mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (04/23/87)
[These two articles were sent to me by Foothead, who asked me to post them for him, since his account at eddie has apparently been deleted. --mrh] The article that follows was written by me earlier this past weekend as a response to more of the same nonsense from Gene Ward Smith. I would have posted it myself except that the net effect of Gene's accusations found in this article has been that my account has been terminated by the people at mit-eddie. I have no complaint with them, since as described my account was a "tourist" account and they certainly have every right to terminate it at whim. What is upsetting is not simply the account being terminated, but the fact that it was terminated based on a series of lame unsupported accusations by one Gene Ward Smith, apparently solely in the spirit of vengence (for joking that he might be the actual perpetrator-- I think I hit a little too close to home!). Gene speaks pompously in his article about the "dangers" to the net from people who post bogus articles, as a self-appointed guardian of the glory of the net. In my opinion, if there is any "danger" to the net, it comes from people like Gene Ward Smith and his buddy Matt Wiener with their vengeful gameplaying that they wreak on people they don't like. Waaa, cried the brahms lullaby babies. Only this time the brahms babies have done something serious: their accusations cost someone an account. How much longer will the actions of these babies be tolerated? I reproduce the original intended article here, as it points out some of the true idiocy in the brahms boys' accusations. Before we get to that original article, here are some added points: 1. Gene has conjectured that I MUST have extensive knowledge about the network, about editing .forward files, etc. The fact that in reality I DON'T have such knowledge doesn't seem to matter much to him. On the other hand, we have seen that Gene certainly DOES have that knowledge, since he is flitting across the country checking mail logs and such, and that he has the means to use the network to play these sorts of games. If people can be indicted because it is purported that they have certain "knowledge," then Gene is far guiltier than I could hope to be. He certainly not only had the motive, he had the knowledge and the means as well. But I like the logic there: I needed to have this knowledge in order to have done the deed in question, therefore I have that knowledge! I guess anyone who says this whole argument has nothing to do with religion is in error. :-) 2. As someone else has already said, the "shell scripts" in my directory were used to give net access to people other than myself, not for "forging" articles as was speculated. If the people involved had been contacted, if I had been contacted, this would have been clear. This trial by conjecture and guilt until proven innocent is making me ill. I ask again, are the brahms boys' petty vendettas and their flimsy allegations grounds for deleting someone's account? Will they pull this sort of stunt again? I've been told that the brahms boys have been telling people in private mail that this is no big deal, that they expect me to be back on the net in no time. It's nice to know that they have such a high opinion of my connections. I, on the other hand, doubt very much that I will be able to get net access again in the near future. (I know at least one of the people using my fh account has managed to get access again, so at least THAT damage is being minimized.) I've also been told that, as a matter of fact, the brahms boys were THEMSELVES kicked off the net a short while ago. Any ideas on how THEY might still be posting? Could it just possibly be that "magic login" they keep talking about? Curioser and curioser, indeed! 3. As I just said, the damage to other people who also used my account to post and get mail under their own names may be minimized. I didn't want to get them involved, since obviously association with the Foothead name at this point is the electronic equivalent of having leprosy. Since the declared reason for canceling my account was the existence of the shell scripts for allowing these people to use the net (scripts assumed to be for an "illicit" purpose-- what is it they say about assuming?), and since it was admitted that beyond that there simply isn't any evidence pointing to wrongdoing (perhaps because there WAS no wrongdoing on my part, though that won't stop Genius Gene from finding more "proof"), I have to wonder. Was my account terminated simply on the word of one Gene Ward Smith? It sure seems that way. He has received high praise for his "investigative" work, and has come out of this a "hero," but what he has REALLY done is to wreak vengeance on a net adversary based on pisspoor accusations that someone believed, and in the process two other innocent people were inconvenienced as well. All this shows is just how good the brahms gang is at smear tactics. Nothing more. Who will be the next victim of their babyish games and "investigative" harrassment? In the original article itself I treated Gene lightly, mocking his so called "investigative" endeavors and pointing out how stupid they are. I am not treating him so lightly anymore. Not because my opinion of his abilities has changed, but because people have taken his claims seriously, and because as a result I lost my account for no reason other than Gene's seeking to trash it. It's beginning to seem to me more and more that Gene and Matt set up this whole affair to come off as "heroes" because they knew their net reputations were basically toilet-bound, and needed something to acheive elevation in the eyes of the net community. Pity that sort of thing works. But then again, it means it could be used again. And what goes around, comes around, or so they say... -- Foothead Nfvqr gb Znggl: unira'g tbggra bire ure lrg, unir lbh? -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (04/23/87)
[These two articles were sent to me by Foothead, who asked me to post them for him, since his account at eddie has apparently been deleted. --mrh] In article <1128@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith) writes: > Oh dear! There I was, snidely implying that Foothead might not understand >the net and UNIX(*) that well, and in particular might not understand the >implications of the phony arndt@prometheus appearing from daemon@ucbvax. >Wrong, wrong, wrongo--and my sincere apologies. Obviously Foothead knew about >all this. He must have. Because Foothead IS the phony Ken Arndt. This would >explain why he was so annoyed at my original pointing out of this, above >and beyond the standard Foothead irritabilities. First, Gene, I was annoyed because you were being your usual obdurate idiotic self, making speculations and basing them on practically no evidence at all. I made a mockery of your speculations by suggesting that it just might be you. (The possibility that you were gloating over having done this seemed quite likely given your personality.) Of course, at that time, it was all a joke. I knew as much as you did and made a speculation of my own, pointing at you. This, of course, got you so riled up that you put on your Hemlock Holmes hat and started "investigating" your eyes out about this. Gee, what could have prompted such a sudden rabid defense unless I had hit it right on the nose with that (then) joke? The second thing, Gene, is that this has moved out of the area of speculation into the area of slander when you say "Foothead IS the phony Ken Arndt." No more maybes or possibilities (not that you would EVER admit that your ideas in any endeavor were less than perfect truth, right?), "IS." The fact that this doesn't correlate to reality apparently isn't important to you, you'll stick your foothead in your mouth anyway. > First: where are the arndt@prometheus articles really coming from? Would >you believe, Rich Rosen? No, not exactly. Specifically they come from the >account rlr@borax.lcs.mit.edu. > insert network log records here > But what does Rich have to say about it? > I sent him a letter asking about the rlr@borax account. According to him, >this got set up during the Brahms-Rosen "we are all Rich Rosen" wars. He >now has a password on it, and uses it to forward mail from Massachusetts. >We might wonder, does Foothead know about it? Well, lo and behold, we find >the following from the mail log at borax (and eddie concurred): > insert more of the same here >This was the night before the <666@prometheus.UUCP> posting! ... And all through the net, Gene Ward Smith got his pants soaking wet. Gene, you're all excited here, I wouldn't be surprised if your pants WERE soaking wet. Wow, you've "got" me, you've "proven" beyond the shadow of a dord that I did this thing. With your genius logic, you have shown this inevitably to be true. Let's see how. Let's visit the mind of Gene Ward Smith (a short stay, of course) and examine his reasoning, his evidence, his conclusions, and (most important) his OBSESSIONS! > In other words, we get mail traffic from Foothead to rlr@borax, and then >mail traffic from rlr@borax to ucbvax here in Berkeley. Does Rich Rosen >know that Foothead is sending mail to rlr@borax? rlr@pyuxe, the original >genuine Rich Rosen, says not. He wonders how it is that Foothead is sending >mail to rlr@borax but it isn't reaching him--after all, he "knows" it's >used to forward mail to him. I will take a chance, and leap to the con- >clusion that perhaps Foothead knows how to edit .forward files. I also >notice that Foothead's mail to rlr@borax is 1925 bytes long. The article >that <666@prometheus.UUCP> was responding to was <9322@decwrl.DEC.COM>, >which was 1663 bytes long on our system. That does leave room for mail >headers. And what a coincidence, were Foothead the perpetrator, he would >read and save the original on eddie, and somehow get it over to borax. >(A suggestion for next time: use something other than e-mail. Magnetic >tape perhaps? :-) Wow, well, I surrender. Boy, you sure caught me with your pants down this time, Genius. Now, check this out. I mail something to rlr@borax. That's funny, I have been sending mail there for quite a while now. Rich's news feed has been sporadic for some time (one of the reasons he says he hasn't been posting, but I think he's had better reasons not to be posting :-) ) So, I (and apparently others as well) have offered to mail him articles of interest that might amuse him. And THIS is Gene's "proof?" I guess everyone who has sent mail to that account is also under Smith's scrutiny! Here's more "proof": the mail in question was one length and the article in question was slightly shorter by just about enough (according to the precise Vulcan logical mind of Smith) to account for mail headers. WOW! (Truth is, the letter in question may very well BE that particular article, because I DID send it to rlr@borax (among a few other gems, including articles in the "arndt" series as well as a few moments of egotism from Genius Gene). How Gene will take this and use it as more "proof" will surely be an amusement for all.) Let me make it plain: you are claiming that because I sent mail to rlr@borax, and because the phony articles are purported (by you?) to have come from there, I MUST be the one who did it! And people wonder why I flame about self-proclaimed "geniuses" on the net? Here is a perfect example of one whose idea of logic is "let's see, what would I like to prove, and what could I say that would convince people that I've proven it?" > What about the Paul Koloc connection? According to Koloc, his prometheus >was broken into and a phony arndt@prometheus account was set up. This happened >just before April 1, and an April Fools' "joke" seems likely. Paul then had >to remove the account and send out cancel messages on the bogus articles. >He says a number of attempted entries were then rebuffed, the log showing >the following: > >BAD LOGIN ATTEMPT arndt tty02 Tue Mar 31 12:45:56 1987 etc. And the humorous thing here is that you would BELIEVE Paul Koloc. For all we know, Paul Koloc (who hasn't exactly been known for his honesty) fabricated this "log" from thin air. I'd sooner believe Richard Nixon than Paul Koloc, and I think most people who've read his articles would feel the same way. But YOU, Gene Ward Smith, believe what the man has to say because it matches your expectations about reality. What's really amusing about all this is Gene's choice of sources of information: Paul Koloc and Rich Rosen. Now, Koloc is a known liar, so his claims should be taken with at least a pound of salt. But imagine Gene Ward Smith using Rich Rosen as a source of information to "prove" his fantasies! His foremost net.adversary of perhaps ALL time! In another time and place, Gene would probably be whomping Rich just like in the "good old days." But this time, since Rich Rosen has said something that might help him in realizing his little vengefulness, he believes him! I guess some people pick their sources of information and allocate believability points to them based on what they want to believe. I guess I'll go ask Rich Rosen whether or not you and Matty Weener are really the same person, since you trust his opinion (all of a sudden) so much. > Curioser and curioser! Bogus arndt@prometheus articles, and a bogus >arndt@prometheus login. And simultaneously, valspeak gets run on >pmk@prometheus articles. Since Foothead is strongly implicated in the >first--his insistent attempts to point the finger before anyone even >suggested he was involved are truly laughable--we wonder. And we do >recall, another, just amazing coincidence, Foothead indeed has been on >an anti-Koloc and anti-Arndt rampage from the very beginning of his known >net.existence. Well that chunk of logic makes it all rather interesting, Gene. Why don't I use the same logic myself to draw different conclusions. Talk about "insistent attempts to point the finger before anyone even suggested he was involved!" Who came out first with a declaration about what happened, apparently nothing but a behind-covering move? And didn't that person gloat about the impact to the net of all of this with great self-serving pomposity? And let's not forget the OTHER "amazing coincidence," that the brahmsboys have been on a rampage of their own, this one an anti-Foothead one (actually one of a continuing series of rampages against practically everybody), for the longest time. (And by the way, Gene, I have never come "face to face" with Ken Arndt, so your further fatuous nonsense about my being on an "anti-Arndt rampage" is yet more crap. In reality, a good number of people were readily convinced that it was the "real" Ken Arndt, yet Gene "knew" RIGHT AWAY that it wasn't. Where did HE, in his GENIUS, get this knowledge?) I don't have the big guns that these guys seem to have, among them access to mail logs from machines ALL OVER the country, nor the knowledge to use them if I had such access. ... Now THAT'S intriguing: who DOES have access to all the tools to enable them to perpetrate such a fraud on all of us? By their own admission, using it all in an effort to "prove" their innocence and pin blame for the whole affair on someone whom they seem to have some vendetta against? Who else? >ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 >ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith /Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 Yup, who else? The Olympic world champions of synchronized smearing themselves. -- Foothead -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
page@ulowell.UUCP (04/23/87)
Interesting ... although Foothead spends quite a bit of time on his
personal attacks of the Brahms Gang, he never denies their accusations.
..Bob
--
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet} desilets@randvax.UUCP (04/28/87)
What does all of this have to do with religion? Why not move this discussion to talk.netboys.masturbation -- +------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+ | /-------\ | DISCLAIMER: (was a maiden yesterday) | | / \ | RAND Corp doesn't even know I *have* opinions, so they | | / ``` ''' \ | certainly couldn't agree with them! | | | <(*) (*)> | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | | / \ | | | | | | | | | THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR FUTURE WITTY SAYINGS | | | (o_o) | | | | \ ^ / +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | |\_____/| |USnail@ RAND Corp. 2100 M Street NW, Washington D.C. 20037 | | \ U / +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | \_____/ | desilets@rand-unix.UUCP | (202) 296-5000 E.S.T. | +----------------+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+