From: http://web.archive.org/web/20020812002641/http://www.fearthevampires.com/history.htm
It was the beginning of the new age for "Fear The Vampires" during Space Merchant Newbie Game 17. Fear the Vampires ruled this game, achieving victory after victory providing many of our enemies with shiny new escape pods. We viciously and relentlessly attacked planet after planet, always leaving a trail of space debris in our wake. The High Council members were from various races, born with fangs so sharp that no armor could withstand their bite. The call for blood was overwhelming and many had succumbed to the vampire advance. Our own safe haven Castle Vampire was the best in that round, impregnable, and no enemy ship ever got near or survived a close encounter. The Sun (Space Merchant) went Super Nova destroying everything except the vampire spirit within us, we re-emerge in Merchant Empires with the a fresh thirst for blood!!
Fear the Vampires was founded out a need for rebirth. Tattoo wanted a change after 2 round of dominant combat with Hordez. A chance meeting was all that was really needed to begin the adventure, in walks Moronix and the first generation of Vampires was born. Why Vampires, because it seems that none of us sleep, we're always online and ready at the drop of a teryllian bat to fly into action. Some members from former enemies are recruited and with these handful of us, we have formed "The Galactic Vampires". The first of the Vampires are Count MasterBlaster, Count Baliman, Count Moronix, Count Vertigo, Count Me Out, Count on Me, Count Naeblis, Count Shock and Count Tattoo. Others whom aren't using Count title such as RMR6, Asimov, LockNLoad, Snade. Only Jome (Count Vertigo and my best SM buddy) and myself were in NG9, thus making us the most experience players.
Clynelish whom also was former Hordez member had broken free of the Hordez ties and spawned a new alliance No Fear. He too had the same problem with the size of his new alliance, we discussed a merger and formation of a new stronger alliance in "Fearless Vampires" or "Fear the Vampires". In NG17 Fear the Vampires was lead by Clynelish with Masterblaster at his side. MasterBlaster was a big help due to the fact he was the catalyst within the alliance. His charm in negotiations were also a great asset for Fear the Vampires. A Vampire High council was formed to steer the direction of this new formed alliance Clynelish, MasterBlaster, Moronix, Baliman(PBman) and Tattoo. NG17 was a great success for Fear The Vampires, we had the best planet, we planet busted as much possible and made vet gamers whom ridiculed us to eat their own words. We had hunters podding big name traders, all of the sudden the tide had changed. NG17 will always be remembered by Fear the Vampires members, as they were part of an alliance to which they could be proud. There are so many memorable events, which will be part of our lives. (We have earned the respect from very experienced alliances such as Tartarus and Rain of Death) And Hordez just fades away..
Later when Space Merchant went Super Nova, MasterBlaster had lead Fear the Vampires into a new gaming area (which Hardcore has vast experience) in Merchant Empires. We are once again newbies in the realm, this realm being Merchant Empires. MasterBlaster leads the drive of Chaos as Fear the Vampires begins to move deeper in to the Merchant Empire universe. Later, he passes the leadership to Carnaugh the Fearless and Noble leader. Carnaugh does exceptionally well in Merchant Empires and once again leads Fear the Vampires into glory! Thank you MasterBlaster for bring us into Merchant Empires and jump starting Fear the Vampires into overdrive and thanks to Carnaugh for keeping us there.
And finally some words of wisdom from Tattoo;
The success of an alliance very much depends on the cooperation between the gamers, if you give the benefit of doubt and open your heart to accept new friends, you will definitely enjoy any game you play.
Note: Thank you to all the original "Counts" support on my idea of the theme "Vampires", without them it wouldn't have materialized, and Thanks to Clynelish for merging with us and leading the FtV to great heights. Thanks to MB sound advice for the High Council to determine whom are our allies! and enemies. Thanks to Carnaugh for leading FtV to great heights in ME. Love you guys!! FtV forever..where The river of blood doesn't run dry!
Monday, August 26, 2013
Internet Archive: Fear the Vampires Contacts Page
From: http://web.archive.org/web/20020812000828/http://www.fearthevampires.com/Contact.htm
FtV High Council
APME
Tattoo - Tattoo@fearthevampires.com Carnaugh - Leader - Carnaugh@fearthevampires.com
MasterBlaster - MasterBlaster@fearthevampires.com Saruman - Second - Saruman@fearthevampires.com
Carnaugh - Carnaugh@fearthevampires.com MasterBlaster - Newbies Contact - MasterBlaster@fearthevampires.com
Hawklan - Hawklan@fearthevampires.com
Site & Email Admin
Hawklan - Hawklan@fearthevampires.com
Stuffen - Stuffen@fearthevampires.com
Asimov - Asimov@fearthevampires.com
For immediate assistance, try using IRC. sminchat.fearthevampires.com channel #fv
There is usually, but by no means always, one of us on.
FtV High Council
APME
Tattoo - Tattoo@fearthevampires.com Carnaugh - Leader - Carnaugh@fearthevampires.com
MasterBlaster - MasterBlaster@fearthevampires.com Saruman - Second - Saruman@fearthevampires.com
Carnaugh - Carnaugh@fearthevampires.com MasterBlaster - Newbies Contact - MasterBlaster@fearthevampires.com
Hawklan - Hawklan@fearthevampires.com
Site & Email Admin
Hawklan - Hawklan@fearthevampires.com
Stuffen - Stuffen@fearthevampires.com
Asimov - Asimov@fearthevampires.com
For immediate assistance, try using IRC. sminchat.fearthevampires.com channel #fv
There is usually, but by no means always, one of us on.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Merchant Empires was the MPOGD Game of the Month for January 2005
MPOGD's GAME OF THE MONTH JANUARY 2005
Game Name: Merchant Empires
Description:A game of space exploration and economic competition. Merchant Empires is a game of strategy, role-playing, combat, diplomacy, and is loosely based on both Trade Wars and Space Merchant.
Game Name: Merchant Empires
Description:A game of space exploration and economic competition. Merchant Empires is a game of strategy, role-playing, combat, diplomacy, and is loosely based on both Trade Wars and Space Merchant.
Merchant Empires Creator Bryan Brunton Interview in the Linux Gazette
From: http://linuxgazette.net/issue63/brunton.html
Bryan Brunton is the creator of the Merchant Empires Project. Merchant Empires is a multiplayer, web-based game of space exploration and economic competition. It is a game of strategy, role-playing, combat, and diplomacy. Merchant Empires is based on the venerable BBS game Tradewars. In the article below, Bryan Brunton is interviewed about his experiences in bringing Merchant Empires to life.
Q: Why did you write ME?
A: A number of reasons. First, I wanted to see if it could be done. I have always been a fan of space based strategy games and I have always wanted to write one. Although I knew that the efforts of bringing the idea to completion would be at times tedious, I didn't care. Secondly, I ran across a game called Space Merchant which is a closed-source, ASP-based implementation of Tradewars, and I was appalled at how badly it had been done. In my opinion, there are many things wrong with the Space Merchant implementation but one thing really struck me as ridiculous: when playing Space Merchant, occasionally an error screen would pop up that said, "Command not processed due to an Error Storm. Please log out and try again." The utter inanity of the the concept of an "Error Storm" and that someone was attempting to pass that explanation off as rational was, to me, hilarious. I said to myself, "Tradewars deserves better than this." However, at the same time, I don't want to overly disregard the thought and effort that went into Space Merchant. The developers of SM deserve a lot of credit for their work.
Q: What software have you used to bring ME to life?
A: Here is a brief summary of the open source software used in ME:
Q: Many of the ME players tell me that the ME site has been, at times, less than stable. What problems have you run across while developing ME?
A: I ran across a number of bugs and gotchas. The pre-configured scalability of the operating system itself and applications such as Apache and PostgreSQL in most Linux distributions is really quite horrible. In my opinion, pre-configured Linux does not provide a stable platform for a medium traffic, database backed website (Apache + PHP + PHPLIB + PostgreSQL). And when I say pre-configured, I mean as installed on the average PC from any of the popular distro CDs.
Here are a few of the problems that I have run across (most of these caused major headaches):
Q: Why on earth would anyone want to put away one of today's state-of-the-art games like Quake III in order to open up a web browser to play ME? Just how interactive can your game be when it doesn't require the CPUs on your player's computers to make even a single gigaflop of floating point calculations?
A: The stateless void of HTML is certainly the last place a player wants to be when, potentially, an enemy vessel could be pounding him into space dust. But a browser based gaming environment has advantages that I value. I looked at a number of similarly directed projects before writing ME. Many of them had stalled or the developers had spent six months time writing a server and client with no playable game to show for their efforts. I wanted to spend my time immediately writing game code. Spending untold hours writing a scalable multiplayer game server was (1) beyond my ability and (2) boring. Also, I like the lowest common denominator factor involved in playing ME. All you need is a web browser that supports javascript. You can have access to and play ME from a far greater number of places than a game that requires client installation and configuration. As far as what makes a good game, I have always enjoyed intelligent turn-based game play, not frames per second.
Q: The gaming industry as a whole has been very silent concerning Merchant Empires. Recently, when questioning one industry representative about ME and his company's initiatives in bringing games like ME to the marketplace, we received nothing but silence and utter denials of any involvement. What commercial interest has been shown in ME and what future do you see for the "resurrected-from-the-dead, BBS2HTML" gaming market?
A: There is no commercial interest. I despise banner ads. The Merchant Empires site that I run will never use banner ads. This means that I can probably never afford to purchase additional bandwidth to host ME (it is currently run on a friend's 768K DSL line). There is always the chance that a well funded organization that wants the honor and privilege of sponsering ME could provide additional bandwidth. One side note on DSL: while it is great that such cheap bandwidth can be brought to the masses, the reliability of DSL (as profided by QWest in the Colorado Springs, US area) is attrocious. Only a company in monopolistic control of the market, as QWEST is, can afford to provide such lousy service.
Q: How popular is ME?
A: Over 7,000 people have created users. ME has a loyal group of a couple hundred players that play very regularly. In my opinion, the game is somewhat limited in its playability due to its simplistic economic and political models. I would like to flesh out these areas so it might have a greater appeal. The possibility for role-playing is very limited beyond pirating and player-killing.
I enjoy hosting ME because there is something that is just cool about writing a piece of software that gets frequent use and can potentially generate lots of data. I don't know why but I just like lots of data. The ME database can grow to over 100 megs before I delete data from old games and players.
Q: What do the ME players most enjoy about the game?
A: The players seem to most enjoy the politics of planning ways to kill each other. The same is true for most online games that involve combat. In ME, players pick sides and then organize toward the goal of conquering galaxies and then the entire game universe. It is fascinating to watch the organizational approaches that different alliances take along a autocratic to democratic continuum. Many of the ME players are also programmers who provide development assistance. The players definitely enjoy watching the game grow and improve.
Q: What plans do you have for improving ME?
A: IMO, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) are the future of the web. SVG is essentially an open implemenation of Flash. SVG could potentially be more powerful because it is based on open standards such as XML and Javascript. It is unfortunate that browser-based SVG support on Linux is limited to a some barely functional code in the MathML-SVG build of Mozilla. On the Windows and Mac side, Adobe provides a high quality SVG plug-in. But as Linux is my current desktop of choice, I am currently caught in this SVG dilemna.
There are a few big features that I want to put into ME. I'd like to implement a java applet that could provide realtime game information. I would also like to introduce computer controlled ships and planets. Eventually, a computer controlled Imperium (the police in ME) will play a larger part in the game.
I would also like to remove ME's dependency on PostgreSQL. I have nothing against PostgreSQL but other people have inquired about running ME with MySQL. Currently most of ME's database access is through data classes provided by PHPLIB so removing the few PostgreSQLisms in the code wouldn't require much work.
I am planning on a few major changes in ME 2.0. I want to have hexagon based maps (currently sectors are square). But to do this right, I need SVG. I want to implement a whole new trading model where there are literally hundreds of different goods and contract based trading agreements. I'd like to do away with ports as separate entities, making ports simply a feature of planets. I would like to replace ME's current simple experience point advancement model with one that is skilled based. These and other ideas are discussed at the ME Wish List over at SourceForge.
Q: It has been noted by your players that your code sucks. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I really must agree. Before this interview, I was looking through the code to your event processor, the server side Python process that handles important game events, and I noticed that all of the program's intelligence is crammed into your networking loop.
A: You should first consider that I wrote Merchant Empires as fast as I possibly could. My approach was very simple: look at a Space Merchant screen shot and reproduce it as quickly as possible. Also, writing Merchant Empires was quite intentionally a learning process for myself. Parts of Merchant Empires use C++, PHP, and Python. While I had limited C++ experience, I had never used, and knew nothing about, either PHP or Python. I wanted to learn both of these languages. Parts of Merchant Empires, such as the inconsistent use of CSS and the combat functionality, are from a coding standpoint barely at the proof of concept stage. At the time that I wrote the event processor, I barely understood what a select networking loop was. Today, I have forgotten everything that I learned on that concept and now I am just pleased that that particular piece of code still works.
Q: So your code is pretty rough around the edges. Have you considering using any recursive programming techniques to spruce it up?
A: Recursion, if properly used, is an awesomely powerful programming tool. However, I have never actually used it. I thought that by interviewing myself for this article (which is a somewhat recursive process), I could introduce myself to the concept of recursion, and if I like it, consider using it in the future.
Merchant Empires: Coding your own PHP Universe
By Bryan Brunton
Bryan Brunton is the creator of the Merchant Empires Project. Merchant Empires is a multiplayer, web-based game of space exploration and economic competition. It is a game of strategy, role-playing, combat, and diplomacy. Merchant Empires is based on the venerable BBS game Tradewars. In the article below, Bryan Brunton is interviewed about his experiences in bringing Merchant Empires to life.
Q: Why did you write ME?
A: A number of reasons. First, I wanted to see if it could be done. I have always been a fan of space based strategy games and I have always wanted to write one. Although I knew that the efforts of bringing the idea to completion would be at times tedious, I didn't care. Secondly, I ran across a game called Space Merchant which is a closed-source, ASP-based implementation of Tradewars, and I was appalled at how badly it had been done. In my opinion, there are many things wrong with the Space Merchant implementation but one thing really struck me as ridiculous: when playing Space Merchant, occasionally an error screen would pop up that said, "Command not processed due to an Error Storm. Please log out and try again." The utter inanity of the the concept of an "Error Storm" and that someone was attempting to pass that explanation off as rational was, to me, hilarious. I said to myself, "Tradewars deserves better than this." However, at the same time, I don't want to overly disregard the thought and effort that went into Space Merchant. The developers of SM deserve a lot of credit for their work.
Q: What software have you used to bring ME to life?
A: Here is a brief summary of the open source software used in ME:
- Apache
- Any webserver that supports PHP could be used.
- PostgreSQL
- PHP
- PHPLIB
- This libary provides classes that simplify PHP database access and session tracking.
- Python
- The first version of ME was written entirely in Python. Due to performance considerations, I switched to PHP. Parts of ME remain in Python.
- PygreSQL
- The ME event processor and map creator gather and update ME data that is located on a PostgreSQL server using these libraries.
- Medusa Asyncronous Network Libraries
- Medusa is used in the ME event processor. These libraries provide telnet access to the ME event processor.
- The ME event processor and map creator gather and update ME data that is located on a PostgreSQL server using these libraries.
- KDevelop
- KDevelop is a great editor for HTML/PHP code. I will probably be purchasing the new PHP IDE from Zend.
- Gimp
- Almost every ME image has been created with this excellent tool.
Q: Many of the ME players tell me that the ME site has been, at times, less than stable. What problems have you run across while developing ME?
A: I ran across a number of bugs and gotchas. The pre-configured scalability of the operating system itself and applications such as Apache and PostgreSQL in most Linux distributions is really quite horrible. In my opinion, pre-configured Linux does not provide a stable platform for a medium traffic, database backed website (Apache + PHP + PHPLIB + PostgreSQL). And when I say pre-configured, I mean as installed on the average PC from any of the popular distro CDs.
Here are a few of the problems that I have run across (most of these caused major headaches):
- The maximum amount of shared memory, open files, and file nodes on most Linux distros is set pathetically low.
- Apache, PHP 4, PostgreSQL had (and possibly still have) problems with permanent connections using pg_pconnect(). Either the PHP parser or Apache does not correctly close database connections when a child http process terminates.
- ReiserFS and PostgreSQL had (and possible still have) issues with using PostgreSQL with the -F option (no fsyncing on each write operation). This would result in corrupted file system and/or database.
- I purchased a NetGear networking card. The tulip driver for this card fails miserably under high load. In my opinion, the monolithic Tulip driver is a mistake. It gets rewritten and older NICs suddenly stop working. It doesn't function consistently across all cards.
- The back-end storage manager for PostgreSQL doesn't dynamically free deleted rows. This has a major impact on performance on heavily used tables. The PostgreSQL documentation states: "Running VACUUM periodically will increase the speed of the database in processing user queries." The documentation doesn't define exactly what "periodically" means. Who knows how many people just like myself have wondered why the load on their web server is at twenty because PostgreSQL is missing decent documenation on admining the database for a high traffic site. Also, PostgreSQL ships with a back-end process limit of 32. That number is abysmally low for a site with even medium levels of traffic.
A: The stateless void of HTML is certainly the last place a player wants to be when, potentially, an enemy vessel could be pounding him into space dust. But a browser based gaming environment has advantages that I value. I looked at a number of similarly directed projects before writing ME. Many of them had stalled or the developers had spent six months time writing a server and client with no playable game to show for their efforts. I wanted to spend my time immediately writing game code. Spending untold hours writing a scalable multiplayer game server was (1) beyond my ability and (2) boring. Also, I like the lowest common denominator factor involved in playing ME. All you need is a web browser that supports javascript. You can have access to and play ME from a far greater number of places than a game that requires client installation and configuration. As far as what makes a good game, I have always enjoyed intelligent turn-based game play, not frames per second.
Q: The gaming industry as a whole has been very silent concerning Merchant Empires. Recently, when questioning one industry representative about ME and his company's initiatives in bringing games like ME to the marketplace, we received nothing but silence and utter denials of any involvement. What commercial interest has been shown in ME and what future do you see for the "resurrected-from-the-dead, BBS2HTML" gaming market?
A: There is no commercial interest. I despise banner ads. The Merchant Empires site that I run will never use banner ads. This means that I can probably never afford to purchase additional bandwidth to host ME (it is currently run on a friend's 768K DSL line). There is always the chance that a well funded organization that wants the honor and privilege of sponsering ME could provide additional bandwidth. One side note on DSL: while it is great that such cheap bandwidth can be brought to the masses, the reliability of DSL (as profided by QWest in the Colorado Springs, US area) is attrocious. Only a company in monopolistic control of the market, as QWEST is, can afford to provide such lousy service.
Q: How popular is ME?
A: Over 7,000 people have created users. ME has a loyal group of a couple hundred players that play very regularly. In my opinion, the game is somewhat limited in its playability due to its simplistic economic and political models. I would like to flesh out these areas so it might have a greater appeal. The possibility for role-playing is very limited beyond pirating and player-killing.
I enjoy hosting ME because there is something that is just cool about writing a piece of software that gets frequent use and can potentially generate lots of data. I don't know why but I just like lots of data. The ME database can grow to over 100 megs before I delete data from old games and players.
Q: What do the ME players most enjoy about the game?
A: The players seem to most enjoy the politics of planning ways to kill each other. The same is true for most online games that involve combat. In ME, players pick sides and then organize toward the goal of conquering galaxies and then the entire game universe. It is fascinating to watch the organizational approaches that different alliances take along a autocratic to democratic continuum. Many of the ME players are also programmers who provide development assistance. The players definitely enjoy watching the game grow and improve.
Q: What plans do you have for improving ME?
A: IMO, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) are the future of the web. SVG is essentially an open implemenation of Flash. SVG could potentially be more powerful because it is based on open standards such as XML and Javascript. It is unfortunate that browser-based SVG support on Linux is limited to a some barely functional code in the MathML-SVG build of Mozilla. On the Windows and Mac side, Adobe provides a high quality SVG plug-in. But as Linux is my current desktop of choice, I am currently caught in this SVG dilemna.
There are a few big features that I want to put into ME. I'd like to implement a java applet that could provide realtime game information. I would also like to introduce computer controlled ships and planets. Eventually, a computer controlled Imperium (the police in ME) will play a larger part in the game.
I would also like to remove ME's dependency on PostgreSQL. I have nothing against PostgreSQL but other people have inquired about running ME with MySQL. Currently most of ME's database access is through data classes provided by PHPLIB so removing the few PostgreSQLisms in the code wouldn't require much work.
I am planning on a few major changes in ME 2.0. I want to have hexagon based maps (currently sectors are square). But to do this right, I need SVG. I want to implement a whole new trading model where there are literally hundreds of different goods and contract based trading agreements. I'd like to do away with ports as separate entities, making ports simply a feature of planets. I would like to replace ME's current simple experience point advancement model with one that is skilled based. These and other ideas are discussed at the ME Wish List over at SourceForge.
Q: It has been noted by your players that your code sucks. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I really must agree. Before this interview, I was looking through the code to your event processor, the server side Python process that handles important game events, and I noticed that all of the program's intelligence is crammed into your networking loop.
A: You should first consider that I wrote Merchant Empires as fast as I possibly could. My approach was very simple: look at a Space Merchant screen shot and reproduce it as quickly as possible. Also, writing Merchant Empires was quite intentionally a learning process for myself. Parts of Merchant Empires use C++, PHP, and Python. While I had limited C++ experience, I had never used, and knew nothing about, either PHP or Python. I wanted to learn both of these languages. Parts of Merchant Empires, such as the inconsistent use of CSS and the combat functionality, are from a coding standpoint barely at the proof of concept stage. At the time that I wrote the event processor, I barely understood what a select networking loop was. Today, I have forgotten everything that I learned on that concept and now I am just pleased that that particular piece of code still works.
Q: So your code is pretty rough around the edges. Have you considering using any recursive programming techniques to spruce it up?
A: Recursion, if properly used, is an awesomely powerful programming tool. However, I have never actually used it. I thought that by interviewing myself for this article (which is a somewhat recursive process), I could introduce myself to the concept of recursion, and if I like it, consider using it in the future.
Merchant Empires Creator on SM Brats
From Slashdot:
What Is A Clean Room Implementation? 7
Posted by Cliff on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @01:34AM
from the reverse-engineering dept.
Bryan Brunton asks:
"I am writing an open source game called Merchant Empires For now, it is
almost completely based on a closed source game called Space Merchant.
IMO, Space Merchant is slow, ugly, and bug-filled. I am getting Space
Merchant users who log into my game, spew some profanity and claim that
I will be sued. I have no access to Space Merchant source code. Can I be
sued? If so, what do I need to do to make my game qualify as a clean
room implementation?"
Don't let them worry you. (Score:1)
by yakfacts (201409) writes:
on Friday June 16, 2000 @07:28AM (#1006801) There were
tons of Doom and Quake clones, and nobody cared.
I would suspect the people spewing profanity are 18 years old and need a
life. Don't let them worry you, as long as you don't have access to the
source. But make certain you dont disassemble the commerical code at
all.
Was not IE a clone of Netscape which was a dressed-up clone of Mosaic?
WordPerfect was pretty close to WordStar....
House Forsaken is Dead
In the early days of Solar Empre, June-October, 1999 House Forsaken was the mightiest clan in the game. At least that is until the likes of the Evil Empire, TalkHouse & the Trex Mercenaries showed up. Even then, HF's position was strong enough that in January 2000 SE creator/developer/operator Bryan Livingston awarded them their own SE game that was admined by HF members. HF was also a multi-game outfit that also had strong clans in other major online games such as at Battle.net and in Everquest.
However, HF succumbed to hubris and became too big for its britches. This happened in March, 2003 in the game of TDZK that was created/developed/operated by HF members Jerle & Hotaru. In that game 2 HF members, one of whom named Hyperion had played SE under the name of HY and who had originally been a HF recruit in SE (and if a certain story is true played SE with HF back in late 1999 under the name of -=WindKull=-), were caught brazenly cheating. In a related incident in the same month, Hyperion committed treason by destroying a HF planet (Planet OMGN).
Since HF prided itself as being a clan that claimed to have honor at the very core of its being and repeatedly used the idea that it was a honorable outfit in its recruiting that was firmly opposed to cheating, one have thought that the HF leadership would have come down hard on the cheaters. Instead the opposite happened. The leadership acted as if nothing bad happened and that, if anything, the real culprits were those who brought the cheating to the attention of the clan. Additionally, the leadership failed to provide even the slightest discipline to Hyperion for his SE treason.
The end result of all this was the mass resignation of almost every member of the HF Browser-Based Gaming Realm (about half of the membership of ) and with that the single most active unit within HF ceased to exist. From that point on, HF went into a state of decline and fall and after years of being little more than a glorified "forum clan" has ceased to exist.
However, HF succumbed to hubris and became too big for its britches. This happened in March, 2003 in the game of TDZK that was created/developed/operated by HF members Jerle & Hotaru. In that game 2 HF members, one of whom named Hyperion had played SE under the name of HY and who had originally been a HF recruit in SE (and if a certain story is true played SE with HF back in late 1999 under the name of -=WindKull=-), were caught brazenly cheating. In a related incident in the same month, Hyperion committed treason by destroying a HF planet (Planet OMGN).
Since HF prided itself as being a clan that claimed to have honor at the very core of its being and repeatedly used the idea that it was a honorable outfit in its recruiting that was firmly opposed to cheating, one have thought that the HF leadership would have come down hard on the cheaters. Instead the opposite happened. The leadership acted as if nothing bad happened and that, if anything, the real culprits were those who brought the cheating to the attention of the clan. Additionally, the leadership failed to provide even the slightest discipline to Hyperion for his SE treason.
The end result of all this was the mass resignation of almost every member of the HF Browser-Based Gaming Realm (about half of the membership of ) and with that the single most active unit within HF ceased to exist. From that point on, HF went into a state of decline and fall and after years of being little more than a glorified "forum clan" has ceased to exist.
Aaron Swartz was a Scumbag
Hacking is the same thing as breaking and entering one's home. As Declan McCullough wrote back in the late 1990's, there is no such thing as "hacktivism", only vandalism.
What gets me about this case is the way that his father has been acting. He talks as if MIT committed a great sin by alerting law enforcement to his son's crimes.
He was recently the subject of an article in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying that MIT needed to apologize for its actions and to do what his son wanted them to do: make journal articles and academic journals free of charge. Given the fact that academic journals are pretty expensive to publish, if they were made free, pretty soon there would be no more academic journals around.
Aaron Swartz was a scumbag no different than kidnappers and other kinds of violent hoodlums.
What gets me about this case is the way that his father has been acting. He talks as if MIT committed a great sin by alerting law enforcement to his son's crimes.
He was recently the subject of an article in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying that MIT needed to apologize for its actions and to do what his son wanted them to do: make journal articles and academic journals free of charge. Given the fact that academic journals are pretty expensive to publish, if they were made free, pretty soon there would be no more academic journals around.
Aaron Swartz was a scumbag no different than kidnappers and other kinds of violent hoodlums.
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