Dagmar wrote:
Well, it seems that the guy who a few short days ago had his free MySpace page template essentially stolen by the consultant maintaining the McCain MySpace page wasn't all that was going on... Spurred on by this, someone else posted a comment (completely with "McCain's" approval) containing an image of a campaign button, and then changed it to a political cartoon.

...which has now resulted in the FBI coming to his house, accusing him of breaking into McCain's server (or something, somewhere--nevermind that this is pretty much impossible), and taking all his technology. BZZZT. FAIL!

Hooo boy will his lawyer be getting da monies from this one!

Man, I think I pulled this one back in the early 90's. :)

Decius wrote:

Dagmar wrote:
Well, it seems that the guy who a few short days ago had his free MySpace page template essentially stolen by the consultant maintaining the McCain MySpace page wasn't all that was going on... Spurred on by this, someone else posted a comment (completely with "McCain's" approval) containing an image of a campaign button, and then changed it to a political cartoon.

...which has now resulted in the FBI coming to his house, accusing him of breaking into McCain's server (or something, somewhere--nevermind that this is pretty much impossible), and taking all his technology. BZZZT. FAIL!

Hooo boy will his lawyer be getting da monies from this one!

Man, I think I pulled this one back in the early 90's. :)

Then both of you guys need to Wikipedia the definition of "funny".

Dagmar wrote:

Decius wrote:

Dagmar wrote:
Well, it seems that the guy who a few short days ago had his free MySpace page template essentially stolen by the consultant maintaining the McCain MySpace page wasn't all that was going on... Spurred on by this, someone else posted a comment (completely with "McCain's" approval) containing an image of a campaign button, and then changed it to a political cartoon.

...which has now resulted in the FBI coming to his house, accusing him of breaking into McCain's server (or something, somewhere--nevermind that this is pretty much impossible), and taking all his technology. BZZZT. FAIL!

Hooo boy will his lawyer be getting da monies from this one!

Man, I think I pulled this one back in the early 90's. :)

Then both of you guys need to Wikipedia the definition of "funny".

Well, when the rumor involved federal agents shooting my cat its really hard to have sympathy for anyone who seriously beleived it. This, on the other hand, was a bit more beleivable.

Well, when the rumor involved federal agents shooting my cat its really hard to have sympathy for anyone who seriously beleived it. This, on the other hand, was a bit more beleivable.

Okay, yeah, I remember yours now. Yours I didn't have a problem with because you dropped enough hints that it was not real that one could tell it was a good story.

Clive, on the other hand, needs to learn the definition of "funny". What he did wasn't much better than pranking someone by telling them their lunch was laced with cancer-causing mutagenic agents--you and I know that the sh*t he described actually happens to people. I clicked on the link for how to help, not once, but twice. What came up was a clone-up of one of the NIN Parefin sites, which, since I've been looking at them lately, seemed to me like he'd just made a local copy of one of them and got his links mixed up. It's not like the text on them is easily readable--if you've seen them before you see the page and think "Oh, that Year Zero page" and just move on. Both times I just figured I'd come back later and maybe he'd have it fixed...

Oh well, it's a good thing Clive doesn't live in Boston.

Rattle wrote:
It appears neither McCain's people nor the FBI have a grasp on what has happened here. In short, it was McCain's web staff that screwed up.

People seem to not be getting this as we've seen stuff like it occur so often, but this IS an April Fools joke. Click on the link on the page titled "ps - if you want to help me out, all offers would be most welcome!"

Decius wrote:

Rattle wrote:
It appears neither McCain's people nor the FBI have a grasp on what has happened here. In short, it was McCain's web staff that screwed up.

People seem to not be getting this as we've seen stuff like it occur so often, but this IS an April Fools joke. Click on the link on the page titled "ps - if you want to help me out, all offers would be most welcome!"

Yeah, here's the kicker on that...

Q: I tried to link to your help page and it didn't work. Why? Blame mod_rewrite (confused quite a few people :)

...saw that going on, too, which is part of the reason I figured his "how to help" page was just no-worky at the time.

Update^2: It was an April Fools day joke. A pretty believable one too. Heh. I expect this kinda thing to happen these days.

Ah, so Clive is actually an ignorant dipshit who doesn't know the meaning of "funny" or understand it's importance to April Fool's Day.

For fuck's sake when will people learn...

Dagmar wrote:

Update^2: It was an April Fools day joke. A pretty believable one too. Heh. I expect this kinda thing to happen these days.

Ah, so Clive is actually an ignorant dipshit who doesn't know the meaning of "funny" or understand it's importance to April Fool's Day.

For fuck's sake when will people learn...

You know, the most fucked up thing about this whole situation is that on some level this is all a promo for the new Nine Inch Nail album. The flag in the cartoon added to McCain's site as well as the style of the page that explained that it was a joke are being used variously around the net to promote the album release....

Ah, so Clive is actually an ignorant dipshit who doesn't know the meaning of "funny" or understand it's importance to April Fool's Day.

For fuck's sake when will people learn...

Yeah, I contemplated laying out that line in my update, but didn't feel it was worth the typing at the time.. But it's true. There really wasn't anything about this that was funny. It actually presented a very real problem where someone was directly effected in a real way, and expected people to react. People were prepared to react.

There was a sort of "call to arms" in regard to this earlier today. I got a voice mail about it. I concluded that I wouldn't be able to do anything till Monday. I didn't bother to research it at the time... I figured the details would make themselves known over the next 12 hours. I guess they did make themselves known.

This guy just cashed out any capital he gained by his initial prank on McCain. On one hand, the reaction to this exposes a certain reality of fear surrounding places where political speech and technology intersect.. We are going into an election season where we can expect more of this type of thing, and the response of the feds to it is in question. It's a touchy spot.

A good hoax is funny. A bad hoax is crying "fire" in a theater.

At this point, this guy really appears to be a class-a moron.