From: David DeLaney Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.usenet.kooks,alt.answers,news.answers Subject: Net.Legends.FAQ (Noticeable Phenomena Of UseNet) Part 1/4 Supersedes: Followup-To: poster Date: 27 Nov 1994 15:09:25 GMT Organization: Brown Ajah, r.a.sf.w.r-j Division Reply-To: dbd@panacea.phys.utk.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu Summary: This FAQ gives information on some of the more noticeable or notable people, places, and/or things occuring on UseNet. Not to be taken internally. X-Last-Updated: 1994/09/15 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Archive-name: net-legends-faq/part1 Posting-Frequency: every 73 days Last-modified: 9/13/94 This... is the Net.Legends FAQ. Due to minutes^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hweeks of unrelenting plagiar^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hresearch, we have gathered together here some descriptions of those net.phenomena that one hears about in passing, and (due to the collective memory of the Net being about one week, maximum) wishes one had more information about (such as "Who *was* McElwaine, anyway, and *why* is he still being talked about?). What follows is a list of some of the Legends of the Net, along with descriptions, semi-explanations, and (in some cases) a parenthesized catchphrase for easy identification... not all of the following are completely factual entries: in some cases the true facts are known only to one person, or lost in the mists of time, while in others the facts pale in relation to the mythology. In any case, the actual facts included, sparse though they may be, are true as far as I know; if you have evidence otherwise, please contact me and *tell* me (saying "This is wrong!" without actually saying *what* is wrong with it is of little use to me, though...) (Note: "Myth" is canonically used to refer to stories involving gods or other supernatural beings; "legend" refers to stories involving humans that could be true.) The FAQ in each case should be considered to be "Who or what is ____ and where can I get some [no wait.. umm..] why & how should I know this? [yeah, that's it]". The miniFAQs mentioned are available by anon-ftp (as is this FAQ) or gopher to cathouse.org, the awesome AFU archive, under /pub/cathouse/urban.legends/net.legends, and are mostly composed of representative posts... they are also available by mosaic to http://enigma.phys.utk.edu, in my personal page (click on UT Particle Theory Group at the bottom of the HomePage and then on David DeLaney, middle of page) [they are *not* stored on enigma, so don't write angry letters to the sysadmins *or* to the Boss and annoy them, please], at least as long as that personal page stays there.... The FAQ and the miniFAQs are currently *not* available at utk via anon-ftp; the FAQ's several places on Internet, most of which I don't know, but one is ftp.umd.umich.edu, under /pub/text; another is in /pub/crd at ftp.netcom.com, which is now a Hypertext/Mosaic link to the cathouse archive mentioned above. If the posting to news.answers has worked, the FAQ will also be archived at rtfm.mit.edu, in the appropriate subdirectory for news.answers, alt.answers, alt.folklore.computers, and alt.usenet.kooks ... Have Fun! Disclaimer(s): *Since* these are in fact net.*legends*, not much of a real attempt to verify that these people actually do hold these opinions, exist at these addresses, etc., has been made; in addition, much of this FAQ is in the form of, er, "overheard" posts (fully credited at the end), to give some feel of what it might be like to *have* heard a net.conversation about them, and to preserve the "legend" style... The "Contrib. post"s are posts (or sometimes email) which people have made, recalling what they remember about the subject, and are not guaranteed to be accurate, but only what the person who posted them remembered. If you have better info on any of these, see the last bit of the FAQ (if you *are* any of these, and wish to correct some info, by all means go ahead! Lewis Stiller did, and won a new updated entry! Dan Karnes broke the chain, and 2 weeks later got exiled to news.admin.*...). Any attempt to actually email any of these addresses may have results ranging from complete silence to a perfectly normal conversation to mailbombing to complaints to your sysadmin to sudden inclusion in a vast global conspiracy; You Have Been Warned. Also, if you're one of the type who call up all the phone numbers they see in movies (which is why the 555 exchange is universally used in the USA now for these things ... but I digress) consider what it might be like to have *your* name appear on one of these things... and wake up with 1,000 pieces of mail in your mailbx... This is *not* "the FAQ for alt.usenet.kooks" (motto: In Cyberspace Everybody Can Hear You Scream), by the way; many of the people herein are here only because they are or were *noticeable* in one way or another on various (sometimes widespread) parts of UseNet. Some are loons, yes, or crackpots or kooks; some are not by *any* stretch of the imagination. Some are probably not very sane, while others are quite sane, and there's even some where it's very hard to tell one way or the other; all, however, have *some* distinguishing characteristic(s) that cause them to stick in people's memories. By the way, the repeated use of "loon" and its derivatives in the quoted posts and some of the descriptions comes mainly from the origination of this FAQ in a thread entitled "Call For Loons" (which started on alt.folklore.computers), before it became clear that *notoriety*, not looniness, should be the distinguishing characteristic of those gathered herein. This is not a complete listing of Notable People Of Usenet - be serious! The net's way too big for that. This is a selection (albeit a large one). This FAQ is also biased, in most cases towards the humorous side; all FAQs are biased, because they are ultimately written by people who are biased. There's not enough room in the world's hard disks to present all sides of every argument for every person and/or phenomenon noted in here, so some things are inevitably gonna be left out. Deal with it. In most cases, if you want to know more, you can either ask on the newsgroup(s) in question or ask the net.legend themselves; many will be happy to explain (sometimes at great length) their particular quirks, or why they feel the way they do. Some will of course be acrimonious instead of happy; see above about emailing them... The information in here is inevitably somewhat or largely out-of-date, simply because the Net (and even Real Life) keep moving on. No conceivable FAQ could keep up with the *current* doings of even a small fraction of the people listed herein. Updates will be accepted, and probably stuck on the bottom of the 10,000 or so lines of other raw-data-to-be-smelted-into-FAQ- entries currently in the possession of the FAQ-maker... And yes, the format is a bit difficult to find things in; it was hard to write, so it should be hard to read, no? Search functions are your *friend*... Table of Contents: ----------------- 1.0 The Good Guys Kibo tale Spaf the da Silvas Ron "Asbestos" Dippold and the UVV The Warlord The UseNet Oracle alt.fan.lemurs 2.0 The Rest Of The Stories McElwaine B1FF Gary Stollman Jack Schmidling L. Detweiler Abian Serdar Argic Jack Sarfatti Hannu Poropudas Dan Gannon Riley G. ted frank snopes & Lasner Ludwig Plutonium Ted Holden Shub-Internet Daniel Drucker John_-_Winston Dave Hayes Dick Depew John Palmer Bruce Becker Laurence Godfrey David Sternlight Pat Townson Daniel J. Karnes 3.0 Stupid Net Tricks Dave Rhodes & MAKE.MONEY.FAST Alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb "Surveys"/"Homework"/"Email me!!" "Will you icky queers kindly go awaaaaaay!" Clueless newbies Death of UseNet/Internet predicted .sig viruses alt.religion.kibology Crossposted to *.test Posted separately to every newsgroup you can find Hitler, Nazis, nazis, and net.cops UseNet Rules #n Permanent Floating Flamewars Email Addresses of the Rich and Famous 4.0 Lesser Lights various and sundry, too many to list here; read! read! 5.0 Also Nominated but with little or no information attached, unfortunately... 6.0 Other Callings or, The Debris Of The Naming Straw Poll 7.0 Credits You know who you are ... or you *will*... Net.Legends Roll Call: ---------------------- 1.0 Let's start with the "good guys", chief amongst which is: Kibo (You're allowed. -- K.): Perhaps the single defining hallmark of genius is to do something that noone else has ever done before, or even thought of doing, and make it look blindingly obvious afterwards. James "Kibo" Parry, confronted with the vast reality of UseNet, decided to begin `grep'ing his entire newsfeed for posts containing his middle monicker, "Kibo", in order to look them over and see if they were worth replying to. (Actually, he now uses `agrep', and I do not know if he started out on `grep'.) As a result, any post mentioning Kibo became suddenly apt to generate a followup from the Great One, or at least email from him. As his art was refined, he started also grepping for "xvob" ("kibo" in rot13 encryption) and anti-grepping for "ski boots", for obvious reasons (but not for "kibosh"...). He has become a UseNet term, derived from this activity: grepping your entire newsfeed is "kibozing", and one who does so is a "kibozer" (or, depending on how you feel about them, a "kibozo"). Reference has been seen on alt.folklore.computers to an operating system (not UNIX) having to "kiboze its hard disk" to find files... He has his own newsgroup, alt.religion.kibology, which is also his own religion (Kibo is a genuine net.god, along with tale and Shub-Internet (q.v.)) where odd posts happen (including regular postings from John_-_Winston (q.v.) and, formerly, Lewis Stiller (q.v.)); alt.exploding.kibo (newgrouped by Kevin L. McBride), its counterpart alt.imploding.kibo (a Carasso [tm] product), and alt.politics.kibo also exist, at various levels of activity. Rec.kibo.hunting, proposed by Joel Furr (q.v.), was never allowed into the RFD stage by tale (q.v.)... Most people and subjects are Allowed to post or be posted about on a.r.k . He has an imitator and opposite, xibo (q.v.); he has a dog, named Spot, who (along with xibo and a few others) is Not Allowed [he's Just a Dog, dammit!]. He has what is probably the canonical example of a supremely warlordable .signature; however, he rarely uses it, preferring the terse " -- K.". Don't ask to see it unless you *really* want to know. Several other people have adapted or re-invented the newsgrep technique for purposes of their own, including Serdar Argic (q.v.); Larry Wall, the creator of the language perl (who does it, using Perl, to answer Perl questions); Peter Trei (q.v.), who greps for Freemasonry references, and Daniel J. Karnes (q.v.), who apparently does it to inflict himself on newsgroups talking about him. (Reportedly) the National Security Agency was doing it long before Kibo ever thought of it, so watch out... If you have ever received email from Kibo, your official Kibo number starts out as 1; if you have not received email from anyone whose Kibo number is < n, but have received email from someone whose Kibo # is n, then yours is n+1. Fractional Kibo numbers are imposters (i.e., ted frank (q.v.)); Kibo's own Kibo number is 0. Posts don't count for Kibo number purposes, only email. (A few others have had Kibo number zero as well, earned in various ways; Kibo can also assign a number to you, and came in 2nd in the "most evil net.personalities" vote, so watch it.) Thom Grace claims credit for originating these numbers. He's even been featured [Kibo, not Thom] in a White Wolf gaming supplement (for "Mage"), and in Playboy (no pictorials yet though)... His titles include "Great Leader" and "He Who Greps"; discussions about Kibo tend to attract his attention unless specific precautions are taken (e.g.: Quibeau [doesn't work, don't bother]), and such precautions, in general, don't last very long... Kibo has no real "haunts" other than his group(s) and UseNet in general, but *does* read alt.folklore.computers; HappyNet is ... not yet implemented. Kibo celebrated September in 1994 by having his own death faked by members of his newsgroup, possibly unbeknownst to him... Contrib. post: > I do not read a.f.c any more that I read other groups; HappyNet is implemented, it's just that YOU'RE not connected to it because YOU have a wimpy site! a.r.k is just about the only group I read *all* the articles in, except maybe control. No, I'm kidding about control. -- FAQs for a.r.k, Spot, and HappyNet are available, as well as an a.r.k IAQ; a.r.k is archived on world.std.com in /pub/alt.religion.kibology, along with Kibo's .sig and Kibo's McElwaine and Plutonium archives, of which he is very proud. Posts from kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry). -- > Also posts from other places and names, but they're secret and you can't > figure out where they are, la la la. -- tale (... is an unmoderated newsgroup which passed its vote for creation by ...): David Lawrence spends time and energy selflessly to maintain order in the news.* hierarchy. He moderates news.announce.newgroups, and has effectively net.god status, in that sysadmins everywhere look for the tale seal of approval on newgroups for the Big Seven hierarchies. Gods help us if he ever has a stroke from holding in criticism of Dave Hayes (q.v.) too long. A man who knows that silence is usually a *very* effective strategy; speaks only when there's something important to say (entirely unlike the rest of UseNet). Posts, rarely, from tale@ten.uu.net (David C Lawrence). Spaf: Closely net.related to tale, Gene Spafford compiled the non-bogus group lists; his decisions had such influence across the net that, so the saying goes, `if a newgroup isn't "spaf", it won't be propagated'. This issue came up in the SF-reorganization flamewar, as well as in the much less noisy rec.arts.anime reorganization, with regards to things such as fanfic groups, which Spaf would presumably not permit. If there were an actual head of a Net.Control.Cabal, Spaf was *it* (however, see UseNet Rule #0); he taught them all they know and wrote many of the FAQs appearing in news.answers... he's also known as "Emily Postnews". He also only did really useful important things rather than nutty noticeable things, and thus tended to fade into the UseNet background. Unfortunately, he seems to be more faded than usual these days, and it's generally accepted that he resigned and moved on to Real Life things some time ago (a post from him was recently seen on news.admin.* saying that he doesn't even *read* news these days)... Peter and Stephanie da Silva: Also in the category "do many many useful things for UseNet and get noticed very little". Provide voices of reason on news.*. Peter apparently maintains some of the Guidelines; Stephanie maintains the List of Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, and is one of the few people with the ability to slap Kibo on the nose and get away with it... Peter seems to have originated the "that name is a crawling horror from the sewers of hell" Newsgroup Name Objection, according to Stephanie. May be considered to be Cabal-members-if-there- actually-were-such-a-thing-as-a-Cabal (again, see Rule #0). Stephanie posts as arielle@netcom.com (email: arielle@taronga.com), Peter as peter@nmti.com . Ron "Asbestos" Dippold and the UVV (The Knights Who Say Ack!): Contrib. post: Since August of 1993, the USENET Volunteer Votetakers --- The Knights Who Say Ack! --- have conducted polls for close to a gross of groups. Co-ordinated by Ron Dippold, who has himself handled several dozen proposals, they have provided a very valuable service to USENET by bringing quality and consistency to a observably less than ideal group creation process. They do their jobs with no compensation but the feeling that they are contribution something positive to the network news community. It's generally a job done without observable gratitude, and I don't want it overlooked. Knights, on behalf of myself and many group proponents, users and administrators everywhere, I say thank you. Well done! David Lawrence, moderator, news.announce.newgroups -- The UVV has pretty much put an end to the formerly-common flamewars over vote results; biased vote-takers, vote floodings, and other Usenet Big 7 voting rules violations have dropped remarkably since their inception. They will also do straw polls on various subjects, in addition to their usual CFV vote counting, if asked nicely. Ron posts from rdippold@qualcomm.com (Ron "Asbestos" Dippold); votes taken by the UVV usually are done from voting@qualcomm.com; see also: news.announce.newgroups ... The Warlord: The original owner of the sword that appears in .sig files all over UseNet, in various forms. Left this plane long ago, but passed on his flame of inquiry and satire to George McQuary (of the McQxxx four-line .sig limit), who in turn shared it with the alt.fan.warlord Inner Circle. They've been doling out said flame in drips and driblets ever since, whenever an especially "warlordable" .sig comes along. So be good little .sig designers, boys and girls, or you may find yourself suddenly transported to a.f.w and mercilessly mocked, and possibly have your .sig even animate itself to death. [I'm putting this under the "good guys" for a good reason, ok?] Does not post himself; others do his work for him. The UseNet Oracle: Has its own groups, rec.humor.oracle and rec.humor.oracle.d . Will answer questions if groveled to sufficiently. Querents are referred to the UseNet Oracle FAQ; beware the "ZOT!". One may also mail oracle@cs.indiana.edu with the word "help" in the Subject: line to get information, or with "tellme" or "tell me" in the Subject: line if you have a burning question for the Oracle... Alt.fan.lemurs: What can we say (besides Frink!)? Check out the Frinkquently Asked Questions, in six parts; bring along your grape soda. Several parts lemur humor, lemur poetry, lemurs swinging from ceiling lamps and plotting to liberate grape soda from supermarkets, and frequently saying "Frink!", to one part actual lemur facts and how you can help this endangered species... 2.0 __________________________________________ That's the good news; now for the odd, bad, distinctive, memorable, or just plain irreproducible (tm) news: Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED): Contrib. post: The nice thing about mcelwaine was that they acted as proxy for not just one loon, but for every loon in the local galactic cluster. mcelwaine was sort of a lightning rod for looniness, like some sort of device that tesla might have dreamt up to concentrate and store the stuff. but frankly i stopped reading mcelwaine's posts pretty quickly; it was all just too repetitive and too pointless. but i never stopped reading those little one or two-line introductions to the canned posts, tailored to each individual newsgroup, explaining the reason for the cross-post. those were often priceless gems of idiocy. -- Ahhh, McElwaine. Fun fellow. Completely and utterly loony. His site-imposed censorship was a blow to comedically inclined physicists around the world. -- sissel@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu wrote: >You almost have that McElwaine-ian touch, JF, by >randomly capitalizing words, but you still haven't >yet mastered the RM's decidedly brilliant method >of randomly throwing in dollar $IGN$! McElwaine didn't "randomly" throw in dollar signs. THere were a few words that he consistently dollar-signed, and a few words that had dollar signs every once in a while. Nor did he randomly capitalize words, although his capitalization is indeed unorthodox. I have done some counting-up-of-words for the corpus of McElwainiana, and I have some preliminary results. Sooner-or-later, I intend to post a summary of what I have found, along with a program to implement McElwaining of arbitrary text. -- >Does anyone know what McElwaine's position was at UW Eau-Claire? >(BTW, he never responded to my email.) No, Robert never responded to anyone's email, and I'll bet he used to get a bunch of it! McElwaine was an undergrad student at UWEC who then graduated from there and apparently hung around the school after graduation, either working there part time or just hanging-out. If he entered grad school he never mentioned it, and since he was very fond of signing himself: Robert E. McElwaine Physicist and Astronomer B.Sc. UWEC I'm sure he would have trumpeted any grad school work he was doing. -- I am one of the lucky few, then - here's one I got back when hew first started the posting binge. Note that his famous capitalization style extends to email. Makes you wonder what he sounded like in person. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 04 Feb 1993 17:44:07 -0600 (CST) From: MCELWRE@CNSVAX.UWEC.EDU Subject: Re: FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY For Spacecraft >Hello, > You posted this same article to sci.astro a few months ago. There was >a great deal of discussion about it at the time, but you did not reply to any >of the comments. May I ask why you would want to post the same big artile >again if you don't want to participate in any discussion of it? I repost articles for the benefit of NEW READERS. I do NOT have time to argue about with CLOSED MINDS. Interested readers should consult my cited SOURCES. -- Apparently lost his account Some Time Ago for abusing net-access privileges; has not been seen since... Kibo maintains an archive of McElwaine's postings on UseNet,at world.std.com, under /pub/alt.religion.kibology/net-wackiness/ mcelwaine, for those of you who came in too late to $EE the real THING. Joel Furr (q.v.) has released a McElwaine T-shirt. Posted from MCELWRE@CSNVAX.UWEC.EDU (??). B1FF (HEY D00DZ!1!! THIS IZ K()()L!!1!!): extremely unorthodox (but somewhat consistent, and *easily* mimickable) typography in his posts (ALL CAPS, I->1, O->0, E->3, etc.) "K00L, DUD3Z!", plus much surfer-type slang. B1FF posts from a Commodore C-64, and is a Kool Dude who Rilly Knows Net.Stuff. Has many imitators. Remembered semi-fondly by millions. Had a girlfriend, Buffy (tee-hee! :-) :-) *giggle*! :-) :-) ), [or possibly Muffy; rumors are flying that Muffy has been killed by kibologists - I would remind people that Rumors are Treason and make The Computer unHappy; have a Nice Day, Citizen...] who would probably blow Phil Gustafson's diodes permanently were she to appear on afu... B1FF is *not* Kibo, nor is Kibo B1FF. Nu-uh. Nope. B1FF was last seen proclaiming his new account, b1ff@aol.com (an obvious forgery, of course - B1FF has no minuscules) and before that, his BIFFSTER@DELPHI.COM account (and before *that* on news.groups, quickly followed by buffy). -- From the alt.religion.kibology FAQ: "WHO IS BIFF?" BIFF IZ A REELY K00L D00D !!!!!!!!!!!!!1 HE P0STS 2 THE NET FR0M HIZ BIG BROTHERS C-64 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111 BIFF IS AWESUM ..........,,,, "SAY, KIBO, ARE YOU RELATED TO BIFF?" N0 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "IS BIFF A KIBOLOGIST?" Everyone's a Kibologist... whether they know it or not! -- Contrib. post: 5> STOP OVER-BIFFING. BIFF is simply a YUNG D00D on his brother's 5> COMMODUR with poor spelling, grammar and typing skills. He is not 5> dyslexic. If i see someone use a 3 instead of an E in a BIFF post 5> i will claw my eyes out with a spork. 5> Don't overemote. Keep BIFF simple. He is a simple personality. He used to be. But he got older and learned about RADIK()()L NEW BBSES D00D WHERE EVERY 1 TALKS LIKE HIM!!!111 BUT THEY UZED 3 1NSTEAD 0F E!!111 THEY WER THE AWESUM K00L HAKERS AND B1FF WANTED S0 MUCH 2 B LIKE THEM!!!111 THEY HAD ALL THE LATEST WAREZ!!!11 S0 B1FF START3D T0 US3 3 INST3D 0F E CUZ ITZ WAY K00L3R!!!111 N0W B1FF IZ A WAY-K00L HAKER D()()D 2!!!!11111 WAY 2 G0 B1FF!!!1111 -- Let me take a moment and explain the history of the Wacky Misspelling Gag. It started out as a parody of usage common in certain subcultures, particularly those of teenage software pirates and crackers, and infantile Usenet newbies. You still see someone who types this way without irony every once in a while, particularly in groups devoted to heavy-metal bands. In any case, at some point a number of different individuals created a mythical entity named BIFF or BIFF@BIT.NET or BIFF@psuvm.psu.edu or something like that, an enthusiastic but clueless adolescent who posted from his brother's Commodore 64. BIFF typed in all caps, often with bizarre line breaks, and ended every sentence with a string of !!'s and some ones mixed in for good measure (which really makes no sense given the C64 keyboard, but BIFF's naivete exceeded even physical bounds). It is a very old joke and tired too, but now that's its charm, as Mike Nelson as Jack Perkins would say. Most of us started out as BIFFs in some sense or another; we would put huge ASCII swords in our .signature files, or misspell things intentionally so it would be K00L, or respond in a puzzled manner to obvious bait and flame the poster apoplectically in sentences ending in strings of exclamation points. We look back on our newbiehood, and BIFF helps us remember. Personally, one of the most embarrassing aspects of my Usenet childhood was that I thought BIFF had at one time been a real person. In any case, now you know. Kibo wasn't responsible, not originally, at least. I've asked him who was, but he says if he tells me he'll have to kill me. -- [The true ID of the *original* B1FF is to be found in the Jargon File (which spells it "BIFF"; this can be found at prep.ai.mit.edu (18.71.0.38), in directory pub/gnu, as the file named jargon300.ascii.gz (gzipped); >1MB unzipped, watch out! Also at netcom.com, in /pub/linley. I include it here:] -- Lookup request: BIFF :BIFF: /bif/ [USENET] n. The most famous {pseudo}, and the prototypical {newbie}. Articles from BIFF are characterized by all uppercase letters sprinkled liberally with bangs, typos, `cute' misspellings (EVRY BUDY LUVS GOOD OLD BIFF CUZ HE"S A K00L DOOD AN HE RITES REEL AWESUM THINGZ IN CAPITULL LETTRS LIKE THIS!!!), use (and often misuse) of fragments of {talk mode} abbreviations, a long {sig block} (sometimes even a {doubled sig}), and unbounded naivet'e. BIFF posts articles using his elder brother's VIC-20. BIFF's location is a mystery, as his articles appear to come from a variety of sites. However, {BITNET} seems to be the most frequent origin. The theory that BIFF is a denizen of BITNET is supported by BIFF's (unfortunately invalid) electronic mail address: BIFF@BIT.NET. [1993: Now It Can Be Told! My spies inform me that BIFF was originally created by Joe Talmadge , also the author of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible". The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton [q.v.], who posted BIFFisms much more widely. Versions have since been posted for the amusement of the net at large. --- ESR] -- BIFF (not B1FF) was created by Joe Talmadge (of "Ten Rules for Flaming" fame) of HP in 1988. Joe posted three postings by BIFF from his account, and shortly after Richard Sexton began sending out BIFF@BIFF.NET postings for about a year until he lost interest. At this time, because some idiot had posted "How to forge a posting" to talk.bizarre, everybody and his brother was now forging B1FF postings. Talmadge and Sexton never used digits (C00L, B1FF) in BIFF postings. Most of the original BIFF forgeries were done from psuvm1.psu.edu . -- Gary Stollman: pursued by aliens; was not seen for a while, but has turned up posting from Netcom on alt.alien.visitors . Contrib. posts: I remember Stollman quite well. However, I never did save them [his posts] since I thought he was going to be Eternal. At least until the Aliens got me, at which point I wouldn't care. He was manic, paranoiac, and a man of his convictions. I think he'd had several convictions, though he was not guilty by reason of insanity... -- I do have Gary Stollman's long life story somewhere -- the highlight of this is how he realized that people were following him when he started staring at this family he saw at a rest stop, and they became so discomfited at his staring that they left! Imagine! -- I remember Gary. I even flamed him once. It was kind of mean, it was an indirect flame/rant about the lack of interesting nutcases (ie, Van Gogh was a more interesting and creative mentally disturbed type of person, you're no Van Gogh etc.) He responded in his usual fashion. "No, it really did happen!" etc. I feel pretty sorry for him really. I remember seeing the fake gun holdup on TV. It surprised me that this guy had gotten net.access. Mind you, it says a lot about some mental illnesses-- you can be intelligent and yet totally unable to deal with one facet of reality. -- >From garys@netcom.com Sat Mar 19 01:21:44 PST 1994 Well, the account name looks similar... >Article: 4028 of alt.alien.visitors >Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors Posting to the same groups as usual... >From: garys@netcom.com (Gary Stollman) >Subject: INVASION!!! His favorite subject-line... >Summary: Yeh, I'm still around... >Keywords: stollman, invasion, clones Not sure about him adding keywords, but never mind... >Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 02:51:58 GMT >This is just to let people know that I am still around and >functioning...I am curently taking a C programming class at Tallahassee >Community College, currently I have an A in it, I just want to get it >done so I can visit my mom in LA...Enjoy!!!!! Hmm.. Seems a little "upbeat" for Gary. New medication? It's a little short to be able to tell if it is his style (the easiest way of detecting forgeries, IMHO... anyone can forge an email address but forging style is another thing entirely!) but it is close enough to what I remember. > Gary >-- >Gary Stollman Internet: garys@netcom.com GEnie: G.STOLLMAN >----------------------------------------------------------------- > The world is your playground. Keep it clean! >----------------------------------------------------------------- Same .signature. Brings back memories! (sniff) Well I would say that it is about a 80% probability of being him. Glad he's back, and that the clones didn't get 'im after all... :) -- Currently posting from garys@netcom.com (Gary Stollman), and possibly from Gary Stollman . Jack Schmidling (I will be arrested for refusing to buy Israeli oranges): Contrib. post: >Jack was never widely known was he? Certainly Jack would qualify for >the Net.Legends list if he's posted all over the map. Did he? He was pretty widely known in alt.revisionism; he used to post in a bunch of other groups - the usual suspects for crossposts from AR: alt.activism, alt.conspiracy, alt.activism.d, alt.discrimination, alt.censorship. talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.jewish... (Contributor) thinks anybody who dares sign all their posts "ARF" in a group scanned by the ZUMABOT qualifies for net.legend status. -- Jack is the reason I stopped reading t.p.m. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. It should be noted that Jack shows up in rec.crafts.brewing, from time to time, and is reported to be just as obnoxious there, but in a different way. (A friend who graduated read rec.crafts.brewing often, and mentioned Schmidling's presence. You'd have to check r.c.b to make sure.) -- >>>Are you sure it's the same guy? >>One hundred percent positive. > Jack Schmidling is not just a Usenet kook and a suburban-Chicago lawn kook, >he is an internationally famous amateur radio kook also. Anyone remember >Jacks old .sig trumpeting his "ARF" (Amateur Radio Forum) on 14.313 MHz? >Jack managed to use roughly 40 lines of text in that baby. The one with the lighthouse image? > Anyway, Schmidling & Co. staked-out 14.313 as their personal turf and >set up a swearing/yelling/threatening encounter group that, due to the >magic of ionospheric propogation, interfered with the normal activities >of amateur radio operators worldwide. The last I heard, the FCC had >cracked-down on the 14.313 mob, issuing $10,000 fines and such, and the >frequency seems to be rather quiet now. Anyone know if Jack got caught >up in the dragnet? Is that why he is now the master.loon of rec.arts.brewing >rather than rec.radio.amateur.misc? He's back in alt.revisionism again, repeating his oft-disproved claim that Barry Shein maliciously altered a post of his when reposting it in another article. Dan "Karnes/Artimus and now Schmidling? McElwaine's return may be right around the corner" Case -- Schmidling mini-FAQ available, thanks to Ted Frank (q.v.). He's also one of the few net.legends to have his video publicized by Garbage magazine, and to be interviewed by the CBS news; had some odd ideas about lawns... Formerly sometimes believed to actually be the same person as Dan Gannon (q.v.); seems to have settled down a good bit recently. A miniFAQ of some former posts is available. L. Detweiler (you are all TENTACLES of the CYPHERpunk anarchoSYNDICALIST pseudospoofing CONSPIRACY; everyone who contacts me via post or email is a tentacle of a single Medusa): All information relevant has been deleted (probably by the cypherpunk pseudospoofers); ask around - old-timers can tell you about him, through "safe" avenues (like email). Warning: attempting to disillusion him of his theories usually results in threatening mail and getting incorporated into said theories. Handle With Extreme Care. Appeared occasionally on the news.* hierarchy (for instance, news.admin.policy), crossposted to hell and back. Author of the Internet Anonymity FAQ and the InterNet Writer Resource Guide, pre-legendary status... first name apparently Lawrence or Larry. Contrib. post: >I think this article was some sort of satire but I fell asleep on >the spacebar and, ya know, I just don't get it. Anyone care to boil it >down to a sentence or two? Yes. L. Detweiler, the guy who posts as an12070, and who also posts (now less frequently) under his own account "ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu", is a paranoid psychotic (or someone doing a good parody of one) who believes there is a nationwide conspiracy out to get him, said conspiracy consisting of almost every prominent cryptographer on the net. He periodically rants against this conspiracy. He makes lots of extremely bizarre claims, such as stating that every person posting articles saying he's nuts is in fact a pseudonym of the great conpiratorial group. He's pretty much ignorable, although he has sent death threats to a large number of people that some have taken seriously. -- ...This *may* all be a "front"; he comes across as relatively sane in email (just don't mention Nick Szabo or Tim C. May...). There's really no way to tell, which may actually be the point of all this... Was peculiarly insistent on wanting to become the poster of *this* FAQ as well (to the point of my having to tell the news.answers team "Don't approve this unless I send it to you"...). Posted as ld231782@.lance.colostate.edu (L. Detweiler) and an12070@anon.penet.fi (various constantly-changing identities) - this last address has been disabled by the anon server's sysadmin, and was been proven to be him on several different occasions, although he was hiding it fiercely for a time... his Colorado address has gone also (2/94), according to the sysadmin; this impending loss apparently prompted the Blacknet notices. He's not been seen since from that address - but beware: anyone who "talk"s you may actually be either Detweiler or a Tentacle incognito... MUAaahahaaa!!! The person posting to (among other places) news.admin.* as tmp@netcom.com is, if not this entity, making a good run at attempting to imitate Detweiler (posting to all the same old places, antagonizing Tim May, having S. Boxx and Blacknet show up in tmp@'s constantly-changing .sigs, assuming a dizzying variety of identities...) - but with somewhat better material this time around... and given Detweiler's bee-in-the-bonnet, impersonating him successfully would in some sense make somebody *be* him... Since netcom folks are allowed to choose their own IDs, there's no real evidence that "tmp" is any sort of a guest account (as some have postulated). Posted (maybe) as tmp@netcom.com (various identities); has since been kicked off Netcom, allegedly for posting, somewhat altered, a piece of email from the support staff there. One nym@netcom.com (Sue D. Nym) got kicked off shortly later when (as one Cypherpunks-list person apparently got notified via email) they discovered that "the same person who had formerly paid for tmp's account was now paying for nym's", thus garnering "And we *mean* it!" points... *May* be also ldetweil@csn.org, but if so is not posting from there. Keep yer eyes peeled, kids - he may be back at any time, in any disguise... Abian (IMAGINATION IS THE ESSENCE THE REST ARE DETAILS - I deserve a Nobel prize for this): Hangs out in the sci.* hierarchy, as in sci.physics . "NASA's exclusive goal, ambition and aim must be the reorbiting Venus [into Earth's orbit] by the year 2004. Otherwise NASA will lose its viability. That wee should not permit ! never ! never !" Is convinced that altering Earth's orbit and tilt is the only way to cure humanity of its evil deviance; puts subject lines in ALL CAPS. In Real Life tm, is a retired tenured math professor at a Iowa State U. A miniFAQ of Abian, critiqued MST3K style, is available. Has been interviewed by the BBC, and broadcast... Contrib. post: >Abian [from his .sig]: >``TIME HAS INERTIA. EQUIVALENCE OF TIME AND MASS: (1/T)+(1/log M) = 1 (ABIAN). Isn't that how time flies or crawls? Certainly you've seen this effect around the beginning and ending of your workdays/weeks, people! > ALTER EARTH'S ORBIT AND TILT - STOP EPIDEMICS OF CANCER, CHOLERA, AIDS, ETC. Well, if you knock Earth out of orbit, the sky's the limit. (Although it would be a darn shame if I couldn't spend a comfortable retirement in Florida that's pending for me in, ohh, 2035?) > VENUS MUST BE GIVEN A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT TO BECOME A BORN AGAIN EARTH'' Nevermind. I should take up horticulture while I can... >-- "waiting for the tag-team match: > Marilyn Vos Savant & Robert McElwaine vs. > Alexander Abian & Ludwig Plutonium" Hmm...those team-ups could be destructive could they? (I'd prefer an ABIAN/MCELWAINE vs. Sagan/Plutonium match.) -- > I read an interesting short article in Omni a few years back. Some > scientist (don't remember who) suggested that earth's environment could be > improved by nuking the moon. >I think I read it -- or at least something similar. Aiee. How Soon They Forget (tm). The "scientist" in question was/is none other than Alexander Abian. Yes, he may have moved on to "reorbiting Venus to make it a born-again Earth", but he began on a smaller scale, closer to home. -- ...you forgot to mention that you can also find Dr. Abian's work in the Weekly World News from time to time. Yes, the bastion of supermarket journalism has indeed employed our own Dr. Abian for what nefarious purposes I can not remember. But ooh, it was a doozy! -- Posts as abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian). Serdar Argic (What a bunch of turkeys): Common monickers: zumaBOT, "that d*mn*d turkey". Greps for "turkey" much as Kibo greps for "Kibo", and follows up to many appearances thereof with long rants about Armenian genocide as practiced on Turks, or Muslims (or was it vice-versa?), which bear little if any relevance to the original post other than (usually) quoting a line or two out of it. Will happily follow up to Ken Arromdee's Stuffed/Leftover Turkey .sig bait... Usually crossposts to hell and back, also. Widely believed to have been a script for auto-posting for Some Time Now. Can be sighted on soc.culture.turkey and alt.revisionism, usually. If you really wanted to. His sysadmin, Ahmet Cosar, has been talked at, and is *not* cooperative in the least with the wishes of the rest of UseNet that Serdar get a real life. Believed to have formerly posted under the name Hasan Mutlu; see FAQ mentioned below. Other names sometimes associated with it are Joachim Mattillo/Ilan Rabinowitz/Supric Gupta. Contrib. post: Actually, the repititious daily bombing of USENET in this manner was started a couple of years ago ['92?] from the account of Hasan B. Mutlu from an AT&T site. The real Hasan B. Mutlu, based on an examination of conferences and transactions by an author of that name, is/was one of those AT&T software wizards. The manual reposting of files containing canned replies, preceded by a custom-written reply-specific insult, could have easily been coded into a program whether or not the two Mutlus were the same person. This Mutlu net.personality (referred to as such in deference to the real Hasan who may be a different person that may be suffering repercussions due to the USENET entity) then moved around to a number of other sites, using that name or masked behind other nicknames (either getting disciplined by AT&T, or after the entity was discovered to have been a hacker breaking into the real Hasan's account). Whatever the name, the behaviour is obvious. For a while a running joke was a weekly Mutloids analysis done out of Australia, which tracked the infestations, ranked the appearance of file repostings, etc. Traffic was considerably higher for the two weeks preceding the past two American Thanksgivings, also popularly referred to as you-know-what day. -- One "Suha Artun", whose path also goes through anatolia.org, ("anatolia" apparently translates to "Turkey", by the way) has shown up on soc.history doing the same thing (xpost, Armenia, etc.) (2/94), and a Mr. RooT from anatolia has shown up to protest the group alt.cancel.bots, formed specially to carry cancel messages for the 'bot (subscribe if you want to automatically not see the bot's posts at your site), in news.admin.* . Other recent arrivals are meltem@rahul.net (Arif Kiziltug) and ephesus@netcom.com (Yalin Ekici), although these two do not set followups to soc.culture.turkish, post much less often (~ once/day), and don't crosspost *quite* as widely. Finally (?), Argic apparently disappeared entirely in April '94, one step ahead of a petition drive aimed at UUNet to ask them to ask him to tone things down; a representative from UUNet said "the site anatolia has not existed on UUNET since April 94." Does not answer posts directly; cannot be e-mailed to (although Cosar can be; see the miniFAQ). Bleah. May actually be a small group of people who have taken over maintenance of the posting script. Representative quote: "There are now none left of the 2.5 million Turks slaughtered by Armenians in the early years of this century" or some similar combination of templates/words to that effect. Because this FAQ includes the word "turkey", it may well be followed-up to if it's ever posted, although cross-posting to a moderated group may slow it down a bit. Minifaqs with a bit of info are available, as well as the alt.fan.serdar-argic FAQ. One note: as far as anyone who's read history can tell, the Turks slaughtered the Armenians, directly contrary to this entity's multitudinous claims... Has (2/94) claimed to have virtual lawyers, quoting their success record; possibly rented them from John Palmer (q.v.), and (5/94) claimed to have a doctorate ("Dr. Argic") by one of the people railing against the Uunet petition. Can be emailed to at cosa0001@gold.tc.umn.edu (Ahmed Cosar); be warned that *any* mail to this address earns you a threatening email to your sysadmin complaining of harassment... A person from anatolia (*not* "Mr. RooT") showed up on news.admin.* in 2/94 asking how to set up mail maps; this may be a sign that mail to zuma.UUCP may actually start going somewhere (bit-bucket, most likely). Joel Furr (q.v.) has released a Serdar Argic T-shirt. Posted from (among others) sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic). Jack Sarfatti: Posts long strange posts on physics, consciousness, and metaphysics, many of which do not make much sense to practitioners of the above fields. Used to crosspost to hell and back. Can be seen in the sci.* groups and alt.consciousness. A small collection of posts is available. *Not* a "crackpot" in the classic sense; has a Ph.D. in physics and understands the field quite well - but tends to use it to delve into philosophical concepts and outre' theories rather deeper than many other physicists care to read about. Also posts on and off to sci.psychology about connectionism and perception, and the neuro-psychological implications thereof. Contrib. post: Jack Sarfatti is a physicist who posts on sci.physics. He believes in faster-than-light communication through quantum effects and backwards-in-time communication due to the existence of advanced solutions of wave equations (which exist mathematically, but.... it's a long story). I post to sci.physics a lot as well, and used to take him to task for various errors, and finally he got so annoyed at me he wrote letters to me, the chair of my department, and a dean, threatening to sue me for libel. He has done similar things to a number of people [note: Jack says the "similar things" did *not* include specifically writing to anyone else's Dean/chair/superior]. I am not immensely fond of him, so I was amused when Kibo picked up on a recent post of Sarfatti's in which he mentioned the notion of "beables" as an alternative to the usual concept of "observables." Since then "beables" have become a bit of a fad; over on alt.sex there are now some people under the impression that "beabling" is some sort of vile act people do while watching X-rated movies, etc. etc.. One has to read alt.kibology to get the total picture. -- Has written to at least one poster's dean and dept. chair, complaining about their sense of humor in posting that the 4 moderators of sci.physics were pretending to be Abian, Plutonium, Hannu and Sarfatti in order to drive folks to sci.physics.research, leading the chair to start asking (in jest) in the halls "Did you know was a vicious clown?"... Says that the rationale for the letters (as mentioned in the Contrib. Post) was *not* the pointing-out of supposed errors, but instead various libels and untrue anecdotes that appeared concurrently with the "error-corrections". A story *was* going around at least one physics dept. (which is probably at least as false as any of these entries; Jack himself denies it utterly - but you know how urban legends grow) that Jack used to tell people Murray Gell-Mann found his ideas interesting, and that someone finally checked with Gell-Mann - and found the complete quote was "Your ideas are interesting, but [looking at watch] I'm late for an appointment." Posts from sarfatti@netcom.com (Jack Sarfatti). Hannu Poropudas (Wanna see gifs of my daughter's theories?): Posts theories about space potatoes, made up of combinations of positive- and negative-matter neutrinos, in sevens, to the sci.* hierarchy (sci.physics). Somewhat entertaining. Had a leave of absence, due to his sysadmin responding to protests about his changing his userid with every post so people couldn't killfile him; he says it was actually because he told Scott Chase (sci.physics FAQ person) that he was asking God to put Scott in God's killfile... lost more credibility when he revealed that the official-looking name he kept referencing was in actuality his wee daughter, to whom much of this information had come in the form of dreams, and who gives him further leads in the form of crayoned drawings. Has been "harrassed" by Ludwig Plutonium (q.v.), who has decided Abian is an AI experiment. Posts as haporopu@freenet.hut.fi (Hannu Poropudas). Dan Gannon (Let me explain by reposting the *same* Holocaust-was-fake trash; I didn't write this, I just scanned it in. And you are all VILE LITTLE LIARS for saying so! don't forget my high IQ and my theory of the universe having 23 - nope, wait a minute, make that 25-dimensions): The original UseNet "let's post Nazi revisionist junk in quantity and never reply to debunking, except by reposting the same stuff" person. Has occasionally *tried* to answer posts debunking his anti-Holocaust views; was normally not very successful, and quickly went back to crossposting his articles to hell and back, followed by the self-appointed Dan Gannon Cleanup Crew, who spend selflessly of their time and effort debunking Dan *every* time (Dan posted to soc.college, as far as anyone can tell, in order that maybe just *one* of his multiplicities of posts would catch some uninformed person's eye and fool them into believing his articles... similarly for the other, ever-changing newsgroups on his Newsgroups: line. One is reminded of the IHR people who attempted to take out ads in college newspapers across the USA, succeeding once [I believe; I may have this confused with the CODOH and Bradley Smith's ads, which have been placed successfully several times and laughed down many more times]). Alt.revisionism created mainly to have some place to redirect followups from the cleanup crew; most old-time soc.history readers have killfiles because of him and Serdar. Soc.history.moderated's creation also mainly motivated by him and Serdar... Runs a BBS in Portland, OR that is known for attracting neo-nazi punks of various varieties. For a while, long ago, posted under a multiplicity of identities; retreated to only the Gannon one only when finally caught out. A mini-faq of gannon rebutting this entry, and several others rebutting Gannon, is available; eerily reminiscent of the "main event", without the negative connotations thereof... Has posted as "Ralph Winston", "Maynard", "Pete Faust", and "Foxy Roxy" in the past. Made #7 on the list of "most evil net.personalities", just behind Serdar Argic. Contrib. post: >I'm new to this thread and don't know who Gannon is or what he is famous or >infamous for. Can someone give me a clue?? Why is what he posts considered >drivel?? --KAC In a nutshell: Gannon and the now dissolved organization he patsies for, the IHR, maintain the following thesis: 1. No Jew, Gypsy or other person was purposely killed as part of a national policy by the Nazi govt during WWII. 2. That there certainly were no mass killing operations, no gas chambers, no gas vans, no mass executions in Nazi Germany during the period 1933-1945. For example, they completely deny things like the Einsatzgruppen who wandered the countryside in Eastern Europe executing Jews and others, and certainly deny events like Babi Yar. How over 30,000 bodies got into the same ravine, dead, in a few days is to them merely one of life's great mysteries, perhaps they all tripped and fell... 3. They assert that the massive deaths in concentration camps and similar both did not occur (e.g. all the Jews and Gypsies actually ran off to the USSR and lived happily ever after), and that they were the fault of the Allies, particularly the US, UK and USSR. See, their theory is that it was Allied bombing that caused food shortages, typhus, perhaps the noise made SS guards' guns go off into lined up prisoner's backs, it's hard to know. But it was all the Allies' fault, they're guilty of all the supposed Nazi war crimes. And no one died anyhow. How this happened years before any bombing of Nazi territory occurred is never quite explained. 4. Gannon and the IHR are closely allied with bona-fide Nazis and white extremist and virulent anti-semitic individuals and organizations. For example, when Gannon is not busy claiming contradictory rewrites of history he is often found typing in long tirades about how the Jews are responsible for every conceivable evil that's occurred in western history, including but not limited to the souring of milk and rain at picnics. Seriously, it's your typical jews control the banks, jews control the media, jews control all major western govts, etc. type of rants. Some of the folks he likes to quote have written such notable works as "The Hitler We Loved and Why". He's also promoted the typical "Blacks have smaller brains than Whites" kind of garbage. There's more, but that should be enough for anyone who isn't two tacos short of a combo plate. -- Formerly posted as dgannon@teleport.com (Dan Gannon). Started posting again from maynard@banished.uucp, then dgannon@banished.com, in 12/93, apparently from having lost the teleport account after request-bombing one Holocaust information server... Update: Dateline: 3/4/94. Netcom.com (through which banished.com feeds) gave Dan an ultimatum - that in the future he may only post to the following newsgroups through them: alt.revisionism, talk.politics.misc, soc.culture.german, soc.culture.jewish, soc.rights.human, alt.discrimination, alt.conspiracy, alt.illuminati, alt.individualism, alt.mindcontrol, alt.politics.correct, alt.politics.reform, alt.censorship (copied from a "Goodbye!" post Dan made on soc.history)... Dan *specifically* tells us netcom.com has forbidden him to post to (or to post revisionist stuff to - he's not clear on this [but it seems it's "post to" after all]) soc.history, soc.history.moderated [actually, this is somewhat redundant], talk.politics.mideast, alt.activism, alt.society.civil-liberties, alt.society.civil-liberty, sci.skeptic, soc.culture.europe, soc.culture.austria, soc.culture.polish, soc.culture.soviet, soc.culture.usa, soc.politics, soc.veterans, soc.answers, alt.society.civil-disob, alt.society.revolution, alt.society.etrnl.vigilanc, alt.politics.usa.misc, alt.politics.libertarian, alt.politics.reform, alt.politics.media, alt.cabal, alt.journalism.criticism, alt.extropians.forbidden.topics, alt.flame.dan.gannon.nazi.scum [Note: I am NOT a Nazi!!!] (says Dan), alt.society.resistance, --- And EVERY OTHER NEWSGROUP as well! --- (says Dan). This has been a Net.Legend News Minute... Riley G. Mat(t)hews: Collated from various people: >Oh, who was that ex-NYC cop over in sci.skeptic a few months ago who was >offering to use his psychic powers to fix the Mars orbiter and the Hubble >telescope? ... Riley, alias Riley G., alias The Thin Blue Line, alias Riley G. Mathews. Proper skeptics (or, as Riley liked to call them, septics) never were convinced he actually *was* an ex-NYC cop. ... can't remember whether or not he posted from DELPHI. -- Ah, yes, "Riley G". Although one of my personal favorites, especially after Bob Ingria over on sci.skeptic challenged him to give Bob's personal information and Riley got it *all* wrong, Riley is rather new, doesn't cross-post into places like rec.gardens, and disappeared during ("my good friend") Uri Geller's recent tour, so is mostly unknown. -- Ahh yes! Riley. Most of the sci.skeptic people ended up calling him Rile E Coyote, I think. He sounded like he must have gotten his brain from Acme, that's for sure. He used to post letters ostensibly from The Amazing Randi and then flame, flame, flame away about them (the letters certainly sounded like Randi might have written most of them -- they certainly took Riley apart. Why Riley posted stuff against his own position just so he could make (badly written!) retorts to them in public is a bit confusing to me...). -- >Riley's touchiness about Randi knowing where he lives, and presumably his >real name, motorcycle licence number, etc seem quite at odds with the very >casual way in which he posted the names and phone numbers of people here, >along with those of innocent bystanders he claimed to be neighbours of his >targets. They're not really at odds. If Riley is really as paranoid as he sometimes seems to be (viz his claims to have ``phone traps'' on his phone to list the originating phone numbers of all incoming calls, to have ``motion trackers'' and video cameras around his house, etc.), his knowledge of where his opponents live and what their phone numbers are, etc., gives him a potential edge on them---an edge which he loses if they know the corresponding information about him. Also, Riley posts purported information about people both to show off (and, in the first few times he did this, to imply he got the information psychically), and to serve as an implied threat (see his comments to me that he could pay me an unexpected visit because he knew my phone number). It's the bully syndrome: he gets to do other people, but no way do they get to do him. And realizing that they can do him must drive him even crazier than he already is. -- Has reappeared; was pleasant for a bit, then returned to flamebait... Posts from psicop@pipeline.com (Riley G). Ted Frank: (What's this about James "Trashcan" Kirk?) Alt.folklore.urban has *no* loons. Really. An a.f.u "old hat", ted is considered the master (after Kibo) of the "trolling" post - one with deliberate misinformation inserted in order to stir up endless followups from unwary people. Generally crossposts, as a clue, to alt.ted.frank.troll.troll.troll - but so *many* people ignore the Newsgroups: and Followups: lines. ted (along with most of the rest of afu) regrets ever reviving the Monty-Hall-gives-a-Chevy-Nova-to-Winston-Churchill thread ("1/2!" "No, you idiot, 2/3!") that in 11/93 took over for a time a.f.u, rec.arts.startrek.misc, alt.sex.bondage, alt.fan.hofstadter, soc.culture.british, alt.(fan?.)rush-limbaugh, and maybe another I'm forgetting; when that finally died down, a "Robbie the Robot" thread was spawned from it with one simple touch from his newsposter - from a *.sig* reference. (Kibo (q.v.) is also an acknowledged trolling expert, much to the dismay of many newsgroups, including rec.org.mensa ...) Hangs out in a.f.u and misc.legal a lot; also soc.college, denigrating fraternities (or possibly just those who inhabit them). A perennial high-number-of-posts stat-list inhabiter. Posts as thf2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank). snopes and Lasner (Paul is dead!) (The sixties started in 149^H^H942!): Okay, I lied: afu *does* have a loon. However, in typical afu fashion, our one recurrent loon is made up of two posters, who are rather harmless when separated, but who attain critical posting-mass when both have net access simultaneously... A.f.u veterans will recall the definitive refutation of the Beatles' "Paul is dead" troll/myth by snopes, the incredible tenacity of Lasner (even when massively proven wrong), and the amazing amounts of cross-sniping between the two. Also the flamewars that erupted over the UL Uncle Don/"That oughta hold the little bastards"... neither one admitted to thinking it actually happened - but the fallout from snopes' trying to deny Don ever existed and Lasner's arguing that he in fact had was vast... Contrib. post: Charles isn't a bad person, except for a few annoying traits. Unfortunately, each of those traits has led to incredibly long flame wars because he will never, ever, ever admit he was wrong or allow a subject to drop. Those traits are: 1. Thinks that PDP-8s are the pinacle of computing technology, and will flame anybody who thinks that C or C++ on a modern computer is better than assembler on a PDP-8. 2. Thinks that decades begin and end when he declares them to have begun or ended. I think he decided on this stance after he said that "The Battle of New Orleans" song came out in the 60s. When somebody pointed out that it was released in 1958, rather than admitting his mistake, he redefined the 60s. Unfortunately, snopes will also not let the famous "snopes vs. Lasner" flame wars drop, so I usually end up dropping both of them in my kill file for a month or so when these things crop up. -- Lasner, for instance, has strong feelings about "Strawberry Fields Forever". -- snopes has been seen on-net only rarely since shortly after the California earthquake (he did survive it though); Real Life apparently reclaimed him for a while, but he did return in spectacular fashion with a troll to the rec.arts.startrek groups about shadows on the Enterprise in a vacuum which went strongly for at least two weeks. Ted Frank is thought to be contemplating countermeasures. Post as {snopes@netcom.com | vacsc02n@vax.csun.edu} (snopes) (real name: David P. Mikkelson) and cjl@maestro.maestro.com (Charles Lasner). Ludwig Plutonium (This newsgroup is contained inside a plutonium electron): A classic crackpot (in the scientific sense). Believes that the element plutonium has a special significance in the universe, as well as existing as one atom at the center of his brain. Floats around the sci.* hierarchy, (sci.physics, sci.physics.fusion, sci.math) as well as (sometimes) alt.religion.kibology. Kibo (q.v.) is rumored to have an archive of his songs on science-type subjects set to popular tunes and carols. Can prove or disprove any unsolved mathematical theorem in a matter of weeks, using q-adic numbers (*don't* ask). Entertaining, once you get used to his style; his songs are actually singable (although I wouldn't really want to try). He's not at *all* happy with general relativity, but is content with quantum mechanics, apparently... Currently set against both Abian *and* Hannu (q.v.) (has since apparently made up with Abian, to the point of dedicating a Jurassic Park parody to him, but still needles him on occasion)... Is apparently employed as a dish washer, and has limited himself to 3 posts per day to the Net; is slowly posting "Ludwig Plutonium, the Chosen One" (his massive autobiography) to his newsgroup (alt.sci.physics.plutonium) and to a.r.k . Was off-net for a month or so for allegedly posting some sort of Jewish slur against someone who complained to Dartmouth, but apparently this has been cleared up, and he's merrily posting away again. Posts as Ludwig.Plutonium@dartmouth.edu (Ludwig Plutonium). Ted Holden: Contrib. post: Has Ted Holden got net access back yet? He lost it when someone on talk.origins figured out that he didn't actually work for the site he was posting through, and informed them of it. For those unacquainted with the Tedster, his hobby-horses were: 1) Immanuel Velikovsky (_Worlds_in_Collision_) knows more astrophysics than all astronomers put together. God has been playing billiards with the solar system during the last few millenia. 2) The ADA language sucks. What really set Ted apart was the invective he indulged in against those who asked him to provide any scientific evidence for his claims (well, actually, mostly just #1, there was some sympathy for his views on #2), and the tired list of "astronomer jokes" he used to post. -- Ted only got boring once you realized he has a loop time of about 6-12 months. Up until then he was quite a hoot. -- The good folks on t.o. tell the sad tale that Ted lost his newsfeed a couple of months ago, when the company from which he was posting discovered he had been using their site, even though they had never heard of him! Now that Ted has to pay for net access, he apparently has no desire to post mega-messages anymore. -- however, just to tide you over, I'll point out that the inimitable Ted Holden is definitely back on the net and is quite definitely posting the same huge reams of "arguments" that he's been posting for years (still without modification or response to the counter-arguments) and has recently declared total victory over talk.origins because few people bothered to respond to all the "arguments" in his n-th reposting of his proof that Venus had was recently ejected from Jupiter, leaving that big red spot behind as evidence. However, no critique of Holden, the man, would be complete without an examination of his own considerable programming talents, as demonstrated in this truly impressive bit of code that he actually had published as part of an article in support of Velikovsky's theories: Newsgroups: talk.origins From: prl@csis.dit.csiro.au (Peter Lamb) Subject: Re: Holden and the C programming language Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 23:40:20 GMT Actually, feel compelled to encourage Ted in his efforts to improve his programming style. The program which he posted and has had criticised in this thread is a *vast* improvement to what he had published in Aeon 2(4), p115. [Note: Ted has denied ever writing this code in this form, but admits the "while" loop; Peter insists that this is what got published under his name, at least, in Aeon. Last I heard, both of them had retired from the fray to furiously dig through boxes of old magazines to try to find the Aeon issue in question...] ---------------begin Ted code; indenting per original--------------- #include #include int i,j,k,l; long ii,jj,kk; double a,b,c,aa,bb,cc,dd; double x,y,z,xx,yy,zz; main() { xx = 550; while(xx > 1) { printf("\n num of args was %d\n", ii); exit(); } xx=jj; yy=kk; zz=pow(xx,.666); aa=yy/zz; printf(\n\n ratio = %f\n", aa); } ---------------end Ted code--------------- The while loop in this program continues to fascinate me. Something like this, you can imagine, would have been far more difficult to program in Ada.... -- Posts from medved@access.digex.net (Ted Holden). Shub-Internet: The lurking horror at the bottom of the TCP-IP protocol; where the bits go after they hit the bitbucket. *Don't* call it up if you're not *sure* you can put it down again... Last seen (3/94) incarnated as a pair of lawyers named Cthul^H^H^H^Hanter & Siegel, posting GREEN CARDS & Spam!; before that (1/94), giggling from orion.*.edu, having swallowed Clarence Thomas IV's brain; before *that*, sighted on rec.arts.sf.starwars (12/7/93) [Dick Depew (q.v.), oddly enough, was a great help in stemming that outburst]. (I know there's more, but my backups seem to have evaporated...) Contrib. post: ObUL: .sigs over ten lines will awaken Shub-Internet. -- Daniel Drucker (14 Year Old Learning-Curve Wizard): Contrib. post: In 1992, Danny Drucker appeared on several newsgroups [for ~3-4 weeks], alt.folklore.computers especially, with a signature that called himself a "14 Year Old Networks Wizard". However, by his behaviour and general cluelessness, it would be difficult to call him "larval stage", never mind "wizard". When he got roundly flamed over that, he changed it to "C and Lisp Wizard", and promptly demonstrated just how little he knew on either of those topics. His sig mututated to several other "14 year old xxxx wizard" variants. As well as the self-proclaimed "wizard" title, he always had eminently warlordable signatures - and the worst thing was that they promised to add his ham packet radio id later, as if this sig really needed something extra to make it just that much more terrible. I think he eventually got the hint and stopped calling himself a "wizard", but not before the phrase "14 year old xxxx wizard" became a catch phrase on alt.fan.warlord and several other places. (Like all catch phrases, it had its lifetime, and now it's over, ok?) -- >Seriously, was he really _that_ annoying for _that_ long that he gets >to be in the Net.Legends list? No longer than a couple of weeks. Which is about three or four eras in Usenet. Long enough for the phrase "14-year-old _____ wizard" to become part of the Usenet vocabulary. Perhaps Mr. Drucker could go into the net.legends list for another reason beside the above: quickest evolution from clueless newbie to normal Usenetter. Where the normal response to flames is more flames (e.g. Barbara A[bernathy].), Daniel quietly stored up the clues he received, thus becoming a properly functioning member of Usenet in what I think is probably a record time. Have to respect him for that. -- The elitism displayed then was both unusually pointed (maybe it was around one of the exam periods, I forget) and much more ad hominem than it usually gets when someone's clueless. And Danny, er, Daniel, was only clueless for a week or so after someone first jumped on him. He'd been just fine for the previous month, during which nobody objected to his participation. It was an interesting situation, sociologically speaking. -- He's still around; quieter, but there. A photo of him may be found at the URL ftp://bombadil.ori.org/pub/akt/photos/daniel.jpg ... Posted from xyzzy@panix.com (Daniel Drucker); now posts from dmd@panix.com . John_-_Winston (Dear People Who Breath Air: ): John F. Winston (I have *no* idea what the F. stands for) believes semi-passionately in alien visitors and UFOs; hangs out at those newsgroups a lot in consequence thereof, as well as sci.skeptic. This in itself would not distinguish him, but he frequently crossposts "interesting" articles from those groups, or from Weekly World News, or from aliens from the future who have travelled back to talk to him, into alt.religion.kibology, in the teeth of He Who Greps. This if nothing else qualifies him for "legendary" status. Likes (or possibly believes(!)) the X-Files for some reason. -- From the a.r.k FAQ: "IS JOHN_-_WINSTON SERIOUS? AND WHAT'S WITH THE `_-_'?" I'd like to answer that question in two parts. First, John_-_ is a perfectly normal alt.religion.kibology household word. And second, the _-_ is actually a single letter in Chippewa meaning, approximately, "sideways schwa". How this relates contextually to the information he posts about UFOs is something only the Reptoids from Behind The Green Galaxy can tell us. -- Waitaminute. I thought that John_-_Winston was the same person as the JOHNFW@SLACMV.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU. I'm sure he's signed a couple of times as "John Winston", even if he was normally just "John F. W.". I've seen him posting to alt.alien.visitors until summer 1991, when he disappeared. Some time later John_-_Winston made his appearance to the net. -- Photon belt? Buckled. Photon shoes? Laced. Thinking cap? Off. Okay, we're ready for "John".... John_-_Winston@cup.portal.com wrote: : Subject: What's The Buzz. : I always love a mystery and there is one I would like to check out in New : Mexico, USA. Here is some information about it............................ : We'll start our trip by way of northern New Mixico, specifically the ^^^^^^ Me, I prefer the original Mixico. Mmmmm....just thinking about that authentic Mixican food gets my mouth watering. I took Spinich for two years in High School and a year in college, so I never have a problem getting around Mixico City or the Axetek ruins nearby. Spell-checker, anyone? : tourist town of Taos. Taos is best known to travellers for its excellent : skiing and the Native-American beauty of the Taos Pueblo. : Yet there's something strange going on, hidden behind the artsy galleries, : gift shops and ski lifts. Whatever it is, it's in the air. You can feel : it - or better yet, hear it. Especially at night when the town quiets down : and the tourists are gone. It is an ominous, low-frequency buzzing sound. : The sound permeates businesses, houses, walls, windows and brain cells. It : is driving farm animals, pets and people in the Taos area out of their : gourds. Well then, "John", you'd fit right in. : No one knows what's causing the buzzing and no one can tell where it is : coming from. The sound is everywhere and cannot be traced to its source. Whoops. Sorry. That's just me...that darn Thai food does it to me every time. : Thinking that it might be part of a secret Air Force project, the town's : leaders contacted the military. The Pentagon claims they have no connection : to the buzzing. But, as we all know, WHATEVER the Pentagon says is actually the OPPOSITE! Yes, folks, every day is OPPOSITE DAY with "John". : Not far from Taos is the super-secret city of Los Alamos, where government : eggheads are busy developing new super-weapons and Star Wars projects. Calls : were placed to Los Alamos and, specifically, Sandia Laboratories, a : government funded tech-company responsible for atomic weapons research and : other dark projects. GASP! How DARE the U.S. Government have secret projects and not tell us! : Sandia denied having any connection; however, they did send a specialized : team of acoustical experts to study the sound. The Sandia studs brought : in all their expensive toys and high-tech gizmos. After months of study, : they issued their report.In a nitshell, it said that they didn't have a clue : as to where the noise was coming from. Well, perhaps if they took it out of the nitshell, they could get a better look at it. : To this day, the buzzing continues and no one has come forward to claim : responsibility. Mean while, the people of Taos go on with their lives, : trying to ignore the insessant buzz. Everyone in town has their own theory : as to what is causing it. Some say it's wind rushing through the nearby : Rio Grande Gorge, while others suspect the government. Still other believe : the sound may have an extraterrestrial origin, or even suggest that satanic : cultists are at work. Whatever the cause, the buzzing continues. : JW Don't ask me what it is. Don't worry. : Source Of Information: Far Out, winter, 1993. ^^^^^^^ I'll say. -- Has also gotten a reputation on alt.conspiracy, alt.alien.visitors, alt.dreams, alt.pagan, and alt.mythology... frequently gets his posts MST3K-ified on a.r.k, as in the example above. Posted from John_-_Winston@cup.portal.com . Frequently. (Unfortunately, he has finally discovered Delphi, and has lost his middle thingy - however, he'll always be John_-_ to us...) Currently posts as John Winston . Dave Hayes (Impeach the Net.Cabal!; Ignore it, it'll go away on its own): Self-proclaimed news.* (news.groups in particular) "Biggest Clown". Delights in arguing with people over details there, apparently mostly for the entertainment value. Has stretched several threads there beyond all logic. Claims to have reasons for everything he does, and to be speaking for all the "little people" of UseNet who do not, cannot, or will not speak for themselves, leading to someone's coining the phrase "This is UseNet. Speak up for yourself or Dave Hayes will speak for you...". Has been awfully quiet recently (1/93); may be Up To Something [returned as of 4/93, espousing the Advanced form of the "Hit the `n' key if you don't like it" Philosophy]. Posts from JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories), as dave@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes). Compilation copyright (only) dbd@panacea.phys.utk.edu (David DeLaney); this does not claim that individual contributors' copyrights have been transferred, only that the compilation and original portions thereof are copyright. Please feel free to distribute freely, charging no-one. Dick Depew (ARMM! ARMM!! ARMM!!!): Long-lost twin brother of the intelligent and articulate Ray Depew, who's not paying me one cent for those adjectives (AFU Official Ex-Executioner: *no* smileys!). Showed up first in the sci.* hierarchy, later became most common on news.* . Interestingly enough, as near as I can tell, the original set of cancels that he did affected exactly *two* posts - both of which had dared to come from anon.penet.fi in the sci.* hierarchy... much to his surprise, something of a furor arose over these, which was prolonged unmercifully by his defense of his actions. Notable chiefly for his long and vocal insistence that his plan (ARMM) for moderation by forge-cancellation of people's posts (RetroModeration, or RM), possibly without their permission, is a valid, necessary, and logical addition to UseNet. Version one malfunctioned when tested (3/30/93), causing a massive newspost/cancel loop (it was cancelling its own cancels, as near as I can make out) which caused general hysterical laughter from those who knew what was going on, as well as the usual predictions of the imminent death of UseNet (q.v.). Briefly espoused a "tit-for-two-tats" version. As it turns out, the net is actually threatened in various manners by several different things (not the least of which is its own ever-increasing growth), but anonymous postings and/or the accountability thereof generally are not among the subjects people post "Death of Usenet predicted" (q.v.) messages about these days... Joel Furr (q.v.) newgrouped alt.fan.dick-depew (which is *not* retromoderated by Dick, despite frequent claims by him to the contrary...). Dick was helpful in cancelling, for instance, the rec.arts.sf.starwars 16+Megabyte UseNet "burp", which tied up traffic for half a day in 12/93, and more recently the mustang.com repost spew on news.groups and alt.config. He has also offered for public consumption his spam-auto-cancel scripts (talk to him for details) since the advent of Canter & Siegel... Also notable for his theory that off-charter postings are uncivil and therefore deserve to be "moderated" out of existence. Uses the term "supersedes" instead of "cancels" to refer to his scheme, generally. Has had trouble in the past making his plans conform to RFCs -822 and -1036. "Now he lives off his new-found fame, kibozing the Net for `ARMM' and revelling in immortality by monumental error." More info is available in the Anonymity On The Internet FAQ (which, oddly enough, is by a pre-legendary-status L. Detweiler (q.v.)...). Also the proponent of "Newsgroup Democracy", an interesting concept he regards as semi-integral to RM (but which others, sadly, regard as a separate item - if ND *were* inseparable from RM, objections to the latter would be far fewer). Had a medium-size heart attack in 1/94, but (against doctor's orders to not do anything stressful) returned to net.debate soon after; it seems not to have had adverse effects though, thankfully. Newgrouped alt.retromod in 3/94 after a perfunctory proposal (not involving ND) on alt.config and has taken to mostly posting (and "admonishing" and "rejecting") there. Claims to currently be figuring out a revolutionary new Message-Id: scheme for HappyNet... and is gleefully awaiting the return of Canter & Siegel to UseNet... Contrib. post: >P.S. are you considering taking on the task of ARMM archivist? No, Dick, I'm not. I'm actually still of the opinion that you're a dangerous loon who should be locked up in a small steel box and put in a room with Tim Pierce. P.S. ARMM! -- Posts from red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us (Richard E. Depew). John Palmer (Another FORGERY!!!; I'm outa here for good and this group is toast): Has his own alt.fan. group. And his own FAQ (which nobody can apparently locate at the moment). Associated off and on with Rabbit.Net (currently up); names his computers after the Thundercats. Perenially in trouble with Michigan net-routing people for forging map address entries for tygra. Has his own stable of virtual lawyers, constantly on the go (which can be seen only by the pure of heart), at least one of whom is named Mr. Stechschulte; has his own special epithet ("asshole") [note: he uses it about others, not vice-versa - just to be clear here...]. Is the victim of many, many forged postings doing nasty things with rmgroups and newgroups, all of which are shrouded in mysterious circumstances, and all of which were confirmed at first by other forged postings purporting to be from him. He's never (curiously) taken advantage of PGP to verify which of these postings are actually from him... His last widely-known exploit resulted in the twilight existence of alt.tv.tiny-toon.sex, against determined rmgrouping by other admins (who were chiefly incensed because John's "discussion" seemed to have taken place on an other-dimensional net)... Currently has reappeared, claiming never to have left or been "no longer employed by" RabbitNet after all, and started up an automatic repeated rmgrouping of alt.fan.john-palmer, which in consequence has gotten a lot *busier* (maybe he should be newgrouping it instead?) Gave up on that after a while. Is now apparently running an anonymous-remailer service off tygra which Vitaca Milut (q.v.), among others, is using. Ask on a.f.j-p about the "Mortimer Bomb"... Newgroups for about six rabbit.*- hierarchy groups, including rabbit.config and rabbit.q-and-a, showed up in 9/94; questions about RabbitNet probably belong on the latter... Posts from uuhare@rabbit.net and @tygra.com, among (many) others. Bruce Becker: Sysadmin reportedly somewhere in Canada who takes many rmgroups for alt.* that reach his site, forges them (under assumed names) into newgroups for the same groups, and sends them out again, ensuring the effective immortality of anything in the alt.* hierarchy. Widely cordially disliked, and partly responsible (with his imitators) for many of the unused newsgroups that infest alt.* to this day. His newgroups are recognizable from the invariable ...!feline!halt!... in their path somewhere. Reported to have been responsible for the whole series of "Copyright violations" description lines in the alt.binaries.pictures.* groups... Was absent between October 1993 and March 1994; no such forged newgroups were reported during that time, except for one in 1/94 (for alt.binaries.games.vga-planets) which was rather more clueless than usual Becker forges, and was probably from an imitator... GTS.ORG is a site registered to Bruce Becker in Toronto, along with several others according to rs.internic.net, and visitors to the city have said that there is a Bruce Becker in the phone book there... is this the real Bruce? Who knows? Posts, occasionally, a list of the alt newsgroups he considers to be non-bogus from news@gts.org to alt.config/alt.answers/news.groups/ news.admin.misc/"alt.newgroup". May also be bdb@gts.org; if anybody knows a consistent email address for Bruce, let us know... Laurence Godfrey: Found on soc.culture.canada and soc.culture.british. Contrib. post: For the uniniated, Laurence Godfrey is a british scientist who worked in Canada until he quit after a dispute with his boss (he is currently suing his former employers). Since that time, Godfrey has taken to posting on soc.culture.canada with insulting comments about Canada and canadians in general. Needless to say, he has generated a lot of flames. A few months back, several people posted comments to the effect that he was fired from his canadian job. "Libel!" cried Godfrey! Surprisingly, as of about a week ago (12/93), Godfrey claimed to have won out of court settlements from the academic institutions that these people attended. In the last few days, the thread has spiralled out of control - people doubting his claim (particularly the aspect of suing people in Canada from a British court) have called him a liar. His response to these people has been along the lines of: you'd better be careful what you say or: I am taking the necessary steps to deal with this person - basically implying that he will take legal action. A popular reply to this has been that Godfrey is purposely attracting "libelous" flames in order to make a quick buck. -- He vehemently loathes Canada and anything Canadian. Or German. But he's not racist (he married a Thai [note: Filipino, actually]); he came to hate most foreigners after a great deal of thought. He also loves suing, and is perpetually threatening to sue for libel over the net. Look for his posts in soc.culture.british (or don't), and there was even at least one issue of the Godfrey Gazette containing some of his more xenophobic comments. >this might sound like a rather minor net.loon... Well, apart from his disturbing ability to capitalize correctly (they're the most dangerous ones), he does have all the correct attributes. -- John Palmer (q.v.) has a stable of virtual lawyers, but this appears to be looniness of an entirely different order... Has been fairly quiet about the legal threats since 12/93; claims to have served someone with a High Writ just before Xmas. But wait - Contrib. Newsflash: From "RISKS DIGEST 16.06" (usenet group comp.risks): > In the first case of its kind in the UK, Canadian academic Dr Laurence > Godfrey [^^^^^^^^ oh boy, RISKS DIGEST is about to get sued for libel!!] > issued a libel writ in London against another academic based in Geneva > claiming he was defamed by a bulletin board message posted on the Usenet > system. If the claim succeeds, hosts and users could soon be contemplating > sizeble pay-outs. I'm not wrong, "Phil Hallam-Baker" is the "academic based in Geneva" that Godfrey has the libel writ against. Personally, I regard Hallam-Baker as one of the "single issue" ax-grinders that make Usenet such an inter- esting place. He seems to regard DEC (the corporation) and VMS (the operating system) as some sort of holy things. -- Posts from s0lg@exnet.com (L Godfrey). David Sternlight: Contrib. post: I second. David is one of the insidious ones, because he can spell and write. But he's terribly dishonest (or a GREAT troller). Every now and then, someone will post something saying "I don't always agree with David [who does?], but his posts always seem to make sense". I suspect they either don't understand the subject matter, they don't like flames (get off usenet NOW), or they're just loony lurkers. -- David would need to be added based in his lifetime of work, not a single rant (although I could probably dig one up if I needed). This contrasts with the Dan Gannon ilk whose every sentence screams "I'M A LOON!". David has been kind enough to keep from proliferating too far across the net. He tends to stick to the crypto groups and has what I would call a sick obsession with other people using pgp (he doesn't like it). -- There's David Sternlight, who seems to get his jollies by presenting his own agenda while ripping up or dismissing out of hand everyone _else's_ positions on topics in comp.org.eff.talk, then getting bent out of shape when people start slapping him down, so he declares that he's making his last post to this group, so any snappy comebacks are pointless because he won't see them -- and then begins posting again within a week. I think he's up to his third or fourth "I'm leaving this newsgroup forever" message now, and there was another posting from him this morning in comp.org.eff.talk. -- Clearly your counting abilities are not very well; you have lost count ;-). -- [He is widely believed on those groups to be working for the government, and trying to encourage use of the Clipper encryption chip, and to discourage PGP (because the US govt. can't break it); he is (or was, in 1989) a member of the gov't's Council on Foreign Relations...] Pat Townson (UseNet is a cesspool, a dungheap): Moderator of comp.dcom.telecom, alias the Telecom Mailing List/Digest (gatewayed). Known mainly for his commentary added, seemingly at random, to the ends of posts - that is, up until John Higdon, and others, proposed another, unmoderated, telecom group, to be called comp.dcom.telecom.tech; got *way* over-worked-up on this issue. Had a personal vendetta against Higdon - accused him of owing him thousands of $, wrecking his net.livelihood, etc. The first vote failed; much of the blame for this was laid at Pat's feet for allowing only negative commentary (except for one special issue of the Digest [which {I disrecall} may actually have only appeared *after* the first vote]) to appear in the group and for sending out a special mailing, to the list, urging people to vote against the group's creation on rather specious grounds. Negative votes poured in from list people - but only *after* said mailing. The vote failed the 2/3-YES test (but not the >100 test). The allegations of irregularity finally moved tale (q.v.) to waive the normal six-month waiting period. The second vote was marked by even *more* of a flamewar (although not up to the standards of the soc.culture.tibet/ talk.politics.tibet flamewar which had just ended, and of less volume than the rec.food.veg "discussion") in news.groups, and passed resoundingly; shortly after, Pat made some final scathing comments in news.groups (including a threat to start a group sounding remarkably like this present FAQ) and cut off the gatewaying of the mailing list to UseNet. Has since restarted the Digest's feed (*possibly* motivated by Joel Furr's (q.v.) generous offer to take over the moderation of c.d.t); all has been relatively quiet since 12/93... Daniel J. Karnes (None of you guys have phased me even for a minute): In the same tradition as Fordyce/Kaldis/The Bard; seen periodically on a.p.h, attempting to ridicule arguments against bigotry and usually winding up showing how little he knows on the subject. His sig read at one point "Infinitely inconclusive", which many people think applies to his usual "arguments" quite well. Has missed, somehow, learning that quantity of posting does not correlate with quality thereof. One of his aliases may (or may not) be "Artimus Page", who posts radical-right anti-homosexual tracts from time to time from a (bogus) address at Yale, claims to have a "cure" for homosexuality and a clinic at which it's implemented, and who seems to be present only when Dan is on-net... many people argue against this on the grounds that Dan couldn't keep from wisecracks long enough to post "Artimus Page"'s tracts (which isn't true, as Dan *can* write well when he bothers to make the effort - see below), and that "Artimus" never responded directly to people... Netcom knows about Dan, is watching to see if he oversteps himself, and has had at least one little chat with him about harassment of other netizens... Also seen on the other gay groups; gets shunned on soc.motss, and leaves quickly because of it. Apparently in it solely for the attention he gets from gay people, which makes one wonder severely... Has claimed outright to kiboze, apparently for his name and/or initials in various forms (which is why certain groups warn new people "don't say That Name again, please, or he'll show up and we'll all have to start up our killfiles again"); has also claimed to rarely call people names. Also seen frequently on ca.earthquakes, where he reportedly has something of a reputation as well. Has been laughed out of alt.flame at least once by the master flamers residing there; has been taken against by "Andrew Beckwith" (q.v.). Once (shortly after his first wife packed herself up in their brown Ford Taurus station wagon and left him) forged a post to news.announce.important asking that anybody who saw her get in touch with him; I suppose it *was* important to him... -- Contrib. post: Strikingly, no one that I've noticed has nominated Daniel J. Karnes as a net.butterfly (in the sense of "small thing one wishes were easily torn apart", perhaps). Maybe it's because he's been away. But he's back. Here's an extract from one of his recent posts, detailing his own assessments of his accomplishments last time around... >Actually, I "accomplished" quite a lot... Thus: >1) I got two hundred queers to go buy Bibles - and READ them. >2) I exposed the little "nice guy" facades that you guys put on >as the bullshit those of us with thinking minds know them to be. >3) I demonstrated the mental illness rampant in gay circles by >facilitating situations in which some really sick people dropped >their guards and demonstrated symptoms of their sickness publicly. >4) I exposed dozens of pedophilic gays for what they were by their >own admissions. >5) I thoroughly enjoyed myself. :) -- >>Artimus Page is always good for a laugh. He claims to have a `cure' >>for homosexuality. >Artimus Page is Dan Karnes under a very thin disguise... therefore he's >already got. This was widely claimed, but never decisively proved, as far as I know. The Path lines weren't even similar. I think Artimus deserves (?) separate mention, maybe in the Karnes section. Artimus definitely had a very different rant from the typical Karnes style; Artimus also never responded directly to anyone, as Karnes did all the time (albeit incredibly ineffectually). -- For what it's worth, every Artimus Page article that anyone bothered to track down was forged from the same out-of-the-way terminal server from which DJK has been seen to log in. -- Does Dan's entry include his rather, err, uh, unusual theories about earthquakes? He believes that earthquakes "like" to happen at 4:34 a.m. -- Danny has taken against this FAQ entry for some reason, and has threatened to borrow John Palmer's virtual lawyers, saying it's "slanderous" (hint: look up slander sometime) and defames his reputation, without actually ever giving any details to ye olde FAQ-writer on *why* he thinks this or what exactly he doesn't like, and going so far as to bother yoF-w's sysadmins and Department Heads and Deans (sheesh!) about it; his version of what it ought to read like is as follows (note that this by itself doesn't really tell one why he's widely known on UseNet, or most of the interesting details): -----begin Karnes----- The problem I have with my entry in this "FAQ" is that most of it is simply just not true, and the rest is nothing but propaganda from the net.queer element that reeks up certain parts of USENET. Reading this, I find that almost all of it conforms nicely to the "model" that net.queers try to paste on anyone that opposes them, but very little of it is based on fact. (quite typical of homosexuals) Please remove my entry from your FAQ - or allow it to be revised so that more TRUTH is presented. Like this: ------------------------------------ Daniel J. Karnes Or "djk" as he is known on computer systems around the world has been a part of the internet since it's early days. At first, he was confined to posting to "relative" newsgroups and sending private email through a numbered account in a large corporate machine. Djk found true freedom when he was one of the first users on one of the first commercial public access UNIX systems when the internet was opened up to non-governmental or academic users in the early 1990's. Djk works in the telecommunications industry as an engineer and manager, and possesses a rare blend of hardware and software skills that make him a technical power to be reckoned with. Early in his net.carreer, djk noticed a strong homosexual element present on the net, and being a member of a very large Traditional Values group, decided to watch them closely. It did not take much time for djk to become outraged by the activities of net.queers who seemed to think that the net was their own private playground. Djk began his very controversial postings to the gay groups as an effort to undermine the efforts of net.queers who were operating with gang-like organization against anyone who opposed them. Djk can stand firm against hundreds of opponents and his name strikes fear into the hearts of most homosexuals on the net. djk posts as djk@netcom.com and operates TASP.NET as a private access UNIX system from his home. ------------------------------------ There! Now THAT is more accurate! -djk -----end Karnes----- I might add that, contrary to his usual one-liner posting style, Dan *can* compose long rational pieces of prose like the above, given time, but apparently does not think it worth the effort to do so in almost all of his UseNet posts. A minifaq is also available with some interesting Dan posts and email, to/from myself and sysadmins. In 5/93, came in 13th in the "most evil net.personalities" vote on alt.evil . Posts as djk@(TASP.uucp.)netcom.com (email: djk@bandor.tasp.net) (Daniel J. Karnes). Not all of the net.legends are people - or even human. Therefore, viola (tm): 3.0 ------------------------------------ Stupid Net Tricks: Dave Rhodes and MAKE.MONEY.FAST: In every Paradise there is at least one fatal flaw. In every mail system, there is sooner or later a chain letter. UseNet, luckily, seems to have been adopted by only one such - but it pops up in more places and faster than kudzu, and is about as hard to kill completely. Actually, nobody currently knows much about Dave Rhodes (but see below) - except that he wrote the template for the first MAKE.MONEY.FAST pyramid scheme. His name and address have long since fallen off the top of any of the current copies... There is something of a miniFAQ available on this post. Advice to new netters panting to try it out and make $50,000 in an afternoon: I can tell you right now what you're gonna get - an extremely full emailbox, a ticked-off sysadmin (because your emailbox is full of letter bombs from irate UseNetters who snapped at seeing this cr*p in their newsgroups for the fifth time in two weeks, and because several thousand *un*snapped-as-yet UseNetters email her directly saying "Talk to this kid; it's illegal, a waste of time, and annoying), and a rapidly-vanishing UseNet access (wave bye-bye to it for a looooong time, if you're not lucky...). The letter itself says it's legal, you say? It's lying; it's known as a Ponzi or pyramid scheme, and is wire fraud for *sending* the letter, *and* postal fraud for receiving any of the money thru the U.S. Mail (can you say Federal Case, boys'n'girls?)... And you *have* to leave a trail directly to yourself, name and address - or else it *can't* work (hee hee)... Save yourself the grief: just say NO to Dave.Rhodes . Recently voted number one on list of people *every* UseNetter would like to see die an excruciatingly slow and painful death. If we're lucky, it does not get posted at all (for a day or two). Contrib. post: Dave Rhodes was a student at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, MD. This is a Seventh Day Adventist college. The posting machine was !cucstud, aka Columbia Union College, Student. It passed news upstream to uunet. Cucstud was a 3B2, and there were two or three more. Note this predated the widespread usage of the pseudodomain of { }.UUCP, and I don't recall if the site was ever so named. Needless to say, Leroy Cain, the sysadm, was not amused. This posting was made in 1987-1988, sometime just after the infamous jj@portal one, and his incoming mail queue was impressive. I do not know if Leroy took the matter to the Dean of Students, but do know he posted an apology, and ensured that Dave would not be doing that again, at least at THAT site. As for why I had an account on cucstud, and knew Leroy, when my only connection was that I caught a bus to work in front of the place every morning; that's a different story........ -- I like what Dogbert had to say about chain letters: "Don't you think that for your first crime you shouldn't attach your name and address and mail it to several thousand strangers?" -- [Evidence has since turned up that the Dave Rhodes letter has been circulating, in snail-mail form, long before that fateful day in 1987 or 1988... ah well...] Alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb: Alt.* ... is a sewer. Thanks to Bruce Becker (q.v.) and others like him, there are literally thousands of odd, little-known, poorly-propagated alt.* groups, many or most newgrouped as a whim of someone's. The canonical first on the list in this category (and the most widely (?) respected) is alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork (newgrouped by Jeff Vogel, with Distribution: mudd and surprising-to-him results), for speaking in Mock Swedish and discussing chickee recipees. This spawned, thru the intervention of Shub-Internet (q.v.), alt.tv.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die, alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die, sci.edward.teller.boom.boom.boom, alt.lawyers.sue.sue.sue, alt.minsky.meme.meme.meme, alt.music.enya.puke.puke.puke (and of course the infamous alt.music.enya.puke.puke.pukeSender:, missing and all) as well as alt.ted.frank.troll.troll.troll ... all of which are effectively immortal. INN apparently now has a "kill-the-chefs" option which sends newsgroups of the form alt.foo.bar.baz.baz.baz to the bitbucket... Also infamous: .cabal, from approximately mid-'93, which broke news software far and wide (due to no-one having imagined anyone would create a newsgroup starting with "."...), and is *still* causing problems among some xrn users... The moral of the story? First: read *all* the newsgroup description lines. Then: read the alt.config FAQ. Only after *that* should you even *think* of discussing a new alt.* group (on alt.config, of course). "Can you take a moment to fill out this survey?"/"Do my homework for me, mister man?"/"Please email me, as I don't read this group": This sort of stuff recurs quite frequently, and is usually a result of low familiarity with UseNet. Try not to do it yourself. Surveys actually do have a place - but not the ones that seem to think they're doing you a favor by letting you contribute to their Important Research... "Please email me, as I *can't* read this group", on the other hand, is quite acceptable, as is "Please email me; I'll post a summary of the responses". Thinly-disguised attempts to get others to do your research paper or algebra homework are Right Out, thanks. "Will you icky queers kindly take your pictures/GIFs/discussions/proposals OUT of our nice shiny clean newsgroup!": Sigh. There will always be people who have *no* idea that ideas different from theirs exist - until they get to UseNet, where *anyone* can speak up at *any* time. Quote: "It's UseNet, get used to it." Prevalent on the erotica and sex groups; usually seen proposing that the group be *split* into sections - what a *marvelous* idea - why hasn't *anyone* ever thought of it before? Tend to leave quickly, under the dark cloud produced by the flames. Canonical recent example: stx1606 (q.v.). Clueless newbies: Everyone has been a newcomer at one point or another. Thus the term "newbie". It's not derogatory, and it's an easily-curable condition - for most people. The rest tend to become known as "clueless newbies". The only known treatment for such is repeated force-feeding of clues. Sometimes even this doesn't work... If someone *does* give you advice on the net, it *never* hurts to think about it for a second, nor does it ever hurt to think before following up to a post. Canonical example: the alt.christnet (q.v.) fiasco. And remember, all you newbie-flamers out there - you too once knew nothing whatsoever about this mysterious thing called UseNet. Death of UseNet/Internet predicted: People panic easily, it seems; any time there's a new development leading to expansion of the net, someone's sure to bring up its humble origins and the fact that it was never designed in the first place to be *anything* like what it's grown into today. This invariably leads to someone else predicting "imminent death of UseNet; film/GIFs/JPEGs/animated ASCII art/SIRDS/ Claymation/etc. at 11" (old news joke; Brad Templeton (q.v.) claims the original formulation of "Imminent death of the net predicted" - I don't know who first added " at 11"...). Basically, it's gonna take a *lot* of shit to break the net, as it is today (even Dick Depew (q.v.) didn't manage it (yet...)), although it can be staggered some, or slowed down for a bit... meanwhile, it keeps right on growing, and the next crisis is always Just Around the Corner (tm). The net *was*, after all, designed to keep functioning after an all-out nuclear war... and though some of the flamefests have approached this level, none have quite managed to destroy it yet. Anyway, "Imminent Death of the Net predicted, at 11" is a long-running net.joke, applicable to Internet as well as Usenet, and is in fact the unofficial Motto of news.admin.misc (where the net.crises are posted about and debated endlessly - until the next net.crisis shoves them aside). .sig viruses: First there were .sigs; next, the Warlord (q.v.); then came .sig viruses. The simplest (and probably first) was "Hi, I'm a .sig virus; copy me into yours and join the fun!". This, rather predictably, mutated into dozens of non-compatible versions; most .sigs can only hold one or so (Kibo's is, as usual, an exception; a 1000-plus-line .sig has room for *everything*!). A particularly strange turn was taken on a.f.u in late 1993, when Vicki Robinson, relative newbie, innocently proclaimed "But I'm not in anyone's .sig". A.f.u being what it is, this appeared in someone else's .sig almost immediately, (Jason R. Heimbaugh claims this distinction, and is keeping both the .sig collection and the FAQ) and quickly spread to cover nearly the entire a.f.u community of posters; it has been sighted as far away as news.* . There is a Vicki Robinson sig-virus FAQ; refer to it for more details on chronology, varieties (this .sig virus mutates MUCH faster than normal), etc. Vicki's own .sig now contains mentions of her .sig virus in other people's .sigs (a meta-virus)... "welcome to afu. Here's your accordion" sums it up best, I guess. A Vicki virus in your .sig is not *required* for a.f.u posters (indeed, Joel Furr (q.v.) has denounced the practice, saying essentially "get a life"... and has ended up in Vicki's .sig, and others, as a result)... but viruses *are* contagious. Has somewhat revived, in multiple varieties, not all of which are Vicki anymore, in late summer '94. Alt.religion.kibology: Possibly one of the strangest places on Usenet. Home to the worship of and/or scorn for Kibo (q.v.); impossible to crosspost inappropriately to, much like misc.misc . Home also to a constantly-changing cast of "regular" Kibologists, currently including several people already mentioned in this FAQ (Kibo, by definition, plus John_-_Winston, Ludwig Plutonium, and Andrew Bulhak, and everyone mentioned in the xibo entry), as well as such luminaries as Craig Dickson, Lewis (YDNCTFL YWSRCFAOTW) McCarthy (not to be confused with Lewis Stiller), Rose Marie Holt, brent jackson, and Jay Paul Chawla, plus a couple anti-kibologists (Jason V Robertson is filling this role at the moment, with R Bryner being an anti-k 'bot). Filled with trolls, beabling, "You misspelled Ann Rand", odd followup-to lines, posts from Kibo, and a proselytary attitude; inadvertent arch-enemy newsgroup of rec.org.mensa . If you see it in the headers while reading another newsgroup, you may want to take a deep breath before pushing 'f'. Stick around long enough here and you'll be crossposted almost everywhere else on UseNet... which leads us neatly into Crossposted to *.test: A variation on "crossposted to alt.hell and back"; see Gannon, Argic, etc. A news.admin.misc post suggested that this practice (which gives unsuspecting followers-up a deluge of autoreplies from the daemons scanning the *.test groups worldwide) originated with Carasso (q.v.) in the late 80s; further data I've gathered indicates, however, that it well predates him, and that he simply widely popularized and practiced it... Moral: *Always* check your Newsgroups: and Followup-to: lines... And the sequel, "Posted separately to every newsgroup you can find": No, you're not the first person to think of it. Unfortunately, you won't be the last, either. As the net grows, and the number of new users grows, however, each incidence of this is a little worse than the last; at the moment we have in net.memory Skinny Dip Thigh Cream (posted by someone who set his email-forward to the [widely known] address of one of the developers of Mosaic, but got kicked off his account *very* fast anyway because he didn't have the access to set his site's postmaster@ address' forwarding too), Laurence Canter and his law firm^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwife Siegel [Green Cards and Spam! I do not like it, Sam I Am!] (who have been kicked off *four* separate services for mass postings of a misleading "Green Card" ad) and Clarence Thomas IV, who mass-posted a two-page note about the end of the world ("JESUS IS COMING SOON") soon after the California quake from a Seventh-Day Adventist college somewhere. Joel Furr (q.v.), incidentally, has released a Canter & Siegel T-shirt, and in return has been threatened with various lawsuits by the distaff portion of that lovely pair... "Cross-posted to 2000 different newsgroups" has also been thought of; this will quite probably break people's newsreaders all over the place due to line length considerations. Either of these is about the only thing that's not actually illegal that you can easily do which will piss off your admins *and* the net worse than posting Make.Money.Fast (q.v.); don't even think about going down in net.history like this, kids. Can you say "25,000 pieces of email in your mailbx"? Can you say "Kicked off your account faster than you can spell an12070@anon.penet.fi"? I knew you could... Hitler, Nazis, nazis, and net.cops: Warning: now that this FAQ has mentioned Hitler and Nazis, UseNet Rule #4 (also known as Godwin's Rule, after Mike Godwin of the EFF, sci.crypt, and comp.org.eff.talk, a sometime foe of David Sternlight (q.v.) [even though it was apparently in use, by Richard Sexton {q.v.} among others, before Mike's 1988 (?) net.advent; the "Godwin's" part seems to stem from "Rich Rosen's Rules of Net.Debate, which I don't have a copy of]) says it will be coming to an irrelevant and off-topic end soon. Just as there will always be newbies ("It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the net" - response to a 1993 wave of delphi.com postings on a.f.u), there will always be people who see the net and are repulsed because there's stuff there they don't want to see - so they set out to make sure noone else can, either. They invariably fail, because there are no net.cops to enforce any such rules on UseNet; in the course of the heated flamewar that usually follows, things escalate until either Hitler or Nazis (or both) put in an appearance, at which point the thread has officially lost all relevance. People scream at each other a bit more, then give up and go home. Bleah. "Keep your brains up top; don't be a net.cop." This has mutated, in true UseNet fashion, to encompass *any* continuing thread; if you mention Hitler or Nazis out of the blue, the thread is sure to die irrelevantly soon (and, incidentally, you've lost the argument, whatever it was)... and every continuing thread on UseNet *must* contain such a reference sooner or later. Invoking Rule #4 deliberately in hopes of ending a thread, however, is doomed to failure (Quirk's Exception)... UseNet Rules #n: No firm info at the present time is available on just what the other UseNet Rules #n are. However, at a guess, they include: -- Rule #nonumber: There are no hard-and-fast Rules on UseNet, only Guidelines, which are more or less strictly enforced (and differ) from group to group; this is why it's generally wise to read any group for a bit before ever posting to it. Rule #0: *There* *is* *no* *C*b*l*. There *is*, however, a net-wide conspiracy designed solely to lead Dave Hayes (q.v.) to believe that there is a C*b*l. Corollary: *There* *are* *no* *pods*. Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net. Dave Fischer's Extension: 1993 was The Year September Never Ended [so far, there doesn't seem to be much evidence he's wrong...] Rule #17: Go not to UseNet for counsel, for they will say both `No' and `Yes' and `Try another newsgroup'. Rule #2 (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Rule #108 (from the soc.motss FAQ): "What will happen to me if I read soc.motss?" "In general, nothing. (You may be informed or infuriated, of course; but that's a standard Usenet hazard.)" Rule #666: Old alt groups never die. They don't fade away nicely, either. Rule #7-B: There is no topic so thoroughly covered that noone will ever bring it up again. Rule #90120: Applying your standards to someone else's post *will* result in a flamewar. Rule #1: Spellling and grammer counts. So do grace, wit, and a sense of humor (the latter two are different), as well as a willingness to meet odd people, but these are lesser considerations. Rule #x^2: FAQs are asked frequently. Get used to them. Rule #29: no rational discourse can happen in a thread cross-posted to more than two newsgroups. rule #6 (Eddie Saxe): don't post to misc.test unless you understand the consequences. Rule #547 (Arne Adolfsen): When people know they're wrong they resort to ad hominems. Rule #37 (Faisal Nameer Jawdat): Read the thread from the beginning, or else. Rule #5 (Reimer's Reason): Nobody ever ignores what they should ignore on Usenet. Rule $19.99 (Brad `Squid' Shapcott): The Internet *isn't* *free*. It just has an economy that makes no sense to capitalism. Rule #3 ("Why 3?" "Because we felt like it"): For every opinion there is at least one equally loud and opposing opinion; sometimes stated as: Rule #27 (Gary Lewandowski): "In cyberspace, *everyone* can hear you scream." And for completeness' sake: Rule #4: (Godwin's Rule) Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause the thread it is mentioned in to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon; every thread on UseNet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain such a mention. Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is ineffectual. Case's Corollary: If the subject is Heinlein or homosexuality, the probability of a Hitler/Nazi comparison being made becomes equal to one. `Rap is not music' (and other Permanent Floating Flamewars): Contrib. post: In the list of non-human net.legends, I think the `Rap is not music' meta-thread deserves a mention. This turns up every month or two in some music group, and is distinguished by being even more predictable than the average recurring net.thread. It's become a crowd participation event to chant along with the newbie following the script until he gets to the point where he (never seen a woman do it) volunteers to write a rap 'cos its so easy and disapears in a puff of embarassment. -- >Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives... >There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards... >( at least a year so far..) >The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this >humble newgroup [alt.folklore.computers] ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! >Hi, Mike [Dahmus]!). >The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps >firing back up on alt.fan.furry... >And let's not forget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed >at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?) Those are all recurring, not long-running. >Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous? It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended. -- Foob's Law states that the quickest way to completely derail any netnews discussion is to bring up gun control, and so I guess we're on our way to Outer Space now. -- Note that almost every newsgroup will have a Flamewar that Will Not Die (or two, or six) lurking somewhere in the background - but that these flamewars are usually pretty well confined to the one newsgroup simply through specialization, so I'm not gonna even try to include most of them here... however, there are several that pop up almost at will *anywhere* in UseNet, among which are the abortion flamewars, the homosexuality flamewars, the "My computer's better than yours" flamewars, the freedom-of-speech/UseNet- is-international flamewar, the Permanent Floating Flamewar that followed Serdar Argic wherever he oozed, the drug wars (for various drugs), the male/ female circumcision wars, and the Christianity-spreading-people vs. "enlightened intellectuals" flamewar(s)... there's something about many of these subjects that seems to attract the worst in people (that's partly why this FAQ seems to concentrate somewhat on anti-gay posters, for instance - there's so *many* of them that have this little "hot button" that there's more kooks amongst them...). Scan down the subjects in talk.* for a more complete listing, and note that Emily Postnews has a FAQ on the predictable "I want my groooop!" script for alt.config ... "Oooo, *he's* Famous! What's his email address???": There are many people on the net who are Famous in Real Life tm; however, usually the requirements of being Famous preclude their spending all their time on the net corresponding by email with Fans. Some have newsgroups where they hang out (Douglas Adams and Mike Jittlov have their own alt.fan groups, for instance, as do Dave Barry and Terry Pratchett, and they show up there or lurk with varying degrees of consistency); others are on an online service or just lurk in certain places. Generally, though, you'll do better writing to their editor or publisher or agent if you really really want an autograph or a piece of their clothing... William Gibson (of Neuromancer fame) is *not* on the net (he still reportedly uses a manual typewriter), so don't ask. Asking "Gee, how can I get [famous author]'s email address? Pretty pleeeeeze?" on rec.arts.sf.* is likely to get you semi-toastily flamed as well. This may be slowly changing however... more companies/organizations are discovering that the net's a good place to get feedback or opinions, or to get volunteers (or even employees), and some (like Wizards of the Coast on rec.games.deckmaster) have a quite extensive net.presence, looking for reactions and/or helping people. But in general, creative-type famous people must spend much of their time creating, not wasting time on UseNet... 4.0 ______________________________________________ Lesser Lights (Honorable Mention): not all of these are loons (many are quite sane), but all are notable in more than one group to some degree, or notorious in one group. There are *far* too many odd people on the net to mention all of them, or even a fraction thereof; these are some of the ones that have stuck in *other* peoples' minds as ... distinctive. "Red-Headed Goddess": Contrib. post: I still want to nominate at least in lesser Loon status the "Red-Headed Goddess" that I saw on a.a.v and occasionally on sci.skeptic. Doesn't anyone but me remember her? She was able to post the most absolutely LOVELY gems of New-Age crossed with 1920's space-opera physics which she used to combat spoilsports like me who might inquire as to how intelligent life could exist on Venus. Her retorts were works of art, saddened by our unenlightened state, filled with "different vibrational states in the ether" and other buzzwords of poetic yet senseless nature. -- *May* be Kathy, kathy@vpnet.chi.il.us (Redheaded Goddess), sighted recently on talk.religion.newage; may not be. Waiting for further (dis)confirmation. Steven Fordyce (Deer are for dinner) and his ilk: Dedicated to proving that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, because marriage is based solely on the possibility of reproduction and the needs of the government. He and several others like him fight a losing battle daily in alt.politics.homosexuality and alt.(fan.)rush-limbaugh, usually simultaneously (UseNet makes strange bed-fellows...). Is currently several thousand points behind solely on style and grace, not even mentioning logic; is seemingly not capable of altering his worldview. Has admitted he did not marry his wife for love, and doesn't seem to understand *why* this spurs his debating opponents on... Posts from stevef@bug.UUCP (Steven R Fordyce). Ted Kaldis (I can't understand why anyone should think I'm a "gay-basher"): Contrib. post: "Christian" homophobe. Most famous for the "tire iron incident", in which he lent his tire iron to some friends so that they could use it to bash some men at a gay bar. He bragged about this in alt.flame, then subsequently claimed he had had no idea what was going on. Supposedly nothing came of the incident; the police turned up or something. Believes that nobody outside the USA may comment on anything to do with the USA. Particularly hates Canadians who have the temerity to comment on US issues. Sexist, racist and misogynist to boot. Posted an article which listed (mostly obscene) slang terms for Asian women, and seemed surprised when he got flamed for it. Seems woefully unaware of his own reputation. Choice quotes: - - - cut here - - - cj@modernlvr.wpd.sgi.com (C J Silverio) writes: > [...] With a name like Valerie or Sally or Trixie, a woman on the net > is in for it. "Trixie" is a name for a female dog. (The four-legged variety.) > [...] You get Ted Kaldis responding to your posts with heavy-footed > witticism about "feminine logic being an oxymoron." [...] Darling, you're just wound a little too tight. And I know exactly what'll loosen you up. - - - cut here - - - - - - cut here - - - cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes: > I've seen ads in the Sonoma State Star (SSU's student newspaper), that > specified that a gay employee was required for a graphics advertising > position with one of the gay resorts on the Russian River. Well they shouldn't have any trouble finding one! I worked in the ad industry for over a decade, and I can tell you for a fact that homo's seem to proliferate that industry. My best explanation is that they live in a fantasy world anyway (pretending that aberrant behavior is normal) and because of this they are drawn to a profession where an active imagination takes precedence over practical reality. - - - cut here - - - "If a man has sex with men, he's a homosexual -- and by definition is exhibiting a hate for humanity; if he carves them up afterwards, he is a homosexual who carries out his hate for humanity to the ultimate degree. [...] It is only to the depraved that the act of buggery represents an expression of affection." "Lesbian: a poorly-socialized female who is unable to enter into or maintain a relationship with a man, and who thus resorts to engaging in perverse sexual acts with other females." "I have the necessary qualifications to speak on behalf of Jesus." "That's easy. This is yet another example of feminine "logic" (truly an oxymoron if ever there was one)." "These kinds of remarks are wholly inappropriate and are the mark of a bigot." "I can't understand why anyone should think I'm a "gay-basher"." > I am surprised (and probably shouldn't be) that Ted Kaldis is still around. No you shouldn't. > Did he ever get his tire iron back? No. I had to go to the junkyard and pay a buck to get another one. -- Actually lucid for posts at a time, which puts him in the Sternlight category. -- He, of course, euphemistically referred to [the tire-iron incident] as "scaring some homosexuals". T*d once titled a post "SHUT UP CANADIAN AGITATOR!" for no good reason on (get this) soc.culture.canada. You're [also] forgetting his exceedingly pedantic harping about spelling mistakes, his claims he would vacation in Colorado because of the passing of Proposition 2 and his claims that he would move to Louisiana because they passed stringent anti-abortion laws. -- And his proud boast that he was moving to California to get a 6-figure salary. Never happened, what a surprise. And the time he bragged about his programming expertise, and proved it by producing a version of bubble sort which he had coded in uncommented 8086 assembler "for maximum speed and efficiency". -- Posts as kaldis@{remus|romulus}.rutgers.edu (Theodore A. Kaldis). Mikhail Zeleny (That goes completely against the categorical imperative!): Russian philosopher wanna-be; *his* objection to homosexuality (yes, I know I have about six in a row here, but *honestly*, it's one of the big nut- subjects, no pun intended, on the Net...) seems to be purely abstract: he can't imagine Kant (I think) approving of it, thinks it rules out reproduction, and so tries to show that it's metaphysically bankrupt. Seen on several different groups; try soc.culture.soviet, but mind the Zumabot ... Contrib. post: Michael Zeleny pops up all over the place. His kink is to post unbelievably long messages full of philosophical verbage which generally boil down to no content. His only `interesting' opinion is that homosexuality is immoral because it (in some way he can't define) precludes reproduction. Maybe he thinks the net will need more newbies in 18 years time. -- "No content" is a little strong, but it is clear that he's arguing for the sheer love of long pointless arguments. The last time I saw him drift into a real group, the first followup (from someone himself prone to long, relatively opaque and pedantic posts) was started with a warning that most people in the group should probably just ignore him and save the grief. Cameron Laird's beautiful summary of a few USEnet groups mentioned him: >>I think of it as a party held in very very large house. In one room people >>are drinking espresso and discussing translations of Rilke, while in another >>they're sucking nitrous out of a garbage bag and setting fire to a couch. >rec.arts.books: drinking espresso, and watching > M. Zeleny burn translations of Rilke. >misc.woodworking: should we burn the couch-maker, > because he used electricity? >soc.history: eat the garbage bag, inject nitrous > into anyone who looks like Rilke, and, anyway, > couches and espresso are glorious Turkish > inventions. >news.groups: no one should be permitted to say > "garbage bag", "fire", or "couch", because > newsgroups for those purposes already exist-- > and even if they don't, it was a democratic > decision. -- I think it would be fun to include an example of Zeleny's attempts at humor. Seeing Zeleny try to tell a joke is like watching Miss Manners try to limbo; you know it is not going to be done well, but it is amusing to see it attempted. There was a really good one on rec.arts.books about a week and a half ago; too bad I didn't archive it. Shall we start an Urban Legend saying that Zeleny is the same guy as "Fans-to-blow-toxic-waste-into-Latvia" Zhirinovsky? Or maybe he's the lost Russian twin of Dieter on the SNL "Shprockets" skits? ("The categorical imperative does not allow negative statements. So you see your attempts at humor are futile.") -- Zeleny will do anything for posterity. For some articles he wrote last October in a.p.h, he put the expiration date to be Dec 31, 1999. -- Posts as zeleny@oak.math.ucla.edu (Mikhail Zeleny). magoo/Gary Landers|Warren (The Great Gary L.)/The Bard, and other prepubescents everywhere: Generally all following the same pattern: flame and run away, or flame and stick around and never reply very sensibly to anything... A hazard of day-to-day lurking/posting on the gay or bi groups, or alt.flame - there's many more, like Chuck Whealton, but I think I'm gonna stop with The Bard, because the examples (like the posters) just get repetitive... The particular multi-handled person mentioned above seems to grow a new "handle" after each retreat... Contrib. post: Oh, he made an entrance here, I think it was during late summer, with stories focusing on young gay men, transvestites and orgies, where he made claims that "there was nothing so shocking as seeing another naked man." Every character except for the protagonist was portrayed as fucked up. The language was... passable. The first ones were fascinating to read; after that it became like watching the same carcrash over and over. The funny thing is that he doesn't dehumanize gay sexuality, but just sees us (oh crime) as `unamnly'. He then proceeded to define that in wonderfully circular defenitions, manly == having women == manly == etc. He seemed to be beyond reason or empathy. Furthermore, there is this subplot somewhere of a gay brother of his who died, and I think we are seeing guilt for ostracization of him somewhere. (By the way, don't ever get caught doing dishes, cooking or other household chores as a male person. He brands you `unmanly' for it). Wait, wait, wait, there's more, yeah: he saw being gay as taking the easy way out. You know, can't make it with a woman, so you turn to a a man. And lesbians don't exist, in his worldview. He never mentions them. By the end of it, he claimed to be here just for the flaming and having fun with the reactions, he really didn't mean it like that, he just wanted some attention and then proceeded to give a name by name account of people who responded to him and that he thought they were cool and brave fighters. Again, another person who thinks it's ok to just take queers as objects to flame for fun. Makes you wonder why they never go over to soc.culture.jewish or soc.culture.african-american or something. They could have heaps more fun there. So, is that recap enough, or do you want more? -- 'The Great Gary L.' is Gary Landers, who over summer 1993 terrorized alt.politics.homosexuality with his unbelievably crap posts on how to stop being homosexual. He also posted a lot of spoof fictional tales, as I recall. In September 1993 he posted that, owing to requests in a.p.h., he was going to spend a weekend 'being gay' and rattled off his own list of what exactly being gay meant to him. Strangely, when the time came to report the results, he was silent. Eventually (this must have been early October) he had so pissed everyone off that he must have been in most people's killfiles. In response to someone politely inviting him to leave he gave a hostage to fortune by saying he was well liked on a.p.h. and called a net.vote to determine whether he stayed or went. He lost by at least 10 posts to 0. The low number of posts asking him to leave was probably due to his ubiquitous killfile presence. Though he said he had actually won the vote, he did indeed go shortly after. -- [He didn't stay away very long, but re-appeared as The Bard...] The Bard posted from thebard@char.vnet.net, now from thebard@jabba.cybernetics.net, and has confirmed being Gary; Gary Landers posted from scoopnet@access.digex.net, and magoo from magoo@char.vnet.net (Magoo) (magoo also has confirmed being The Great Gary L.). (7/94) Gary Warren, hardcopy@char.vnet.net has just appeared, signing his posts "The Wonderful Bard"... Keith Cochran ("Justified and Ancient"): A counterpart to the above several. On the seek-out-the-fundies-and-dissect- their-arguments-gleefully-with-flaming side; tends to bring abortion and/or gay rights into threads he's in. Likes to snipe at the alt.christnet (later christnet.*) groups (but had to cut back dramatically since Holonet started filtering them), and likes to crosspost to them, to talk.abortion or alt.abortion.inequity, to talk.religion.misc, and/or sometimes to talk.origins or alt.atheism (keeping things stirred up on all of them...). Also