textfiles/bbs/fotmw.txt

                         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, <name>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 <ELITE> 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 <so and so> sub,
post all msg's releating to <so and so> 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<hn0l0gy". If anybody
has any new warez that can be cracked by COPYA, please leave us mail and maybe
you could even join our new group. It's called "The Untouchable Mafia 1200 Guild
Elite". If the ware you have uses 4X4 encoding, any kind of complicated protection
(complicated meaning we can't crack it with copya or disk muncher), then don't
send us mail. Cre-8-tive Te<hn0l0gy just put up a board too, so heres a ad for
it"  Call!     The Sweaty Jockstrap ELITE      103/202/212 Cat-Fur/AE  450
Message bases/Telecat 49.8 Return from Hobokan to BBS Mod!! Online Proving
Grounds & Casino!    User Fights!/Mass Mailing! 850 Volume Cat-Fur with Newscan! 
      new user PW: COPYA       No rodents allowed!!        TUM1GE: Base Board   
        No Locals!   The War sub will be full of such msgs as:  "you can all
suck my 30 inch cock" "the Read/Write head is a fuckup!" "your mother eats shit" 
and other examples of original humor like this. People who can rag don't bother
to call boards anymore, as it takes too much time to rag on people on a 1 to 1
basis, instead they put it all into a text file and upload it to the local
Cat-Fur.   The drug sub will be filled with people posting messages like "dudes!
I'm so fucking stoned! I went to this party last night and smoked 92 fucking killer
doobies! and drank 192 california coolers and walked away from it! Aren't I a
total stud? Don't you want to hear all about it!??!" after this someone will ask
if anyone knows where to buy drugs in whatever shithole he happens to live in.
The rest will be filled with 15 year olds who have never had a beer, telling
each other how "fucking fucked up and stoned" they got last night or how they
were forced to fight off some girl who wanted them real bad. The drug sub is the
bbs version of forum magazine, filled with posts about things that never
happened and if they did happen, why would anyone else want to hear about how "fucking
smashed" the poster was last night.   The phreak sub will contain a msg saying:
"I don't give just anyone access to this, so post good info". Following this
will be 20 msgs full of metro dumps to whatever port is local to the bbs you
just called. Following the codes will be statements like "I just put up Cat
Hacker for the last 46 hours and got 4 codes, here they are, use em wisely!"
The sysop will now request a PBX so he can start a conference and someone will
attempt to fall back on the tried and true phreak rule of: "When in doubt quote
acroynms. The longer the better" and post a msg. saying something like: "Then
when using lmos on the carot tirks be careful to disable the ani!" or "remobs are
real dudes! only they're called 4tels (or fortel's, fortell's, 4tell's, many
variations of  spelling exist)". Then for some real fun, someone will post 25
CIS accounts, none of which work, 3 msg's later he will call everyone a asshole
for changing all his pw's and act hurt. The sysop will tell him he should have posted
that awesome info on the hacker sub to begin with. Bringing it to an end will be 
50 diverters which don't work.   The hacker sub will contain 40 more Connect
addresses on telenet, taken from the original list that was put out in 1983 and
hasn't changed since them. They will explain how this info is very secret, so
don't give it out. Then someone will post the # to their school computer and ask
if anyone can hack into it and change their grades. Following this will be a
heated discussion on Phantom Access: does anyone have it? If the worlds awesomest
pirates don't have a copy then how can it dare to exist? someone will declare he
has seen it, or has a  friend who has it and will get it next Tuesday for sure.
Then someone will explain that they have both Phantom Access, Cat-Fur source
code, everyone's phone # and the true knowledge that Ronald Reagan is a closet liberal,
who wears wigs and then dissapear from the board forever. The sysop will request
that anyone who has a copy, please upload it to the Cat-Fur.   The sysop sub
will contain a opening msg. saying "This sub is for visiting sysops only" just
in case that wasn't obvious enough. Following this will be 1 msg from each
person who has access to it saying: "Hi! i'm here, I am a sysop, call my board,
we need more users bad!", then there will be a discussion on how all users are
losers, on the idea of starting a blacklist, someone will bring up that those
blacklisted can just change their names, then someone else will say that you can
usually tell who it is anyway, then someone will disagree with him, and someone
will post a fix to some bug in telecat like:  Dudes, to fix the problem, in line
21341 change it from:  21341 FOR X(4) = 1 TO 46 : NEXT X(4)  to:  21341 FOR X(4)
= 1 TO 46 : NEXT : PRINT "Fixed by AWESOME SYSOP! : Call the       AWESOME
Board!:"  and so on.   Of course most of the excitement will focus on the
Cool-Fur! every week there will be at least 1 new file from someone in NY (like
me!) who used to go to TAP and "has the goods" on everyone and everything and is
going to tell all in his latest file (how ya doing Richard? way to go inf, where
is part II? not Dead's Tap.Interviews II, the real one! come on type type type
Rich!). Most of us know each other from having spent 3 years sitting   at the
same table and waiting for something interesting to happen at TAP and were
slightly pissed off when nothing at all ever happened. So now everyone cranks
out files about what really happened at those meetings to make up for it.

Part 2

   Off the subject of BBS' onto the subject of rumors. They had a habit of
starting at TAP when someone would say something and 5 people desperately
hanging on the speakers each word, came up with their own interpretations and
posted it on all the boards. Here are the facts behind some rumors & some truths
about certain people.  First in line is a explanation of the situation in our
area (NY & the 5 buroughs, NYC, QUEENS, BRONX, BROOKLYN, STATEN ISLAND). Most of
"us" know each other in this area and have had contact with some of the "legends"
of the phreak/pirate world. For that very reason, a lot of us found it was a lot
of shit & didn't care too much. For example, during the year of 1984 when LOD
first went up and Plovernet was up, what would happen is that at least one of
the people who were on that board (Magnetic Surfer in this case), would save all
the msg's and files into a buffer and be willing to give anyone who wanted it,
printouts and copies of the buffers. From my own experience I remember thinking:
"What a bunch of arrogant morons." My reaction to piracy was the same, because I
met up with Adam (Nowhere Man (anyone remember him? of course not)) who was at
the time (other than Bozo NYC) the biggest pirate in the NY area. I got a bunch
of new wares and I stopped caring. I started going to TAP since I had nothing
better to do with my Friday nights, like most of the others there.  So anyway
here's a roster of some of the people who I knew or still know and something
about them that hasn't been said before.  You knew this was coming, so let's
start with who's probably the most well known NY guy: Lord Digital.  In my
opinion Inf's file was more or less right, when it mentions his own reactions to
what Patrick (LD) said. But Inf never got to know him too well, in fact he never
got to know anyone too well, because (face it Rich), Inf is kind of a "slimy"
person. Not physically or anything, but he just has a kind of grating personality
that makes you want to cross to the other end of the room when Inf shows up. 
Personally I met him along with a lot of other people at a very early elec-
tronics show, before I even owned a computer. The only reason I even ended up
talking to that group of people, was to try to get to know this girl who was
with him at the time, I think her name was Roberta, or Bobbie or hmmm Roberta is
Bobbie, I'd forgotten about that, it amazing how theareputic  writing a text
file can be, everyone should try it! Anyhow, wonder what ever happened to her,
haven't seen her in a long time, she was quite nice. What is said in Inf's tap
interviews, is all true I guess, but it gives the impression like he was born,
he met a computer, he spent all his time playing with it. As far as I know, he's
had computers as long as I can remember, but he was never really "into" it, as
in he never called all the boards, or joined all the groups or whatever, he just
did his own thing and people blew it out of proportion.  Completely ignoring his
computer involvement for a while, here's what I know about him as a person and
all the rumors of being a "wall street wizard" (Atom been reading a lot of
strange books huh?.) Anyhow, when I first met him I think he was 13 at the time
(this was before secrecy became the big thing, because there were no "rodents"
to protect your identity from), I eventually ended up at his house along with
the usual group of people following him around like Carl (ugh). Normal place for
NYC, normal room, Star Wars poster and a Clockwork Orange poster I remember. And
he had 4 bikes hanging from his walls (very weird, you'd have to have been
there), which I remember well since Carl took one down and threw it at me. It
was eventually explained that he used to race for team mongoose, so that was why
he had all these bikes laying around, from  when his career ended at age 11 by
moving to NYC from somewhere in California or wherever he came from out west. 
As for being a "wall street wizard". As he himself said in tap interviews, you
have to be brain dead not to make money, the only thing holding most people back
is the fact that they don't have a father they can call and say: "Dad, hi, can I
borrow 50,000?" and have him say "sure son, why not." I have never met his 
father in my life, he lives somewhere in the west. I seriously doubt it makes
any difference, but everyone writing all the in depth exposes' should realize he
isn't mr. mega bucks. At a intelligent guess I'd say he's worth maybe 400K,
which means he can have about 350K cash when he hits 21 in 3 years. Since he's
usually not working, other then his allowance, the only source of income I think
he has right now is for breeding his dog. This might sound dumb, but his dog is
champion of this & that with a pedigree 3 miles long and he picks up about 20
thousand a year just getting it laid. Still this isn't that much for the area
he lives in and from going out with Carl it's nothing at all (Carl is a whole
other story, I'll get to him in a little bit).  Over the years I've known him,
disregarding computers, just about everything can be summed up as:   Ummmm
Pat... say, you realize you've gained almost 50 lbs guy?  Hmm, yeah, seems that
way.   (3 years later,)   Ummmm Pat... say, you realize you've lost almost 50
lbs guy?  Hmm, yeah, seems that way.   I don't know what everyones fetish is
with following what he's done since the day he was born (do you know Richard?
you asked him the dumbest questions to begin with), but he isn't god! Until
about 3 years ago he was a typical NY  juvenille delinquint. The only reason the
guy even made it through school to begin with is because he was getting thrown
out of private schools instead of public schools. Private schools don't care how
many days you miss as long as you send them their money each month. But from
what I know of his school days, for every day he was in school, he cut out the
next 4. And I should know since we all did the same to hang out at someone's
house and play D&D. In a public school that right there would be the end and you
would never graduate with so many abscences.  In all the time I knew him while
he was in school, I have never seen him take home 1 book from school, do any
homework, or study for anything. His saving grace was that he is far from dumb
so he aced all the tests and finals (how I don't know since he never read the
books to begin with). In my opinion, I agree with Rich on this, he threw his
education away. As for 1580 SAT, I first want to say that I think SAT's are
shit. If you know how to program then the math part is easy, if you know how to
read then the verbal part is easy. 1580 is  still very impressive, but nobody
about SAT's besides colleges. And whose SAT is going to mean 0 because he has
yet to enroll in college? duh...  From Junior High to Graduation this past June,
I've gone through 3 Junior High schools but only 2 HS's because I finally got my
shit together and stopped  fucking around. Patrick went through 8 Junior High
schools and was lucky that it was time to move up to HS because there weren't
any private JHS left in NYC to get thrown out of, unless he decided to become a
member of the jewish race. In High School he managed to go through 5 in 2 years,
and would probably have gone through more but he racked up a lot of credits
somewhere and took a bunch of tests and managed to get himself out at 16. He's
far from dumb but he doesnt care about too many things, if he'd done the smart
thing he'd be 1 year away from graduating college at 18, instead he hasn't even
started.  2 times we have both been in the same school and out of those I had 1
actual  class with him at a school called St. Regis, which is a catholic private
school and the only one that would take people inbetween semesters (which was
the time he get thrown out and me along with him, from the previous school).
Catholic schools are just what they show in the movies, stained glass windows,
a chapel, religion as a class and actual priests acting as teachers. In other
words total hell. This was the one time I actually appreciated having him in
school with me, because he always has fun no matter how fucked up the 
situation is. The biggest pain about catholic school is having to go to mass
once a day, all of this sucks really badly, but it's amazing how much fun you
can have at a place like this if you don't care about being thrown out of it.
The school had a dress code, so you had to wear a shirt, tie, suit, all that
shit, Patrick suddenly decided he was in love with black metal and instead of
white shirts, started wearing "Venom - we drink the vomit of priests" kind of
shirts to mass. It is amazing to see the look on priests faces when they see
this kind of thing. They can't stop an entire mass in the middle, so he'd be
standing in the front row with a picture of blood dripping down a devil's  face
on his shirt and a bunch of priests would be 5 feet away calling down god to
protect our immortal souls and all that shit. The funny thing is he didn't get
thrown out, me and 3 other people who couldn't stop laughing got put on a 5 day
suspension.  The height of my entire educational experience also came in the
history class we were both in. During yom kipper, or whatever the fuck it's
called (some jew holiday) we were supposed to show our acceptance of other
religions by writing a term paper on how the jews have been persecuted because
of their religion by people through the ages and why the holocaust couldn't
happen again today.  John (explained later), Alex and Patrick used to (and
probably still do) play this game they made up, called "World Dominion". No one
else I can think of played it besides them because it took too much time and was
too complex. The rules of the entire game were: Using all information available
at the present time, under the present economic systems of the world and the present
technology. Devise a plan that will gain the person who carries it out absolute
dicatorship of the world, with a minimum of time, money and manpower spent. 
This sounds fun, but there are so many details and so many things to learn if
you don't already know them, that nobody ever played it except them. But it was
still mind blowing to see some of the results. They spent time studying the
entire nazi movement and how something like it could have happened and could
happen again using present day circumstances and technology, and ended up with
3 major plans if I remember. Ranging from gaining control of a small portion of
the commodities market to cause economic collapse in a few third world 
countries. To chemical warfare. To sublimal messages, prevailing prejudices in
all portions of the world. It had to take all the conditions into account, I
doubt they could have pulled it off for the entire world, but they managed to
map out how to gain a huge following in the US and take it to some third world
country. It's all too long to go into because they were playing seriously when
they wrote them (like for example you weren't allowed to say I'd get 500 atomic
bombs and threaten to set them off. You had to go into detail where you'd get
the heavy water for it and all that shit. Which is why I and everyone else gave
up on it).  I'm sure its been done before, but not from the point of view on how
to make it happen now. Everyone always looks back at why it happened, they were
trying to figure out how to make it happen again. Depending on how you take it,
it's  either incredibly fascinating, or sick.  Anyway I got a couple of books on
the third reich and why it rose and fell and my term paper could be summed up
as: It started because people were poor, had nothing, Hitler came by and offered
them the world, having nothing to lose they started up with it. It fell apart
because Hitler was insane and finally all the atrocities he comitted in the name
of his movement, made enough people concerned enough to go kick germany's ass. I
got an A.  Patrick wrote a huge paper that covered the entire nazi movement,
brought in Freud, Jung, Metaphysics, Lord of the Flies, a bunch of weird shit
from the occult and I forget what else. And combined all of it to say that
Hitler was a pathetic loser, who was talentless and stupid. The only thing he
had going for him was willpower. Then he went on how there is no good, no evil,
just prevailing attitudes of the day. Said that Goebbels (Hitler's chanceller of
the "ministry of truth") and Haufshtater (Hitler's geopolitician) were both
brilliant (maybe so, but they both also commited suicide at the Nuremberg war
crimes trials. Not the most brilliant way to end a career), that if someone
else had been in control the 1000 year reich they dreamed up could have 
happened. And it ended up that the basic idea behind the nazi movement of 
creating a master race was appealing to the masses, because masses are full of
morons (arrogant attitude to have, but going to see movies like Rambo or
Commando and seeing 90% of the audience get themselves into a frenzy by 
screaming at the screen, does a lot to convince me he was right about masses of
morons) who want to feel superior to others. He wrote off the 6,000,000 jews who
died, as incidental to all of it, that nothing Hitler did hasn't been done
before, he only made the numbers bigger with the newer technology at his
disposal.  And concluded that the holocaust could easily happen again today or
anytime in the future as long as there are people who are mad at  something and
need scapegoats. Intense report and I think I'm going to take his name off my
copy and use it in college if I need it.  He got an A+ on his report and a free
mandatory session with the school's  pscyhiatrist, for his attitude about 6
million people dying (we are supposed to care about that kind of thing in a
catholic school. I don't either, but I kept my opinions to myself). Anyway the
school psychiatrist was a nun (I'm getting sick thinking back on all this), when
she came into class to pick up Pat and a few other people who were supposed to
talk to her about their  "wrong" attitudes. In the middle of the class he told
her that he had no interest in discussing his viewpoint with her, when she
starting up that he had to, the greatest moment of my education came when he
told a nun that  what she really needed was a good fuck, so instead of annoying
him she should go out and get laid. The nun almost had a heart attack, so did
the history teacher, the class got a bunch of detention time for laughing and
Pat got thrown out yet again. But that time I'd say what he did was worth it. 
From knowing him, I think he is interesting because of the way he thinks.
Nothing I have ever seen him try has failed. People think something through,
then go try it, he thinks 50 possibilities through, tries to figure out what
everyone's reaction will be 20 steps in advance and then does it. Looking at
something he's designed or planned, is far from "Why didn't I think of that",
it's more like "What the fuck is he talking about." But the end result is always
sucess, so what do I know.  His major personality flaw is, that he doesn't care
about anything. I think  everyone who doesn't have assertive parents and access
to a lot of money, ends up this way (Carl for example). He has almost 0 ability
to take shit from  people. Kissing ass is a fine art that people need to master
in the real world, but he never has. If someone is a total asshole, they're
stupid, stuck up on themselves and annoy you, most people will think "What a
asshole" or think of ways to make his life suck afterwards, Pat will just tell
him what a idiot he is, make him feel stupid and tell him to rant and rave and
threaten all he wants because he can go fuck himself. Needless to say Dean's of
schools and other authority figures don't go for this. If he'd been sensible about
all of it, he could have talked his way out of it, when he wants to be he is
incredible at social engineering and could tell people that black is white and
convince them, instead he tells people to go fuck themselves. In school, if you
really don't care, that's ok and a great laugh, because as soon as he gets
thrown out, his father gets him signed into some other school. But it's a big
attitude problem for the rest of your life. Right now it's fine, but if his
parents ever get sick of him and cut him off from money, I would give a lot to
see him try and cope with the real world like most other people have to, with
that kind of attitude.  EVERYBODY acts like the guy is so cool. He isn't "cool"
in any kind of  respectable way. On Tap Interviews, "he looks like Rob Lowe or
Steve Jobs", that's a laugh. Rich, Rob Lowe and Steve Jobs, look nothing like
each other. Rob is barely 5 feet, Steve is over 6. Pat is over 6, he looked good
for about 9 weeks, so Rich had to catch him then. If he's not overweight, he has
to do something else to fuck himself up naturally, so the "clean cut" look
lasted  a real short time. The last time I saw him he was wearing a 16th century
hair style, leather trenchoat, sunglasses (at night naturally) and combat boots.
MORON. I didn't say it at the time, but if you're reading, you look FUCKED UP
dude.   Responsibility is the same way. I can't complain, the last job I had was
one he got me. I lasted over a year, I'm only quitting because I'm moving to
another state for my college. Pat lasted for 8 days. I don't know why he lasted
for 8 days, the company had a dress code, so he naturally decided to go in with
his "bum off the street" look. He's never on time (anywhere, the few times he
was in school, he was always late too), I don't mean 5 minutes late either, the
dude walks in 3 hours later then he's supposed to, doesn't even aplogize, "I'm
late" DUH, really? I guess he must have been good at something, since nobody
fired him, instead of taking advantage of it, he quits after 8 days. He doesn't
give notice, they ask me to find out where he is. Where were you? "Nowhere, I
got bored". So why not give notice? "So give them notice". IRRESPONSIBLE. It
ends up he bullshits his way into some job because he needed 400 bucks after his
mother got mad and cut off his allowance or some shit like that. He had 3 days
pay left he didn't even bother to come in and pick up. FUCKED UP dude. PERFECT
example of what I mean by good luck in the real world. I AM grateful for him
getting me the job, but it is such a fucking waste. People who HAVE to work to
live, try so hard to get a job to support their family or something, you take
the same job, act  like a asshole, then walk out without bothering to inform
your boss that you're walking out. He USED to like you, he thought your programming
was good and when I got offered your job if I could do it, he said you were going
to be allowed to work from home. You could have got out of bed, turned on your
modem and been paid for it. Why the fuck you couldn't tell me that before? I
would have learned the langauge if I had to stay awake for 30 nights in a row
to do it, that is a DREAM job dude and you walk out. S T U P I D.   Pat has
never thought that maybe he should be trying to do something to make money like
everyone else, the only time this terrifying notion enters his mind, is when one
of his parents cuts off his access to their bank accounts, his credit card or
his allowance. THESE ARE THINGS PARENTS DO TO 12 YEAR OLD KIDS, NOT 18 YEAR
OLDS.   There are times when I really wonder what the fuck he is doing. Again with
Rich's file, the company he had was doing GREAT. His interpretation was "ok".
He sold the company because he got tired of the paperwork.   I DO NOT in any way
understand his money "problems". I KNOW he made a lot of money with his company,
I've seen his tax returns, in theory he should be able to support a 6 person
family with a wife and still be in the higher tax  bracket. Where does all of it
go? By the time he does hit 21, the only money he's going to have is what he
gets his hands on from his parents and what they forced him to put into money
markets when he was 16 and they could still force him. He gets paid for having
his dog fuck another dog (hard job), or gave himself his pay when he had the
company. I remember I had 200, 300 dollars in my pocket friday night, he had a
few THOUSAND and Carl was always there and Carl always paid for everything. I
could call him up monday and ask him if he wants to go to a club or do something
and its "I have to see if my mom will give me 50 bucks", or ask's me to lend it
to him. What happens to a few thousand in TWO DAYS? "Oh, I got some books I
wanted and some hardware and I got this really cool sword that was only two
thousand this week and then I invested some of it" (the last IS true, he is good
with penny stocks and "death stocks" where you can lose all your money in 10
hours or make it back 50 times over, not that it ever made any difference, it
might as well be gone, because he just spends it then)  He is like, I don't know
how to put it, he makes me want to strangle him because all these chances come
to him so easy and he doesn't are. He managed to save me a lot of money and work
on my taxes I know he does the same for himself but his "budget" is so fucked
up, that one day he can have 5 thousand and then be without any money for 2
months for some reason, so he lies his way into some job that people dream
about, to get himself spending money, then throws it in the guys face and quits.
He never buys anything that has any value, 500 year old books that are in Latin,
"magic" swords from some crazed armorer in the midwest who thinks he's a
reincarnation of Merlin (for real), another modem, another gadget another
something. I can't stand it.  His room is a good example of his head. Their
housekeeper isn't allowed into his room, so it hasn't been cleaned out since
I've known him. What happens  from time to time is that the piles shift. It's
hard to explain, it is like walking into a twilight zone episode, "today we have
the surreal bedroom". I have never seen him watch tv, yet there is a tv set
laying on its side under a desk, tuned to NOTHING, which has been on since 1983
when someone kicked it into its side. His air conditioner runs ALL YEAR, its
next to the heating system, so in the winter a small flood runs over that corner
of his room when the ice from the air conditioner hits the heat. It is just so
UNREAL and stupid, how someone could let something that stupid go on year by
year. I remember bookcases from a few years ago, they all overflowed and are
buried in books, magazines, manuals, clothes, wires, chemicals, empty cans,
phones, weapons, pieces of computers and I don't know what else. 3 of his bikes
are laying in a pile in pieces, the one that is still hanging is covered with
clothes. He used to draw and paint, that stopped sometime ago, so there's a
studio desk with half a painting on it covered with 2 years of dust. In the
computer corner, I don't even want to get into it, it looks like someone put a
bomb in his disk boxes, you can't see the desks anymore, they are covered with
dust, disks, printouts, manuals. There are 2 payphones laying in a corner from
over 2 years ago. For NY it WAS a B I G room, the last time I was there, you
couldn't see the floor. I have pictures of his room that I look at when I get
depressed and want to laugh, it looks like some kind of movie set, no person
would live in there. The funniest thing I could think of for a long time, was if
he ever got busted, what would be waiting for the FBI. I really think they would
cry, you could not look through all that stuff in 10 years. What's more, Pat
entered his paranoid kick like 3 years ago and started  writing all his notes in
(get this) Anglo Saxon runes and some dead langauge for the word construction.
All his notes are this, I don't even know why I'm talking about this now, it is
so STUPID. It really reminds me of a exterior view of what's in his head. The
only thing that amazes me is that he didn't blow out his electrical system and
start a fire yet.  His entire life is like a study in weirdness. I've seen some
of his photo's from his childhood. At 5 he was taking ballet (hahahahahahahaha)
classes  because his mother was a professional ballet dancer at the time, he
quit after he moved to some other state. At 8 he was racing bikes professionally,
he quit when he moved to NYC at 11. Somewhere in all this, his computer involvement
started and hasn't stopped yet. At 11 he started drawing, at 12 he got into the
HS of Art & Design, 2 months later he got kicked out. From 13 to 16, he sat in
front of his computers, ate (I know that was cruel), played AD&D and had some
very strange (even for him) ideas come to him. He started babbling about mind
expansion, spheres of existance and the universe. He was always talking about
something incomprehensible anyway, but never the universe. At 17 he got into
martial arts, invented the VERY healthy Lord Digital diet-plan, which every
doctor would approve of and everyone would love because it's so simple that it
shocked everyone. "Stop eating until you lose weight" Amazing. Being  blessedly
free of the influence of any medical book's horror stories of what will happen
to you and ignoring all of us when we told him he was going to die. He went from
looking like a 20 year younger version of John Belushi, to a 17 year old version
of himself. He didn't die and acted so smug you wanted to kill him anyway. His
"normal" look lasted long enough to give him another free ride when his mother
got her agency to sign him up for photo sessions. His new dream job lasted for
another 2 weeks before he threw it away again (why am I not surprised) by
refusing to get his teeth filed (when he smiles it looks like dracula, all his
teeth are pointed). By this time he was 18 and supposed to go to MIT (since he
was 16, but I guess he decided to sit in front of his computer instead),
naturally he didn't. He signed up to Juliard and started taking voice and acting
classes. ONLY voice and acting classes, no degree as usual.  In his "Belushi"
stage, he had 2 modes. "almost dead" he used to sit around and just stare into
space, you could talk to him and he wouldn't even notice. And "I'm so up that I
can't stand it", then he wouldn't stop talking, acted hyper, and looked like he
never got any sleep. Now he has only 1 mode, no matter what is going on, he
always has this stupid smile on his face, like he knows the secrets of the
universe now and he's going to take off to another galaxy.  I'm not going to
talk about parents, but to let someone grow up like that, is beyond my understanding.
Carl's father is like a general and when he's there Carl says "sir", maybe Pat's
father is like that too, but his mother doesn't give a shit about anything he
has ever done. Again, I don't mean to talk about parents, I actually like his
mother, because she isn't much of a mother, she's like mid 30's, was the first
mother I ever fell in lust with, and is really REALLY nice. She's like a older
sister. But I still can't understand how she let EVERYTHING go on for so many
years. He could go out and kill someone and she'd think it was "nice". There is
always some boyfriend of hers trying to make Pat like him, by giving him things.
JESUS, I wanted a mother like that. I can also see why he lives with her, these
days she's one of the "idle rich", I VERY SERIOUSLY doubt that ANYONE who works
for their money, would EVER put up with his attitude, which is probably why he
never sees his father.  I haven't seen Patrick for a while and doubt if I will
again, before I leave for college. He's very easy to lose touch with, because
unless you call him, he will NEVER call you.   Enough of this, too much has
already been said about him in all the other files so first I'm going to clear
up some rumors and then talk about the "background" people that have been around
through all this, that nobody has written about, & someone should write about,
since a lot of them had a lot of input on what  happened in the modem world.  
The Goetz involvement is nobody's business, if you were there, then you know
about it. If you weren't then don't worry about it.  Computer Factory, the same
thing.  SR is Patrick's group. I used to know what it stood for, but have no
idea  anymore, it's not english anyway (the words that "sr" stands for). I also
don't think the group has nothing to do with computers.  Screamer, wasn't a
"9600 baud crasher" or anything for Cat's. It was a NWII OBJ that was written to
support wordwrap, spinning cursors, 300/1200 and some other mods. This was when
there were 2 or 3 boards in the entire US with wordwrap and all these mods. The
obj was given out and soon everyone was using it. The OBJ also had backdoors
built into it. That was "Screamer", the person who turned it into the 9600 baud
crasher was Criminal Element, who used to call everyone up and tell them he'd
crash their boards. When asked how he did it, not being able to think of
anything else to say, he said "with a 9600 baud carrier". They being not much
smarter then Carl himself, believed him. I don't think Carl ever took anything
down in all that time, the person who would have done all the actual crashing is
"Dave" (explained soon).  DEATH was a program that was started during the
Sherwood Forest paranioa and security kick. What it was was a program that
skewed hex values off by a certain amount and the DEATH on the other end skewed
them back. So if anything were to be intercepted along the way, it'd be useless
and if a board were ever to be crashed or confiscated, it would also be useless.
The name is a acronym for something, I have no idea for what anymore, but like
most of the other stuff it was Pat's name for it since he always came up with
weird yet great names for programs and boards and things.   KKK was Killer
Konstruction Kit. This came from a idea by Alex. He wanted a program to upload
to places that was a lethal hacker. He wanted it to dial 911 inbetween codes. LD
wrote KKK as a hacker assembler, so you could create a working hacker that did
anything you wanted it to, while allowing the insertion of not documented
inbetween steps. KKK turned into a entire series of virus & destruction programs.
Other than Phantom Access, this is the only series that LD actually spent any
amount of time doing (that I know of at least). I don't know why all this was
written, seems like a destructive kind of thing to spend so much time on, the
only good thing that ever came out of it that I ever was witness to, was letting
some virus loose in the 47th st. Computer Factory. Need less to say, they didn't
think it was too funny, but I did. Eric as usual fucked things up for us and
almost managed to get everyone arrested by trying to steal a Grid. Like aduh, of
course they don't have sensors there right Eric?  Auto-Verify was something like
a conference starter. Only it automatically broke in on other peoples lines. I
don't know if remobs are what people think they are and I don't know what he
used or did, but this rumor was true. Patrick could end up on peoples lines. I
thought it was bullshit until he did it to me, there are at least 20 people in
NY who will say the same thing. They didn't believe it until he ended up on
their lines. This is what is sounded like when it happened. There was no tone,
no beeps, nothing. Until just before he  spoke, there was the "ah-hum" kind of
tone like when someone does a emergency interupt on your line. But he'd been on
the line for at least 5 minutes because he told me back everything I'd just said
to the other person and there was no tone when he first got on. So for people
who say there is a beep evey 15 seconds all I can say is you are wrong. He could
also "trace" people, which I thought was even better, but am now told is easy to
do. I just thought it was cool to have some loser call me up and start being
annoying and be able to call Pat and end up with the losers phone # 45 seconds
later. There was also a few other programs that were like databases of NY
numbers for things, so you hit a key and a screen popped up and told you what
exactly to say to the person you connected with in order to get call waiting, or
speed calling, or whatever ESS functions you wanted to add. This was during
Patrick and Paul's (Muad'Dib's) ESS kick, when he was writing something for that
system every other day. There were also some programs written in EPL (ESS
programming language) that were supposed to be modification & virus programs for
ESS itself. Anyway back to Auto-Verify, The program Auto-Verify ended up being
made (as I understood it) because what they eventually ended up doing was
listening to stockbrokers private lines and Carl couldn't manage to make it
work, so he needed something that let him enter in the number he wanted to
listen to and hit a key, Auto-Verify was born.  Phantom Access used to be a
fairly amazing code hacker, it eventually turned into some fantasy program that
doesn't need people around to run it. All this seems to have come from 6/8th
Pat, 1/8th Paul (Maud'dib) and 1/8th influence by some weird books whose titles
I forget. Pat did all the actual programming, and final design on it as far as I
know, but he got a lot of ideas from all over the place. The code hacker is 2
sides, one is the program the other are utilities, well the one I'm looking at
right now is. The terminal and some  editers and docs are 4 more sides. Dave
probably has a newer version by now. The full system needs a hard disk and some
other hardware to use it, the only person I know whose computer is configured to
use the entire thing besides LD is the Tempest, whose setup is almost identical.
It's not something that you can boot on 2 floppies.   Moving onto the other
people, I'll start with more well known and move to the obscure.  Carl (Criminal
Element). Put neanderthal man in front of a computer and tell him to explain
what he wants to say by typing it. It doesn't work out too well and that's what
you get when you put Carl in front of a computer. Carl is  almost a older
version of Joe. He is childish, does stupid things and he  could care less.
People think he's 16 or 17, well Carl is 26. He goes to Pace, in theory anyhow.
Since I've known him, he has not moved up 1 grade in school, because he is never
there. He goes to school for the same reason Pat will end up going to school: to
get money from his father. Carl's father is some importer who owns a shipping
business and 2 NY radio stations. And if Carl drops out of school, he gets cut
off, so he will probably still be a freshman at Pace until his mid 30's or
whenever his father dies or whenever Carl manages to arrange an accident to
happen to him.   When he isn't provoked he will just fade into the background,
but when anyone  says anything in the least bit offensive to him, the guy goes
insane. He will post some 5 part message telling him how he will cut him to
little pieces and burn his house down. The really scary thing is that he means
it. Carl is the closest thing I've ever met to a genuine psycho, he carries
around a virtual arsenal and uses it.  If nothing else can be said for him,
going out for some fun is always nice with Carl. I've seen him blow as much as
5K in a night. He has lifetime membership in various sex clubs in NYC, he has
permanent tables reserved for him in rest- aurants. You want it, Carl will pay
for it & not care. Just being seen in his prescence makes everything ok. I can
only imagine he blows a great deal on all this, because when they want to be
nice, they are incredibly civil, but when acting normally, Carl and the rest are
a bunch of animals. I can understand trashing McDonalds and starting food
fights, but when they do the same thing at The Four Seasons or the Russian Tea
Room, places where it costs $75 to sit down and get a glass of water, you begin
to wonder. When you go with them half the food ends up on the floor, not to
mention being loud and obnoxious. I assume he pays off a lot of people because
he isn't banned from any of those places even after re-running the same thing
week after week.  I don't know what Carl does for spending money. But I suspect
it's probably the same type of things as what Paul is doing. Only he won't admit
it. He just abuses his parents and leeches money off them. Carl has never worked
a day in his life.  Carl will either end up very rich or very dead sometime in
the near future. One day he is going to push the wrong people too far. Carl can
be summed up as:  "We're going to kill you Carl."  "No, I don't think so." 
"Why not?"  "Because I'll rip your fucking head off before you get within 5 feet
of me."   Carl is short, always wears a trenchcoat and if you see one of those movies
where the "evil yellow man" is torturing the "brave white hero" and loving
every minute of it, that's Carl as the evil yellow man. He always reminds me of
the perfect over-acted comic villian.   He is another person I don't think I
will ever understand. He makes up these elaborate lies about everything, until
you don't even know what is true with him anymore. He went around telling
everyone he won some championship tourney for martial arts, "sure you did Carl",
then in his house he has the trophy, photos and certificate. After a while you
just ignore Carl if you want to retain your outlook, because he will do everything
possible to confuse you and mess with your head. I've found out that this is his
version of entertainment. For Carl nothing is better then fucking someone over
for no reason.  He is the first person I ever met, who has a real death wish.
It's some kind of big complicated situation, but Carl's parents are from some
old family in China the kind where you're expected to take that sword and
dismember yourself if you lose your honor. I've known him for years and only
seen his father (his parents aren't divorced, yet they are NEVER there) 2 times,
for about 5 minutes each time. Carl is the family failure, he will never
graduate, his honor is very different from his father's and all he wants to do
is spend his money in peace. Until his father dies or he gets him killed, he'll
never get it.  Carl and his "honor" is also a hassle to have around you, becuase
he has  nothing against lying to you, tricking you or anything else. The only
part of his character that the "honor" extends to, is his pride which will get you
killed. Situation- Carl, Alex, Eric and I are in Chinatown walking through a
weapons store, we started in a group of 10, but Kenny, Elliot, Patrick, Paul,
Joe and Charles went to see a snuff film instead. In walks a group of mexicans.
There are at least 9 of them, naturally one of them bumps against one of us and
tries to start a fight, Eric looks down and ignores it, not wanting to die.
Carl says in a loud voice "Eric, aren't you going to ask the spic to say he's
sorry? He must lost his balance." Dead silence, emphasis on the first word. The
peurto rican's start with "let's show the chink and white boys some  manners"
and the predictable insults, Carl goes "I'm not in a good mood, right now I'm
willing to risk getting caught to have the pleasure of killing you. If you
start, you'd better be willing to finish, because you're going to die" I have
never seen anyone fall for this kind of shit, because the person who says it
doesn't mean it, he's only saying it because he doesn't want to get the shit
beat out of him. Carl means it. He acts like he is desperately looking for a
accident to happen to him. The peurto rican's back down and walk away, I guess
murder one way or the other, didn't appeal to them when all they wanted was a
good fight. That's the main thing, Carl DOESN'T want a "good fight" or even to
release some tension, he wants to kill someone or die himself and take as many
people as he can with him. The only times I've ever seen him laugh, is when
someone he didn't like (the entire world) got hurt or fucked over in some way. 
He is like a person who is daring everyone to push him far enough, so he will
die or end up in jail forever. Shoplifting is another example of this, he'll
walk into a store and challenge everyone to steal as much as they can, to see
who can do the most and get away with it. He is 26, this is a 10 years olds
game, what's more if Carl's father EVER even SUSPECTED that his son was a thief
he would be disowned in a day. That is the greatest breach of honor he could
think of. Anyhow, I'll be there in a bookstore or something and carefully drop
some books into my bag or take some software packs or something. Carl walks up
to whatever display he wants, piles on stuff until he is carrying a stack, 
walks up to the cashier and asks her the time while waving the pile up and 
down for emphasis. He is so obvious about it, that people overlook him. He 
thanks her and walks out, meanwhile everyone else is looking over their
shoulders to see if the detective's are coming. We walk out, have 1 book or
nothing, Carl is carrying a stack, he walks a few feet and drops it all over
the street and laughs at us. He gets nothing out of it and would lose so much
if he ever got caught, he might as well put a gun to his head and see if the
bullet will pass through him.   

Part 3

   The next guy is responsible for a HELL OF A LOT of anarchy all over the
place. And this is the first time anyone is even exposing his existence. His
name is Joe (Dead of Knight).  Let me say right now: I don't like Joe. Nobody I
know who has met him, likes Joe, with the exception of Patrick. Why, I can't
understand. There is NOTHING to like about Joe, and anyone who knows him will
agree with me.  Joe has a computer for one reason, that reason being: to harass
anyone and  everyone unfortunate enough to be brought to his notice.   What
people don't understand about Joe is that he just DOES NOT care. He has no
reason for the things he does, he harass's people he doesn't even know. The main
mistake people make with him is thinking he is dumb. He does nothing to make
anyone doubt this and is usually (mistakedly) considered harmless.   During the
years Joe has been a member of a few well known pirate groups and even been
cosysop on a few "elite" boards with completely fake personalities.  I am not
going to get into any of the really philosophical talks or things, but one truth
out of all this is "Knowledge is universal". Joe is the perfect proof of this. I
don't know of 1 board he has not managed to get himself high access on, no
matter how "elite" or "private". The typical elite board now wants some kind of
filter, Joe buffers it, gives Pat a copy and asks him to fill it out for him. He
now has a perfect score on the filter, most of the sysops of so called elite
boards don't even know the answers and when they find a user who does, they get
greedy and want to leech information from him. Joe now has high access. The only
thing holding him back is that some sysops REQUIRE a voice phone # and no amount
of bullshitting will get past that. If he decides he really wants on the board,
once again all he does is calls Pat to set up some phone to call forward to him.
He now has a "home" voice number that the sysop can call and feel secure about
him. And a total unknown is "elite" 1 day later.  Now the sysop will become
sorry, because the only reason Joe logs into any- thing is to cause trouble. He
isn't a very good phreak or hacker, but as in Carl's case, he doesn't need to
be. Pat is only a phone call away and by asking him the answers to questions,
Joe can pass himself off as anything he wants to be.   Some of the better known
jokes he's pulled during the years:  Macdonald-Land 20 meg elite. He called up
some kind who got a new 20 meg drive (this was in 1984), to harass him. He
called as "Lightbulb Man & The Vendor" & convinced him that he was a reclusive
elite phreak. 1 day later the kid gave over running his board to Joe. The
co-sysops were "Hamburglar" and "Mayor McCheese" this lasted for close to 4
months before he got bored of it and inited the whole thing.  The Inse<t0idz.
This was a joke. This was started to see how stupid people  really are. The
answer was: Very stupid. Joe got some kid to buy 1 new ware, he cracked it and
put up a really obnoxious title page saying: <ra<ked By The Insectoidz, Dr.
Raid, Daddy Longlegs & Black Flag. He ended up with a new elite group made up of
20 people who were all him. This would have been funny, but what was amazing is
that he got people to join it. Not only that, but he required everyone to change
their name into some ridiculous "insect" name. The really sick thing is, it
worked. He managed to get 3 or 4 major pirates into it, had 5 boards up in NY
running "roach motel" insectoid subboards and all kinds of shit like this. He
even managed to get "The Insectoids" onto no less than 5 rag pages from major
pirates of the time who considered him a threat! This was probably the funniest
thing I've ever seen him do. Boot up a original crack of Mr. Cool's Gato, there
is a Insectoids Rag, Boot up The Key's version of Cat's Meow III, there is
another insectoids rag and it just went on and on like this until he got bored
and told everyone he moved to Hawaii.  After Insectoids ended he decided that
big groups took too much hassle, too many people to pacify and convince. So he
went back to his old mode of harassing people. A army of 1. There were other
bigger jokes on people, but there's no point in typing all this up. He usually
did smaller things like picking a name at random from a userlist and deciding to
make his life suck for no reason. Or login himself into a board 20 times and
starting a huge  argument with himself eventually having the entire board join
in. It just goes on and on and I could fill 20 sides of just the shit Joe alone
has pulled off. After all he has been doing this for 5 years to keep himself
entertained.  I don't know why Joe ended up being the way he is, I know his
parents weren't too happy either, because when I first met him he was seeing a
psyhciatrist. I guess he didn't help too much. He IS funny to hang around with,
but the problem is that the minute you start to like him (and most people do,
because there is nothing to dislike about him at first), he will do something to
stab you in the back or really make you mad. He just does not quit, it's like
the terminator he has no off switch. Every time I see that "You don't understand,
it's all he does, and he won't stop", you can replace killing with harassing,
and there you have Joe. My advice to anyone who comes into contact with him is:
stop as soon as possible, because no matter what you think of him now, you WILL
be sorry and no matter how much you think you're using him, or how much you
think he looks up to you, it's just another act so he can fuck you up even worse
in the future when he builds up to his final backstab.  To everyone who hates
him: There is NO WAY to do anything to him, personally. Because nothing bothers
him, no matter how smart you think you are, chances are that he's better, he's
been fucking over people for a really long time so he's pretty good at reading
them by now. He doesn't care about being busted, if it happens he buys a new
computer and takes 20 people he doesn't like along with him just for the hell of
it. Unless you are Conan, physical threats don't work either, pranking him
doesn't work. He's impossible to deal with, the best thing to do is AVOID him or
shoot him.   Enough of Joe, next in line is Pete (Captain Avatar, Skip Rooney
and others).  Pete is like Joe in a way. Nobody likes him. I don't  know why
not, I've met him 3 times and he is always a nice guy & knows what he's talking
about in mainframes. The only negative I can think of saying about him, is that
he's lazy and has NO taste in clothes, he dresses like he came out of a blue light
sale at LOUD, CRUDE and TACKY. He is a walking encyclopedia of facts on all
kinds of mainframes and  micro's and things, but he will never write anything
or use what he knows for anything, so he seems like one of Pat's "infomaniacs"
from Tap. The one good thing I can say about Pete, The guy can DRAW. I don't
mean computer art or shit like that (he is great at computer art too, when you
see him at a show near any kind of graphics display there is a crowd gathered
there looking at him work), I mean professionaly the guy could be a artist from
what I've seen of his stuff.   I can't really say much about Pete, because he
never played D&D with us, or got onto Scepter, or hung out with us too much. I
only get brief glimpses of him at shows these days. All I can really say is that
people who rag on him, do so because he is aloof, which makes people think he is
arrogant which pisses them off because they feel he has nothing to be arrogant
about. But as far as I can see he's never actually done anything to anyone, so I
don't know what everyones problem is with him. If he applied himself to anything
he'd probably be pretty good at it, but I don't think he ever will. I could be
misjudging him myself right now and I admit it, but this is just my own opinion,
because I've never seen him complete anything. This could be because he doesn't
care either, but if he doesn't, why does he stick around in the pirate world?
Who knows. But if you're one of the people ragging on him, think about why
you're doing it. Have a reason for the things you do, don't be a Joe.   Next is
Ernie (The Surge).  Ernie was more of a guniea pig than anything else. Whenever
any of them came up with some interesting new form of fraud, Ernie would be
right there begging to be the one to test it out. From a practical viewpoint he
was probably very useful, since none of "us" would have anything to do with
their schemes after what happened at Computer Factory (nothing really bad, but
they have a tendancy to leave everyone to either get busted or not, all on their
own, which is not very comforting). From a humananitariun point of view, Ernie
was the all time loser.  All of us have taken drugs at some point, but while
everyone could "socially" handle it, Ernie couldn't, and picked up a very nasty
coke habit. He finally ended up freebasing it and that was the end.  Instead of
going to Harvard like he'd planned, he ended up dropping out of his senior year
of high school. After using everything in his bank accounts, he began his
serious career in crime to finance his habit. He set himself up for a while by
pulling TRW reports on people and getting fake cards printed out, so he could
walk into a electronics store and walk out with $40,000 in stuff. This collapsed
when his "ring" got busted, and he was being looked for. His name wasn't known
but they knew 1 person escaped and they knew his general location. Ernie took a
6 month vacation to his parents house in barbados (You have to remember, that
when I write about "them" most of these guys have rich parents, so when Ernie
had a "habit" it wasn't for a few hundred a day, it was a little more serious
than that).  After he got back he was the one who volunteered to do the physical
pickups in Pat's Hack-A-Bank system, and also did the physical things that
required some intelligence (meaning Paul's friends couldn't handle it). Ernie
wasn't stupid, he just ended up with a bad habit and tried to deal with it. 
The last I heard of him he had some group of people very made with him, to show
their anger they tore his new Porsche into little pieces and spread it out all
over his driveway. He ended up joining some family of the NY mob.    Next is
Dave (False Prophet)  This guy is like a second rate copy of Joe. He does the
same things, was in Inse<t0!dz with Joe and spends his time hassling people for
no reason. Except he has no imagination and mostly spends his time copying what
other people did before him.  Patrick has never talked about him, most of what I
know about him I got from Carl since I've never met Dave. He mostly calls local
boards and starts fights with people or tries to imitate Joe.   I don't know why
I'm mentioning him, except he was in the Phantom Access docs as "testor" and was
involved in some of this. He might have done more that I don't know about.  
Next is Alex (Pit Fiend)  Alex's life is worse then a soap opera. When I first
met him he lived in a giant house in the luxury section of Queens. His father
was rich, his grand parents were filthy rich and his life was good.   His mother
got cancer, his father stopped working and sold almost everything to pay for the
treatments. After 2 years of suffering his mother died. By then his father's
business had gone to hell, they were broke and sold everything and moved from a
3 million dollar house, to a $350 a week 2 room apartment.  His grandparents are
misers and never help them out with anything, his father has some low paying job
now and mostly Alex's entire life is in statis waiting for his grandparents to
die so he can inherit. He gets 2/3 of everything in the will, which means that
as soon as they die, Alex is a multi millionaire.  He was the first person I met
who has no morals. By none, I mean NONE. He isn't like Carl (bitter about his
situation), he takes life as a joke, in more ways then one. He is the only
person I know who sits around thinking of ways to kill people "just to see what
its like". He isn't some kind of psycho who sits in his room sharpening his ax
and drooling, he is perfectly rational when he talks about it.   He was going to
school in the same way Carl is still going to school. By never showing up, he
forged his grades, tuition forms and all this other shit for 3 years (spending
the money he had for tuition), before his father found out he was doing it. Alex
said his mother's death affected him and that he felt he just couldn't go on
afterward, his father believed it and now leaves him alone. That was a lie
naturally, Alex doesn't care about anyone or anything except  how soon he will
get his share of the money. If I were him I don't think I'd care either, knowing
that one day someone is going to drop dead and drop a few million in my lap. 
Right now he spends his time thinking up ways that might make his grandparents
die much faster then they're dying now. He never has money, he doesn't work, he
dreams his dreams and waits around.  

Part 4

   Next is Paul (many names).   Paul is confused sometimes with Paul Muad'Dib.
They are both black and both almost identical. Paul Muad'Dib I used to see at
Tap, then he stopped going. The other Paul is one of Patrick's old friends who
moved here from the west with him a long time ago.   Being totally honest, Paul
is the one who impresses me the most in terms of money. It's all very nice to
have $300,000 on paper in some stock certificates thanks to being born to the
right parents, and most of them have that. Even I'm far from poor. But Paul is
the only person I know who has $300,000 in a suitcase in his closet. And that,
is totally mind blowing.  Paul is 19 years old, he drives a Ferrari, he wears
$2,000 suits, he also runs 3 crackhouses in NYC and supplies for a few more.  
I've talked to him many times, he lives 3 houses away from Patrick, and I've 
gotten to know him pretty well over the years. The only reason he has a 
computer is to login to Scepter and play the game, before they all got into
that Paul never had any computers. He's kind of a paradox, on one hand you
think about what he does for a living and you think he's a scumbag. But then
you get to know him, and he is a really intelligent and nice person. This is
from my view of him, the guy he shot last week thinks differently I'm sure (I
don't mean to say that he kills people, but "I wonder...").   He also has a
strange life plan, he is one of what I can best describe as  "Patrick groupies",
people who want to hang out with him forever. It's hard to describe (as usual),
but if you know Pat, you know what I mean, he has a very interesting outlook on
life, and a lot of people find they want to be just like him or just hang out
with him. To put it into AD&D terms, he has a 25 charisma (then again, I'm sure
Hitler did too). But this is mostly just dreams, I could even picture myself
doing this too, but then reality comes in and I think "what the fuck he is going
to be doing 5 years from now?" and I say forget it, it's like being in the same
room with some guy who's just made 5 million gambling at your table, the
excitement or whatever rubs off on you and you feel great, but after he leaves,
he is him and you are still you. This is the best way I can think of describing
it. Paul is someone who could best be described as a sidekick. Batman & Robin,
Patrick & Paul, etc. He is also the only one out of the bunch with any ambition
in the "professional" field. He is a pre-med student at the present time.  He
also impresses me because he is the only one who isn't a leech. His father
lives in Europe somewhere, his mother is a Lawyer and does ok I guess. But out
of all of them, he is the only one who wouldn't be a bum if his parents 
suddenly got sick of him and cut off his money.   I don't know about anyone
else, but I always thought of drug dealers as a bunch of animals I wouldn't want
to be near, unless I needed to buy something. But Paul's outlook is pretty good,
paraphrased:  Don't you feel bad about what you do? > 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 <The ORIGINAL  Pit Fiend since 1979>, 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!!???!! <audible gasp>.  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!