Schwags, Addictions and T-Shirts Acquired For Other Reasons

A colleague in the search marketing space with the name Tamar Weinberg had a "coming out" and admit her addition to "SCHWAG", the stuff you get for free at conferences or other promotional items sent to you by companies.

She dedicated a whole blog to her addition where she posted pictures and comments to all her trophies. Guess the name of the blog! ... right SchwagAddict.com! Uh, that was hard.. hehe.

I have some trophies myself. I also extend the definition of Schwag a little bit and include promotional material where I actually paid money for the privilege to carry somebody else's name or logo around for the whole world to see. :)

This pic shows the front of a BuyMusic.com T-Shirt ("get loaded", which has obviously 2 meanings here hehe), a Levelclick shirt, a Techsmith Snag-It Sweatshirt, which reads "Capture, Edit, Share" and can have a double meaning :) ), the front of a CT-Magazine short ("rtfm", which has actually only one meaning), a SES San Jose 2006 shirt, a Mister-Wong.com shirt (top right), a The Party 1997 short where I paid actually money for and a BDN shirt, which I had to earn (I won the fast-ANSI compo at BDN Party 3 in Berlin, Germany). You can also see some other stuff there, such as the "I'am feeling lucky" License Plate frame from Google (which they offered free of charge on their site at some time).



A closer look



Back of the Levelclick t-shirt saying "Stop Guessing Start Earning!" and front of the BuyMusic.com shirt. Also on the picture pens from Techsmith, WebmasterWorld PubCon and TheBlindNetwork.com.



Okay, here you can see what the "rtfm" on the CT-Magazine t-shirt means hehe. I won't spell it out here. CT is a German computer magazine btw., which is great. I still have a subscription and get it delivered here to the U.S.



Again the BDN shirt and a VNV Nation shirt (paid) and a The Party 1998 shirt (also paid). I had to throw away my The Party 1993 and The Party 1994 t-shirts unfortunately. They were damaged beyond repair from wearing them.



Mister-Wong.com shirt (got it via mail for my suggestions and feedback during their U.S. beta), The Party 1997 shirt again ("Batteries not included"), SES shirt and BDN shirt with not so shiny colors anymore.



TP98 shirt, Snag-It sweatshirt back side "take a screenshot, it'll last longer" .. oh ah.. okay hehe. Up in the corner my Star Fleet Academy shirt, which I bought at the Star Trek Experience shop at the Hilton in Las Vegas.



Oh, did I mention that I am a Cirque Du Soleil fan? ;) Here is the proof that I am meaning it! ... but wtf? What does the Google "black shirt" there? Spamming the CDS? God damn it! hehe.



Okay, the shirt on this picture were also all paid for. My deviantArt.com shirt, my Defcon worker shirt (I got two), an "Ex-Sysop" shirt in Amiga Oldskool ASCII characters and the two custom print T-shirts that I had made at Defcon. See my post about it.



So, that's it :)
Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

You Can't Stop Progress! Lessons from the Past

I was sorting some old zip archives on my file server when I stumbled across an old text file from October 1997 with the name "INETSUXX.ZIP".

I was intrigued and checked it out. The FILE_ID.DIZ provided already a glimpse of the things to come.

.-----------------------------.
| a short statement about the |
| actual bulletin board       |
| system scene !!!            |
|       changes are needed!   |
`------------------------------- -- -
                              |
   COMMENT ON THIS FILE!­!    :
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    .
      _.:%[READ:IT]%:._

Here is the entire content of the included text file with the filename "CHANGE.IT!". It has two authors. The initial author who also created the ZIP file and started spreading it through other bulletin board systems is an anonymous sysop who is mad that the BBS scene was going down the drain and that everybody was switching to use the Internet rather than dialing a BBS.

It was modified and extended with comments by PigPen of Poison and Surge. He made some were good and forward thinking statements back then, even though his English language skills are not the best (the text screams for spelling and grammatical errors) and border-line PG13 language used. This is true for both guys by the way. I think it was how we really talked back then. I can't remember for sure, but the text refreshed some long forgotten memories in me.

Okay, here it comes, uncut and uncensored.

Original text....

        this sux!

        we had several times to change the whole thing... but no one of us
        seems to care about  the big problems comming over us! .. we tryed
        to fight against this  enemy of  crime -  but - most of us weren't
        able  to  resist!  ...  so  the  wohle  crap  seems  to  go  down.
        should  not  we  stand  together and fight agains our worth enemy ?
        the internet -  which  becomes bigger  and bigger ... and seems to
        destroy our  nice  bbs  network scene (which seems not to be a net-
        work neither a bunsh  of  friends).  most sysops fight against each
        other  instad  of  putting  their forces together agains the inter-
        net.
                so stand together ... and keep this scene alife!

        a sysop! ...

Added crap cummin' up:

        You're right!

        Definately the Inter*et is huge and growing very fast. The _BIG_
        problem is: It's simply more popular than the BBS-Scene, and you
        really can find there everything, even things, you really don't
        WANT and surely never NEED. Also it's really simpler to use than
        dialing BBS'es...
        And there the whole shit goes: I-N*t is becoming a mass-media
        like TV, and if someone complains about shitnet, he also could
        shout out: 'Read books! Sell yar TV-Set!' Stupid thoughs, but true.
        But on the other hand, sucknet is SLOWER, BUSIER, easier HACKABLE
        and much more EXPENSIVE.
        By the way, ever thought about all those _really_ lame dudez, who
        moved to blamenet, and doesn't bother you anymore? ;)
        Back to business...
        So we all hate lamenet, and wanna _FIGHT_ against?
        ( I mean <fight> not <complain> !­! )

        - What about heavy announcing for our boards in hmpfnet?
        - What about email support per BBS?
        - What about firin' up _ONE_ huge net like good old GSN, CDN or DGI?
        - What about making our boards easier to use?
        - What about making our boards friendlier?
          ('What means ICE?' , 'Be sure you have a good reason to page!' ,
           'No beginners!' , or those ratios we have but glblbnet don't)
        - What about all those suckers, who would call and give the
          remaining scene the rest?!?

        But what's about the _meaning_ of 'The Scene'? Is the scene a
        huge mob of people who call BBS'es and spread drivers and chat
        about Java, HTML, sexdolls and helicopters?
        Or is the scene a small crowd of active, friendly and sometimes ;)
        productive freaks with abilities, not only a mouse to click with?
        I'd really prefer the second...
        Also if you want to keep the scene together, a first step would be
        to sign with your handle, not with <a sysop>.
        Imagine all those dudez, who have the same opinion like you,
        and don't know, who you are... Nice, 'eh?

        Pressin' all this in a short sentence:
        [Internet grows, Scene selects.]

        PigPen^Poison^Surge

Yep, the good ol' days, gone forever. I can feel the anonymous sysop, because I used to be one myself and watched it all go to hell without anybody even blinking or saying anything. But when I saw it in 1997 in greater detail, I knew that the times for bulletin board systems are coming to an end. Note: I saw the Internet already before 1997. I used the Inet for the first time via CompuServ and the second time via a BBS Door :). But it took me a bit to "get it" to the full extend.

You can't change things back to what they were. The genie was out of the bottle and there was no way to put it back into it. Resisting progress is a natural but bad reaction. If you don't stop fighting progress a.s.a.p., the progress will eventually simply roll over you and leave you behind in the dust. Progress cannot be stopped, it can only be delayed! Remember that!

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

I am a Libertarian Anarchist

When people ask me about my political opinion did I not have an answer for them, because what I believe is hard to describe. I did not know that there does actually exist a term for it.

Here in the U.S. people ask me, if I am Republican, Democrat or a Green. I am neither of them. In Germany people asked me, if I am Conservative Christian Democrat, Social Democrat, Liberal, Green, Socialist or a Communist.

I am neither of them. So what am I?

I just found that out a few days ago when I watched the episode titled "Activism, Anarchism, and Power" of the educational series "Conversations with History" by the Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkley.

The host Harry Kreisler had a 1 hour conversation with Noam Chomsky, linguist and political activist on March 22, 2002. I watched the video recording of it, which I downloaded from Google Video.
Here is a link to the complete one hour episode.

I learned that I am a Libertarian Anarchist.

This has nothing to-do with liberals in the United States, who are completely different from who call themselves "Liberals" in Germany, which is different from what the word actually means. The anarchist part of it does also not refer to chaos or lack of organization of the society. I am sure most people get it wrong when they hear it for the first time and probably think that I am a Lenin citing and Molotov Cocktail throwing radical or something like that. This is of course far off from the truth and not what I am.

I created a short 6 minutes video with excerpts from the original 1 hour conversation and added some pictures for illustration, which are blended into the video in the top left corner when appropriate. I also added some background music to make it "less dry" to consume.

I called the short video "Wage Slavery, Freedom and Libertarian Anarchism" and here it is.



Backup URL to video on YouTube.com

The video explains some of the principle beliefs of Libertarian Anarchists and then explains where the term comes from and how it is defined, if you go by the book.

The key sections of the video address the following subjects:

• Wage Slavery = Chattel Slavery


• Power is illegitimate by assumption


• The use of violence may me justifiable sometimes


• What is Libertarian Anarchism?

It feels good to be able to express in a word (or two) what you belief in. Now I can say that I am also a part of something. Okay, I admin that the Libertarian Anarchists are a minority among people, but there are more out there than you might think, most of them probably don't know that they are Libertarian Anarchists, like I didn't know until now.

No, I am not an activist though. You don't have to fear hearing endless political lectures from me, don't you worry :). I was just excited to find out and decided to write about it.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

SAC Updates and Site Content Additions

This post is already over one week overdue, but I just didn’t find the time for it until now. I have several news that I like to share.

SACtros Complete
When I was writing about the SACtros video section here on my site, did I mention that I was not able to get one SACtro to work and asked for help. Well, I got help and thanks have to go to Ben Garret from Defacto2.net (the PC warez scene archive). He created a video capture of the missing intro for me and I was able to produce the final video with music and all and put it up on the site.

I also found a few more SAC VGA logos, which I put up on the designated gallery for them. The logos I included were created by Kenet, Dream Design and Hetero.

Complete All-Time SAC Member List
I got 2 weeks ago in contact with an active SAC member with the name Dipswitch who is a musician and ANSI artist who joined SAC around April 2002. I got in touch with him via Facebook.com and hope that he will be able to help me with my complete SAC member list. I already spent a bunch of time on collecting data and information. The member list is suppose to contain everybody who used to be a member of SAC during its 14+ years history with information about what they did, where they were from and optional contact information etc. From what I collected so far, were 115-120 people members of the group over time. Not bad, eh?

Dipswitch is also pretty busy at the moment, but I hope to get something going by early next year. If you are a current or former SAC member who wants to help with that list, contact me. I created a spreadsheet at Google Docs and Spreadsheets where I can enable access to other Google accounts for collaborate editing.

ASCII Art Academy Additions
I also extended the ASCII Art Academy by two more articles.

The first article is called "ASCII Art Frequently Asked Questions v3.0.3.19" and is a very comprehensive guide to ASCII art on Usenet. It is limited to 7-bit ASCII art for that reason.

The second article is called "The File_ID.diz File Frequently Asked Questions" v1.9 by Richard Holler. It explains in great detail the origin and usage of the file_id.diz file in file archives for bulletin board systems. I chuckled a bit when I read that only 7 bit ASCII characters are allowed for the file_id.diz, because the PC warez scene ignored this and started using block/high ASCII characters in their file_id.diz files as early as 1993.

I am still looking for tutorials for Block/High ASCII art and ANSI art. If you know about or have any good tutorials about this somewhere, please let me know.

For my German Friends
I also added two more pages to the site, but they are quite hidden and not easy to find. Somebody at deviantART.com brought up the subject and I knew that I have it flying around as text files somewhere. So I decided to put them up.



What am I talking about? The infamous "Szenebeobachter" disk mags for the German warez scene from 1997. They are written in German language, but you have to be somebody from Germany who was active at that time anyway to get the humor. The SB was not taking things too serious. I put up issue 1 and issue 2 on the site. I am not sure if they ever released more than those two.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC