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He named his BBS "TacoLand". He should definitely play up this angle...maybe campaign on a taco cart on every corner. I know people who will vote for him for th
by js2 8y ago
He named his BBS "TacoLand". He should definitely play up this angle...maybe campaign on a taco cart on every corner. I know people who will vote for him for that alone.
This piece is a disaster. It's an excerpt from a soon to be released book, it's light on facts about O'Rourke and is at least equally about Cult of the Dead Cow, it's trying to make things sound more nefarious than they were, and it's playing the guilt by association card. The only questionable activities by O'Rourke are:
- he dialed long distance without paying for it.
- he used pirated software.
(Not that I'm defending this behavior, but so did I.)
And he wrote fiction that barely rises to the level of a really bad Stephen King'esque short story.
That's it.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoHonestly the drunk driving was the worst takeaway from the story. Maybe he is the next Kennedy haha.
- malvosenior 8y agoI agree the piece isn't very informative and is very scattered. That being said, this is definitely the most questionable thing: > "When he was younger, he was arrested on drunk-driving charges" That will follow him into the campaign far more than his CDC membership.
- edaemon 8y agoThat will certainly be brought up in the campaign, but it was brought up in his House races and the Senate race and didn't seem to have much of an impact.
- burfog 8y agoIt was a close race, and he lost. That seems like an impact.
- dvtrn 8y agoThis after that, therefore because of that-you say?
- ceejayoz 8y agoA Democrat losing in a race in Texas isn't exactly a shocking development.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoAnd he did significantly better than most people and polls expected he'd do. 3 points, getting more votes than Hillary and Obama in a midterm year through persuasion more than turnout.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> That will certainly be brought up in the campaign, but it was brought up in his House races and the Senate race and didn't seem to have much of an impact. A very actively contested Presidential primary isn't the same thing as a House or Senate race, and he didn't win the Senate race, either.
- edaemon 8y agoThat's true. I mostly meant that it isn't a new development, it's been in the news before.
- mruts 8y agoIs being arrested for drunken driving materially different than having not been arrested while drunken driving? And hasn’t pretty much almost anyone driven drunk at least once?
- lukewink 8y ago> And hasn’t pretty much almost anyone driven drunk at least once? No...
- mruts 8y agoBy drunk I mean above the legal BAC. It’s pretty easy to have a few beers and be above the legal limit.
- dagw 8y agoIt's also pretty easy to have a few beers and not drive
- mruts 8y agoI wouldn’t call it very easy. You drive to a place and have some beers. Then you have the choice of leaving your car or drive above the BAC. Most people choose the latter.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> I wouldn’t call it very easy Yes it is. > You drive to a place and have some beers. It's quite easy to decide not to drive to a place if you are going to have a few beers over too short of a time to safely and legally drive home, or to choose not to have too many beers if you need to drive to and from the place.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- danso 8y ago
- krapp 8y ago>> "When he was younger, he was arrested on drunk-driving charges" >That will follow him into the campaign far more than his CDC membership. Will it? It didn't hurt George W. Bush. Admitting to smoking pot didn't hurt Obama. And Donald Trump... Jesus wept, Donald Trump.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoSmoking pot is not the same as endangering lives. Also Donald Trump doesn't drink, let-alone drink and drive. There's few crimes that are more dangerous than drinking and driving.
- krapp 8y agoThe point is that these people all have incidents in their past which should, in theory, have hurt them politically, but which in practice, didn't.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoAnd my point is not all past incidents are created equal. So it's hard to compare the effects.
- txcwpalpha 8y ago>it's trying to make things sound more nefarious than they were, and it's playing the guilt by association card Are we reading the same article? If anything this article seems like a submarine PR puff piece to me, made to increase the image of Beto by making him seem "cool" and "hip" by associating him with the typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene. This article is very similar to the pro-Beto stuff that was all over Texas during his senate campaign.
- save_ferris 8y agoFrom the article: Still, it’s unclear whether the United States is ready for a presidential contender who, as a teenager, stole long-distance phone service for his dial-up modem, wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street, and mused about a society without money. This doesn't read as very pro-Beto to me.
- madeofpalk 8y agoIt's unclear why the author of the article is unsure what type of president the US is ready for, right after they elected Donald Trump.
- txcwpalpha 8y agoA single sentence in an otherwise glamorizing and embellishing article does not a anti-Beto piece make. That sentence doesn't even read as not pro-Beto to me, either. It's more of a neutral "this guy is really cool, but is he cool enough?" rhetorical.
- saidajigumi 8y agodialed long distance without paying for it. In the right generation, isn't that practically a job requirement for a CSO?
- dragonwriter 8y ago> In the right generation, isn't that practically a job requirement for a CSO? Which, were he applying for a job as a CSO, might be relevant.
- xiljin 8y agoDon't forget that he was also quite a wordsmith (NSFW) - http://textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0050.txt http://textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0050.txt
- alehul 8y agoWarning: NSFW ^ (though cool, NSFW)
- burfog 8y agoI think "TacoLand" has a meaning that could be awkward. The food can be a metaphor for genitalia or for the attached humans. For example a tacofest, much like a sausagefest, is a gathering in which one sex is greatly overrepresented compared to the other. Meat goes in a taco. So, one can guess what was featured on his BBS.
- NelsonMinar 8y agoThis comment says more about you than Beto.
- jandrese 8y agoYou can look up his textfiles if you want to see what was on the BBS.
- burfog 8y agoHe wrote this: https://web.archive.org/web/20041214030544/http://www.cultdeadcow.com/cDc_files/cDc-0050.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20041214030544/http://www.cultde... That at least somewhat supports my interpretation. I was thinking more along the lines of image files.
- jandrese 8y agoThat he was an edgy teenager? Yeah. Image files back in the 80s weren't super common because everybody was on slow dialup and had crappy CGA graphics. There was a fair bit of risque ANSI crawls from groups like ACID and ICE, but they were usually too artistic to be considered just porn.
- cobralibre 8y ago> He named his BBS "TacoLand". It certainly wouldn't have been unusual for a young Beto O'Rourke (or any other Texan) to have tacos on his mind for any number of reasons, but "Taco Land" was the name of a punk bar in San Antonio. It was well known to Texas punks and their ilk and was immortalized by the Dead Milkmen in the late 80s by their song "Tacoland".
- sdenton4 8y agoIndeed. "You'll understand, when you go on down to tacoland." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsDmUcvrCbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsDmUcvrCbI
- VectorLock 8y agoHeres a TextFile listing his old BBS number if it is TacoLand: http://www.textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0080.txt http://www.textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0080.txt Also whats up with textfiles.com having so many broken links on Google? So much for that whole "Archive Team" angle.
- textfiles 8y agoWhat are you talking about?
- VectorLock 8y agoI can't even connect to textfiles.com at all right now.
- VectorLock 8y agohttp://bbslist.textfiles.com/ http://bbslist.textfiles.com/ -> COLLECTED COPIES OF BBS LISTS -> 404
- textfiles 8y agoThat's the so many broken links? OK
- VectorLock 8y agoThats the most obvious I've several I've found but OK.
- billyhoffman 8y agoThis feels like someone trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill and link connections that really don't exist. According to the article O'Rourke left the CDC boards turned 18 and went to college. He's 46, so we are talking 1989 or 1990. The article then talks up all the Back Orifice/Hacktavism stuff which was a solid decade after he left. It's not like Beto's helping Virus and Sir Dystic write SMBRelay...
- tptacek 8y agoThe article itself has Beto at Beyond HOPE in 1997.
- pizlonator 8y agoThe fact that this is coming out so early in the presidential cycle is a good thing for him though. Lots of time for it to become old news. Lots of time for him to spin it. He seems to be good at spin. Anyway this makes me respect him more. Anyone know his handle btw?
- chadlavi 8y agoHah same for me. Though a politician who actually knows how to use a computer can probably do a lot more for democracy in the Senate than the oval office.
- toyg 8y agoThis was intentionally pushed by his campaign precisely for that reason - to get all the dirt out while they can control the spin. Better to burn the story now that he’s “just” a primary candidate.
- exolymph 8y agoDo you have evidence for that or are you guessing? (I have nothing against guessing, but I'd like to know when that's what people are doing)
- pizlonator 8y agoI mean that would make sense but source?
- toyg 8y agoThe way it's stated, to me, indicates clear coordination: "Members of the group have protected O’Rourke’s secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability. Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged O’Rourke as one of their own. In all, more than a dozen members of the group agreed to be named for the first time in a book about the hacking group by this reporter that is scheduled to be published in June by Public Affairs. O’Rourke was interviewed early in his run for the Senate". So the reporter interviewed him first then went to the other members, who somehow "flipped" uncharacteristically (unlike they had done before). The book will be published in June but the reporter decided to start banging the drum much earlier, which is more convenient for O'Rourke than for his sales (he's basically given all the good bits away already). If he wanted to maximize exposure and sales, he would have waited for the eve of a primary; like this, it helps O'Rourke get the dirt out early. Speculation? I'd just call it realism.
- chadlavi 8y ago> (Not that I'm defending this behavior, but so did I.) Same. I bet every one of us in this thread did, too! At least the pirated software part.
- JoblessWonder 8y agoTaco Trucks on every corner. God I loved that quote. https://youtu.be/PzbusRK7YKM?t=360 https://youtu.be/PzbusRK7YKM?t=360