liz@unirot.UUCP (Mamaliz ) (12/12/85)
[from the desk of Mike Whollop, investigative reporter] It has come to the attention of certain net "officials" that Rich Rosen is responsible for what has been deemed to be an "excessive amount of writing". One very important system administrator has stated that "It is impossible for one man to produce this much cogent thought in a week." Well, our cracked investigative team has proven this noteworthy system administrator to be absolutely correct. The Rich Rosen credited with all this does not actually exist. No, he is not an "AI" (artificial intelligence) project, nor is he an "NS" (natural stupidity) project, though many of the latter variety have cropped up on the net at various times. There is actually a person named Rich Rosen, but he lives in a hut in Skmelnsk, Utah, and does not know what a computer is. A dummy corporation called Nestor Enterprises pays Mr. Rosen handsomely for the use of his name, and an occasional use of some of his words. But the incredibly unbelievable verbiage emanating under the name Rich Rosen, with the computerese jargon name of "pyuxd!rlr", is not, and of course could not, come from any one person. We visited Nestor Enterprises' home office in Waukegan, British Columbia. It is well obscured in the midst of a large shopping mall (the Waukegan Galleria). Behind the Radio Shack, right next to the Merry Go Round, with a secret entrance in the back of a tailor's shop, we found Nestor Enterprises. What we found back there was astounding. There were 138 struggling authors, being paid slave wages for piecemeal work, not just by the article, not even by the word, but BY THE LETTER, sitting at cramped desks using dimly lit TI-745 hardcopy terminals, forced to use a primitive editor called "ed" rather than more sophisticated modern word processing tools. We spoke to one of these sweat shop employees, a man named Gary Forrest. "Heck, I'm a devout Christian and I *love* the Grateful Dead, but they MAKE us write this stuff. I mean, anything that shows the slightest variance from the position this mythical person holds is thrown out, and if you write too much unorthodox material you're out on the street. ... But, heck, I've got a family to support. I really have no choice. They pay us $1 for every thousand characters. It's really awful. But my wife is pregnant and my dog is sick, and I've got bills to pay, heck, I need the money. Why, to make ends meet, today, I wrote an article to net.abortion about manipulative rhetoric, another article to net.philosophy about wishful thinking, and one more article to net.news.group about some guy proposing that Rich Rosen be removed from the net! I mean, heck, does he want us all to starve?" We heard similar tales from other writers working for Nestor. Majors works hard to make ends meet, so he takes on every assignment he can, from a list posted daily on a huge board, of some 400,000 articles the Rich Rosen persona might respond to. Others work only in specific areas. The Rev. Carl Wanger specializes in articles about religion. "You know in my travels I've heard just about every line about the non-existence of God, and now it's all paying off. It's just a matter of picking some line out of my repertoire and harping on it. If I actually bothered to think about what I write, I think I might go mad. But all the money I make writing this goes to the church, so it's all for a good cause. ... What is rough is this quota we have to make. If we don't account for 2% of the total net volume, so that system administrators can quote that statistic to their heart's content all over the net, we get docked 25% of our pay." We even heard about a department devoted solely to developing signature lines, which often squanders its funds on wild parties and expensive vacations, going back to Rich Rosen, the man whose name they pay to use, for suggestions for new signature lines at the last minute. We continued our investigation by flying to Utah to meet this Rich Rosen. Some people have said "Rich Rosen can't possibly be as obnoxious as he appears on the net". Well, THIS Rich Rosen actually exceeded the limits of imagination in this area. When we arrived at his hut, he killed our cameraman with his teeth, maimed the soundman with the landmines surrounding his hut, and pointed a nuclear decompositor (at least that's the term he used) at this reporter when asked what his name was. We finally managed to settle him down and begin the conversation by offering him some chocolate truffles. "MR. ROSEN, ARE YOU AWARE OF YOUR NAME BEING USED BY THE NESTOR CORPORATION?" "'Course I am, y' silly boy, heh heh heh. They pay me furty dollars a month!" "DO YOU HAVE ANY INPUT INTO WHAT GETS SAID?" "Jesus Calliope, how the hick em I s'posed t'know? I don't read the stuff that gits writt, ya thinks I'm crazy?" "YOU DON'T READ ANY OF IT?" "Curse not, might cause brain damage! And even if I did know how, I wouldn't read it!" "BUT THEY SAY THEY COME TO YOU FOR INPUT ON OCCASION." "Cupla guys came down here with a chocolate mousse cheesecake and had me talking t'them fur a few hours, and they writ down ever'thing I said. Y'know, life's possible, but the bus of thought has many parts in La Paz." "BUT HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHO IS BEHIND THIS, WHAT THEY'RE DOING IT FOR, WHO'S FUNDING IT, ..." "Now, slow down, sonny, start at the beginning..." What Mr. Rosen told us was shocking. Who is funding this effort to flood the network with an overload of articles? Well, it seems to be coming from several places. One of the chief investors in Nestor Enterprises is the rock star Madonna. She could not be reached for comment. But public records show that at least 20% of the company is indirectly owned by her. In recent times, she had direct operational control of the signature line division. Another is Dr. Gene Scott, the television evangelist, who owns close to 25% of the firm. Apparently, though, this is really not Gene Scott alone but a consortium of religious evangelists working in tandem, led by Pat Robertson. There are other smaller investors in the firm, including rock stars like Jerry Garcia, Kate Bush, and Lionel Ritchie, and other entertainment figures like John Travolta and Phyllis Schlafly. But by far the biggest chunk of the firm is owned by False Front Operations, a dummy corporation owned and operated by both the Central Intelligence Agency *and* the KGB, which also owns MTV, CBN, and Roy Rogers restaurants. And what is the purpose behind flooding the network with endless streams of articles? Well, that's still not clear. It seems that sometimes it is used as a promotional tool for the shareholders of Nestor Enterprises, yet at other times it serves an absolutely opposite function. Dr. Hector Emolument, chairman of the Department of Unclassifyable Phenomena at Skleeb University in Kuala Lumpur, speculates: "I don't know." We then traveled to Saint Tropez, ostensibly to meet Linda Frascoli, executive vice president in charge of signature lines. "No, that's preposterous. Of course we're not a front for the CIA. We're just a tax write-off for a lot of people with lots of money to burn. All this talk about us transmitting subliminal electronic messages to alter people's brains is preposterous." "ALL WHAT TALK ABOUT TRANSMITTING SUBLIMINAL ELECTRONIC MESSAGES..." "Oh, nothing, nothing, ..." More on this story as it develops.
phoenix@genat.UUCP (phoenix) (02/23/86)
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. Can you imagine what might be accomplished should this person be persuaded to turn their talents to the use of the Forces of Goodness? . -- The Phoenix (Neither Bright, Dark, nor Young) ---"A man should live forever...or die trying." ---"There is no substitute for good manners...except fast reflexes."