253 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
253 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
---[ Phrack Magazine Volume 7, Issue 51 September 01, 1997, article 04 of 17
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-------------------------[ P H R A C K 5 1 P R O P H I L E
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--------[ Grandmaster Ratte'
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----------------[ Personal
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Handle: Grandmaster "Swamp" Ratte'
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Call him: Kevin
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Past handles: KP Neato Dee (local BBSes)
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Handle origin: from playing around (and falling in) a swamp all the time
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as a kid
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Date of Birth: April, 1970
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Height: 6'
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Weight: 155 lbs.
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Eye color: blue
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Hair Color: brown
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Computers: Apple ][ (plus/e/c/gs), PC (8088 laptop/'286),
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Amiga (500/600), Macintosh (Plus/7200)
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Admin of: Demon Roach Underground BBS, The Polka AE from Sept.
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'85-present
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Sites Frequented: Not much really. Mindvox can be pretty cool and
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interesting. I used to regularly call boards like The
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Works, Digital Logic's Data Service, the various
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Metallands, Speed Demon Elite, P-80, Kingdom of Shit,
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Ripco, The Metal AE, Dark Side of the Moon, The Missing
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Link, etc.
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URLs: www.l0pht.com/cdc.html, and the new www.cultdeadcow.com
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Email: gratte@cultdeadcow.com
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----------------[ Favorite Things
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Women: that aren't crazy, freshly-scrubbed
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Cars: ones that run, muscle cars with lots of chrome
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Bikes: BMX 24" cruisers, Schwinn Stingrays with metal-flake paint
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Foods: cheap. Sunkist Orange Slurpees.
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Music: 1970's funk and soul, rock, hip-hop, hillbilly country,
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reggae, dance...
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Bands: Run-DMC, Beatles, KISS, Marvin Gaye, Suicidal Tendencies,
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Black Uhuru, Public Enemy, Stevie Wonder, Rolling Stones.
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Zapp, Parliament/Funkadelic, Grandmaster Flash & The
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Furious Five, Dead Kennedies, Black Sabbath, Carpenters,
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James Brown, Metallica, Sly & The Family Stone, Lynyrd
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Skynyrd, Jimi Hendrix, Slayer, Minor Threat
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Instruments: Fender guitars and basses, Kurzweil K2000 series synths
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Computers: Apple ][s and Macintoshes
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Movies: Star Wars, The Manchurian Candidate, Krush Groove,
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Apocalypse Now
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Comics: Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County
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Sports: Ultimate Frisbee, bicycling, wandering around outside,
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climbing trees and rocks, boating with inflatable life
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rafts in drainage lakes, club dancing
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Books: _Foucault's Pendulum_ by Umberto Eco, The Bible, Farrah
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Fawcett's biography, and _Understanding Media_ by Marshall
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McLuhan
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Magazines: Tons... 2600, Grand Royal, Wired, Macworld, Barely Legal,
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Thrasher, Big Brother, Ride BMX, Urb, Guitar Player,
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Keyboard, Cool Beans, Might, Stress, Slap, Crank, 4080,
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Cometbus, EQ, and whatever else I can get my grubby hands
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on. I really dig magazines. Uh, and Phrack!
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TV: The Six Million Dollar Man, The Simpsons, Charlie's Angels,
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X-Files, A-Team, Mod Squad
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My Bands: Superior Products (bass), Weasel-MX (vox, programming),
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Jinx Unit (bass, phat beatz)
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Quotes: "Fully equipped with an army of lawyers." -ad for Zoo York
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skateboards
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People: Evel Knievel, Boba Fett, Mr. T, and the CULT OF THE DEAD
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COW Multimedia Superstarz!
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Misc: thrift stores, huge shiny belt buckles, phresh new laces
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in my kicks, playing shows with my band(s), exploring
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buildings, big trees and rocks
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Turn Ons: energy
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Turn Offs: pretentiousness
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----------------[ Passions
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If you can't tell from the list up there, I'm really into music. It all
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started when the neighborhood teenagers would let me sit around with them and
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listen to the hard-rockin' soundz of KISS and Led Zep when I was a little kid.
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So my mom (bless her heart) under their advisement, bought me Led Zeppelin
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_IV_ and KISS _Alive!_ which I took to kindergarden class and was reprimanded
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for. A few years later my grade school friends and I would spend hours
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sitting around a cassette player making "radio shows" with our Saturday Night
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Fever soundtrack and various 7" singles from K-Mart. We were rollin' with the
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phattest mixtapes at age nine, fool! Somehow this led to MIDI and drum
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machines and CD burners and now I spend tons of time recording and sequencing
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and playing music. I do a lot of recording for the local punk and hip-hop
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groups and it's hella fun. The back of the building I live in is a small
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empty warehouse where we have all-ages music shows and that's pretty neat too.
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It's called MOTOR... If you're in a touring band, lemme know and send me a
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tape or whatever you've got.
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----------------[ Memorable experiences
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Hmm. Well, this is probably my best story, so here we go: I found myself
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all alone at night inside a telco's switching station. Ooh, look... a terminal
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keyboard. In the dim glow of the red "EXIT" signs, that keyboard represented
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all my hopes for a glorious unification of the human spirit through the global
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telecommunications network. How could I best express my ...love... for this
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network and all that it represents? Write a poem? Done it already, hundreds
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of times. Every cDc file I've put out is a gesture of affection. So I did
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what any red-blooded American male wouid do. I dropped my pants, "threw
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jacks" as it were, and doused that human-machine interface unit with my
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Seekrut Sauce.
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Then I cleaned myself and got the hell out of there... pulse pounding,
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freaked by my own insatiable lust. Is what I did "WRONG"? Don't judge me
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with your pithy concepts of morality! I stood before God with my pants around
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my ankles and expressed what was in my heart. If that's wrong, damn... I
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don't want to be right!
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---
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Playing a party where a gang fight broke out, caps were busted during our
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set, and we had to drop our instruments to flee for our livez (and hide under
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cars).
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---
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Falling in love. Getting dumped. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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---
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Going to the various hacker cons is always a blast. Some people have a
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negative attitude about these things 'cause a lot of kids go and act retarded.
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Which is unfortunate, but I always manage to have a great time. These are the
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only times I get to visit with cDc people and it's like a big bonding
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session... we just run around and hang out. Meet lots of cool people in
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general, every time. So go to the cons and don't cause problems, and
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everything'll be fine.
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---
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Starting cDc communications. In some ways this has been an important item
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in my life. Not that editing text files is a huge important thing, 'cause it's
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not. But cDc, at its best, has taught me that I can have a role in making
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something creative and interesting and lasting. Things like that can carry
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over into a lot of aspects in your life. In 1984 I was a junior high student
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and now I'm 27 years old. cDc has changed a lot of course, as it should, but
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I think with our longevity we've worked towards finding a new way to relate to
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technology and the emerging global structure. I was fourteen and part of the
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wave of hacker kids who had been growing up with Atari 2600s at home and the
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video arcade after school... we saw the movie Wargames and got excited. I was
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lucky and had an Apple ][ at home, and soon a modem my dad brought home from
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work. You figured out some Stupid Phone Tricks and bam, in no time you were
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typing away to other kids on BBSes across the country, sharing.... codez and
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warez, sure, but more importantly we shared experiences. This was NEW.
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I remember how exciting it was to call teenager-run boards across the country
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in the early '80s and exchange messages with these people. Now kids can grow
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up from the get-go with the Internet in their house and I think that's just
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great. So my friends and I were writing things and doing goofy drawings and
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whatnot, and could have put out a regular paper 'zine. But we figured out
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pretty early on that the one big advantage these text files we wrote had over
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some photocopied sheets we could staple together was distribution. If we'd
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done a paper 'zine, we could have maybe scraped up enough cash for 50 copies
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or so and forced some friends to take them and then they'd end up at the
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bottom of a closet or in the trash in a few weeks, forgotten. But instead, we
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used those Stupid Phone Tricks hundreds of times... staying up all night, with
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school looming ahead in a few hours. But hey, gotta call that AE in New
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Jersey and upload the latest text files. You can always sleep through class.
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But what makes CULT OF THE DEAD COW different and has enabled us to last
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is that cDc has never been about technology... we didn't form to trade "inpho"
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and hack together like the other groups. We used technology, be it hand -
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hacked MCI codes or the Internet to get our "messages" out there. Hacking is
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a means to an end. I don't give a rat's ass about hacking or any of that crap
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on its own. I just want to make cool stuff. Now we're starting a "paramedia"
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concept which means the end of cDc as a "hacker group that puts out text
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files." Now we're putting out our own original music and other audio files,
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to be distributed just like our text stuff has traditionally been. The
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bandwidth is finally here where we can do it... and when it's practical, we'll
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be putting out video stuff too. The idea is to be able to do whatever sort of
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creative work we want and to use our huge distribution network to disseminate
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it. That's what "cDc paramedia" and the future of our whole group is about.
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Somebody who was making his college schedule wrote me email the other day,
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and asked "What classes should I take? I wanna be a hacker." I told him he'd
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be better off with some history and business courses. Please understand, I
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don't mean to diss on hacking. I'm all for having all the knowledge you can
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and exploring things, whatever they may be. But I've met a lot of bitter old
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"gadget freaks" in this scene, and that's something you want to stay away from.
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That mentality will crush the life out of you under the weight of a
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thousand bits of trivia. Go outside, there's a world there already. It's a
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zillion times more exciting and vibrant that what you can build staring into a
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monitor's dim glare. Hour after hour, year after year. As your eyesight
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fails you and your head draws nearer the image, your shoulders slump. You
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become weak. You are less.
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----------------[ People to mention
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The Egyptian Lover: The whole 806 NPA's only real phreak who ran a great
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BBS, The Missing Link, in 1984. I've only seen him a couple of times in
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person, but have to give him mad props for helping Franken Gibe and myself
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get situated with the phreak knowledge. His board attracted guys from The
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Apple Mafia and The Untouchables (the first warez groups ever), and The
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Knights of Shadow. Though I'd been getting warez since 1982, The Missing
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Link was our first contact with the real "elite" h/p scene, and it both
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fascinated and repulsed us.
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Franken Gibe: Bill helped start and really define cDc back in the day.
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He's a really cool guy. I've known him for over ten years. What can I say?
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We're still, to this day, working on things; though he hasn't been active in
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cDc since '89 or so. Now we're trying to start an advertising agency.
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Tippy Turtle: Jason gave me my first local BBS number. I pushed him to
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finish "Bunny Lust", which is one of our most popular articles ever. There
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have been court cases inspired by that file, and he wrote it when he was
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fourteen. He came back to town last Christmas and I showed him the cDc web
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site. His comment? "That's totally evil. I can't believe how evil this is."
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Mohawk Dave: Christoph is another one of my oldest friends who never
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fails to diss cDc. He's a mega-talented AI/robotics guy, and a rad
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guitarist and BMX freestyle rider too. Our group of friends spent countless
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hours cruising the neighborhoods of our hometown on bikes, talking, setting
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fires, breaking & entering, and having a good ol' time.
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Ex-girlfriends: Blech.
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All the other cDc people. Dang, there've been maybe fifty or so over the
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years and they've all done their thing well and I'm really happy they did.
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They know what's up... this part could run on forever, so I'll just stop.
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----------------[ Pearls Of Wisdom
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Procrastination is the denial of death.
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Lift with your legs, not your back.
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----[ EOF
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