David O Toole

David O Toole was contacted by the US Government regarding his lisp hacking.

He posted a vague warning about it on the lispgames mailing list and mentioned on the IRC that "it was all over".

All his blogs, twitter and any traces of his code have disappeared from the internet.

I've been unable to contact him in the last few months.

wtf?

>>2
its true google it

I've googled it. Still wtf?

Programming in that awful language should rightfully be a crime against humanity. Lets hope he stay properly medicated now.

>>5
yeah they locked him up and flooded him with LSD and brainwashed him into never programming again

So who was this guy?

He freaked out (for what reason?) and deleted all of his accounts. But his new blog has been updated two days ago. http://blocky.io/blog/

>>7
top lisp hacker. he wrote games for fun and did some blackhat stuff for pay

>>9
implying

>>8
http://dto.github.com/notebook/

http://cryptome.org/0005/dod-lisp-sol.htm
Weird shit. Must be schizo.

Can we finally post again?

>>12
Hahaha oh wo- what the fuck am I reading.

Dod needs rogue games in Lisp. If you code rogue games in Lisp they will come for you.

There is secret research in our underground lab on creating the most resource hogging game ever, i can't say much more as it is classified a X-class cyberweapon capable of bringing Xeon servers to their knees.

troll 9000

>>16 =)

>>8
Blocky looks quite interesting. I first noticed the screenshots and immediately thought of CLIM and OpenGenera. Looking back at the blog, it seems they are some in the influences that led to writing of blocky. Maybe I'll play with it when I have the time.
>>12
He appears to be afraid of being in contact with commercial entities as to avoid being trapped by some IP laws/shrink-wrap EULAs (think patents, NDAs and non-compete clauses). I figure it would be a wise thing to do for an open-source developer depending on the laws of the country in which you reside/have citizenship on. It's the same kind of paranoia that rms would have you going when using mono or c# (or anything from MS) - to avoid getting trapped by patents.

>>19
>It's the same kind of paranoia that rms would have you going when using mono or c# (or anything from MS) - to avoid getting trapped by patents
You have to consider the context under the existance of Mono. MS. MS has promised not sue implementations of a specific version of the .Net standard. This promise does not cover unauthorised variants. This promise does not cover .Net standard libraries. A further thing to consider is MS's MO and stance toward FOSS.

How to break your legally binding promises -- the legal way:


1. Never outright license.

2. Only promise not to sue...

2.1. Over patents you control.

3. Sell patents to patent troll and/or puppet company.

3.1. Voilà you no longer control the patents

4. Set us up the patent bomb.

5. Profit


I predict nothing will happen to Mono now or even within two years time (maybe nothing will ever happen). The fact that MS holds important patent rights over key .Net infrastructure makes it risky for the FOSS movement to depend upon these .Net infrastructure. Why? The MS MO shows it is not trustworthy.

As for David O'Toole's case, I don't know about the details so I cannot compare it to Mono paranoia.

dto

There seems to be more explanation from DTO:

http://lists.common-lisp.net/pipermail/lisp-game-dev/2011-August/000168.html

this situation is very confusing.

hey there, just checking in to correct one misstatement,

I've never done any black-hat work, whatever that is.

hey there, just checking in to correct one misstatement,

I've never done any black-leggings work, whatever that is.

what is this site and why am i being discussed on it

>>26 Lold at your sage field.

>>27 Yes indeedy the DTO could just be Doomed To Obscurity, or perhaps a shadowy organization not yet separated from the 4chan placenta

>>19

As far as patents go, it looks like all the interesting stuff in Blocky (even the stuff that looks innovative) is actually borrowed from pretty old systems (Smalltalk, Self) and university and/or public-funded tech.

(Actually that's a great approach if you think about it, because mining Citeseer and old public research projects for ideas is a great way to systematically establish bona fide prior art for every concept and technique employed in the program.)

Welcome to the patent hell that the US has become, where the more creative a programmer you are, the more time and effort you must spend making damn sure you don't actually innovate.

If we USians weren't also simultaneously fucked in every other department of nationhood, I'd really worry about the impact software patents are having on our IT competitiveness. But the transition to a service/tech economy is actually what ruined us. Software patents are just ruining the outcome of THAT.

god damn it

>>29 I, too, see nothing wrong with the idea that a proprietary corporation might be afraid of competition from a Lisp video game engine, and concoct elaborate schemes involving DoD and patents to eliminate this threat. Happens all the time, actually. No signs of paranoia and delusion of grandeur can be seen here. I'm deadly serious and am not giggling like a schoolgirl at all, especially not at the "competition from a Lisp video game engine".

where is your quote from

>>32
not sure, but you should check my dubz just in case

>>31 My point was to alert people to non-compete issues and patents that may affect them. I never said anything about competition, unless I'm somehow forgetting the source for your quote? It's not clear if you've read the actual two or three archived posts at issue here because none of them have the phrase you put in quotes and giggle at.

I have since learned that I was not the only person contacted privately, in this fashion, by that guy, on that mailing list.

Video games have been no exception to the increasing use of patent warfare. If anything it's worse because of all the Media Lab grads.

If I am paranoid about the legal environment it's because I spent about 2 years on the administration team at a successful video game company that was constantly being sued.

In response to the withering ridicule, >>31

Read the original email near the bottom of the cryptome post.

---BEGIN QUOTE---
Sorry to be brief.  Am on family vacation & using itsy-bitsy phone to
reply hopefully only to you.  Am working on hopefully industrial
strength lisp based simulation/game.  Am located in MA.  Would love to
have a chat about what you're doing & what your goals are.  Am under
non-compete with simulation company I co-founded & sold (mak.com) -
agreement is up 21 Dec this year.  Have code in the can - mostly
server stuff - but cannot release anything yet.  Please reply if
interested in chatting - I'll buy.
---END QUOTE---

So, man, "industrial strength lisp simulation/game" was precisely the proprietary business being discussed---his words,not mine.

quite germane to the software patent in question, AND the non compete issues, and ALL this creepily not disclosed to the mailing list nor to the others being emailed privately.

get it?

what does check my dubz mean

the patent is now owned by ST Engineering, a Singaporean firm mostly owned by the government of Singapore

Hi, I am the David T. O'Toole named in the title of this forum. Since I am a private individual who is the subject of a discussion on a public forum, and since most likely the only thing I can do to correct misstatements is to respond to them here, I would like to post my public key as myself using a secure tripcode for the post.

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=bYqf
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

The public key in >>38 can also be found on my website:

http://dto.github.com/notebook

Which I suppose could be a halfway reasonable means of authenticating my responses here.

Point by point, I'll start by saying: I've never done any kind of "black hat work". In addition, posts 34 through 38 are mine.

Wow that IS really DTO posting.

Man you should have stayed with working on ORG and elisp this vidya is a PIA.