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Born Into the Information Age
my current setup
Computers have played a big role in my life. I practically grew up with unrestricted Internet access. Ever since I convinced my dad to sign up with AOL v2.5 back in '92 (I was 12), I have mastered the Internet, learnt its secrets, and watched it explode into a household name. I discovered that one can find almost anything on the web… any piece of information imaginable is digitally stored somewhere, just waiting to be found. And if I wanted something, I found it. I almost feel like I have the "been there, done that, got the T-shirt" veteran status. I did the "a/s/l" chatting, the warez scene, the hours of gaming, the downloading of pics and MP3s, the harmless hacking, and the endless surfing.
I had the chat addiction back when I was 13. I was fascinated by chat rooms and would spend all my free time just talking to people, mostly trying to pick up girls. I grew out of that pretty fast because text chatting has so many obvious disadvantages when compared to real life. For example, you can't see the person, so you actually don't know who you're talking to, and second, because of the anonymous environment, people lie without thinking twice. Or maybe it's more like "exaggeration." Whatever it is, it got stale real quick.
my box (built it myself)
I also had the MUD and online gaming addiction. MUDs (which stands for Multi User Dungeon/Dimension), are just text-based RPGs, and are the predecessors to the massive-multiplayer RPGs like EverQuest and Ultima Online. I used to spend hours at a time in the fantasy world of Medievia, playing my character as an honorable cleric who goes around healing other players and casting dispel evil on flesh-eating zombies in the nearby graveyard. It's the social standpoint, the fact that there are other real live people adventuring with you, that makes these types of games so addicting. But after a while, MUDs lost their appeal to me. At one point, I stopped and asked, "What the hell am I doing? Why am I playing this game? And what am I getting out of it?" I realized then that it was just a waste of time and I really wasn't improving me. My alter-ego was gaining levels and acquiring powerful weapons (glowing morning star), rare armor (full golden platemail), and well-sought after spells (sanctuary), while I was rotting away in front of a monitor watching color text fly by. I gave up MUDding and quickly moved to playing Quake online. This was now fast-paced, bloody 3D action, a great change from role-playing MUDs. I used to play CTF (Capture the Flag) over a laggy, 400 ping, 28.8 baud modem. I loved every second of it, even if there was a noticeable delay of firing my gun when I clicked the "shoot" button. It's so easy to just lose yourself in all the strategy, excitement, and violent-fragging carnage. The time I spent playing equally matched that of my MUD days, so I later decided to quit that too. I still do game every once in a while, but they just suck up so much time and give little in return.
So, throughout my teen life, I was obsessed with two things: computer games and hacking. Now, this isn't make-a-virus-and-set-it-free type of hacking, this was the I-want-to-know-how-that-works-and-I'll-take-it-apart-to-find-out kind. Mostly it was just making harmless AOL "proggies" that did annoying things like changing the text to an "elite talker," or scroll, punt, and other lame features. It was just the thrill and rush of excitement of knowing that I had knowledge that gave me an obvious advantage over computers and the people who used them that made it so attractive to me. When I read The Hacker's Manifesto, I knew at that moment what my identity in the online world was. I went by the alias coldfire, and had the wannabe hacker site, the cheating gamer page, and the exploiting chatting software prog. As my adolescent life began to come to an end though, I grew out of my "bad-ass hax0r" attitude. The thrill back then was always about the rush, like when a teenage boy floors a sports car for the first time and smiles as the engine roars and the RPMs dance in the dashboard. I'm still fascinated about hacking, such as how programs work and how their security is broken, but I suppose now I'm just a little bit more mature now.
coldfire
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