Distress Call

[Andi Eye Candy]

SOS...Crew stranded on desolate moon <stop> Seeking other survivors of the human race...we require manpower and resources <stop> It is the year 4026 at the time of this message...please respond to contact coordinates below <stop>

Terra Nova, a new Burning Man theme camp, is looking for new members with a real interest in bringing our theme to life! The vision:

The year is 4026. Mankind has fled a decimated Earth. Spreading out in all directions, the remains of humanity escape in whatever spacecraft they can find, uncertain of what their future holds, but prepared to sustain life for as long as necessary. Our crew roamed the galaxy for so long, we nearly lost all memory of our origins. Generation after generation was born, gave birth, and passed out of this existence, all within the confines of our ship, our self-sustaining ecosystem, the Mesopotamia. With each new generation that was born, our isolated culture began to diverge away from that which our ancestors had known.

By the time four generations had been born into our company, the Mesopotamia began to fail. It was inevitable that one day we would be forced to land, that eventually our ship would develop problems that we could no longer repair. So, it seems, fate crash-landed us upon this desolate, inhospitable moon. Here is where we have had to make our new home, our new Earth, and so we named it: Terra Nova.

We practice LNT, a gift economy, non-judgmental acceptance of diverse cultures and life styles, creativity, having fun, nudity, self reliance and open-minded self improvement.

Currently in the works are a bar, canvas car covers (to go with the theme), an evap pond and shower, communal kitchen, communal dinners, liberation dome (free-expression area as part of future culture), shade structure and more. We also have some interactive events planned, a Mobile Petting Zoo, a Porta Potty Punch Party and a Stick Figure Rights Rally. Applicants should be prepared to be completely self-reliant, and to help with LNT and cleanup of the communal facilities.

If you would like to help make our theme camp come alive with your art, ideas, structures, participation, labor or whatever you can contribute, please complete the questionnaire below and e-mail it to terra-nova@water-brother.com before April 30, 2006. Please only submit the form if you are serious about wanting to camp with us and helping to make the theme happen. If you would like more information before you decide, feel free to write or visit our web page http://www.water-brother.com/

-------Questionnaire--------

Please fill out to the best of your knowledge. We realize some things may change between now and the event. Be as verbose as possible; this form is to help us and you. If you are a group or couple, please have each person fill out their own form. Please understand we are a diverse group and need you to be accepting of both our diverse lifestyles and the lifestyles of visitors.

----------Basics----------------
Real Name:

Playa Name(s) you may be known by:

If you are a group or couple, who are the other people who will be sending in this form?:

Email address:
(NOTE: if accepted we will put you on our camp email list)

Age:
Due to the possibility of adult activities with in our camp we ask that all members be 18 or more earth years old.

Gender:

Location:
(Note: most of this camp is from Arizona, however you don't have to be.)

Do you understand the concepts of Leave No Trace (LNT) and agree to make SURE the camp is spotless before leaving, not only of your own possessions and garbage, but that of others?

Can you be "kitchen witch" for a day, either primary or secondary? This person will ensure that LNT is taken seriously in our kitchen space as well as in our other areas. Note: The "kitchen witch" may also affectionately be called "Rosie the Robot" or a number of other things.

Is this your first year, 3rd, 19th? What?

Do you have your ticket?

Have you camped in a theme camp before?

Any special medical needs that the camp organizers should know about?

----------Camping needs -------------
We need to know these things so we can request the right amount of space and submit a map to the BM org. If you are a group or couple you do not need to duplicate this information.

How are you camping? (hammock, tent, rv, what?)

Approximately how big is it? i.e. small tent, large tent, large RV

Are you sharing your camping space with anyone? who?

Will you have a car, truck or trailer?

Your approximate arrival and departure dates (may be important for parking and other planning)

Please keep us updated on any changes as the event gets closer.

--------- Participation in the Theme and camp stuff-------
You are filling this all out because you believe in making the theme happen, so how are you going to do that?

Can you help organize and create any of our camp amenities? If so what sounds workable for you?:

We currently have:

* A camp bar for our needs and visitors. The Porta Potty Punch Party will be held here.
* Painted canvas car covers or other things to make our cars work into the theme
* Camp shade (can't have too much)
* Evap Pond (this is to evaporate as much shower water as possible)
* Shower
* Camp gateway and fence. Art that will draw people to our camp as well as provide a cool entrance to it.
* Kitchen and group shared dinners.
* Liberation Dome. As part of the theme, a free space where visitors can explore new horizons in a safe place with no judgment from others.

Do you have other amenities you will be bringing that you may need help with? (Note: if it is bigger than 10'x10' we need to know it's size and details)

What is the name of the ship that brought us to this dusty moon?

Can you help organize and create any of our camp events?
We currently have:

* The Burning Bellies, a group of belly dancers that dance from Center Camp to the man.
* Mobile Petting Zoo, a fun event where we dress up as something pettable (often animals) and roam the streets.
* Porta Potty Punch Party, a public party with a unique punch and bowl.
* Stick figure Rights Rally, someone has to stand up for them!

Do you want to organize other events that may need our help? Hopefully things that fit with in our theme.

Describe your ideal romantic encounter on the moon. (either good old Luna or Terra Nova):

Anything else we should know about to ensure that things run smoothly once we arrive?

---------End-----

Please send this to terra-nova@water-brother.com. This form will be sent to our camp list and decisions will be made from there. Please allow a week or more for a response. If possible please also send us a photo of your self so the other members can identify you on the playa and get to know you a little beforehand.

[Andi Eye Candy]

It was brought to my attention that one of the questions on our questionnaire makes us sound like a dating service...just to be clear, camping with us does not include a date on the moon!

Well, that is, unless you get lucky...

Keep the responses coming...woo hoo!!! We love it!

[Andi Eye Candy]

We are starting to get our profiles up! Anybody who wants to see what the people of Terra Nova are like, go here:

http://www.water-brother.com/profiles06.html

[spectabillis]

Real Name: Theodore Kaczynski

Playa Name: That asshole moderator from the eplaya

Other people?: I invite everyone from the eplaya, but since 90% are sock accounts thats only about four of five.

Email address: theman@whitehouse.gov

Age: It keeps changing...

Gender: It keeps changing...

Location?: cabin, in the woods, no way to contact me unless you provide documented evidence you are not a member of any law enforcement organization.

Do you understand the concepts of (LNT)?: LNT? Dont know, but always more than willing to try new narcotics.

Can you be "kitchen witch" for a day?: As long as you dont hold me legally liable for my cooking. And I get to dose whoever I want.

Is this your first year, 3rd, 19th? What?: I dont leave, always there lurking... among the shadows of firelight from the man... waiting... watching...

Do you have your ticket?: You mean thats not included in your camp fees?

Have you camped in a theme camp before?: Yes, and its not my fault, dont believe them, it was always someone else that did all that.

Any special medical needs that the camp organizers should know about?: Besides Valtrex for genital herpes, does Lithium and LSD count?

How are you camping?: You will provide that for me.

Approximately how big is it?: make it large please, and I want my own midgets dressed as yard gnomes with misters and using palm leaves as fans.

Are you sharing your camping space with anyone?: besides the midgets I will be taking the occasional hostage.

[Observer]

Playa Name: That asshole moderator from the eplaya

Other people?: I invite everyone from the eplaya, but since 90% are sock accounts thats only about four of five.

Sigh. Spec, when you have a moment like this, usually I'll try to talk a little sense into you by PM, when I want to get involved at all. This time, I'm thinking that maybe I'd better handle this in public for everybody's sake, maybe even yours included. Let me explain to you how dynamic IPs work, because you seem a little unclear on the concept, and your lack of clarity is helping to produce more than a little unnecessary and unproductive strife on ePlaya.

Some internet service providers offer static IP addresses, meaning that the same block of numbers always represents the same person. In a perfect world, all ISPs would do this, making forum administration a lot easier because one would almost always know who was who, but we don't live in a perfect world. Most internet service providers make use of something called "dynamic IP", under which the user is assigned an IP when he logs in, which he holds onto only during the length of his current session. If he logs out or loses his feed and has to log back in, the system assigns him a new IP address.

This has lead to some ill-informed commentary on some sites about how this user or that was "hiding behind his dynamic IP address", as if the possession of such a thing were some kind of high powered hacker magic, but the reality is that the user doesn't get to choose his own temporary IP address. The system chooses it for him out of a pool of currently available IP addresses assigned to the provider, using an algorithm the user has no control over. The virtue of this, aside from providing those who like to talk before they think with an opportunity to put their foolishness on display, seems to be that it allows the ISP to have more subscribers than it has assigned IP addresses. I have noticed that the cheaper local ISPs seem to invariably use dynamic IP.

Let me repeat that: the user has no control over the IP he is assigned. It is assigned to him out of a pool (or block) of IP addresses common to either the entire subscriber base of an ISP or some large subset of that base. Let's say that the block of IPs you're looking at has four wildcards at the end of it like so: 12.345.****

That provides us with 10,000 possible IPs, and as a dial-up subscriber is most unlikely to be logged in even 10% of the time, or anywhere close to it, one can easily be looking at a subscriber base of 100,000, if one is looking at a four wildcard block, making that the ISP in question "small" only when compared to an AOL. (With more wildcards or less, just raise 10 to the number of wildcards, and multiply by the inverse of a conservative upper estimate of the portion of the day during which a typical user will be online). Saying that "these two users come from the same IP block, therefore they must be socks of each other", then, is a little like saying "they're both from Sacramento, therefore they must be the same person". "Absurd" is the kindest word that can possibly be used for such an argument.

It becomes especially troublesome in a burner-related context. Burners, like any other community-oriented group, spend a lot of time together and people who do that engage in a lot of word-of-mouth. For example, when one of us decides to go see a movie, in many cases instead of going to a movie reviewer whose taste we may find mysterious, we'll turn to a friend or acquaintance whose taste seems similar to our own and ask him if he's seen anything good lately. Same deal when looking for a cheap local ISP, many of which can be unpleasant to deal with. More quickly than one can say "six degrees of separation", the good word about one particular ISP can travel from user to friend of user to friend of friend of user, to friend of friend of friend of user, and one can end up with a network of local burners landing in the same IP block, because they're using the same ISP.

Then along comes a moderator, somebody who really should know better, and two or more people who might not even know each other will end up getting accused of being each other's sock puppets, because the moderator looks at their IP addresses and jumps to a conclusion not supported by the facts at hand. Only a static IP can be used to establish identity. The most that can be done with dynamic IPs, in this regard, is that one can disprove an allegation that two people are one and the same, by noting that the locations implied by their respective IP blocks are absurdly far apart. Somebody located in Reno, Nevada is obviously not going to be the same person as somebody located in Geneva, Illinois, to take the recent case of a user you severely pissed off, just a week or two ago.

At best, this is going to be a surreal experience for those you've wrongly accused based on flimsy evidence, but your choice of when to do this makes the damage even worse. I've noticed this about your moderation style and we've talked about this by PM: you're in the habit of backing whoever it is, that you've been seeing the craziest behavior out of at the moment, and letting reality be whatever that person wants it to be. On this occasion, you abused a member who was in a conflict with another member who seemed borderline psychotic, seemingly in order to make nice with the borderline psychotic.

Our psychotic friend, having been caught in a lie and having his lie documented, decided to engage in a little payback by attacking his critic's reputation with a wrongful accusation of sockpuppethood. This is trolling of the worst kind, and rather disgracefully, you were supportive of it. When the wrongly accused user asked you to merely be honest enough to vouch for what he was saying about his IP address, your response was to play lawyer and look for one excuse after another to not do so. "You asked me in a post instead of by PM" was a classic - make up an arbitrary rule that makes no sense, after the fact, and then ask why somebody didn't follow a rule that he would have had no reason to imagine would even be there.

You knowingly forced a wrongly put-upon user to go to extraordinary lengths to clear his name of the ill-effects of a wrongful accusation, and then, the moment you saw him doing just that, you discarded your earlier feigned neutrality and made sure to keep the crazy guy happy by cooking up a sock puppet accusation of your own, directed against his target of choice. I'm wondering how I should take that, but if truth be told, even if we assume that you really didn't know how dynamic IPs worked, there is no positive light in which to cast your actions.

Yes, these accusations matter. Our psychotic friend, when he began the latest round of accusations, knew exactly what he was doing. He accused his Midwestern critic of being the sock of a Reno-located user who had picked more than his share of fights on ePlaya. It's a quick and dirty way of rounding up a lynch mob - tell the people one wants to recruit that one's target is their old enemy, in disguise. One should hope that one could count on a moderator to be opposed to such an effort, when it was so clearly in the process of being carried out. Yet there you were, out for all to see, fighting the good fight in support, not of the user who was being abused, but of the psychotic whack job that was abusing him, going so far as to copy his spin on the actions of the person who documented the fact that he wasn't telling the truth: "he's being negative".

Yes, God forbid that anybody on this board should care about the truth, or suggest that any standard of behavior higher than "follow the path of least resistance" should be expected out of others.

The target disproved the first sock puppet allegation, you made nice with the crazy man by cooking up your own, and history repeated itself, with two of us having now been handed to this lunatic, somebody that we can now look forward to being defamed and cyberstalked by ourselves, raising the question of how one could view this in a positive light. If, as I assume, I didn't tell you anything about dynamic IPs that you didn't already know, then I would have to view this as being an act of personal betrayal. Having gained some measure of personal visibility on this board by speaking up with some small measure of skill in support of Burning Man and in support of one of the moderators on this board (namely, you), I find that the reward for my efforts is to have a psychologically unbalanced member of the community sent in my direction, because you felt the need to have somebody reasonably visible to use as a stepping stone, and believed that you could count on having enough readers who understand how IPs worked poorly enough, for them to not see through your line of BS.

We've spoken via PM about your habit of screwing people over for the purposes of appeasement, I've explained to you why that is a really bad idea all around, you've conceded the point, and yet here we are all over again.

Thanks a bunch, Spec. I was seriously considering starting a project for BM2006, but now I either have to scrap it and probably my plans to attend Burning Man for the forseeable future as well, or really engage in some mild sock puppetry of my own, and go through the lengthy process of establishing a new online identity, so that I won't have to worry about you-know-who dropping by and saying "hello", possibly with the help of a little ammunition. To have somebody point me out to a known paranoiac and earn brownie points for himself by fingering me as being part of the paranoiac's vaguely defined Evil Conspiracy (tm) is, at the very least, to put me on track for getting to the start of a very bad day and maybe a lot worse. This, I would have to do, hoping during the entire time that I wouldn't be outed by a moderator, putting my efforts to get away from this psychopath to waste.

Which, Spec, is why there is no good way of looking at your actions. Even if you had proceeded from real ignorance, believing that an ISP would allocate one whole block of IP addresses to a single user instead of having the block shared by many, we would be left with the question of why you would have disclosed that information, something that you have referred to as being a violation of the privacy of the user, in a way that not only greatly exceeds the bounds of the "reasonable request" that was made of you, but barely even seems to relate to the request at all. I and these alleged sock puppets barely even interact on this board, so while one can see a vindictive motivation for your posting, where is the legitimate one?

What we would be left with, were we to accept your defense of your own actions, is that you responded to a user's decision to call you and another user on what is generally agreed to be bad behavior (fraud, libel, and defamation of character) by volunteering to help him cyberstalk the user who talked back to him, insuring that his target couldn't just get up and walk away. That would suck, even if we bought the idea that your ignorance was real and not affected. This, I doubt.

Let's consider the earlier case in which Ed and Rex of Stopburningman.org were accused of being sock puppets of each other on the basis that both used the word "Erm". While I certainly was not a member of their fan club, as anybody reasonably familiar with this BBS knows, I had to be a little suspicious about that argument, and so I checked it, doing a string search under " Erm", making sure to include an initial space in the string to exclude posts that just had "erm" appearing as a string within a word (eg. extERMinate, fERMent, ..) I then posted links to a series of posts by a wide variety of users who plainly weren't Ed or Rex, debunking that unwarranted accusation. Whether we like them or not, they should at least be treated fairly.

Remember what you did, Spec? You quoted me out of context, creating the illusion that I had come in to post an attack, when in fact I had come to rebut one on behalf of people who were wrongly accused of sock puppetry. I don't know why you so love those accusations, whether this is a fixation of yours or you're just one of those people who enjoys sliding in the knife, but either way, you've repeatedly shown a willingness to fight dirty in order to keep such accusations alive. This is conduct that moderators should be in the business of putting to an end, not that they should be publicly engaged in, themselves. Please cut it out.

Like I said, I don't completely know how I'm going to respond to this new reality. I suppose that I could have taken a page out of your book and given praise and support to Mr.Looneytunes in order to make him like me, but I think you'll find that being a paranoiac's friend isn't a lot safer than being his enemy. Maybe I could try to reestablish myself and lose the guy, but that's a lot of work and again, like I said, I don't know when one of the mods will decide to out me, if I go that route. Most likely, I'm just going to wash my hands of ePlaya and of Burning Man, because if I can't contribute to the burn, why would I even want to go? Most definitely, if either comes under attack again, I will not take the time to speak up in their support, if this is how I get repayed. I don't need to doubt where I stand with Ed and Rex and their friends, and probably will for years to come, and I can't even begin to guess where I stand with the people on ePlaya, judging from what I've just seen.

To make enemies one can count on in exchange for friends one can't is a fool's bargain, and I will not gladly be anybody's fool. You've lost me, Spec, and you've held onto somebody who's looking for black helicopters hovering outside of the New Mexico School of Mining. That's your choice, but the next time Burning Man comes under attack by somebody reasonably articulate, I think that you might find that it was a foolish one. In the future, you would do well to focus a little less on what is politically expedient and a little more on what is right. Any other approach will leave you with an unpleasant discovery - appeasement is fleeting but righteous anger endures. For this reason, a community built upon any basis other than justice will, in the end, turn upon itself in a memorably ugly way, discovering that the peace it was willing to win for itself at any price, was never anything more than an illusion.

[Sensei]

Sockboy, don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out...

Jesus Christ, Spec! I wouldn't take your (VOLUNTEER) job for a million bucks if this is the kind of shit you end up having to deal with.

[Steven bradford]

@@

[Observer]

The facts are all up in black and white, Sensei. The only question is how many of the regulars on ePlaya will be willing to make asses of themselves trying to deny reality.

Support for what I said about dynamic IPs can be found at

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci520967,00.html

among many other places. My post rebutting the wrongful sockpuppet accusation against the StopBurningMan.org people can be found here ("Badger got called out will he meet on Thursday"), the conspiracy theory thread this nonsense began on is here, followed up by this rebuttal thread.

Not one bit of this is debatable. You are free to refuse to accept reality, but you can't make it go away. At most, you can help make a solidly good case that the Stopburningman.org people were onto something when they said that "the ePlayans are about as reasonable as a herd of deranged antelope". If, on being confronted with the facts, the regulars refuse to see them, allowing politics to trump observable fact, then Rex and Ed were right and I'd have to say that I regretted ever defending this event.

Regardless, sleazy behavior is sleazy behavior and being a volunteer does not make sleazy behavior into anything other than what it is.

[Steven bradford]

PS to Andi Eye Candy--

Great Idea, good luck!

[ibdave]

Observer,
So that was 2639 words of nothing.

[AntiM]

"the ePlayans are about as reasonable as a herd of deranged antelope".

Gee, I took that as a compliment.

[Sensei]

Regardless, sleazy behavior is sleazy behavior...

Um, don't take this wrong, but... Do you have a crush on our Spectabilis? 'Cause I read your posts and it sure comes across like your obsessed with him. Honestly, I don't know what the fuck you're going on about.

He's a cutie though, that's fer sure.

[Bay Bridge Sue]

Try #2...

Awww... must be true love. Talk about an obsession...

I agree with Sensei, that Spec *is* a cutie, but Sensei has the legs... hands down!

bb

[Desert Duck]

Playa Name: That asshole moderator from the eplaya

Other people?: I invite everyone from the eplaya, but since 90% are sock accounts thats only about four of five.

I'm thinking that maybe I'd better handle this in public for everybody's sake...

And I'm thinking this is the worst kind of hijacking. How I read it, Spec made a little joke thereby bumping Andi's thread back to the top. There are a lot of socks on this site, one only need look at the memberlist to see this. He did, also, "fill out" the questionnaire.
You, seeing that he'd said something you didn't like, decided to turn Andi's thread aboutTerra Nova- a new burningman theme campinto your own little grandstand to mount a personal attack. You suck.

Andi, it's a wonderful idea, I wish you all the success, and look forward to seeing you on the Playa.

[joel the ornery]

i am soooooo glad i am not going to '06.

[Steven bradford]

Decisions Decisions, go with my same old bestest buds I've been going with from seattl for years, or make new friends with this intriquing gang. They look for the most part decidely un -jaded too.

[Sensei]

i am soooooo glad i am not going to '06.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Don't even try and hand me that crap, soldier. You know you want it. You want it bad. If it ain't happenin' this year for you, it's for other reasons and you know that too. You better know that I'll miss ya'.

Besides, you also know that this piddly crap on the board dissolves into nothing once it's playa time.

[spectabillis]

hey, i dont care, just as long as its not a stalker. despite differences i may have with observer, his comments are well thought out and insightful - i value them. i think he can be a bit touchy, and after doing this i can be a bit coarse, and thats where i see part of the problem.

observer: yeah, i would definately appreciate keeping it to pm's, but since its something that you think needs pointing out to everyone else i think its best to keep it in the policy feedback section of eplaya feedback. we try to keep things like that out of thread drift concerns, and its a good place where if people have issues they know where to go to discussion. unfortunately that bit of into is not posted anywhere so people dont know and it does not get used.

but to answer your technical ip related question, yes, i already knew that. i have worked with the largest telecoms and service providers including the likes of mci, quest, at&t, bt, aol, msn... the majority of connections are dialups, with dsl gaining market share. modem banks and dslams both use the ip pooling approach, but some people request a static ip.

thing is, when pooling a set they usually limit it to the lowest subclass - and split those up between multiplexers. so even if a persons ip can change, its usually going to be in a range. usually, not always. but you also have to consider they can log in from another location like work or a friends house which would give an indication of socks that are not really. i can think of three off the top of my head on this board where i have see that. but if we are talking about a specific person with quite a few posts, then its a pretty reasonable conclusion to make that the ip range with eighty or ninety percent of the posts is theirs.

and finally, i would have hoped people would learn that my above post was a pure joke - but hey, that does not always happen.

[spectabillis]

ok, i just created viewtopic.php?p=222841#222841