The Busy Life of a Welsh Virus-Writer, 2003-01-27
The prison-bound author of the Gokar virus loves shoes, pole dancers and personal self-disclosure. His blog tells all.
Virus-writers may notice that it's not good to be arrested in the green and pleasant land. While apprehension is rare, the British courts are tough and one can be warehoused for a respectable shift even on the rep of a relative nothing of a virus. Melissa-creator David L. Smith caused a law enforcement and media paroxysm in the U.S., but he still got less than Vallor -- twenty months.
And fight the urge, boys, to reveal your soul to the world wide Web, too. Simon Vallor's website, "The Devil Within," shows him to be a crushing net bore unafraid to plague the electrosphere with just what the world needs besides computer viruses -- another turgid, self-absorbed blog.
So behold the prose of your standard cyber-ninny, only remarkable because it's the work of someone going
More Than We Needed To Know
"See I got another mention (all of page 3) in one of the weekly newspapers, I can live with that, reporters have a job to do, what does annoy me though is that they keep ripping of [sic] pictures from this website ..." rambles the Gokar man on the toll exacted by lady celebrity.
Memo to virus-writer: If you resent the way in which your image is presented in the news, don't work so hard at being infamous. Or have your family hire a good flack. Both are effective practices, the former being the much cheaper of the two.
Then those ding-dang reporters "start posting sections of my blog (and altering it !! [sic])" the Gokar master protests.
The rats!
Vallor's mad as Hell and he's not going to take it anymore. The virus-writer owns copyright on his blog and "now it's [the reporters] breaking the law ..." by stealing and misrepresenting his work. Anything someone writes on his website is automatically the property of the author, Vallor gripes.
There is no clear comment on The Devil Within about the copyright of the Gokar virus. Gokar was republished in 27,000 computers and forty-two countries, it was said.
Another memo: How on earth could the government have convinced anyone you wrote computer viruses? You can't compose a sentence without creating the impression of a fellow with saliva dribbling from the side of his mouth. The news said you copped a guilty plea on December 20th, but I still want to meet this prosecutor, Audrey Hawkes. She must be able to sell ice to Eskimos.
Freak Factor
The
A column or so ago, I made a comment to the effect that some virus-writers might be afflicted with footwear fetishes. This was a joke but I'm pleased to see it was not too far from the mark anyway.
"I think my grand total now is like [twelve] pairs," writes Vallor of his favorite footwear. Although perhaps hard to believe, the virus-writer adds he does not suffer from a psychoneurotic obsession for Acupuncture brand fashion sneakers.
Some photos of the virus-writer and buds are also present. I passed by the one purporting to show a drunk pole-dancer.
Final memo to virus-writer: The picture of the homely overserved woman at the pub conned into baring her breasts for the camera was in poor taste. I know lads must be lads, but being infamous can lead people who might not know you personally to think you were interested in getting women extremely drunk just to be able to have sex with them.
Many years ago, other virus-writers also conducted embarrassingly stupid personal dialogs. They were not as easy to notice because the underground wasn't as freak factor newsworthy in the mainstream as it is today. However, in one most awful example, Australian virus-writer Clint Haines went on and on in Usenet about his pharmaceutical habits. Why he felt the need to do this is anyone's guess. Babbling euphorically about how his brain felt like "newly washed clothes or something" after bingeing on laughing gas, Haines' unthinking man's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" trip stopped when the Grim Reaper finally arrived riding an overdose.
There is grace in silence.
