From: decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (dean.kaflowitz)
Subject: Re: Who was "Dennis Hall"?
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 16:45:57 GMT

In article <1992Aug16.001437.16522@csus.edu> chaneysa@nextnet.csus.edu (Stephen A Chaney) writes:
> In article <1992Aug13.154042.9507@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
> >
> >	I've seen the claim here that "Dennis Hall" was really Steve
> >Chaney trying to satirize the pro-choice movement with preposterous
> >pro-choice postings.
> >
> >	What did "Dennis Hall" say, and what's the full story?
> 
> A local student calling himself Dennis Hall, obviously had a cs 60
> class (C programming, so I now understand - a class I haven't had
> yet). He got an account, and began posting to t.a. He did something
> regarding posting someone's e-mail, and from what I heard, got torn up
> by his own friends. 

Note this.  The system administrator for that account called me
in response to email I had sent him.  In the email I asked whether
or not the individual posting as "Dennis Hall" was actually
Stephen Chaney.  The system administrator confirmed that it was
Stephen Chaney.

Stephen Chaney, posting as "Dennis Hall," had posted articles
which were highly inflammatory, claimed to be the product of a
"pro-choice" viewpoint, and instead presented the nasty and
idiotic sort of "pro-choice" opinion that is generally described
by Chaney's "pro-life" articles as the "pro-choice" position.
The articles in question were not representative of any but the
most extreme and hateful "pro-choice" opinions I have encountered,
and most certainly did not represent anyone I have seen so far
on the net with th epossible exception of Mark Kaufman.
> 
> Around then, I get this b.s. letter from Scott Roby @ udel.edu,
> claiming that I was posting as Dennis Hall. He said the first time he
> sent such a letter (which I never got) and posted it to USENET (which
> I must've missed), he said it was a joke, but that this is real. 
> 
> My extrapolation is that Dennis got fucked badly by his posting e-mail
> in public, in the tradition of Susan Garvin and Eric Rescorla, and
> that Roby and someone else had him right where they wanted: to use him
> as a joke to drag me down. Obviously, he was expendable as a public
> relations nightmare to their own side. (Though I wonder why they never
> did this to Rescorla or Garvin.) So they decided, "Steve Chaney posts
> as Dennis Hall" was a prank not worth letting slide by.

Actually, Scott saw the deception and wanted to warn people that some
"pro-life" individual was posting articles in a "pro-choice" guise
in order to discredit the pro-choice position.

> Since then, my system administrators have been nagged by Roby, Drieux
> and Dan King, and both Dan King and Roby have been told up-front that
> they had better not _EVER_ write here about it again, or they're beef
> jerky. Scott Roby, as much as he claimed it did not happen, was brought 
> to see his sysadmins, who had quite a bitsa paper work to write up
> because of his probing around here, and was told not to nag CSUS
> again. 

The above paragraph of Chaney's is simply a lie, as demonstrated
by the fact that Scott Roby and Dan King have both posted numerous
times about the incident since it first occurred, and have not
changed their versions one bit.  It is also interesting that
I have never been bothered about the matter at all, yet I have
posted often about having contacted the system administrator and
about his having confirmed the fact that it was Stephen Chaney
who owned the "Dennis Hall" account.  It is also interesting
that Chaney has changed, in this posting, his story yet again.
Originally, Chaney claimed that there was no such student as
Dennis Hall at his school, but that there was a Donlad Hall.
Now he is claiming that there is a Dennis Hall.  It is a pity that
he cannot even keep his story straight.
> 
> Dennis, meanwhile, got his posting privileges removed (while mine
> remained), and by some act, got it reinstated. At least that's the way
> it seemed, as his articles did come up under "junked" in my KILLfile,
> a few times. 

The system administrator in question told me he suspended Chaney's
posting privilegs for ten days.  And he specifically said they
were Chaney's posting privileges, not "Hall's."
> 
> Rumor _also_ has it, as people have claimed on USENET, that he posted
> elsewhere, though I can't remember where. 
> 
> Patrick Humphrey jumped in and said he had documentation to prove
> Roby's claims. I, being the poker player, called his bluff, and he
> folded, claiming he mistook the word "documentation" for the alleged
> phone call that Roby said he got, confirming his claim. Which never
> did happen in the first place. 
> 
> Now, I don't know what happened to him, but the mere fact that I've
> never been in cs 60 is good enough to unravel the "Steve Chaney posts
> as Dennis Hall" prank. (Though I will be taking cs 60 real soon
> here.) Too bad, though; I wanted to know how, when I saw resurrections
> of his stuff, he was able to do totally indented articles. It's a pain
> in the ass to do it manually, and in my shell environment, NeXTNET
> does not support indentation...  

Again, the system administrator for the account in question confirmed
that it was Chaney's account.

Dean Kaflowitz