Information about There Is No Cabal
The backbone cabal was a group of large-site administrators who pushed through the Great Renaming during most of the 1980s.
Credit for organizing the backbone about 1983 is variously claimed for Mark Horton [1] or Gene "Spaf" Spafford, [2] in an effort to stabilize the Usenet propagation. While many news servers operated during night time to save the cost of long distance communication, servers of the backbone cabal were available 24 hours a day.
During most of its existence, the cabal (sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it was almost those involved to respond "There is no Cabal" (sometimes abbreviated as "TINC"), whenever the existence or activities of the group were speculated on in public. It is sometimes used humorously to dispel cabal-like organizational conspiracy theories, or as an ironic statement, indicating one who knows the existence of "the cabal" will inevitably deny there is a cabal.
This belief became a model for various conspiracy theories about various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking over Usenet or the Internet. Spoofs include the "Eric Conspiracy" of moustached hackers named "Eric"; ex-members of the P.H.I.R.M.; and the Lumber Cartel putatively funding anti-spam efforts to support the paper industry.
The result of this policy was an aura of mystery, even a decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 following an internal fight.[3]
As Usenet has few technologically or legally enforced hierarchies, just about the only ones that formed were social hierarchies. People exerted power through force of will (often via intimidating flames), garnering authority and respect by spending much time and effort contributing to the community (by being a maintainer of an FAQ, for example; see also Kibo, etc.).
Credit for organizing the backbone about 1983 is variously claimed for Mark Horton [1] or Gene "Spaf" Spafford, [2] in an effort to stabilize the Usenet propagation. While many news servers operated during night time to save the cost of long distance communication, servers of the backbone cabal were available 24 hours a day.
During most of its existence, the cabal (sometimes capitalized) steadfastly denied its own existence; it was almost those involved to respond "There is no Cabal" (sometimes abbreviated as "TINC"), whenever the existence or activities of the group were speculated on in public. It is sometimes used humorously to dispel cabal-like organizational conspiracy theories, or as an ironic statement, indicating one who knows the existence of "the cabal" will inevitably deny there is a cabal.
This belief became a model for various conspiracy theories about various Cabals with dark nefarious objectives beginning with taking over Usenet or the Internet. Spoofs include the "Eric Conspiracy" of moustached hackers named "Eric"; ex-members of the P.H.I.R.M.; and the Lumber Cartel putatively funding anti-spam efforts to support the paper industry.
The result of this policy was an aura of mystery, even a decade after the cabal mailing list disbanded in late 1988 following an internal fight.[3]
As Usenet has few technologically or legally enforced hierarchies, just about the only ones that formed were social hierarchies. People exerted power through force of will (often via intimidating flames), garnering authority and respect by spending much time and effort contributing to the community (by being a maintainer of an FAQ, for example; see also Kibo, etc.).
References
External links
- Jargon File entry
- in 's .
- Cabal Conspiracy FAQ
- Lumber Cartel
- Entry for "TINC" at the Jargon File
- in 's
- alt.conspiracy.usenet-cabal FAQ on the Cabal and TINC
A cabal is a number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community by intrigue . Cabals are sometimes secret organizations composed of a few designing persons, and at other times are manifestations
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Administrator may refer to:
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- Administration, the performance or management of business operations
- Administrator of the Government, in various Commonwealth Realms and territories
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The Great Renaming was a restructuring of Usenet newsgroups that took place in 1987. The primary reason was said to be the difficulty of maintaining a list of all the existing groups.
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Mary Ann Horton, formerly Mark R. Horton, was a Usenet pioneer. Horton co-wrote the B News server software.
In the early 1970's, Horton designed and implemented the HORTRAN compiler.
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In the early 1970's, Horton designed and implemented the HORTRAN compiler.
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Eugene H. Spafford (born 1956) (known colloquially as "Spaf") is a professor of computer science at Purdue University and a leading computer security expert.
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Biography
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Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. It was conceived by Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979.
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Spoof, spooves, spoofer or spoofing can refer to:
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- Parody by imitation
- Forgery of goods or documents
- Spoofing attack, a computer security term
- Referer spoofing, a type of spoofing attack
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PHIRM was an early hacking group which was founded in the early 1980s. First going by the name of "KILOBAUD," the firm was reorganized in 1985 to reflect a favorite television show of the time "Airwolf". By the mid 1980s The PHIRM was sysopping hundreds of boards.
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The Lumber Cartel was a conspiracy theory, popularized on USENET, that claimed anti-spammers were secretly paid agents of lumber companies.
In November of 1997, a participant on news.admin.net-abuse.email posted an essay to the newsgroup.
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In November of 1997, a participant on news.admin.net-abuse.email posted an essay to the newsgroup.
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Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search
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Social hierarchy is a multi-tiered pyramid-like social or functional structure having an apex as the centralization of power. The term can also be applied to animal societies, but the term dominance hierarchy is preferred most times.
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Flaming may refer to:
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- Anything set aflame or on fire
- Flaming (Internet), the act of posting deliberately hostile messages on the Internet
- Fläming, a region in Germany
- Flaming, flamer and flamboyant
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FAQ is an initialism for "Frequently Asked Question(s)". The term refers to listed questions and answers, all supposed to be frequently asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic.
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TechWeb is a technology-related website, owned by CMP Media. Subsets of the TechWeb Network include " TechEncyclopedia ", which defines over 20,000 IT-related terms, " InformationWeek ", a news website, and " IT Pro Downloads ", with several freeware and shareware security
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The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of hacker slang from technical cultures including the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities including Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN),
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