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Or perhaps the ISP just doesn't know.

From the article:
The FBI declined to specify the target of the search warrant, which is under seal in a federal court, except to say in a statement that the search was ``one aspect of a more than two-year investigation that is ongoing.''

The warrant is sealed. That means that law enforcement has demonstrated a compelling reason for portions of it to remain secret. This could mean that the identity of an informant could be compromised, targets of an imminent raid could be alerted, or whatever. They are supposed to release as much of the warrant as possible, but it may be that the ISP was only shown that the FBI could search their premises for any computer data. The crime under investigation doesn't even have to be named. In a situation with a sealed warrant, you just have to trust that the FBI is right.

It would be a lot easier to trust the FBI if it weren't for stuff like the Steve Jackson raid, mentioned in an earlier post, which had a similiarly sealed warrant.

Mind posting a link?

Sorry, guess that would be nice. Here ya go

I'm glad to hear some of that group is still around. Austin has had a fairly good gaming industry. We have Steve Jackson Games, Digital Anvil, and Origin to name a few. However, Origin's layoff and apparent fall into a coma was quite a blow, especially falling on the heels of massive layoffs from companies like Dell, the shutdown of .bombs like Living and Garden, etc.

I really wish these guys luck. Austin's a great geek city and gaming, to me, plays a symbolic role in demonstrating that to the world. Not to mention the fact that it keeps my dream alive of quitting my day job and coding games for a living.

BZZZT! And thank you for playing. Here's your lovely parting gift.

Read the tag to the abstract:

Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example [...]the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.

d00d, 4.0 introduced FAT16.

BZZZZT! And thank you for playing. Here's your lovely parting gift.

DOS 1.0 introduced FAT-12 floppies.

DOS 2.0 introduced FAT-12 hard disks (remember the XT?).

DOS 3.0 was introduced with the AT, and brought FAT-16 for those big 30-meg drives on some AT's.

DOS 4.0 introduced the BIGDOS partitions.

OS/2 introduced HPFS (don't remember whether it was 1.0, 1.1, or 1.2).

NT 3.1 introduced NTFS.

Win 95B introduced FAT-32.

Win2K introduced some variant on NTFS (compression or encryption, I forget which) which was not backwards compatible with anything earlier than NT4SP6.

Or you could subscribe to Pyramid, SJGames' online gaming magazine

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/

--

What does the Internet have to do with it? You mean longtime modemers, because this was a case involving e-mail on SJG's Bulletin Board System (BBS) and the rights entitled to electronic publishers.

Looks like a winner to me!

steveha

To help Steve out, purchase the Car Wars Card Game (unfortunately, non-collectible), or my favorite, The Awful Green Things From Outer Space", which Steve picked up the rights to a few years back. Despite the unpopularity of real-live face-to-face board games nowadays, Awful Green Things was just a dang good Beer & Pretzels game.

To help Steve out, purchase the Car Wars Card Game (unfortunately, non-collectible), or my favorite, The Awful Green Things From Outer Space", which Steve picked up the rights to a few years back. Despite the unpopularity of real-live face-to-face board games nowadays, Awful Green Things was just a dang good Beer & Pretzels game.

Yes, it was the Secret Service. And if you don't know what we're talking about, their ordeal is well documented here.

The second worst thing that can happen to game software is when a system can no longer be expanded to include new concepts. When this happens, and when you have explored the given concepts to your satisfaction, you jump ship to the next game. If only there was a single system that allowed you to accrue useable score points and prestige across multiple games! You would always be a proud customer of the consortium that established that system, because whenever you got bored with one world you could choose another without losing touch with your gaming peers, without having to learn an new user interface, without abandoning your prestige (or infamy), without having to begin anew with score 0.

Everquest will always be a fantasy genre. As it stands it cannot be expanded to include something like Star Wars, it would be two separate games. If the money is there, they might write a separate system for a genre with a large following such as Star Trek or Star Wars. But you'll never see a VampireQuest or Hitchhikers GuideQuest because Everquest is money driven, and the best bang for the buck is the large genre game. And I suspect WWII falls somewhere in the middle as a genre.

A money-driven system will never be able to transcend this, because developing computer games is vastly expensive. There are money-driven companies that manufacture pencil-and-paper game systems that manage to incorporate hundreds of subgenres because their costs are different. But an open source system might, if enough people got on board. There are some folks on SourceForge that are aiming to do just that.

Anyone else familiar with the paper and dice game from Steve Jackson? There was even a computer version for Apple II once.

or MS has been infiltrated by the Illuminati.

The truth about this can be found here.

Ah, Lord British... there's a name that brings me back. Not that I played any of the games mentioned thus far.

I remember his name from AutoDuel (a bit more info), a conversion for the Apple ][ (well, the one I played) by Lord British and Chuckles from the Steve Jackson Games PnP game Car Wars.

Why do I mention this? Becuase AutoDuel was the greatest game of all time. It was Road Warrior meets the eastern seaboard, and was great fun. Of course, my original 5.25" disks got corrupted, but I still have it on an Apple ][ emulator. I don't play much anymore, but it was a fantastic game.

I thought there were plans to make an updated version... did anyone hear anything about that? This was a few years ago. Google hasn't turned up much...

Ah, Lord British... there's a name that brings me back. Not that I played any of the games mentioned thus far.

I remember his name from AutoDuel (a bit more info), a conversion for the Apple ][ (well, the one I played) by Lord British and Chuckles from the Steve Jackson Games PnP game Car Wars.

Why do I mention this? Becuase AutoDuel was the greatest game of all time. It was Road Warrior meets the eastern seaboard, and was great fun. Of course, my original 5.25" disks got corrupted, but I still have it on an Apple ][ emulator. I don't play much anymore, but it was a fantastic game.

I thought there were plans to make an updated version... did anyone hear anything about that? This was a few years ago. Google hasn't turned up much...

As cameras get smaller, smarter, and eventually mobile, privacy is simply going to evaperate. Wireless swarms of cameras the size of flies will be everywere (this technology is already being tested) recording your every movement.
Small surveillance Plane
Camera size of a quarter
6 inch flying camera

Even without trying, most people get on surveillance video a few times a day: the bank, the local 'quicky mart', the gas station.

The only way to preserve privacy is to make preserving privacy a top concern of your government. Many people seem eager to trade their privay for security, but this only works when the security is in the hands of someone you trust, who would never abuse that power. Of course, no western government would ever abuse its power, right? Just ask Steve Jackson.

People who are willing to trade their privacy and freedom to the government for security are abdicating their adulthood, and letting the government be their babysitter.

It's clever, because people think of claims, not denials, as being the usual April Fools day fodder.

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

Steve Jackson Games has exactly this sort of thing. You can also find shops.

Not suprisingly, Evil Stevie calls it the gamerfinder. Fnord.

Steve Jackson Games has exactly this sort of thing. You can also find shops.

Not suprisingly, Evil Stevie calls it the gamerfinder. Fnord.

Unlike M:TG, which comes out with a new collectable expansion every month or two, INWO has only had a few expansions in its life, and one of them isn't even collectable! INWO SubGenius is a stand-alone version of INWO produced in cooperation with the Church of the SubGenius. (Yes, the "Bob" guys.) Ah, heck, let me quote:

This is a hundred-card non-collectible set. The cards feature art provided by the Church itself. [...] You will like it.

The set of 100 cards is usable by itself, and includes rules for a 4-player common-deck game, using four Church of the SubGenius cards (with different art, of course). Each represents a different faction of the Church, fighting for control, Slack, and that unending flow of dollars from the mindless Pinks. You can also drop other INWO cards into a SubGenius game, or vice versa!

BTW, INWO encourages players to create their own cards. Steve Jackson Games sells blank cards expressly for the purpose.

In case you haven't guessed, this is one of my favorite games of all time. Buy it, you won't regret it!

Unlike M:TG, which comes out with a new collectable expansion every month or two, INWO has only had a few expansions in its life, and one of them isn't even collectable! INWO SubGenius is a stand-alone version of INWO produced in cooperation with the Church of the SubGenius. (Yes, the "Bob" guys.) Ah, heck, let me quote:

This is a hundred-card non-collectible set. The cards feature art provided by the Church itself. [...] You will like it.

The set of 100 cards is usable by itself, and includes rules for a 4-player common-deck game, using four Church of the SubGenius cards (with different art, of course). Each represents a different faction of the Church, fighting for control, Slack, and that unending flow of dollars from the mindless Pinks. You can also drop other INWO cards into a SubGenius game, or vice versa!

BTW, INWO encourages players to create their own cards. Steve Jackson Games sells blank cards expressly for the purpose.

In case you haven't guessed, this is one of my favorite games of all time. Buy it, you won't regret it!

In Tribes, players are a bunch of cavemen trying to grow a lot of healthy children. Even though there is a winner (the player with most healthy adult offspring in the end!), the game is hardly zero-sum as all players are pitted against nature in a fight for survival.

Limited resources in this game primarily means the members of opposing sex in the tribe, and food. So there can be some zero-sum aspects to it as well.

Civilization by Avalon Hill

The original Civilization that existed before computer version is pretty competitive, but alongside the limited resources (=land) there is also the unlimited resource of cultural/technological advancement. These two are combined by trading (land gives you goods -> trading goods wisely generates points -> you can "buy" cultural advancement)

BTW, even though the game mechanics are not zero-sum, the game can still be competitive. The goals set to players (or ones that the players set to themselves) determine the competitiveness, for example: are you aiming to suppress your adversaries with maximum efficiency, or are you just trying to build a esthetically pleasing game for yourself.

Whoops, I was wrong. This game is still in production! Go buy a copy, but be sure to leave your friendships at the door. Non-zero-sum does not mean no losers! ;-)

Ask Steve Jackson Games about that.

My favorite radio station, KFJC, has a show by anti-fascist researcher Dave Emory. Now, I don't buy everything that Dave says, but he sure is interesting to listen to (I like conspiracy theories). One of the topics he covers very frequently is the "Bormann flight capital organization", which involves "Nazi in exile" Martin Bormann evacuating a lot of wealth from Germany, starting in 1944 -- apparently because the Nazis were anticipating a loss in the war and wanted to start up operations elsewhere. This ties in with the "South American Nazis" you may have heard about (or whose card you may have played in Illuminati! by Steve Jackson Games).

One thing that Dave Emory keeps talking about is the fact that Bertelsmann has been acquiring a great deal of the publishing industry. He seems to think that this is part of the Bormann organization's plans for worldwide fascism or something. Frankly, this is one area where Dave starts losing me -- I think he's too quick to connect things that are German with attempts to found the Fourth Reich (using economic conquest rather than military conquest).

So anyway, given the recent BMG partnership with Napster, I initially thought that the "Nazis on Napster" article might parallel some things I've heard on various Dave Emory programs. Life got just a little bit more surreal for a few seconds, until I started reading further.

• Robo Rally: Program your robot to tackle a dangerous factory floor full of escalators, pits, crushers and lasers. Not to mention other robots.
• X Net : Be the provider to offer the most popular content, be it games, recipes or pr0n. Buy a better connection to the backbone and serve even more!
• Mag Blast: Use your fleet to protect your mothership, while simultaneously trying to blast other players ships. It is require to make sounds simulating your attacks (Ptew Ptew! Put Put Put! Zap! Take that evil spacelord!)
• Illuminati: Secret conspiracies everywhere! Do you own the postal service? Who's the man behind the IRS? And what are those damn aliens up to now?
• Chez Geek: Name says it all really. Play with geeks, live with geeks, geeks everywhere
• Hacker: The computer crime card game (Anyone who even tries to remark that the game should've been named Cracker then will get his behind liberally kicked!) With an Interesting read on online free speech in practice.
• Silicon Valley Tarot Another 'name says it all, really' car game. Tell your own Silicon Valley future...

• Robo Rally: Program your robot to tackle a dangerous factory floor full of escalators, pits, crushers and lasers. Not to mention other robots.
• X Net : Be the provider to offer the most popular content, be it games, recipes or pr0n. Buy a better connection to the backbone and serve even more!
• Mag Blast: Use your fleet to protect your mothership, while simultaneously trying to blast other players ships. It is require to make sounds simulating your attacks (Ptew Ptew! Put Put Put! Zap! Take that evil spacelord!)
• Illuminati: Secret conspiracies everywhere! Do you own the postal service? Who's the man behind the IRS? And what are those damn aliens up to now?
• Chez Geek: Name says it all really. Play with geeks, live with geeks, geeks everywhere
• Hacker: The computer crime card game (Anyone who even tries to remark that the game should've been named Cracker then will get his behind liberally kicked!) With an Interesting read on online free speech in practice.
• Silicon Valley Tarot Another 'name says it all, really' car game. Tell your own Silicon Valley future...

• Robo Rally: Program your robot to tackle a dangerous factory floor full of escalators, pits, crushers and lasers. Not to mention other robots.
• X Net : Be the provider to offer the most popular content, be it games, recipes or pr0n. Buy a better connection to the backbone and serve even more!
• Mag Blast: Use your fleet to protect your mothership, while simultaneously trying to blast other players ships. It is require to make sounds simulating your attacks (Ptew Ptew! Put Put Put! Zap! Take that evil spacelord!)
• Illuminati: Secret conspiracies everywhere! Do you own the postal service? Who's the man behind the IRS? And what are those damn aliens up to now?
• Chez Geek: Name says it all really. Play with geeks, live with geeks, geeks everywhere
• Hacker: The computer crime card game (Anyone who even tries to remark that the game should've been named Cracker then will get his behind liberally kicked!) With an Interesting read on online free speech in practice.
• Silicon Valley Tarot Another 'name says it all, really' car game. Tell your own Silicon Valley future...

• Robo Rally: Program your robot to tackle a dangerous factory floor full of escalators, pits, crushers and lasers. Not to mention other robots.
• X Net : Be the provider to offer the most popular content, be it games, recipes or pr0n. Buy a better connection to the backbone and serve even more!
• Mag Blast: Use your fleet to protect your mothership, while simultaneously trying to blast other players ships. It is require to make sounds simulating your attacks (Ptew Ptew! Put Put Put! Zap! Take that evil spacelord!)
• Illuminati: Secret conspiracies everywhere! Do you own the postal service? Who's the man behind the IRS? And what are those damn aliens up to now?
• Chez Geek: Name says it all really. Play with geeks, live with geeks, geeks everywhere
• Hacker: The computer crime card game (Anyone who even tries to remark that the game should've been named Cracker then will get his behind liberally kicked!) With an Interesting read on online free speech in practice.
• Silicon Valley Tarot Another 'name says it all, really' car game. Tell your own Silicon Valley future...

While it looks like this will eventually be a good place to look for stuff, it's failed several tests so far, and jumbled all but one.

A search for "sancho games" failed to bring up Sancho Games
A search for "White Wolf" (... productions, ... games, white wolf by its self) failed to bring up White Wolf
A search for "Disney" brought up Disney-MGM (not quite their home page, but close) as the 677th result, but never actually turned up www.disney.com
Searching for "Slashdot" failed to turn up Slashdot, though it nabbed a bunch of knockoffs and generic linux info.

I could understand a search for microsoft not turning up anything, on the basis that Microsoft isn't family-friendly, but of 3096 hits, doesn't Microsoft (for any reason, good, bad, *or* ugly) deserve at very least to be in the top 25%?

Success!: A search for "In Nomine" brought up Steve Jackson Games, as did a search for "Steve Jackson" but "sjgames" got me bupkis.

A search for "Milton Bradley" came up with AXIS & ALLIES - Games from Hasbro Interactive and Hasbro as the first hit. To be fair, the second search result that comes in when I search for "Hasbro" is a game by Milton Bradley. While equitable, I'm not sure this is what people are looking for...


While I commend you guys on the effort, and several years of dedicated work, it's got at least a few more years' worth of work to go before it starts getting usable for everyday searching.

We used to do the booby-traps too. A couple business cards, rubber bands, and tape and you can rig up something to launch confetti from a drawer or overhead bin.

Steve Jackson Games sells rules for the old Assassin or Killer game. They have some good ideas and links to Nerf weaponry.

We used to do the booby-traps too. A couple business cards, rubber bands, and tape and you can rig up something to launch confetti from a drawer or overhead bin.

Steve Jackson Games sells rules for the old Assassin or Killer game. They have some good ideas and links to Nerf weaponry.

Steve Jackson sued and won against the Secret Service. He got his equipment back and also got damamges. I don't think the SS has yet apologized, but they ate enough crow to mean something.

The issue was more complicated than just writing the Cyberpunk supplement to Gurps: there were people who knew people who were cracking Ma Bell, it trickled down to Steve, and ultimately saw him raided.

The full story is here.

Steve Jackson Games by the narrowest of margins avoided going out of business due to this raid. It had one tremendously good effect, however: it was one of the events that spurred the creation of the EFF.

--

A few highlights from the judge's decision:

"there has never been any basis for suspicion that any of the Plaintiffs have engaged in any criminal activity, [nor] violated any law"

"a reasonable investigation of only several hours would have revealed Steve Jackson Games, Inc. was, in fact, a legitimate publisher of information to the public"

"The affidavit and warrant preparation was simply sloppy and not carefully done."

"In addition, Agent Foley must have known his seizure of computers, printers, disks and other materials and his refusal to provide copies represented a risk of substantial harm to Steve Jackson Games, Inc. -- under circumstances where he had no reason to believe the corporation or its owner was involved in criminal activity."

Any of this sound familiar yet? Read the whole text of the federal judge's decision here. Enlightening reading, especially if you're a government cheerleader. It could happen to you.

However, the REAL reason was because Lloyd Blankenship, the author of the book, was running a bbs to discuss cracking, and they assumed that it would have incriminating evidence on it against SOMEONE (the best they came up with was a stolen bit of code from the 911 dialing system that is available for $0.75).

So SJ Games sued, won, got a bunch of money and got most of their computers and some of their equipment back but of course lost all their data. This is also interesting because it was an early EFF case.

So now we just have to figure out the REAL reason why this guy got busted...

Try SJ Games' site for an overview of the case and the various court materials.

TWW

And the SJ Games reference is here - they eventually got their equipment plus a good chunk of change back. So there is hope.

Steve Jackson Games got a court settlement from the Secret Service over their unlawful asset seisure and parlayed it into an ISP business. More about that here.

They've had their rights wrongly abridged by the government before, so they've been extra vigilant ever since.

I use them for shell-only access from a different part of the US. I get my dial-up (not springing for better bandwidth until it gets cheaper) from someone local. But they have services to suit most any need.

Steve Jackson Games got a court settlement from the Secret Service over their unlawful asset seisure and parlayed it into an ISP business. More about that here.

They've had their rights wrongly abridged by the government before, so they've been extra vigilant ever since.

I use them for shell-only access from a different part of the US. I get my dial-up (not springing for better bandwidth until it gets cheaper) from someone local. But they have services to suit most any need.

and the whole point of the census is to figure out how much the govt. has to spend on you...

BZZZT! And thank you for playing! Here's your lovely partying gift.

The purpose of the census, per the US Constitution is the apportionment of House of Representatives. Period. Congratulations, Lord Omlette, you bought the government's story - hook, line, and sinker.

Right on, brotha!

I don't know if he's a twit or not, but I loved his game. Steve Jackson got jacked for no reason.

In case you're moderating and missed the on-topic point: Gygax is a pretty sad spokesman for supposedly persecuted game companies. If anything, TSR capitalized on the free publicity that D&D got when kids' suicides were blamed on it and religious nuts claimed it taught Satanism. For a more relevant, more persecuted game designer's perspective, talk to somebody at Steve Jackson Games. If that rings a bell, it may be due to the uproar when the US Secret Service raided the company, nearly put them out of business, but never brought charges.

Jim McCoy, Mojo Nation and the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow are obviously just tools of the Illuminati.

Fnord.

Remember when the secret service raided Steve Jackson Games, took their computer equipment for their Illumanti BBS... and they didn't give it back, because it contained the GURPS Cyberpunk file, which was later called a handbook for computer crime? This sounds remarkabley similar. Perhaps we shall be proactive and get ready to protest the secret service.

Sorry, but that just isn't the way it happened. Useful information is at SJ Games' Web Site

The Usenet: The Flaming rules.

Everything in there is pure 100% accurate information. Except this, apparently.

--------

You missed Usenet: The Flaming.

First let me criticize a few suggestions I've seen over the past few days:

(1) Launching a DDOS attack against movie companies' websites: Bad idea. This will only reinforce their accusations that we are all criminals, and turn the general public against us. The decision is frustrating, but we don't need to give them justification for what they've done.

(2) Burning DVD's in mass quantities. Are you going to loot video stores to get them? (see above) Otherwise, the movie industry already has your money, and that's the bottom line. I really don't think anyone would care aside from the protesters themselves, and maybe some neighbors who get annoyed by the smell of burning plastic.

There are other forms of entertainment than movies. Gaming, for example.
I'm discussing mainly (but not exclusively--see the end of my post) roleplaying games.

Gaming is cheaper. A typical rulebook for an RPG is $20-$30, cheaper than movie tickets for for the 4-6 people in a typical gaming group. Extra sourcebooks for a gaming system are usually only $10-15.

Gaming is more interesting. Even if you only have one rulebook, you can have a nearly endless variety of scenarios. Your best-case scenario with movies is renting, where you might be able to get 20 movies or so. This leads right into my third point...

Gaming is easier to schedule. Regardless of how much or how little time you have available, a movie (with few exceptions) takes roughly two hours to watch. The length of an RPG session can be controlled by adjusting the complexity of the storyline. I've seen games as short as 2 hours or as long as several days.
With less time available, you might want to consider a card game or board game (maybe monopoly, but I was thinking along the lines of Settlers of Catan)

Not to ramble on too much, I thought I'd post links to a few of my favorite gaming companies:
Steve Jackson Games
White Wolf Game Studio
Cheapass Games (Typically only $5 a game, I recommend Give me the Brain for a fun, short card game.