"The Masquerade Ball of Tim Roberts"

[digitalwanderer]

I'm not gonna retype something that Hanners already did a great job of, so here is a cut-n-paste of his story over at Elite Bastards. (The story is complete, no need to go to EB)

It seems that Infinium Labs, and in particular Timothy Roberts, just don't know when (or how) to stay out of trouble. The result of this is a couple of articles at the Where Is Phantom? website. The first deals with Mr. Roberts online persona... Or should I say personas?

It has been reconfirmed by that moderator and that administrator as well that what they have stated is true. The IP comes from inside Infinium Labs and the e-mail address is twcbinc@hotmail.com. The only reasonable interpretation of this data is that the poster is indeed Mr. Timothy Munro Roberts. When one reads that, according to Lunabean, the post was made "before HardOCP made it public" (which is indeed true) and notice that the title of the thread is "Ilabs sues HardOCP, looks like HardOCP is screwed, ugly", one must truly must wonder about why Mr. Roberts would do such a thing.

Indeed, that seems to be a theme of this article. "Why?" Why would Mr. Roberts pretend to post as someone other than himself? Why would Mr. Roberts post such a thread that calls [H]ardOCP "screwed, ugly"? There is a near impossibility to avoid these questions when one researches and finds such things.

Part two of the article deals with a possible revelation about Mr. Roberts' past...

The St. Louis Business Journal noted that "Before the Internet existed, Peter Roberts and his twin brother Tim were up all hours in the basement of their parents' house in Kirkwood, writing software and exchanging messages with fellow computer 'geeks' using bulletin boards." What the Journal didn't know is that these geeks may have been computer criminals, phreakers, during their teenage years. The following set of coincidences would place Tim & Peter Roberts in the very same shoes as this set of brothers, also named Tim & Peter.

Through some investigative work, only one meaning for twcbinc has surfaced. From what that information provides, twcbinc almost undoubtedly stands for The Wacko Cracko Brothers, Inc.

The Wacko Cracko Brothers, two real-life brothers Tim and Peter, were heavily involved in the phreaking scene. They associated with other phreaker groups and ran a BBS called Wackoland. If you were a hacker or phreaker in St. Louis in the mid '80s (where Tim and Peter Roberts both lived), you probably knew of them. Even nationally, TWCB were well known.

Interesting stuff - I'll leave the 'Conspiracy theory or caught red-handed?' question for you guys to answer for yourself. Check out the articles at the links below:

- The Masquerade Ball of Tim Roberts, Part 1
- The Masquerade Ball of Tim Roberts, Part 2

It just keeps getting betterer and betterer. 8)

 

[dizietsma]

I just love the name of the console

Phantom

Looking on Miriam Websters online dictionary

Main Entry: 1phan·tom
Pronunciation: 'fan-t&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fantosme, fantome, from Middle French fantosme, modification of Latin phantasma
1 a : something (as a specter) apparent to sense but with no substantial existence : APPARITION b : something elusive or visionary : WILL-O'-the-wisp c : an object of continual dread or abhorrence : BUGBEAR <the phantom of disease and want>
2 : something existing in appearance only


Is this a BIG CLUE

 

[Pete]

Phreaky.