View and vote on the article here: Interview with Mar. Xenographic Pt. 2 of 2
Interview with Mar. Xenographic Pt. 2 of 2| Category | | | Summary | | Here is the second half of the Interview with Mar. Xenographic, complete with pictures of the OmegaMaster himself and an unprecedented look at the old /zebulun10. |
| | Body | BlackFlag: When did you first join CA, and how did you find out about it?
Xeno: I can scarcely remember that; I think it must've been in Oct 98 or something around then. I found it via the Portal, at first, which was very popular. Eventually, I stumbled onto this 'Zebulun' thing, figured out how to hack into it and started my CA career. I even met the *original* Eliza, who took quite a while to beat the first time :]
BF: The "Original" Eliza?
Xeno: She changed several times after some of the resets that happened. At first, she didn't even have a "pet carbon rod." There was even a time where anyone at z5 or so could see the logs from chats with her. I used to keep the "Eliza Log Archives" of funny ones. I still have an archive, I think, but I have no source of new logs.
I used to even have some funny ones of the future CA staff, some particularly good ones from Mar. Trapper. I've been here so long that I've outranked everyone but Pengo himself, heh. At least, at one point or another in time. So, basically, I started out here doing the challenges.
BF: Tell us about your history in CyberArmy.
Xeno: At that time, Nick (AKA overlord AKA pengo) controlled everything. So back in the 'early days' I was one of the first to beat the new challenges as they came out. I wound up in the top 10 for LtKer, Ker, and Gen. Anyhow, for a long time, I was just hanging out with the other people who could beat higher ranks. That's how I got to know people like Mar. Kaladis and Mar. Azrael. Most of the future CA ?old-guard' staff were from the top ranks of Zebulun. Though a lot of that has changed, now: we've found a lot of newer, talented officers. Though I do see the 'old-guard' every so often.
Anyhow, sometime back then, Nick started to delegate responsibilities on the site. He mostly hung out on the top ranks, with many of the smarter players (who had to be fairly smart to beat some of those challenges so fast). And at some point, he introduced Troopers and missions (the original Zebulun had no Tr's, only 2nd Lt's). Back then, however, you didn't have individual accounts like you do now. At some point, due to abuses and cheaters, we changed that, since people got sick of having their ranks reset. Meanwhile, the higher ranks started to get more control over the site. This, unfortunately, led to some abuses. :[
At some point, the idea of a 'rank split' came up. We had quite a few debates over that in the old days; we were all thinking up how to fix it. For a time, though, Nick started promoting people he trusted to the rank of Mar (you could get to Gen via Zebulun). Then we Marshals had near total control over the site. Unfortunately, this led to more problems. No one was responsible for anything in particular... Back then, constant resets were a major problem for CA. We solved a lot with the individual accounts, but it was controlling the site together that was a problem. Eventually, we created the brigades. And then we divided up control of CA.
It's been a slow transition from what was essentially a 'monarchy' under Pengo, to what you see today. It's almost been like watching the evolution of government. Slowly, we were able to divide up the tasks until we got to a more stable structure. We really had to, though, to maintain some kind of control as the site grew larger. But now, we feel as though we have many of those issues sorted out. We've begun to reform the old CA community with a whole new structure that should be more manageable.
You guys have no idea what it's like trying to manage thousands of users who all have their problems and expect you to deal with them somehow. We just had to divvy things up and allow people to delegate things further, while still retaining some kind of control, so that we still had some authority left. Otherwise, we'd get more things like ESP. Fortunately, I missed most of that fiasco... :]
BlackFlag: What is/was ESP?
Xeno: I think that that's one of the things that really drove home the need for rank splits. ESP was a group who were self-appointed cheat hunters. They operated entirely outside of CA and caused no small amount of chaos. Basically, someone formed their own posse of sorts to go after people cheating on Zebulun...
BF: Its been said that you were the first to have VirusPete disconnected from his ISP, could you explain more about this?
Xeno: Heh, VirusPete... He was some lamer who stopped by one day and got into an arguement. He wouldn't let it die and eventually started spamming the forums. He wrote some scripts to do that and also liked to post some really sick pornography as his board image. Anyhow, he basically ticked off all the staff at the time (though we weren't exactly 'staff' then, per se, just the top ranks who still watched over the lower ones).
Anyhow, I stayed out of it as long as I could. But eventually, I just told him to give it a rest already, and he started mail bombing me. Of course, he used the old sendmail vulnerability to 'mask' his IP in the headers. So I just filtered it to /dev/null (which was quite easy to do most of the time). This went on for a LONG time. Eventually, he slipped up: he sent *1* message from a mail server that wasn't vulnerable. Since I always investigated the headers, he was busted. :]
I tracked down his ISP, forwarded them the message, and politely explained every single way he had violated their ToS, complete with quotes thereof. I told them that he was a disreputable cracker sort whom they did not want [ab]using their services and provided other references as to what he'd done. They replied with a very nice note telling me that they'd discontinued his services. They also advised me that I could try to prosecute him under the UK Data Protection Act, if I cared to. Eventually, VP got a life (or something) and started to leave us alone. :]
Actually, VirusPete was the other main reason why we decided to make individual accounts for each person. That way, we could ban him. Heh, that's also what caused us to develop the Fong Device's ability to detect proxies. VP actually caused us to do quite a lot in terms of securing the old boards, just so we could get him to go away. It's crazy how some random idiot who won't stop pestering you can get you to work harder. I think I know a few bosses/teachers who buy into that style of 'motivation' for that matter... :]
BF: People who search around the net are bound to see mentions of the "Pengo Affair." Could you give a full explanation of this, and what your involvement in it was?
Xeno: That was probably the largest 0mega operation, ever: quite a large practical joke. It all started when Nick changed his name on CA from 0v3rl0rd to Pengo. We had individual accounts by this point, by the way. I was bored and I wondered, what had happened to the old 0v3rl0rd account. Nick had posted about changing his name in the CA news we had then (just a news script, not the full zZine site we have now). I checked--sure enough, he'd just deleted the account. Thus, Tr. 0v3rl0rd was born. I didn't know what to do with it, but then it hit me: people didn't know who 'Pengo' was just yet--he had just changed his name right out of the blue.
I posted something about it to the staff forums and had a bit of fun with the account. Staff, knowing what was going on, played along with my impersonation of Nick. So, as Tr. 0v3rl0rd, I posted saying that that 'bloomin' Pengo' had taken over the site & demoted me to Tr. If you can find it, that post is *really* funny; it's a lot of badly done aussie slang [Nick is from Australia, if you're wondering]. I posted a lot of stuff that only someone like me would know to 'prove' my identity.
BF: Rumor has it that you were once part of a 'revolt' in CA, what was that all about?
Xeno: Well, that was the Pengo Affair: I asked for CA's help in starting an insurrection. We actually did get the people on the boards quite upset over it. Through IRC and other means, we managed to convince people that something was really going on. Anyhow, I actually got banned for 24 hours over it when Pengo came back. He laughed, but said that it was necessary to maintain order. Although, as Xenographic, I actually posted something which upset a lot of people--that we should give in to 'new master' pengo :]
Nick later was more careful & banned the old overlord account. But for one day, I actually led a 'rebellion' against CA :]
BF: What are your favorite memories of CA?
Xeno: Mmmm, the time I got VP has already been covered. As has the time I turned into Tr/gamma...I was the first to come up with the idea for some kind of 'justice tribunal' within CA, which was then called JAG, then ZAG, which is the ancestor of our CIA. I worked on the idea with MrYowler, who was then only LtKer or Ker. I actually got to know both him and chawmp 'on the way up,' while I still outranked them.
Chawmp was interesting, too. He found an SSI hole and showed it to us. Then we worked on making a mini-challenge out of that. It was long and quite fun. Someone actually almost made it to the end. But we finally took it down because it wasn't a 'real' challenge. Still, many people enjoyed it as a diversion. I was trying to learn perl better at the time, so it gave me somewhere to practice regexes, since I had to make sure that the SSI hole was 'real' but not too real.
Actually, I've known most of the staff for a long time, though I know the 'newer' people less well. I remember *way* too much gossip from ages past... It's funny, I remember a lot of such things. Even things about officers who aren't with us anymore (i.e.: LiteWait). Nowadays, I begin to feel like the last one left who remembers some of these things. And I haven't seen much of Azrael or Kaladis, who are the only two officers that are even semi-active, who have been around as long as me. I've begun to feel like an old hand who is the only one who can remember some 'in' jokes from ages past. :]
BF: You and bans33 were the first two Marshall's, right? Do you remember anything in particular about bansh33?
Xeno: Heh, bansh33: he was the first Marshal. I actually came quite a bit later; Marshal has *never* been a challenge rank. He was an old friend of Nick's from what I gather. He may have been from the Midnight BBS or something. He was the first and only Marshal for a *very* long time. It wasn't until much later that Nick decided to make Marshals into staff, instead of just as a favor for a friend of his. Bansh33 owned the site siegesoft.com for a while and made some sort of anonymizing proxy. He eventually sold that site for $750k during the .com boom. Anyhow, he actually hasn't been that active in CA, ever. I never really got to know him; he barely posted at all. But I do remember all the people who were impressed over the $750k he got. :]
BF: You were retired from CA until a short while ago, what was your motivation for coming back?
Xeno: Well, I was only really inactive while the site was down. There was nothing at CyberArmy for a very long time and I just wasn't on IRC that much... So I was 'out of the loop' for a while, until the main site came back. Anyhow, I always liked CA and since it was back, it was only natural for me to want back in. I am, after all, one of the few people to see the old, fabled /zebulun10. Pengo actually had a board up there to talk with himself.
BF: As a final note, is there anything that you would like to add?
Xeno: Well, I just want to say that I'm pleased to see that CA is growing. I think we've solved many of the problems that used to plague us and that we're becoming a very nice little community. We're one of the best online communities for people who care about their rights online. So, I'm just glad to be a part of CA again and I hope that everyone enjoys and appreciates all the work it has taken to make CA what it is today. We would no longer be here if it wasn't for the efforts of all the staff. I'm happy to say that, in spite of the .com bust, we've survived and it's only going to get better from here on out :]
BF: Thank you, Mar. Xenographic for your time and this interview.
Xeno: You're welcome :] |
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