Plist ethos

[Alan Westrope]

On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, Tom Stanton <tstanton at nationalgeographic.com> wrote:

>[...] Someone
>told me that back when "Vineland" was published someone
>hacked the California DMV and got TRP's photo, then put it on
>the Internet, but it was refused by upstanding P-listers. Urban
>legend, perhaps? 

Partly true.  The DMV was hacked back in the days when TRP was living
in Aptos.  As I recall, the perps only got text info about him from the
computer(s) -- name, address, DOB, etc. -- no photos.  [Hard for me to
imagine GIFs/TIFFs being stored on DMV computers back then, considering
the cost of storage for all those pix at the time, but I could be wrong,
what with California's spending habits...]

I don't believe *any* info was ever put on the Internet other than the
fact that the hack occurred.  I heard about it from the guy who originally
told me about this list, before he unsubscribed due to the execrable S/N
ratio.  The hack3r d00dz sent him an unsolicited copy of the info, and he was
pleased to see it confirm his suspicion that TRP was living near him during
the time _Vineland_ was written.  [Grizzled veterans of this list may ;-)
recall a subscriber from Aptos who mentioned that many of the book's locales
reminded him of places in his area.]  I never asked him for TRP's Aptos
address.

--
Alan Westrope      PGP public key:  http://www.crl.com/~awestrop
<awestrop at crl.com>                  also via keyservers & finger
<awestrop at nyx.net>
PGP 0xB8359639:    D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43   7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23