loydb

They had guns when they came in the door, but Goggans had said something to the effect of 'you'll never take me alive' on a BBS post, so they were a little more proactive in his case... :)

Like I said, it doesn't surprise me that I said that, I just didn't remember it.

But a random Usenet post from someone who undoubtedly wasn't there isn't a source, it is hearsay....

And how hard would it have been to look at the cover of Cyberpunk and spell my name right?

We thought three copies in two separate locations was backup enough. All three of the computers (my home system, my work system, and the Illuminati BBS) were seized.

LOD is even thanked in the book credits.

As the guy they're talking about, I did keep an offsite backup. The GURPS Cyberpunk manuscript existed in three places -- my computer at home, my computer at work, and the Illuminati BBS.

They took all three. They also got my wife's in-progress Master's Thesis, and she had to restart from scratch because they refused to return even a copy.

I'm curious where the quote attributed to me was sourced from, as I don't remember saying that. However, since I regularly come across things in old backups that I had totally forgotten, both code and written text, it may be completely legit.

I'm kind of surprised the author didn't bother to contact me at all (I'm hardly difficult to find). We weren't awakened at gunpoint, for instance. That was Goggans. We were awakened by pounding on our apartment door at 6 AM.

It's not just the game industry -- it's high-tech in general. As a 50-year-old programmer with zero desire to manage people, I am in the same boat.

In 1990, the US Secret Service seized a book I was writing called GURPS Cyberpunk. One of the agents repeatedly insisted to my publisher that "THIS STUFF IS REAL!" to which we always replied "Well, yes, but step one is to plug a jack into your forehead..."

The more things change....

Then perhaps I'll "explore the possibility" of buying it. But probably not, they have left a nasty aftertaste with their shenanigans.

Spending a gaming week or two deep diving into this is a worthwhile pursuit (I agree about the O'Reilly book as well). In the end, I came to the conclusion that the ASCII graphics were, in fact, incredibly good and info-dense, but the UI wrapped around the whole game was just infuriatingly bad. I'll look again in 2-3 years.

No, you're right. I just don't want to see it painted in a fairy dust of nostalgia. There were some real criminals involved, and I'm sure there were many who nobody ever knew played both sides. There were plenty of guys that were good enough at hiding their True Name that they could have been anyone. Not just random dudes on a bbs, but folks I "knew" with serious technical skills.

^this++

One of the arguments I make against black hat hacking when I answer emails to (mostly) kids is that there is soooo much available you can do to fulfill your wildest geeky dreams. I'm around 90% sure that, were I growing up now, I would have eschewed cracking and instead be hip deep in some nerdvana corner of the maker universe, wiring cats up for spaceflight or something similar.

Well, it was written at a point that I was feeling pretty damn bitter and resentful... :)

My attitude (and that of most of my contemporaries) was that hacking government computers (in our own country at least) was a Damn Stupid idea.

A corporation will make an ROI decision about pursuing someone. Is it worth their time and money and hassle to pursue, or should they just change the admin password to something other than "secret123" and forget about it.

The government, on the other hand, has whole branches of people with nothing better to do than follow up on this kind of thing, and they aren't motivated by 'profit.'

Well, that's not strictly true. I know at least a couple of folks from that era who would pilfer a bank account in a heartbeat, given the opportunity (they tended to be active 'carders'). They were, however, treated with disdain by 99% of the 'exploratory' hackers I knew.

The catalyst for me getting out of the black hat side (other than aging out of the 'being bad is fun' stage) was getting into a massive system from which I could have easily pilfered millions. Thoughts of everything from "set up Swiss bank account, fill up" to "offer to 'consult' with the company in question to fix the holes" went through my head. In the end, I just said "game over, I won," stopped cracking systems, and put up the Phoenix Project BBS as a center of learning. Which lasted until the Secret Service showed up at my door in 1990...

I like the phrase 'catch and release.' We always worked from the philosophy of 'do no harm.' I can certainly see the top poster's side of things -- there are a lot of issues that I feel much differently about as a near-50-year-old than I did as a teenager. For what it's worth, I was never trying to provide moral authority for hacking in the perjorative sense when I wrote it, I was just venting...

But you're right, the rebellion was the delicious topping on the technical exploration sundae. By the time I outgrew the illegal portion of things, the technical 'hacking' imperative was firmly established in me, and has continued to this day.

Also, remember that back then it was way harder to get caught. We did stuff like wardial entire area codes with impunity. The general lack of awareness/focus on computer security combined with non-digital phone switches (oh crossbar, how I loved thee) made it much less risky.

As the author, I've been amazed over the years at how well this resonates with people 25+ years after the fact. I continue to get 2-3 emails a week from people about how it affected them (unfortunately, about half of the emails also ask me to break into something for them).

It is difficult for anyone who didn't live through the BBS years to understand the feeling of no longer being isolated and alone. I strongly recommend Jason Scott's documentary 'BBS' (in which I'm interviewed) for a glimpse at a bygone era.