The world gone mad!

[Taz]

Noticed this mentioned on various websites :-

'This is David McOwen, dmcowen674@aol.com. I need everyone's help that possibly can. I worked at a school system 2 years ago that is part of the State of Georgia and was the configurator of the computers. They are now prosecuting me for Felony conviction with up to 15 yrs in prison and wanting $ 415,000. They are saying the Dnet client costs 59 cents per second for the Internet transmissions!'

The thread is here

[Gurm]

Hmm...

1. Distributed.Net doesn't charge.

2. It's fake.

3. The originator and lawyer both have AOL addresses.

4. It's fake.

5. This is the dumbest ****ing thing I have ever heard.

6. It's fake.

7. Did I mention that it's fake?

- Gurm

[Pneumatic]

Yep. It's a hose job.

No way anything charges $.59 per second. That's $35.40 per minute and $2,124.00 per hour. If something were actually that expensive I am quite sure that everyone that came anywhere near it would know.

The thing about the law office using AOL struck me as pretty odd too.

Strange thing is that as far as I read in that thread (a couple of pages) very few people called the bluff. Is that a forum exclusively for stupid people or what?

[Wombat]

I'm not convinced it's fake. This showed up on slashdot the other day, and nobody proved it's a hoax then. As for Gurm's first point, Distributed.net isn't charging him, but that's what GA says it's owed (network time, electricity, etc). Although it is nuts, and comes out to about $1.53mil/month.

There is one post from a guy from distributed.net (account #3631, so it's been around for a couple years, and not created yesterday). :

distributed.net can confirm that at least some part of what's being reported is accurate. We were subpoenaed for information relating to Mr. McOwen's participation in the RC5-64 project and supplied that information as requested. We also spoke at length with representatives of the prosecution to make sure they understood the actual impact of the dnetc software on the machines and networks in question.

also....

Any browser that show the ALT text when the pointer is hovered over images will show you that he registered on AT forums in Oct '99 when they were created. Also, read the thread. One member named Russ has already contacted the attorney's office and has offered help. In case you didn't know, Russ is the maintainer of the TA Cube account, which is seventh overall in in the RC5 contest. Russ is very involved in RC5, and I would assume he knows what he's talking about. Finally, read the guy's RC5 stats http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/...hp3?id=152863. Note that he's 94th overall but his current keyrate is only about 1000 kkeys/s compared to his overall of over 55,000. The PCs he lost are probably the ones he's being sued over. I don't think this is a hoax at all.

I had to recopy the hyperlink, but I think it will show.

[Guru]

Taz we have a thread on this already!!!!

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27097

[Taz]

Originally posted by Guru
Taz we have a thread on this already!!!!

Oops, sorry I didn't think to check there, I tried the other forums but not that one.