Supposedly he was first noticed when he was able to recover some obscure message on Shadowland during the first crash.

You mean the 2011 post?

"Good morning world. Welcome back. Play nice.
-Saeletra"

Twelve at the time, he found it when he was browsing Shadowland. Managed to copy-paste it before the Awakening happened and all hell broke loose. By the way, to gain access to Shadowland at that time you had to do some serious hacking, or atleast thats what City of Shadows says. Looks like FastJack was a child prodigy.

(P.S, FastJack wrote the Virus! )

Not a jar... an antique lava lamp

Nah. David Galivan (now known as Damien Knight) wrote the original Crash virus as an industrial espionage tool. When it went off the reservation, he joined the Air Force (and Echo Mirage) to help slay his rogue creation. Can't for the life of me remember where I found that bit, though.

Cool, I wasn't aware it was ever actually declared. I knew that there were rumours flying about, ranging from it was one of Dunkies pet projects to old Damien playing his tricks, but could never find a definite answer. You sure that wasn't in some Shadowtalk article? You know what they say, everything in Shadowtalk is subject to change

DWC is right. Company Gavilan worked for was called Acquisition Technologies and belonged to *cymbol clash* Thomas Roxburough. Now what bells ring there?

one variant i think i ran into was that the virus was a prototype of the nanosecond buyout code...

To be specific, it wasn't just your own brain. You also needed:

• A Datajack
• Program Carriers (Bodyware Cyber implant that allows up to three optical chips to be slotted; these chips then fed connection prongs with retractable fiber optic cables. These connection prongs, mounted on the back of the hand, would allow those chips to interface with a standard matrix connection. A subdermal fiber optic cable connected the program carriers to a datajack to allow for direct DNI control of the programs slotted.)
• Optical chips containing three of the four "Persona Programs" that constituted the basic Matrix Attributes of that era's ruleset: a chip each for Evasion, Sensors, and Masking.
• (Optional) Headware Memory for storage of files to be downloaded from or uploaded to the Matrix.
• (Optional) Reaction/Initiative Dice Enhancers such as Control Rigs or Wired Reflexes. (Decking Naked used the character's Meatspace Initiative.)

In short, Decking Naked merely meant using a partial, striped-to-the-bare-minimum-components cyberdeck that just happened to consist of cyberimplants. It's still not a trivial task: the lack of a Master Persona Control Program chip meant that the user had to co-ordinate three separately running Persona Programs into a coherent Matrix Icon through shear force of Willpower. Running without the Persona Program "Bod" also meant that there was no Matrix Condition Monitor; any Matrix Damage went straight onto the Stun track. Finally, a Naked Decker wasn't allowed to bring any Utility Programs with. Any Utility Programs needed to be coded on the fly by allocating Dice directly from the Hacking Pool, meaning only the most skilled would even dream of trying.

I don't disagree that anyone who Decked Naked and lived to tell about it was a Matrix Badass, but it wasn't a means to learn insights into how the Matrix worked, it was how you demonstrated that you already knew how it worked, and didn't need crutches such as a fully constructed cyberdeck. Using the Program Carrier implant in this manner was itself a hack; it was originally designed to slot basic diagnostic programs that allowed Matrix technicians to perform troubleshooting on a system without jacking in.

sounds quite a bit like a TM in operation, that...

Personally I like Snow_Fox's idea the best.

Except that being a Technomancer hasn't ever give anyone brain cancer, which was the in-game reason given for why the Program Carrier implant was phased out. And of course, the fact that being a Technomancer requires no hardware what-so-ever.

It's a little bit of a closer analogue to being an Otaku, as they at least required a Datajack equiped with an ASIST Converter to function. In fact, when the Otaku were introduced in the Denver boxed set, they had to specifically state that these kids who could run the matrix without a cyberdeck weren't using the then-obsolete Program Carrier technology.

Yet. It's still a pretty new phenomena. No one knows what long term affects there may be.

Everything gives everyone cancer. Even the cancer-curing agents can cause cancer.

ah, got to love reading the lists of possible side-effects on things like pain killers

So, noticed something in some of the newer books. This is in referance more too the "Who is the JackPoint Reader". The reader seems to be capable of reading the PM's of multiple different users. An example would be in Ghost Cartels where he/she reads a PM from Riser to Kay. St Irregular (There are more examples as well). I know that the Freelancers have stated that they are not aware of any specific character being the JackPoint Reader, but those Freelancers are tricksy buggers!

That would mean that the Reader would have to have Admin/Moderator rights yes? And the only people I am sure have atleast moderator rights would be Jack himself and Sunshine (She reopens a SAN by herself in one of the books, I forget which.)

could it have been forwarded?

Could be, I cannot really see why anyone would want to forward some of them. The message seems to be topic specific, and not related to any other ones.

Or any other medication on the market right now. Every time I hear, "Side affects may include death" on a commercial, I start laughing maniacally.

It's always possible that the JackPoint reader could have hacked those messages open. If the network was really secure and protected the privacy of the users, even the moderators wouldn't have access to the private messages.

Yeah, I like those birth control variances that increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and blood clotting. You very well might die, but at least you won't be pregnant!

Back on track: It's entirely possible that the JP character has simply Sniffer'd.

Or maybe the sender or recipient just gave him a copy of the post/chat. You know, just going for the easiest explanation. Sorry to dash the hopes of anyone looking for an evil Jackpoint conspiracy.

Sure, but then the question becomes, "why?"

If something weird was going on, you'd tell your friends and provide whatever "proof" you might have wouldn't you? Besides, by sending the entire transcript they'd see everything you saw, no chance of leaving anything out and you wouldn't have to tell the same story over and over and over and over and over. I know that's one thing that always annoys me about trying to disseminate information.

Sure, but from what I remember of the IMs, ect, that explaination doesn't really fit.

What makes you think he didn't? Who would know?

How so Ravor? It seems rational to me that either the recipient or sender posted it publicly, sent it to an associate, or to a network of "friends". I could be wrong, I'm mostly just throwing out possibilities, but I am curious why you think that.

Unless my memory is failing me, the contant of some of the IMs doesn't strike me as something one could forward in the Shadows safety. Besides, even with today's tech, a forwarded message is clearly marked as being such and I don't see that feature as going away any time soon.

Hmm. That is a point. While I'm not sure wheither I necessarily agree, or, for that matter, disagree with your conclusions, I'll definately keep them in mind while reading those in the future.

That's actually a feature of some mail clients and not others or users discretion. Maybe the forwarder wanted to strip the header and forward information.

I chose to see the Jack Point splashes as mostly humorous and generic but I've also decided that Jack Point is a shadow resource widely used and read in the community. The core fifty or so users sometimes refered to have more powers/features and functions and are expected to reciprocate by posting more information within their ability. Others likely do post comments in threads but like rep filtering software today they don't make it in the "books" unless their comment is flagged as particularly insightfull by one of the core crew. Which may in turn be the road to joining the Jackpoint group proper.

That's my take.

Yep, there's probably a group of prime runners in any given munincipality that are professionals and thus given access to JackPoint. They farm intel for the core posters, which in addition to serving as a resource to everyone, helps them decide when they need to make a focus article, and what on.

Jack-cess?

Isn't that more what the Shadowlands are for? I imagine JackPoint itself being a much more private affair, something that lots of people know about but very few have access too. ShadowSEA is back up and running after the Crash, under the command of a new Sysop, and the Nexus is still the biggest Data Haven out there. Plenty of places for the other Prime Runners to gather information without encroaching on the JackPoint VPN.

/shrug

It becomes a matter of perception and implication. To be relevant, especially in the tone of Jack's rant in the opening of the 4E book and also to fit the scope of something that the runners might actually "see" and therefore being more easy to match palyer knowledge to character knowledge Jackpoint has to be out there in some way. ShadowSea and the Nexus just don't ahve the same ring to them. Heck for the longest time the nexus was naught but a glorified mirror site.