From:	Jeffrey Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Re: Fw: Newbie92739434
Date:	Wed, 18 Feb 1998 23:22:42 -0800

> > I won't go into how he actually gets a place in the school, I assume with
> >copious amounts of mind manipulation and school-net hacking that that kind of
> >thing would be possible. Remember though, this is an Ares owned school..
> >they're not going to let just any Bob, Bill or Susie sign up. Some kind of
> >connection to Ares would be a must, not to mention the kid's trips out onto
> >the net (using the school decks at any rate) have been monitored, he's a bit
> >of a pet project for them. No serious overwatch or anything although they
> have
> >been becoming a bit concerned with how little he's in the matrix lately.
> >(Little to them.. he's been in just as much or more than ever up til now,
> it's
> >just he's been using his home-brew deck which they don't have bugged).

Huh? So, let me get this straight:

The Newbie is a kid, and a little one at that. (Another little kid posting
to Shadowland Dear Lord Almighty please tell me when will it stop? =) )
And he's inside the Ares arcoplex. And he's been "monitored" as a "pet
project" by Ares matrix security. Ares, the North American military-
industrial complex megacorp has an interest in this kid, he posts to
Shadowland with a message thet gets the FBI and SIGA interested, and he is
still going to school, as opposed to a vault deep somewhere with fifty
tons of the latest in military harware between him and the outside world,
while the lawyers figure out the extraterritorial mumbo-jumbo with the
Feds.

And they don't know about it because he uses his homebrew deck that said
megacorporate security a) doesn't know about, b) didn't bother to bug, and
c) didn't keep an eye out for with frames on any and all of the access
points the kid would be able to get access to. Right. "Hey George,
somebody in #th Grade is punching out into the open matrix and just
bypassed our lockdown." "Is it Timmy's computer?" "Nope."
"Guess its
not him, lets go have a brew." And BITD has, in about one day, managed to
infiltrate the same school as the "pet project" past security that, after
a recent spate of terrorism should be "tighter than a nun's habit" as they
say.

Not to say that any of things are impossible, but they shouldn't be made
to sound so trivially easy.

--My two yen

Jeff