in a car wreck." Joe ended up logging into boards as "Dead Lord" as a joke about all of this, and the then some kid (Galactic Knight) liked it and changed his name to Dead Lord. Joe then logged "Brain Hemmorage" into the board and had a war with the new Dead Lord starting with declaring he was Criminal Element's ghost, and the real CE was flatlined and brain dead, which was the reason he acted like an asshole, and eventually led to another Joe first, in which he created "Captain Spellright!" and told King Arthur, Galactic Knight, Disk Rigger and a few other moron's who were "kra[> [>00[>!!!@#" all over the place and being serious about it, that they must begin using correct grammer and spelling or he would post their #'s and beat the shit out of them. This was so funny I still have buffers of it, they started out predictibly enough by telling him to fuck off, and ended up using as close to perfect grammar and spelling as they could get and begging him to just leave them alone. Eventually they discovered codes and their stupidity spread to the rest of the world and some of them are lesser fuckup's, while others (Disk Rigger) have gone onto exploring new and until now, unknown plateau's of moronic behaviour. This all came together when I read Tap.Interviews II, In the first place it rags on the Tavern. Of course they wouldn't have liked the Tavern, All I rem- ember about them is that King Arthur used to call up and post msg's like: "Why can't I connect at 1200 baud with Catfur?", "You should add a download section if you have 47 megs and 6 lines it would be the best catfur ever!" and shit like this. Second it was uploaded to everywhere by Dead Lord. Third it is the exact same style of writing that Dead Lord uses all over Direct Connect, it rags on Disk Rigger, LOD, Blotto and everyone else they don't like, and tells everyone to call Draco Tavern, which is the place Dead Lord spends most of his life logged into. I don't support 'elites', and personaly think LOD is a joke, all elite groups are a joke, Blotto is a joke if he means what he says in his reply to the Atom, but that is their privledge! You can be a "rodent" or a "elite" or anything you want, it's up to you how you choose to have fun. But what I don't consider acceptable behaviour is taking someone elses name and dragging it through the mud. And that is what they are doing. First of all 3 names that everyone seems to be fascinated with are: BIOC Agent 003, Lord Digital, and King Blotto. Not mentioning the 20 BIOC users who don't claim to be him and just trample his name BIOC Agent 009, 010, 001, 007 and others, there a a bunch of people who spend their time impersonating these people. At least one of which is Dead Lord. They have logged Blotto into at least 25 boards, dragged him through endless bitch wars and have fucked up many boards. I know Blotto calls boards, but unless the guy is a total moron, then he wouldn't post the shit he does, and I've seen his real posts, and this stuff is nothing like his normal style. The next is even funnier, they brought Lord Digital back and logged him into "Pit Fiends" board and a few others, and got themselves "Phreak Advisor" status on a bunch of boards using his name. Another one of my treasured humor buffers contains a msg. posted by "Lord Digital", full of moronic shit like "King Blotto" was posting, and dated June of 1986. The guy has been in Europe since the third week of May! and won't be back until the summer is over. While it's understandable that "King Blotto" might fool people, it's hard to believe sysops are so stupid that they believe "Lord Digital" is going to come back and call their board after everything Richard quoted from him in Tap.Interviews. Naturally why not have all three? That is the same board "BIOC Agent 003" also appeared on. Why they think he's come back is also beyond me. The sysops of most places are blind I guess. I've talked to some of them and they brag about having done this for 2 years (used their names). I would never have said anything, because Dead Lord has as much a right to post or write anything he wants as everyone else. But when he logs other people into boards all over the place and drags them into bitch wars, that's not cool in my humble opinion. It's not just Dead Lord, there is King Arthur, Disk Rigger, and a few assorted other local moron's who do this (Max Headroom, Psychodelic Shroom, and I have my suspicions about Sigmund Fraud, as sometimes it gets too literate for Dead Lord to be doing all the writing. Which Sigmund Fraud I'm not sure, since there are two of them). But the all time funniest impersonations I have ever seen, are people using Richard's name. What's more, they're too dumb to even read the way he spells it, login to places using 'The Infiltraitor' and pretend to be him. To me it's just so overwhelmingly stupid that people would want to pretend to be Richard, that I almost can't understand it. If you're impersonating someone at least do a decent job, not even spelling the guys name right? come on! Then I call up Brainstorm and leave mail to their "Infiltraitor" about Tap.Interviews, he says he wrote it, then I ask him what his first name is and how he spells his name and he doesn't know, great impersonation. Tap.Interviews II didn't seriously pretend to be Rich, but Dead Lord still managed to spell his name 3 different ways in one file alone, not one of them the right way. Part 8 A open message to all the "Pirate" bbs sysops with delusions of grandeur: Ever since the Adventurer's Tavern went down, every geek in the US with a Sider and some software has declared: "Let's make this the next Tavern". I laugh a lot and wonder about these people, but it will NEVER EVER, EVER, happen. You want to know why? Let me count the reasons: You say you have Mr. Crack 'em All and the entire membership of every elite pirate group in the world on your board? Well who exactly got ground into the dust on the Tavern? Was it the same Mr. Crack 'em All, and the rest of the "elites"? HELL YES. You say you have most of the big name older respected pirates who are still around on your bbs? How many of them actually post, call more than once every 3 months, and when they do post, post something besides a request for some utility they need? None you say? RIGHT AGAIN. The only place any of them are "active" is on their own boards which charge fees to get on so morons can bask in their presence, and on Pirates Harbor where they all rake in the bucks for showing up. You say you have the latest m0d to telecat 46.9 made by mr. mega crack and the cracko commandos, and every transfer program ever written is on your 600 volume catfur line? Who gives a fuck besides the morons who migrate from one catfur to another and leech or upload new wares? NOBODY. How many of those morons can get past print statements in basic or hardcore copy cracks? NOT TOO MANY. Did the Tavern ever even have ANY transfer section? NO! You say you want a intelligent forum on discussing programming and collect all kinds of interesting information? How can you do this when you censor messages, tell people what they can or cant post, delete people off your board whenever any of them dares to question your motives or rules, and in general act like a tyrant telling everyone exactly what is or isnt allowed? YOU CAN'T DO IT! The reason the Tavern worked was very simple: The Gunslinger was mature enough to make reasonable rules and not act like god incarnate. He gave everyone a board for what they needed, if someone posted a rag on the wares board he just deleated it without wetting his pants, ranting and screaming and threatening to throw people off. Nobody forced the pirates to read the rag sub, or forced the "moralists" to read the crashers sub or forced anyone to do anything. You know what? It worked perfectly. The programming subs had all kinds of good programming information, the wares sub had new wares out, and all the "elites" didn't even have time to get into their own boring "my group is better then your group" posts, because they were kept too busy trying to defend themsevles against the Old time big name pirates, and people with some intelligence, who were grinding the new wares kids into the dust all over the roustroom. I call up any of the "elite" transfer boards and I see them trying to copy the roust room. What's on their versions of the roust room? people getting mad at the sysop for censoring and deleating their posts when anyone says anything that upsets the sysop, lame rags with people trying to copy Elven Wizard, Tracer (714), and the Gonif's style, and boring group wars. You want all the cool users to call up, and give you great info. Yet your login messages say: No hacking, phreaking, hackers or phreaks allowed on. Why's that? Because you don't want to be busted! WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING RIGHT NOW? PIRACY IS ILLEGAL AND YOU WILL SEE 50 ANGRY PUBLISHER ORGANIZATIONS ON YOUR ASS SUEING YOU FROM ALL SIDES, THE MINUTE 1 DISGRUNTLED EX MEMBER, OR PERSON WHO KNOWS ABOUT THE BOARD BUT COULD NEVER GET ON IT, GIVES YOUR PHONE # TO JUST 1 SINGLE PIRATE VIGILANTE ORGANIZATION. The reason "pirates" don't get busted is easy to answer: who is going to know your a pirate or do something about it if they find out? NOBODY. If you run a 50 meg pirate board with 100 copyrighted programs all over it, who is going to take the time to sue you? 100 COMPANIES, GIVE OR TAKE 5 OR 6 SMALL TIME ONES WITH NO BUCKS TO SUE. ALL THEY NEED IS JUST 1 PERSON WHO DOESN'T LIKE YOU TO LET SOMEONE KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING ON YOUR BOARD. You think I'm wrong? Call up Bytenet, call up STC, read Infoworld, call up ANY network with ANY reps from magazines or publishers on it. They are getting pissed off at pirates, and you will see bust after bust after bust listed on there, with "scouts" from all ovr the place givng them more board #'s, and parents saying "my son has 800 disks of these games I thought were public domain, but then I found out, so here is his entire list of bbs and pw's he used to be on before I found out". PIRACY IS A CRIME YOU MORONS. Just like phreaking and hacking, only with piracy you have individuals and companies who lose as much as 90% of their profits mad at you, with phreaking and hacking you have companies to who you are a tax writeoff for the losses you give them, mad at you. Who's mad as hell? the phone companies lose nothing at the end of the year their insurance pays it off, the software publishers have "loss of sales" which cant be written off. They'd like to see you torn to little pieces, or sued for all you have. Every single "rodent" in the world who has something against you, or just thinks it would be funny to bust you, can turn you in and rake in the bucks. You know how easy it is to do a CNA? VERY EASY. A "rodent" could make a career just out of busting boards. It's like someone said on the Tavern: It's not the hardware that makes a board it's the users and the atmosphere. Telecat, cccccoooll modzzzz and 23 versions catfur, ae, bme, radterm, and fastsend with the new and improved new warezzzz scan, clock readout, and return to board feature!@#!@# just don't cut it. Its just another tranfser board, and you cant turn it into another Taven without the Tavern's users, and mentallity, and YOUR own willingness not to censor, and let everything take its course. I have yet to see ONE sysop with the maturity to handle it. A couple of things to say about the latest phreak magazines: Phrack: Written by morons, for morons. Every article that ever appears in it is plagerised from some telecom magazine. That leaves the "news" section, which is Knight Lightning's version of a gossip rag. And he takes himself seriously. Not only does it tell you everything you never wanted to know about every rodent who ever got busted, but it's wrong so often that it's not funny. Here are a few gems from it: (dated 1986) "the big new pirates group in the Apple world that is replacing MPG are the Racketeers." Does someone want to tell me where they've been for the last 2 years? Some kid who has a Apple and lives around the corner from Knight Lightning boots up Rescue Raiders in his prescence and he decides to make this the basis of a 5 paragraph article on Apple pirating groups written from nobodies viewpoint at all since most of them have IBM's and don't have the slightest idea of what they're talking about. Big "old" groups: Knights of Shadow: Sir Knight's group. WHAT? they HATED Sir Knight who never had anything to do with the group in the first place. Inner Circle: The guy from the book. LOD: They publish the LOD memberlist every other issue, get it wrong, and keep correcting it in all the inbetween issues. Inner Circle, Knights of Shadow, and Legion of Doom (in their order of appearance in the modem world) were the 3 biggest and longest lasting groups in phreak/hacker history. I don't support any of them and think they were all full of egotistical morons, but if you're going to write about them, at least know what you're talking about. From reading Phrack, I'd never know anything about Inner Circle or TKOS, since all of 1 line is devoted to them, that 1 line managing to have 100% wrong information. As for LOD a incorrect member roster keeps getting published and that's it. Then they give you the life history of 20 local (to them) groups that nobody has ever heard of, explain why they fell apart 2 days later and tell you what every one of the members are doing now. Most of all: Who cares? Following that, just about everything ever written is WRONG, not to mention useless. Do Mark Tabas and Karl Marx really want the world to know they were busted for something so stupid that even people like Neon Knight's members get away with it? Is it any of anyone's business? In this case I agree 100% with Dead Lord, it's a great thing to read if you want to get depressed about life. Then you can read their news and feel even worse about everything by reading 70 sectors of busts, more busts and still more busts of people nobody cares about. Knight Lightning himself is as far as I can see, a nobody, who has never done anything except develop of fetish for MCI. The first issue of phrack started this by publishing a dialup list of MCI nodes from him (as if it hasn't been done 500 times already) and it just keeps going forever with him copying the latest MCI NEWS excerpts every single issue. Well I have news for you, If I wanted to read fucking MCI NEWS I would get on their goddamn mailing list, which I'm already on, so I get to read MCI NEWS 2 times each month. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU DO THIS? YOU COULD JUST AS EASILY LIST THE ADDRESS FOR MCI NEWS AND LET EVERYONE WHO CARES GET ON THEIR MAILING LIST, WHILE SPARING THE REST OF US. ANYONE WHO HAS ANY SOCIAL ENGINEERING ABILITY CAN GET A FREE SUBSCRIPTION IN ALL OF 45 SECONDS AND 1 PHONE CALL. It finally ends with phone interviews of 10 rodents who got busted and will now give you a complete interview of why they think they got busted, who to look out for, and more tips like this from people who manage to get themselves busted for using metros. I'VE GOT MORE NEWS FOR YOU: I DON'T NEED WISDOM FROM SOME MORON WHO CAN GET HIMSELF CAUGHT FOR USING A FUCKING METRO CODE OR THROWN IN JAIL FOR NEVER RETURNING THEIR LIBRARY BOOKS OR WRITING BAD CHECKS. Phrack also has a "forum" where people can blab about what they consider you should know about, but unfortunately for anyone who reads it. The people who do all the talking in Phrack are DULL and if you are anything near normal, you really don't want to know what Captain Hacker (215) thinks of of the latest computer laws and He-Man episodes. 2600: Doing the same thing they've always done. Publish some rumors, followed by 4 pages of newspaper clippings of people getting busted. The only good thing to be said for 2600 magazine is their push for phreaks rights. Bootlegger: I used to laugh, now I just feel a little like I feel after reading Phrack, Depressed. Bootleg himself is ok, he also manages to get some decent people to write for him sometimes, but that's it. Tap: The Whacko Cracko Brothers will come out with a 90000 page, hardcover issue, from volume 1 to 999, as soon as they get out of jail, buy a printing press and get people to send in donations. If you didn't get it, that was a rag. Phreak magazines either exist to make their moron "publishers" more "elite" (Phrack and its like), or to sponge up money from gullible people who want to learn all about "phreaking and hacking" by buying them. This brings me to my MAJOR mad as hell point. Loompanics: This is a mail order book company that will sell you all kinds of "secret" and controversial information available at your local library, in paperback format, done on a offset press and selling for $20-150 bucks per book. Their latest gem is a xerox copy of visa/amex/mc merchant # rules, which they sell for $65, and which you can get for free by calling any of the 3 clearing houses that serve visa/amex/mc. One of their newest books is "The Computer Underground" which sells for $15 and says things like: Learn all about the secret underground! learn who's doing all the crime, etc. I brought it because I wanted to laugh, I didn't even laugh because it's all off of 1 fucking bbs. Sherwood Forest ][. And the entire book is a 40 column, shitty dot matrix printer reprint of SF msgs. This includes: A listing of Cat's Meow, which is (C) so what they did it illegal, but who's going to sue them? A listing of a micromodem hacker. BIOC's files. A reprint of a article about computer break ins, followed by the Knights of Shadow mainframe hacking files. A reprint of a article about ADS hacking followed by Lord Digital's ADS hacking file. Dr. Who's original COSMOS hacking file. LOD's first COSMOS hacking file (which is wrong in a lot of places. Not that Dr Who's is any better, but he typed up a manual which isn't wrong, while Lex gave you his interpretation of the manual, which is wrong). King Blotto's boxing file. And 30 pages full of a war between LOD (Sharp Razor representing LOD) & HOJ (the Hall of Justice, whatever the fuck that is). THEY DEVOTE 30 FUCKING PAGES TO THIS, AND EVEN INCLUDE THE 'PHREAKS CODE' AS WRITTEN BY HOJ. SO TELL ME THIS: WHO THE FUCK IS HOJ? HOJ WAS SOME COLLECTION OF MORONS LIKE SPIDERMAN, SUPERMAN, AND OTHERS WHO LOGGED INTO SF][ TO HAVE A WAR WITH LOD AND SHARP RAZOR DIDN'T LET THEM DOWN, SO THEY HAVE SOME HUGE ARGUEMENT, BUT THEN THIS MORON TURNS AROUND AND TAKES IT SERIOUSLY REPRINTING THEIR POSTS OF HOW (AND I QUOTE) "we were sitting on a remob waiting for you." This wasn't even a exploitation book, it was so dumb I don't know what to say about it. 1 guy logs into 1 board, leeches all the low level G sections, down loads the general board which happens to contain a LOD/HOJ war at the time, and now Loompanics sells this for $15. And all the rest of their books are the same kind of shit, overpriced, useless, wrong information, and what is right, is out of date. What I'm trying to say is: DON'T BUY FROM LOOMPANICS. Loompanics second "hacking" book is called "The Hacker's Handbook" which should have a subtitle "Selected chapters from radio shack manuals at a 900% markup". It's not even worth talking about. In addition to all that, I've talked to 2 other people who brought the book, I brought a copy in Jan of 86, one brought one in Dec 85, and another one got it in June of 86. AND NOT ONE OF THEM ARE THE SAME! They keep getting smaller and smaller, mine has less articles then the one from Dec and the one published in June is almost 1/2 the size of mine. Which probably means someone is putting pressure on them to cut out certain articles. Their price has of course gone up since then. Some things to say about other people: Red Ghost: Came back (I don't know why) to write the Apple Mafia Story. From what I know about the Apple Mafia, it's right in everything he said. But Mike, why come back at all? Sherlock Apple: Gets my award for lasting the longest as a "pirate" without learning how to program. It's been over 3 years since I first saw his name, and he is still doing the same thing: THANKS TO. meaning: ware brought by. The only difference is that he has slid from Apple Mafia who got beta copies from their members who had developer friends and Sherlock just distributed the wares, down to Digital Gang, where he just buys the wares. His sidekick Silicon Scorpion has yet to resurface, but I'm sure he'll be back too. He will always be remembered by me as the prototype of new warez kids to come. He was a man before his time, but his vision has come true and there are 1000's of people just like him out there now. Gonif: Keep up the good work guy, I used to think you were a typical loser pseudo-elite (which you were for a few months there). Skip Rooney: Are you really so insecure about yourself that you need to get attention by bringing up Phantom Access all the time? Getting a 5 word mention in Tap Interviews was probably the high point of your "career", so you are now an official pseudo-elite and get all the attention you crave. Isn't that enough? why do you find it necessary to work people into a frenzy by mentioning it all the time. With the exception of you, nobody else who has it feels it's necessary to use it as some kind of ego-booster. I don't really know anything about you so I presume Patrick considered you trustable, but why act like Carl and taunt people with things they can't have? Unless you decide to try to boost your dwindling popularity by actually giving it out, in which case you will gain the momentary admiration of all the gnu wherez kidz. If that's what you want so much why don't you just give it out? You never will give it out, because that's the one thing that gives you some imagined superiority over everyone else. Sometimes I think that may be the reason Pat even gave you a copy to begin with. Try to look at it objectively, you aren't the only one with a copy, I have it, Dave has it, Joe has it before anyone else, some group of people has it in California, Xerox has it, I'm sure Paul Muad'Dib has it, Yuri has it, Paul has it, John has it, The Tempest has it at least 10 other people that I don't know have it. And unless your hardware has increased by a lot since the last time I talked to you, you don't even have the hardware to run the full version. So what does that leave you with? if you have it, the full Phantom Access mouldering in a pile of disks which you can't use, and the smaller version which I along with 20 other people have. Who does that leave you superior to? The losers on bbs systems, sure. But you shouldn't need a crutch to feel superior to them. This leaves you with the solitary pleasure of booting it up and having multiple orgasms looking at the main menu. That and 10 feet of c0dezzzzzzz to call c000l catfurzzzzz with and hack ELITE pws! Lastly you should ask yourself why all the losers you feel superior to don't have it. The only reason they don't is because nobody besides you, who has a copy, calls Cat-Furs or even knows any of the current generation. Take a look at Tap Interviews (I'm sure you have a framed copy with your name highlighted in bright yellow, sitting in a glass case in front of you), does it not directly quote from Pat "I don't care who has a copy, or what my friends do with it"? What is his attitude towards old programs? Isn't it: Give them to whoever wants them? Isn't that what happened to Code Finder and all the others before that? The minute the newest version is done all the old versions get given out. The final Phantom Access is a very large step up from the one you and I use so why should he care if everyone has ours? He introduced the most effective copy protection I can think of into the final version: that being the requirement of lots of peripherals and modem modifications to use it. Who is going to spend a few thousand on hardware just to run a program? Where are they going to find out the Apple Cat mods? Nowhere. And where does that leave the next to the last version? Also nowhere. It's a great program if you use it for what it is, a very effective programmable hacker. But it's not some kind of mystical talisman that makes you better than everyone else. I considered uploading it onto every loser infested 80 meg Rad-Fur in the world for a while Skip, the only reason I'm not doing it is because I think even less of the "people" who call them then I think of you. And it's not worth it to burst your bubble at the price of making morons happy. If you want to feel great about yourself, do it, but don't require some kind of crutch. Arrogance is its own reward, and you might as well be happy with yourself if nobody else is. I am now placing bets that Skip will change his handle by the time I leave the modem world for good this August. I predict it will happen between now (July) and then. Every board I look at it looks like Skip has worn out his welcome, and as we all know: When the going gets tough, Skip changes his handle. Skip if you're reading this: How do you get so many people to hate you so fast? Didn't you just change names a few months ago? Didn't the same thing happen to you the last time? You are a normal person when I have seen you in person, you might be a little ecentric, but you aren't a asshole. What you say even rings of intelligence at times, so why do bbs' bring out the worst in you? I will be at my last show this August, since I know you'll be there like you're at every other show, I will probably see you there and even introduce myself as the author of this file in case you don't make the connection with my real name. You can then tell me how much you hate me or get someone to try to break my legs, or if you feel really mad maybe even try to do it yourself. I typed all this because I wanted to say everything I had to say after all the years I've seen all this. As much as I'd like to I can't become another Patrick or Carl, because my parents wouldn't put up with this shit, so I have to go out in the real world and enter college this August, which will be my final cut from all of this. I'm glad it's over, because as bogged down as it gets in parts (I don't claim to be perfect, it's readable, but I'm not going to spend the next week revising it), it says everything I had to say. I was also getting tired of explaining all the people I made references to on other systems, so now I can hand them these files and say read. Fond farewells to: John Maxfield: Suck my dick. One day someone who is a anarchist instead of a phreak or hacker will be busted by you. And he will be unstable enough to finally do what should have been done a long time ago: Kill you. (Cable Pair) Ralph Meola: Ralph, it's not like the entire phreak population doesn't know that you exist. You have been the joke of Tap since 1984. Take a bow. (Fat Tub of Shit/ex secret head of AT&T security, current laughingstock of same.) Ian Murphy: Some day more people will realize you aren't the helpful, ex-con, ex-phreak, current Security Ageny owner that you claim to be and come to the conclusion that instead of being a friend to people, you really are what you claim not to be: a rent a squealer just like John. (Captian Zap) Wizard 414: I hope you're enjoying jail. Maybe you can write a book (or get someone else to do it for you so someone might be able to read it), how about: Soap on a Rope, Jail Survival Kit. or: How to enjoy being raped by The<414>Wizard, brought to you by the *ELITE!* Phreakers Club! Mr. Xerox: You too. You should get your old phone turned off, your mother cries when people who don't know you were in jail, call up and ask for you. Makes the person calling feel very depressed. Sprinter: Going to jail for getting caught hacking a mainframe... Get a new lawyer, this is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. Actual jail time for a first offense. Mr. Gucci: I hope Brazil agrees with you. What you did was low, but for the high monetary returns, I can't say I wouldn't have done the same. Mark Tabas/Karl Marx: You need more practice being small time thieves. Maybe you guys could get the friendly boys in jail to help you out in exchange for some help on making free phone calls and serving as surrogate females. Lord Digital: Since I doubt I will ever talk to you again: If nothing else, it has been interesting knowing you. I'd like to see you again in 20 years to see what actually becomes of you and then decide whether I wasted my life or you wasted yours. I hope you aren't too mad at my writing this, but I don't really think you care and it doesn't bring up too many things Richard didn't already bring up. I'd wish you good luck, but as you always said, you don't need it. Thanks for everything and good luck anyway. Criminal Element: It has also been interesting knowing you. I hope everything works out for you and you don't end up dead or in some jail. My best wishes in buying enough teachers at Pace to actually graduate sometime. Paul: Take my advice and go sit on some island and party for the next 50 years. You can't tell me that trekking across the barren wastelands of the world with Pat is going to be any better. Last I heard they weren't keeping what you guys are searching for at the local library, I may be wrong in what I think you're doing, if I am, the best of luck to you. If I'm not, also the best of luck and when you discover the meaning of everything, tell me. Just keep in mind that Ferrari's don't fit into luggage compartments, and when you're stuck in some 120 degree shithole of the world, remember that you could be sitting in a air conditioned hotel room in the caribbean wondering whether to have the blonde or brunette with dinner. Third world countries have shitty phone service too. John: Tell Satan hello for me the next time you talk to him, and tell him my soul is his in return for a few hundred thou. Thank you for all the fun you've given me over the years with AD&D. Joe: Have an accident, have two. Charles: Get a girlfriend and forgot computers for a while, there is more to life than your motherboard. Skip Rooney: If I don't see you again: Lay off the new wares, get laid and work on your person to person relations with those around you. You have a lot of potential, but I doubt you'll ever use it for anything except preaching to uninterested people. I cut down on you because every board I call I see you doing the same things over and over again. I don't think you're a loser, so don't take it that way (not that I think you'll care what I think of you anyway, but I'm writing this file for me, not you) The Tempest: Cat's Meow still doesn't work for me or anyone else I know. But I wish you the best in life anyway. The Surge: I'm sorry that I didn't help you more than I did, but it's hard to help people who don't want help. Stay alive. Kenny: Lose some weight and get a high school diploma. It's been 4 years since you dropped out and said you'd get it "next week". Nobody cares whether or not you have one, you're certainly making more than enough money without one, but by constantly bringing it up, it shows that it bothers you if nobody else. You aren't stupid, so get one. Also Ken, a Fiero is not a sports car, I'm sorry but it's still a shitty little car with a lawnmower sized engine, no matter what you do to it. Elven Wizard: Good luck at your job, hope all goes for the best in your life, and don't get so upset with everything in the pirate world. Laugh, enjoy, but don't have a heart attack about it. Tracer 714: You too, maybe you and Elven can get together and actually write a book. God knows you're both verbose enough to be able to crank one out in no time. Alex: Hope your grandparents dies soon and you inherit everything you ever wanted. You're the only one I can think of who knows what to do with his money (enjoy it). Eric: Probation runs out next month for you, so I'm sure you'll do something really stupid to get put right back on. But the best of luck anyway, hope you get everything you want. In most ways I am glad I spent the last few years involved with all this, most of the people I met have been morons on ego trips, or people searching for ways to make their shitty real lives better. But I have met many interesting people who have shown me that the only limits that exist are those that you set for yourself, and that if you have enough faith in yourself you can do anything. Most of those people were rich enough to be able to afford such philosophies and I don't think they would have evolved the same way being poor. These are also the same people whose formal educations have gone down the drain en masse. I doubt even one will ever graduate from college, most won't even enter it. And for those who are sitting in 5X8 cells counting the days before they get out of jail, it must really be hard to keep faith in the choices you made. Maybe I'm taking the cowards way out by going to college and becoming another yuppie clone, but I do know that I won't have to worry who wants to kill me next week, or how many years of my life will be spent in jail. Like most of you have said, you can do anything, I just hope you really do have enough faith in yourself to accomplish all your goals and I hope they still mean something to you when you do. But personally I think you've just become jaded by money so instead of one form of kicks, you are looking for other ways to add some meaning to your life besides the quest for dollars. * There is no other meaning, grab the money and then enjoy it. * The title "Fall of the Modem World" is true enough. The original modem world is no more. But like anything that gets exponetially bigger and bigger every year, there is no way it could have remained unchanged. There are times that I really would like to be able to go back to 3 years ago, just for a few days maybe, and just enjoy it, not worry about college, or anything else. But life goes on and everything changes, those who try to hang onto something forever should know that nothing stays the same. Here or in real life, there is no past or future, there is just the present, take it or leave it. What else do I have left to say? It's been fun at times, don't catch AIDS and die and Mouse Write has made me sick of it through this typing, so I am going back to Applewriter forever. May your real life not be your modem life, Chris. Entering the real world. bye bye These files were not "packed" because I am uploading them to 5 specific places. Sysops of a RBBS or Vax are going to wonder what a file called "Fall of the modem world s1<528>" means, for 10 seconds and then delete it. Editors Note - August 1st, 1991 This file may not make sense to you, but you should read it and distribute anyway. It is an artifact from a simpler, better time. When phreaks and hack roam freely accross the range hunting buffalo. Watonka!