CNN REPORT: Straczynski Target of Internet Pranks... Again!
Tom Limoncelli
This comes from the CNN.COM web page "Entertainment" section:
Straczynski Target of Internet Pranks... Again
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THE INTERNET -- J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the popular SF TV
show "Babylon 5" yet again has been the subject of internet pranks on
"April Fools Day". Every year for the past couple of years tricksters
have forged messages on the internet claiming that "JMS" (his nickname)
has died. The forgeries have claimed to be from people such as his
business partners, his brothers, and other show staff.
The classic New Yorker cartoon states, "On the internet, nobody knows
you're a dog." It is also difficult to tell which dog you are. The
internet provides very little ability to prove who typed the keystrokes
you see on the screen. JMS had been extremely active on the internet
since before Babylon 5 aired to get feedback from the SF Fan community.
This year the pranks were considerably worse than in 1996.
Three different messages, presumably forged by different people appeared.
One forgery claimed to be from Douglas Netter, JMS's business partner,
with a grim announcement that JMS had died late at night on March 31
while watching Bay Watch with his wife in his home in Los Angeles.
JMS, in a telephone interview, paraphrased Mark Twain's famous quote,
"the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".
The second forgery claimed to be from JMS himself saying that the hit
TV show Babylon 5, which JMS created, was cancelled. Rumors have been
flying as to Babylon 5's fifth season renewal and fans have been on the
edge of their seats waiting for this news. Douglas Netter has
confirmed that no such decision has yet been made.
The final forgery claimed that Paramount was purchasing all rights to
Babylon 5 and would be merging it with their failing "Star Trek:
Voyager" series. Paramount denies the claim.
Experienced internet users have learned a number of ways to spot a
forgery. Mike Kelly, an internet user and fan of Babylon 5 reported,
"Forgers always try to leave at least one clue to show that it is a
forgery." Some of the techniques he listed were:
1. The message contains one or two obviously incorrect facts. For
example, JMS has mentioned many times that he was an only child yet the
pranks often have quotes from "JMS's brother Larry".
2. Real messages on the internet have date/time encoding that are
"natural". Pranksters often include impossible dates (like "2/31/97")
or dates that would be very difficult to actually achieve, like exactly
at midnight. X-Files pranks have forged times of 10:23, to commemorate
the fact that X-Files episodes often have digital clocks showing that
time. The wife of Chris Carter, X-Files producer, was born on October 23rd.
3. Additional "header" fields are added, such as a "Summary:" header
that states, "Just kidding".
4. If the news is too good to be true, it most likely is.
5. If a extremely "big" story is real, CNN and other news sources
would be reporting it too. Claims of a natural disaster that isn't
being reported by CNN usually isn't real.
6. The message is riddled with extremely ironic or self-referential
clues that it is a forgery. Pranksters particularly love irony and
what computer scientists call "recursion".
7. Someone with a long-standing belief reverses their opinion.
8. The post comes from well-known internet humorists like "Kibo",
"Biff", or "Tom Limoncelli".
9. The Message-ID of a message is usually generated by the computer
as a random string of letters and numbers. Pranksters often put a hidden
message into the string.
Experienced internet users spot these tricks right away but new users
are more likely to be fooled. Often the ensuing discussion and
confusion create so much traffic that the internet gets jammed and must
be shut off while maintenance crews clean out the clogged pipes.
"Considering that the number of people with access to the internet
doubles every 12 months, at any given time about half the users are
'new' to the network." said Jack Klugman, director of CERT, the
Computer Emergency Response Team, an organization that was created to
be a focal point for the computer security concerns of Internet users.
--EndArticle--
--
Tom Limoncelli
t...@bell-labs.com -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal -- t...@plts.org
"You can not solve the problem of people being annoying with technology."
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