Openess to Dictatorship (very long)

Readers,

As many of you have noticed, and taken offence to, two "guests" took advantage of the openness of this forum over the past weekend, forcing me to take measures I had hoped that I wouldn't have to make. The ultimate way to keep these kids with too much time on their hands at bay was to implement moderation for all posts.

Going through the logs and correlating them with timestamps of posts, there are several interesting aspects of the attack. I'm currently working on a document that explains everything in detail as best that I was able to piece it together.

Assuming that the two kiddies used their home internet connections to start, the first offender lives in Saitama and appears to be very knowledgable about the Japanese game. Profiling his posts, I invisioned him as either a military brat or an embassy brat - someone who moves around a lot without any say in the matter. Of course, that may hold for corporate brats as well, but I don't have any experience with them. (Note, the word "brat" here is not a derogatory term. In fact "military brats" appear to like the name so much that they continue using it in circles to describe themselves well after breaking away from home and the military.)

The other offender appears to be a great deal more Internet savvy. He first appeared using a cable modem account from a provider based in Hicksville, NY. (I know, that's the real name of the place.) However, he has another account that appears to change its location. It was hidden in a subnet of NTT last weekend, but now it appears to have moved to Texas.

I linked the two IP addresses together when, after the purpatrator tried to access with the Hicksville account, 30 seconds after that faild, he tried to access with the hidden account. This happened twice, so it doesn't appear to be random chance.

There is a chance that the Hicksville cable modem is a cracked machine, so that may or may not be where he actually is.

I need to continue my analisis for a better profile on him. He can be too cleaver for his own good sometimes, though. Take the Kintama post on the Horner thread as an example. Several things made me suspicious of the post. First, "Kintama" for a name. While I'm sure there are people with the name Kintama, it's also slang for "the family jewels." Such a sly, crude nickname fits right in with either of these guys. Secondly, the guy over stresses his Canadian-ness. It reminded me a great deal in structure of the post where he immitated being a Japanese with not so good "Engrish." (Come on, that may be the way Japanese pronounce it, but their not so stupid as to write it that way. You're insulting us here.)

There were several other ayashii things about the post which prompted me to post a warning on it. Of course, he may very well be telling the truth about Horner's whereabouts. I sure hope so as it will reinstall some faith in humanity that I had lost this past weekend.

Nonetheless, he's now crying for the return of free speech and the ousting of me as dictator. (He reminds me a great deal of a character Michael Keeton (sp?) played in some movie quite a while back.) Anyway, nothing would make me more happy than to reopen the forum for all to post freely and anonymously. However, I'm not going to allow you two to rape this site again.

You've made your point. I've been worried about the U.S. falling into a dictatorship after the WTC terrorist attacks, and I've made a number of comments about how it's looking that way. Fortunatly (so far), the checks and ballances in government have prevented that. After your terrorist attacks on this site, and fighting a gurilla battle to keep you at bay without resorting to totalitarism, I can now see just how easy it is to finally give up and take the easy way out - remove everyones' basic liberties such as the right to post without moderation. It took three days to break me into a "ruthless dictator." (Please, don't ever elect me to any public office.)

So, now what do we do? This is not the note I wanted to end the season on. Is the site now so bad that I'm best abandoning it? After these attacks on posters' characters (calling me an alcoholic was a bit absurd as I drink less alcohol in a year than most people do in a day - it's baseless attacks like that that I don't approve of - feel free to attack my logic all you like), can you still feel safe posting and/or reading this site any more?

Well, the first thing I'm going to do is write that report and post it. Those of you who "missed the excitement" can view a number of the posts and see for yourselves how base these two have been.

Next, I'll set permissions to post moderator free for those of you who post regularly. I see no reason why the two attackers couldn't eventually earn the trust of their peers here and have their "rights" resored as well.

Remember, though, rights have responsibilities. That's something that U.S. schools seem to forget to teach when expounding the greatness of freedom. And one never appriciates ones freedom until it's lost.