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See http://www.cyberarmy.net/~thegame for details and links...
From http://www.zzine.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=198 : Interviews: CYBERARMY HERO OF THE MONTH: Retired Marshal TheGame Posted by: dante00 on Tuesday, February 26, 2002 Yes. TheGame has answered to zZine and this is the result. What are you waiting for? Just click on 'Read More' and learn why this popular CA member is our CYBERARMY HERO OF THE MONTH. "TheGame was and often still is probably CyberArmy's biggest helper and ally. Retired Marshal TheGame contributed a lot of work into this organisation. This goes from the creation of the Mr.Fong Device until CyberArmy database and filesystem improvement. But also as person and advisor is TheGame matchless." (by CHICoSTo) Q. HAVE YOU GOT ANYTHING TO SAY TO MARSHAL CHICoSTo, WHO WAS THE LAST "CYBERARMY HERO OF THE MONTH"? DO YOU THINK IT'S A GOOD PRESENTATION OF YOU? "Hmmm - thanks, I guess ?" :) Actually, I'm definitely not CA's biggest helper anymore, if I ever was. But I'm still glad to help out when I can... Q. HOW OLD ARE YOU? At CA, older than most and younger than some. In real life, still relatively young. In my mind, quite child-like sometimes :) Q. WHY "TheGame"? IS THERE ANY STORY BEHIND IT? Well, I created a little game once, and for lack of inspiration, I ended up simply calling it "The Game". So when I put it online, I started using TheGame as a nickname too, and I grew quite fond of that nick. When I got more involved in the so-called 'hacking scene', I did a little checking around, and it turned out there weren't any well-known TheGame's that I could find, so I ended up using it everywhere else as my 'official' nick. I guess I could have called my game "The Pyramid", in which case you'd be calling me "ThePyramid?" now, maybe. But I much prefer "TheGame" :) [Note : you can find "The Game" at http://lightning.prohosting.com/~thegame/] Q. WHICH ARE YOUR OTHER NICKS ON THE INTERNET? None. Q. WHICH IS YOUR RANK AND WHICH IS YOUR CURRENT TASK IN CYBERARMY? I'm an actively retired Marshal and occasional plumber (or vice-versa). Which means I've done my share and I'm no longer responsible for the day-to-day running of CA, but as I said above, I like to help out from time to time. Q. WHY AND HOW YOU JOINED CA? TALK US ABOUT YOUR RANK PROMOTIONS. SOME HISTORY WILL BOOST ZEB CHALLENGER'S MORALE ;D. When I first announced "The Game" at the end of November 1999, I didn't know there were other games like that on the Web. So when some people asked me "is this like Desperado's password challenge ?", I had a look over there, went through it and came back saying "Nope, Java applets definitely aren't the same as Javascript. But it's the same kind of idea - a nice game for a (few) rainy afternoon(s)." And then someone else asked me if this was a clone of Zebulun, and I went "Nope, sorry, never heard of it". And so I checked that one out too... The first challenge was pretty trivial, the second one already forced me to learn a bit more of things I had heard of, but never really investigated up to then. So I decided to stick around and play some more of this promising game. And then I met a lovely (if somewhat whimsical) lady at z3, and that was my undoing :) I must have spent 2 weeks getting frustrated, investigating and learning all kinds of things before I finally beat z3, and that became the pattern for the next challenges as well : be totally stuck, learn lots of interesting stuff (most of which turns out not to be relevant to beating the challenge), and move up. I also started interacting with the other players on the boards by then, and found out that there was more to CA than just that game - there was this feeling of a virtual community that I hadn't seen before. How could I have missed that ? Too much concentrated on 'beating the game', I guess. Anyway, by the time I became Kernel (Christmas 1999), I realised that I came back to CA (almost) every day more for the people than for the game itself. So when I figured out that because of a certain technical limitation, I had the choice between an unethical course of action and something I really didn't want to get into to complete the new General challenge, I did a quick look-around to confirm the possibilities I had in mind, and called it a day. The last challenge I really took was hacking one of the General's accounts when pengo made me a Marshal later on, because I wanted to say 'hi' on their board, and being a Marshal didn't give you access to the z8 level at the time. Guess some of them were a bit surprised to see me there after all :) Q. TELL US ABOUT YOUR PAST TASKS DONE AT CYBERARMY. [Disclaimer : vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas :)] When I stopped playing Zebulun at Kernel, I mostly spent my time keeping the peace on the boards. Then CyberArmy released a pretty buggy new version of the Albert Fong Device in January 2000, and I felt that with all that I'd learned about CGI security in the past month, I could certainly clean that up. So I did, together with a bunch of enthusiastic bug hunters from CA. It took me quite a bit longer than I'd expected, though - so much for hubris, I guess :) The WWWBoard Test Center is still up at http://hammer.prohosting.com/~fongdev/ if you want to try your luck and find some new holes. Around the end of May 2000, I received a mail from Overlord (now pengo) asking if I wanted to help out and build the individual user account system you're all familiar with now. That was exactly what the doctor ordered to stop the crazyness going through CA at the time - mass cheating, global rank resets every couple of weeks, and so on. It turned out to be a bit of a challenge, but a lot of fun to build, really. So since Overlord had made me a Marshal, I took on that responsability quite seriously, helping him and the other Marshals run CA, taking over when he went on holiday etc., until some of the new Marshals started taking on more of the load, and so I hoped to happily resume my plumbing once more. It didn't really turn out that way... I won't bore you with the day-to-day activities of a Marshal, except to say that it can take a hell of a lot of time, doing lots of things no-one really appreciates or even notices. So mad props to the current Vice CinCs?, Marshals, Generals and Brigade C/Os in general. Anyway, apart from that, we had the occasional "wave of madness" that seems to go through CA members every once in a while, and life at CA went on. Brigades at CA had their ups and downs (which was largely outside of my 'activity domain'), and this weird idea came up of separating Zebulun from the brigades in order to let both grow at their own pace. At the same time, we were getting more and more aware of the limitations the current site architecture imposed on us, so we decided to migrate everything to SQL databases, instead of simply implementing the ranksplit on the existing architecture. Which presented a particular problem, because simply plugging out the old Berkeley DB files and plugging in the SQL databases would have killed the (old or new) site in no time, performance-wise. So we had to basically rewrite the whole site - not something that could be done overnight. All in all, I finished writing an SQL demo around April 2001, but no-one else at the time had the necessary skills to turn this baby into real-life, and I didn't want to end up being the only one knowing how the new system worked, again. For technical matters, there's nothing worse than being indispensible. So the SQL conversion lay dormant until more people became familiar with SQL and mod_perl. wa1800z picked up the challenge, rewrote the whole thing and went way beyond my expectations - he's now wrapping up the new code together with Pandect. Meanwhile, I celebrated my 1st anniversary as a Marshal at CA, looked at how the new Generals and Marshals were doing an excellent job, and decided that it was time for me to officially retire. So here we are, 2 site moves and a few site rebuilds later, and I'm still "actively retired". When I have the time, I pour out the occasional eLance clone for a database design class, or create an Exploit DB, or fiddle with the site by moving off all images to reduce CA hits by 80%. In short, still plumbing away when the occasion presents itself... Good thing there are people like ReDeeMeR, snarkles or hellz (to name but 3) around to do the real plumbing now, or CA would definitely have sprung a few leaks by now :) Q. COULD YOU PLEASE TELL US THE URL WHERE WE CAN FIND A PHOTO OF YOU? TALK US ABOUT THE STORY OF IT. No way - why would you want that for ? Q. WHAT ABOUT A PHOTO OF YOU AS A CHILD? Oh, I'm told I was really cute when I was a kid. Did a TV commercial for beer too :) Sorry, no picture... Q. YOU ARE FROM BELGIUM, AREN'T YOU? IS IT THE BEST PLACE TO BE OR YOU WOULD LIKE TO CHANGE COUNTRY? IF NEGATIVE, WHICH ONE? New Zealand seems like a pretty cool place to live. But then again, so do lots of other places around the world. Home is where you feel at home, and I'm pretty flexible about that. Q. HOW DO YOU SEE THE ACTUAL SITUATION OF CA? GIVE US YOUR POINT OF VIEW. Site-wise, I hope to see home.*, brigade.* and mail.* come back up in a week or two, depending on how soon our busy kitten can make some time to reconfigure the server, and how long it takes to rebuild the sites. After that we can finally say we're fully back in operation after this long break, and start some restructuring of the main site. Technology-wise, I hope that we'll come out of beta for the SQL code within 2 months, and start using that to run the new CA. That means we could also have some expanded services on IRC too, and perhaps some better cross-links with the different brigade sites as well - to be discussed. Organisation-wise, I don't expect to see many changes for people within the brigades, except for whatever the brigades want to change for themselves, but activating the rank split should bring along some changes for the Zeb players, and presumably for the way z8+ is organised as well. Brigade-wise, some of the brigades have really flowered during this unintended break, while others are just coming back to their feet as you read this. Let's learn our lesson from this, and not forget that it's the people (you, I, every one) who make a difference - not the presence or absence of a site. Mission-wise, I'd say that we still have a way to go before we fully realise exactly where we want to go, and how we'll achieve it. Don't hesitate to talk it over with your C/O, your colleagues in your brigade and friends at CA. Of course this many people will never agree on every aspect, but if you can already get a clear concessus on what your short- and longer-term aims in your brigade are, and can pass on the message to everyone else, we'll already be a step further in the right direction. People-wise, I think the biggest challenge for everybody is to keep an open mind, and to actively search out possibilities of cooperating, both within brigades under the same top-level brigade, and across top-level brigades. There seems to be much energy wasted in duplicating efforts in several places, and in creating "brigades that will deal with inter-brigade matters", and in conflicts and misunderstandings about goals and responsabilities, and so on. If we can't solve our problems internally, and organise our work in a decent way, how can we ever hope to make a larger impact outside of CA ? So don't just talk with the members of your brigades, but make the time to get to know other people and other brigades as well, and see if you can't help build something that becomes larger than the sum of its parts... Q. WHICH ARE YOUR PROJECTS REGARDING CYBERARMY? I'll stay happily retired, thank you. For the rest, I'll be there when you need me, and I'll try to help CA achieve more of its potential where I can. Q. AND YOUR PERSONAL PROJECTS? Are personal, no doubt about it :) Q. WHICH IS YOUR GREATEST GOAL IN YOUR LIFE? When I'm finally standing at the door to leave this life, I'd like to be able to turn around one last time, look over all I've done in the past, and say : "I've done some good here..." Q. WHO DO YOU ADMIRE? I admire the dreamers and creators of this world, both in real life and on the Internet. Which is probably why I have no respect at all for kiddies defacing a web site just because they're bored and they managed to find some button to click on. Q. WHO IS THE DEAD PERSON YOU WOULD LIKE TO MEET? Hmmmm, tough one. If I had to choose only one person to talk with for a few hours or days, I'd probably pick one of the religious leaders of the past, to see what they really thought before their preachings were turned into a religion. Take Buddha, for instance - there seem to be so many radically different views on what he was really trying to say, that I'd like to hear it from his own point of view for once. Not that I'm anything of a Buddhist or anything, he just seems like a guy I'd like to talk to some day... Q. IF YOU WEREN'T IN CYBERARMY ... ..I'd probably get more sleep at night :) Seriously, it's kinda hard to imagine how my on-line life would be if I hadn't joined CA. I take a break from time to time, for a couple of weeks or when I'm on holiday, but I keep coming back. Must be that ugly dark background color or something :) Q. PENGO OR MROWLER? They're both very different. pengo is the founder of CA, there's no way that's going to change no matter who the current CinC is. And MrYowler? is one weird crazy kitten, but he's pretty smart for his age, so I'm glad when he's around. Q. HACKER OR SECURITY AMATEUR? Both, depending on how you understand the word 'hacker'. I'll go for the hacker view in "How to become a hacker", rather than the one in the "Hacker Manifesto" : http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Q. SHIMOMURA OR MITNICK? I can understand Shimomura's anger and obsession, even though I can't condone some of the things he did. Mitnick did a couple of smart things, and a couple of stupid things, and he payed for it. Q. MOUSE OR TRACKBALL? Mice make a more satisfying noise when you throw them against the wall. I prefer a keyboard interface for speed, though. Q. BEER OR WINE? Either, depending on the circumstances. Or neither :) Q. LINUX OR FREEBSD? For a server environment, FreeBSD. I don't have a *nix desktop, but I'd probably go for one of the Linux distros or MacOS X if I had to change. Q. WINDOWS 2000 OR WINDOWS NT? Since Microsoft is discontinuing support for NT, companies don't have much choice other than Win2K or XP, really. Unless they switch to *nix, of course. Q. BILL GATES OR STEVE BALMER? Neither. You don't get to that position without stepping over bodies, and I don't particularly appreciate that in a man. Q. SOCCER OR BASKETBALL? You mean football, right ? Anyway, neither - I'm not such a fan of group sports. I watch the occasional tennis match or ski competition, though. Q. REGULAR BOOKS OR E-BOOKS? Nothing beats a good paperback :) Q. BELGIUM FRANC OR EURO? Why would anyone be interested in Belgium Franc anymore, except collectors maybe ? Q. WHO WOULD YOU RECOMMEND US FOR BEING THE NEXT "CYBERARMY HERO OF THE MONTH"? WHY? Well, I first thought I'd nominate wa1800z, because I know he'd hate this as much as I do. :) But then I thought, why not ask each top-level brigade to nominate one particular brigade member (not the C/O), and interview that person ? There are so many "unsung heroes" at CA that it's a shame they're never put into the limelight, and this would be an excellent way of doing it. Up to you, of course... Q. NOW, THE QUESTIONS CONTRIBUTED BY OTHER PEOPLE: - WHY DID YOU RETIRE (alfer)? I think I covered most of that in my replies above. As always, there were a bunch of reasons, but mostly I felt that things weren't moving fast enough for my taste, and that it was time to let some new people officially take over the duty. - WHICH IS YOUR PREFERRED PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE (alfer)? That would depend on what I'm coding, of course :) - for server applications, I'd go for plain C - for client applications on Windows, I'd go for Visual Basic - for simple *nix admin tasks, I'd go for shell scripting - for all of the above and everything else, I'd go for Perl I've programmed, helped debug or optimised code in all kinds of languages, and I hope I'll continue learning more languages as I go along, but for my own projects, I tend to choose whatever language(s) seems most appropriate for the job, and that includes feeling most comfortable with that language at that time. - HAVE YOU GOT OTHER WEBSITE WERE WE CAN VISIT YOU (alfer)? Besides http://www.cyberarmy.net/ you mean ? :) Other than "The Game" and the "WWWBoard Test Center", I don't really have anything related to 'TheGame', except for a few test sites here and there. I'll try to put up a link page to the database design class, the eLance clone and other stuff like that on the CA server when I get some time... - HAVE YOU WRITTEN MORE TUTORIALS (alfer)? Nope - did you have any particular topic in mind ? - HOW DID YOU GET STARTED OFF PROGRAMMING PERL (BlackFlag?)? Good question :) Actually, I got a book called "Programming Perl" for free, that came with a document management system we were evaluating. I was mostly doing stuff in C, shell scripts and tcl at the time, and this looked like an interesting combination of all three, so I gave it a shot. The document management system is long gone, and I'm still learning new things about Perl every week or so :) by LtKer?. dante00 (zZine CA News/Interviews) For more interviews, see http://www.zzine.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=3&topic=&allstories=1 |
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