4 ms·

All this BBS talk takes me back to about 10 years ago, when I had a business encounter with a consultant engineer from IBM in Chicago. After our business meetin

All this BBS talk takes me back to about 10 years ago, when I had a business encounter with a consultant engineer from IBM in Chicago. After our business meeting, we went to lunch and this gentleman dropped me off at my place of work in his car (IIRC, it was a Toyota Avalon with white leather interior). We had some small talk during the short drive - about some of my pet projects at the time and what I was doing outside of work, etc. He was very encouraging and appeared very curious. I appreciated that. Little did I know at the time that I was in the presence of greatness and driving with a legend. He was Ward Christensen. I was so totally ignorant of his awesomeness that I'm ashamed. And so embarrassed now thinking about how vain I was talking to him about my barely getting my feet wet with Android application development. :$ That was my only encounter with Ward. I think I connected the dots a few months later when I read about him in 2600. (@Ward - If you are reading this, hi!! And my apologies for my ignorance).

dpwm 8y ago
> I was so totally ignorant of his awesomeness that I'm ashamed. I would speculate it's likely it made for a much more interesting conversation for both of you than if you had been aware of his accomplishments. You also got a much more interesting anecdote as a result of that. FWIW I hadn't heard of him until your comment. I suspect for every one person I have heard of there's at least a hundred I haven't heard of whose accomplishments are no less great. Unless you are a narcissist, it must really suck to be so famous that you can never have a conversation with anybody in a symmetric fashion.
- batlegdotcom 8y ago
  I haven't been able to buy a working voltmeter in this zip code. Not sure what is wrong with the instructions despite using Home Depot. I have read the Army Survival Guide. I am looking for 4 hour work week but my lawyer and bother in law said everyone signs non-competes that last for 2 years. As pro se in person I would just say indentured servitude is illegal in the 13 colonies. I am a narcissist. You may delete this comment. I will just file for stored and useless (unemployment) like everyone else. -SKT
- TomVDB 8y ago
  In my college days, I often hitchhiked to places instead of taking the train. It was just more fun to talk to people of various kinds. One day on my way back from a trade show about the future of technology (1992?), I get picked up by this chain smoking hippy guy in an old beat up Ford Escort. We had a pleasant conversation. And then it suddenly hit me that I was talking to a famous (in my country) radio comedian. And that’s where the conversation stopped. It was exactly as you described: I just felt embarrassed talking about mundane stuff like the full color flat LCD panels that were so cool. What do you say to somebody like that?
fit2rule 8y ago
I once hired this guy, whom I'd met at a 2600 meet up at Union Station in LA, to work for me at one of the first web-development agencies in California. I had him all set up as a sysadmin doing sysadmin'y things, got him a new SGI machine as requested, sat him in the corner and watched him type away happily, doing web-development/sysadmin'y things. Little did I know that he was writing his seminal paper in a terminal on the side .. "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" has gone on to be one of the most famous of Phrack articles .. if only I'd known, I would've asked to proof-read it first. ;) (Likewise: hi @AlephOne!)
- harry8 8y ago
  What has AlephOne been up to since?
  - fit2rule 8y ago
    I guess he's continued his career as a security researcher .. I really don't know. I extricated myself from that company back then and moved on, myself, to other things .. but it always amuses me to remember looking over his shoulder and seeing MIPS assembly up there and wondering "hmm.. what does this have to do with the website we're building, hmm.." ;)
  - thelittleone 8y ago
    AlephOne was CTO of SecurityFocus which was acquired by Symantec back in 2002. He stayed on until 2011 and is now at Cisco. Oh the golden days of #phrack and #2600 in the 90's. Was a teenager armed with a dialup to a BBS with an IRC gateway. The modem so slow I would type lines and wait for the characters to catch up on the screen.

dpwm 8y ago

> I was so totally ignorant of his awesomeness that I'm ashamed. I would speculate it's likely it made for a much more interesting conversation for both of you than if you had been aware of his accomplishments. You also got a much more interesting anecdote as a result of that. FWIW I hadn't heard of him until your comment. I suspect for every one person I have heard of there's at least a hundred I haven't heard of whose accomplishments are no less great. Unless you are a narcissist, it must really suck to be so famous that you can never have a conversation with anybody in a symmetric fashion.

batlegdotcom 8y ago
I haven't been able to buy a working voltmeter in this zip code. Not sure what is wrong with the instructions despite using Home Depot. I have read the Army Survival Guide. I am looking for 4 hour work week but my lawyer and bother in law said everyone signs non-competes that last for 2 years. As pro se in person I would just say indentured servitude is illegal in the 13 colonies. I am a narcissist. You may delete this comment. I will just file for stored and useless (unemployment) like everyone else. -SKT
TomVDB 8y ago
In my college days, I often hitchhiked to places instead of taking the train. It was just more fun to talk to people of various kinds. One day on my way back from a trade show about the future of technology (1992?), I get picked up by this chain smoking hippy guy in an old beat up Ford Escort. We had a pleasant conversation. And then it suddenly hit me that I was talking to a famous (in my country) radio comedian. And that’s where the conversation stopped. It was exactly as you described: I just felt embarrassed talking about mundane stuff like the full color flat LCD panels that were so cool. What do you say to somebody like that?

fit2rule 8y ago

I once hired this guy, whom I'd met at a 2600 meet up at Union Station in LA, to work for me at one of the first web-development agencies in California. I had him all set up as a sysadmin doing sysadmin'y things, got him a new SGI machine as requested, sat him in the corner and watched him type away happily, doing web-development/sysadmin'y things. Little did I know that he was writing his seminal paper in a terminal on the side .. "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" has gone on to be one of the most famous of Phrack articles .. if only I'd known, I would've asked to proof-read it first. ;) (Likewise: hi @AlephOne!)

harry8 8y ago
What has AlephOne been up to since?
- fit2rule 8y ago
  I guess he's continued his career as a security researcher .. I really don't know. I extricated myself from that company back then and moved on, myself, to other things .. but it always amuses me to remember looking over his shoulder and seeing MIPS assembly up there and wondering "hmm.. what does this have to do with the website we're building, hmm.." ;)
- thelittleone 8y ago
  AlephOne was CTO of SecurityFocus which was acquired by Symantec back in 2002. He stayed on until 2011 and is now at Cisco. Oh the golden days of #phrack and #2600 in the 90's. Was a teenager armed with a dialup to a BBS with an IRC gateway. The modem so slow I would type lines and wait for the characters to catch up on the screen.