| Author |
Message |
  
Knighttour
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 01:47 am: | 
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"knighttour" is a registered name. If it is yours, type the password.
If not, just hit return to try another name.
password: ÿü
Player "knighttour" is banned.
Please email: abuse@chessparlor.com
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Well, banned for no good reason. I was on last night. Played 10 games of bughouse or so. Talked briefly with fpawn. I don't think I talked in channels then, though I remember chatting about the USCF and gamesparlor parting ways in channel 4 much earlier that day. Maybe they were annoyed at that. Or perhaps they were mad at my BugBoard posts. It's even possible that they improved their detection of non-USCL interfaces and I was auto-banned for logging in with CClient. Who knows?
I emailed abuse@chessparlor.com and the email bounced. Nice operation they're running there, eh?
When I asked SuperIntellect, a USCL admin and programmer, what the correct email address was, we had the following exchange:
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t superintellect do you know the correct email address for abuse at USCL?
(told SuperIntellect)
. I was banned there, and I emailed abuse@chessparlor.com (the address they list in the banned login message), but it bounced.
(told SuperIntellect)
SuperIntellect(TM) tells you: I seriously couldn't care less...
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Anyway, whatever. My home is on FICS. I just hit 300 days online on FICS a few hours ago, and I don't idle to inflate my time online, so that's quite an accumulation. I guess USCL has severred the last remaining ties I had with them. It's sort of sad, since I have some good USCL memories and enjoyed playing bughouse there a lot. The really annoying part of this ban will be making it much more difficult to chat with pminear or see any of his games though. Oh well, there's always Bob Dodge's.
What with my being given no notification that I was banned by email (and more importantly WHY I was banned), their designated email address bouncing, and SuperIntellect acting rude to me, the USCL administration at large has been quite offensive and unprofessional. Therefore I have no qualms now about telling everyone how to login as a non-Royal member with any interface.
I understand that their rudeness is just business though. If any of you USCL people attend the World Open and want to play some bughouse with me, just pull up a chair. I don't take any of it personally, and I always like meeting people I know from online.
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Okay, guys, here's how you login to USCL with WinBoard, XBoard, CClient, LightningRulez, or SLICS. (Thief doesn't work because of its superior error checking. Thief won't let you put a % in your handle and won't let you manually type in the handle and password.)
The key is that when it asks for a handle on login, it really wants a country code. The country code for the United States is "%sUS".
On WinBoard, XBoard, and LightningRulez you just wait for the "login:" prompt. Then you type "%sUS". After a second the server will respond with the string "#Server set". At this point enter your handle followed by your password as normal.
I'm not that familiar with SLICS, but if you store your handle and password somewhere I'd recommend leaving those fields blank so you'll just be prompted on login and can procede as in above.
With CClient, use "%sUS" as your handle and leave the password field blank. When you see the "#Server set" response, type your handle in the console. A popup dialog box will appear asking for your password.
After you login, feel free to set your interface string to match the USCL interface string if you want.
It's just that simple, kids. Have fun!
-knighttour |
Psychic
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 05:34 am: |
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So that's where pminear has been hiding. I've been wondering where he went since I haven't seen him bugging for months now.
Has he moved permanantly to U$¢L? He is still listed as an admin on FICS. I fingered pete's account and I got this as part of the finger output:
Finger of pminear(*)(CA):
Last disconnected: Fri Jan 25, 20:31 PST 2002
So it's been almost 3 months since he's last logged in to FICS. Obviously he's not "taking a break" since he's playing on USCL. It would be a shame if we would have to wait for Lameparlor's inevitable bankruptcy before we can see Pete on FICS again. Anyone else moved there as well?
By the way knighttour it seems obvious to me that you got the "royal" shaft for letting people know on the bugboard that it's possible to skirt their pathetic defenses to logging on with a normal client. One of their admins probably saw your post and banned you johnny on the spot. Now that you've clarified how you login with other clients I think it's safe to say that you are going to be banned for a long time, if not permanently. At least I know there will be one more person cheering when they see that Chapter 11 filing. Besides the owners of I¢¢ of course.
Psychic |
fermy
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 02:19 pm: |
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Well pminear promised to me that he will play in revived bug grand prix that will kick off in September. Stay tuned. |
Knighttour
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 03:43 pm: |
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Okay, first of all I want to apologize for posting this thread in the "Bughouse" section rather than the "Flames and Rages" section. It clearly has more to do with the "Rages" part of "Flames and Rages" than it does with "Bughouse". What happened is I lamented the lack of a main section for other chess servers besides FICS and ICC, so I posted the thread before this in "Bughouse" because it made the most sense there of the choices. Then when it came time to post this, I was originally going to make it just a reply in that other thread. At the last minute I decided it deserved its own thread, and I posted it in the same section thinking to myself it was kind of an informal "USCL" section, which it clearly isn't. I would have no problem with this thread being moved to "Flames and Rages".
Secondly, I have been told why I was banned. Indigo replied to an email I sent her and told me "You were banned for using a non-GamesParlor interface as a basic member.". I replied pointing out that in no place in their policy do they ever state that this is required, but as we all know that's pretty fruitless. Anyway, you all should keep that in mind when deciding whether to use the method I describe above, because I would hate for someone to be similarly banned and blame me for not making it clear that they have banned others for that. Perhaps that was why DarkMorn was banned too... Anyway, she didn't tell me the real abuse email address, and I assume they have none.
Third, pminear has been playing mostly on USCL for around a year now. He used to play on FICS occasionally too, but doesn't seem to do even that anymore. It seems that his reasons for playing on USCL are the prize tourneys they have. He has won over $300 just by playing games he enjoys anyway, so we can hardly fault him for choosing to play there. (Btw, no one who has ever won money from a USCL prize tourney has ever actually received that money, and it's very likely none of them ever will. But that's besides the point.) pminear is still a dedicated FICS admin though. As far as I can tell, he still fulfills the same admin duties he did when he played on FICS regularly. I'm sure he'll come back to FICS full time to play eventually, and we'll all be happy to see him return.
Hehe, that U$¢L is pretty clever... I've never seen that before.
-knighttour |
Knighttour
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 06:32 pm: |
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Thanks, SG.
In the interest of full disclosure, I hear this occured on USCL which may account for the email address not working:
Indigo(*)(TM)(3): we had some mail server problems yesterday
I'm justed checked into that by sending another email to see if it bounced too, and the email address seemed to be working today.
Impossible to tell whether it was really one day mail server problems or not, but people can give them the benefit of the doubt if they want.
When I sent the original email, the auto-response told me that the email didn't exist. "Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. vpopmail (#5.1.1)"
-knighttour |
g
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 06:33 pm: |
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Ok, I was curious if you can still log in there with cclient: yes you can. I didn't set interface string though. In about 3 mins I got this amusing message:
Uhoh. See you in next century.
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AdminBot just sent you a message:
As a standard member of this service, you are required to use a GamesParlor-certified client to connect. You are currently not using a GamesParlor-certified client to connect, which is in violation of our policy. This is a serious violation which constitutes "Theft of Service" because it requires you to willfully and knowingly circumvent the protections that we've put in place to prevent such connections. "Theft of Service" is illegal and will not be tolerated by GamesParlor, Inc. Additional attempts to connect without using an approved client may result in account banishment and possible criminal/civil charges being filed.
**** You have been kicked out by AdminBot! ****
Thanks for using the Global Chess Server! Come Back Soon! |
Knighttour
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2002 - 06:52 pm: |
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Hehe. I assure you that is a new addition, possibly in response to this BugBoard thread. For two weeks or so I logged on regularly with CClient and never received any such message. But obviously I haven't logged in since I was banned. I'm not the duping type.
-knighttour |
Knighttour
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 12:49 am: |
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They've threatened to revoke my USCF membership based on this BugBoard thread. I'll keep you all updated as this develops.
-knighttour |
Whoami
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 01:13 am: |
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Sounds like they really want to screw you wearing a sandpaper condom. |
Hilarious
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 03:27 am: |
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Knighttour,
You're kidding me! They want to restrict your freedom of speech by threatening to revoke your USCF membership? ROFL!!!
Let them do it. You have more than enough grounds for a lawsuit if they do. They absolutely have no case. |
Rubberduck
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 06:29 am: |
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Glad u sanctamonious hypocrete got his tiny hole fucked knighttour, cheers. |
SlimShady
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 08:44 am: |
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Hahahaha, I got that same message! I'll be damned if I ever pay or use that piece of fucking shit they call an interface! Somehow, I'm not gonna miss that poor excuse for a chess server at all. |
kingwalker
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 11:32 am: |
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Ajedrez is a lawyer!!  ++job to my boss!! |
Jamesbaud
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 12:27 pm: |
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Theft of service, haha Theft of service generally requires some sort of active fraud like changing your power meter or buying a cable descramler or illegally tapping a water line, etc.
Anyway, it seems rather simple to me. Why the hell would one use an inferior chess server such as USCL anyway?
Matt |
Knighttour
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 03:14 pm: |
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It seems to have been worked out now. They were bundling the accusation of my "publishing the results" with "reverse engineering" their software, and I think that most of their threats were based on the "reverse engineering" part of that. But I made it clear that I wasn't the one who discovered this little loophole. In fact it would have been impossible for me to do so since I have no copy of the USCL interface on my computer, and have not had a copy for around a year and a half.
I asked them to let me be unbanned in the future only on the condition that I sign up as a Royal member, because I will never be content with their interface, so if they are going to make a federal case out of it I might as well stay banned while I can't use other interfaces. This gives me a way back in case USCL becomes a great service sometime in the future and I want to check it out again. They seemed to agree to this.
I had some great dreams last night though. I dreamed that gamesparlor sued me under the DCMA thinking I would just roll over and beg for forgiveness, but instead I researched law for a solid week then I flew to Pittsburgh and represented myself in the case. Next in the dream during the pre-trial hearings I demanded that they turn over the sourcecode to the USCL client and server as evidence to be examined by experts to determine the date of all the changes dealing with the country code... then I countersued them for harassment to recoup my legal fees (travel and hotel) and demanded that they turn over their tax returns and internal budget as evidence that they were grasping at straws for money and frivilous litigation was the only way they could stay afloat. Then everyone at gamesparlor started shitting themselves when they realized the can of worms they had opened by putting me in the legal system. Daniel Sleator testified as an expert witness since he was right there in Pittsburgh anyway and hated gamesparlor so he did it for free. mmm... dreams...
-knighttour |
nfg
| | Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 07:34 pm: |
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bahahahah
u rule ;] |
I am LionMan
| | Posted on Saturday, April 27, 2002 - 11:21 am: |
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A quick update: As of Saturday April 27, it appears
the server is now set so if you're a serf member,
they won't allow you to connect except by their interfaces.
I tried to connect through straight telnet and it wouldn't
let me in. Gave me a message
**** This interface is not valid for your home service! ****
Changing country code doesn't seem to work (Tried %de
and %Au). |
bugboardghost
| | Posted on Saturday, May 04, 2002 - 07:08 pm: |
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that is bullshit to threaten to take away your uscf membership. there isn't any way they can do that. |
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