I know that since Railroad Tycoon II came out I've wanted to run over everybody who hacks me off with a train.
Oh, wait, I've wanted to do that ever since I fell in love with Gomez' train set on The Addams Family in the 60s! TV causes violent behavior! Now I have to run over my TV with a train!
Re:I hope they're not using it to power the site..
on
Perl 5.6.0 Out
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· Score: 1
I got that too, the first time I loaded the page. I suspect the web server is just groaning under the/. effect. (Could be worse -- at one time perl.com was serviced by a 2400-baud modem and a pile of redirect scripts.)
Chad, I just have to respond to this. You state that the Illuminati BBS was "selling and distributing documents that clearly laid out plans for hacking computer systems."
This is not just flat, flat wrong, it's a dairty blaack LIE.
I was in charge of the Illuminati BBS for a very long time. I was also one of the editors on the GURPS Cyberpunk project. For those who don't know, Cyberpunk was a near-future supplement for SJG's GURPS roleplaying system. The only rules for hacking into systems it contained would let you hack into systems that existed nowhere but in the gameplayers' imagination and in the rulebooks. It had about as much to do with real-world computers as Dungeons and Dragons had to do with real-world witchcraft, which is to say, absolutely nothing. We made all the stuff up.
The Secret Service went completely ape over the manuscript and described it as "a handbook for computer crime," not even realizing it was a GAME which had NO BASIS IN REALITY any more than Monopoly might.
We did not allow copyrighted or illegal material on Illuminati. Period. We even went so far as to delete song lyrics people posted (e.g. Queen's "I'm In Love With My Car" on the Car Wars section) because they were copyrighted. We were a publishing company, and we took copyrights very seriously because we wanted people to take ours seriously. And we most certainly were not passing around stolen credit card numbers, blueprints to the BellSouth 911 system or any of the other things we were supposed to have had on the system.
How could you expect the FBI to know this? You could expect them to get in touch with someone who knows the difference between fact and fiction, and build a case of probable cause before raiding a publishing company.
No. I haven't been keeping track but the turnover in the game biz being what it is, I would be very surprised if anyone but Steve is still there from when I left almost nine years ago. Cheers, -- Creede
The bottom line is that, under current law, federal law enforcement can seize your entire business with little or no judicial oversight, you have no right to appeal, and no right to due process. It happens all the time, and noone cares because it's just the drug-dealers and the hackers whining about it, right?
Wrong. SJG did successfully sue the US Secret Service for the raid. As I remember the award was pitifully small -- I would have like to have seen damages on the order of seven or eight digits, just as a warning to other Luddite law enforcement agents to think twice before doing it again -- but it was enough to morph the Illuminati BBS into Illuminati Online (io.com).
I won't say it wasn't painful, because it was, and there was some doubt as to whether the company would survive. It does, however, serve as an example or how the little guy (we were pretty small potatoes at the time), once in a while and when he's in the right, can stand up to the government and win. I'd like to think this would help Ramsey, and maybe it will, but the circumstances were somewhat different -- Ramsey is an electronics manufacturer, and SJG is a publisher, and the rules change dramatically when you're contemplating executing search warrants on a publisher. Freedom of the press and all that.
Anyway, I just thought I'd pass that along.
Cheers, Creede Lambard Former sjsop, Illuminati BBS (yes, I was there when the raid happened)
Slashdot Mirror
I know that since Railroad Tycoon II came out I've wanted to run over everybody who hacks me off with a train.
Oh, wait, I've wanted to do that ever since I fell in love with Gomez' train set on The Addams Family in the 60s! TV causes violent behavior! Now I have to run over my TV with a train!
I got that too, the first time I loaded the page. I suspect the web server is just groaning under the /. effect. (Could be worse -- at one time perl.com was serviced by a 2400-baud modem and a pile of redirect scripts.)
Chad, I just have to respond to this. You state that the Illuminati BBS was "selling and distributing documents that clearly laid out plans for hacking computer systems."
This is not just flat, flat wrong, it's a dairty blaack LIE.
I was in charge of the Illuminati BBS for a very long time. I was also one of the editors on the GURPS Cyberpunk project. For those who don't know, Cyberpunk was a near-future supplement for SJG's GURPS roleplaying system. The only rules for hacking into systems it contained would let you hack into systems that existed nowhere but in the gameplayers' imagination and in the rulebooks. It had about as much to do with real-world computers as Dungeons and Dragons had to do with real-world witchcraft, which is to say, absolutely nothing. We made all the stuff up.
The Secret Service went completely ape over the manuscript and described it as "a handbook for computer crime," not even realizing it was a GAME which had NO BASIS IN REALITY any more than Monopoly might.
We did not allow copyrighted or illegal material on Illuminati. Period. We even went so far as to delete song lyrics people posted (e.g. Queen's "I'm In Love With My Car" on the Car Wars section) because they were copyrighted. We were a publishing company, and we took copyrights very seriously because we wanted people to take ours seriously. And we most certainly were not passing around stolen credit card numbers, blueprints to the BellSouth 911 system or any of the other things we were supposed to have had on the system.
How could you expect the FBI to know this? You could expect them to get in touch with someone who knows the difference between fact and fiction, and build a case of probable cause before raiding a publishing company.
-- Creede Lambard
Former sjsop, Illuminati BBS
No. I haven't been keeping track but the turnover in the game biz being what it is, I would be very surprised if anyone but Steve is still there from when I left almost nine years ago. Cheers, -- Creede
The bottom line is that, under current law, federal law enforcement can seize your entire business with little or no judicial oversight, you have no right to appeal, and no right to due process. It happens all the time, and noone cares because it's just the drug-dealers and the hackers whining about it, right?
Wrong. SJG did successfully sue the US Secret Service for the raid. As I remember the award was pitifully small -- I would have like to have seen damages on the order of seven or eight digits, just as a warning to other Luddite law enforcement agents to think twice before doing it again -- but it was enough to morph the Illuminati BBS into Illuminati Online (io.com).
I won't say it wasn't painful, because it was, and there was some doubt as to whether the company would survive. It does, however, serve as an example or how the little guy (we were pretty small potatoes at the time), once in a while and when he's in the right, can stand up to the government and win. I'd like to think this would help Ramsey, and maybe it will, but the circumstances were somewhat different -- Ramsey is an electronics manufacturer, and SJG is a publisher, and the rules change dramatically when you're contemplating executing search warrants on a publisher. Freedom of the press and all that.
Anyway, I just thought I'd pass that along.
Cheers,
Creede Lambard
Former sjsop, Illuminati BBS
(yes, I was there when the raid happened)