Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Wednesday 2/01/2002

New Year's Honours are out. And among them, between gongs for Services To The Queen's Handkerchief and Running Faster Than Foreigners, is an Order of the British Empire for one Jeremy Sans, head bod of hyper-successful Argonaut Games. Which is scary stuff, and not only because I've never heard anyone call him Jeremy.

Before he got into games software, Jez was a BBC Micro nut who was also one of the first wave of serious UK hackers. Many of his exploits from those days -- when it wasn't illegal to be a hacker, as BT expensively proved by prosecuting two friends all the way to the Lords -- are still talked of reverently by ancient computer hacks. He was even reputed to be able to tell someone's password from the sound of it being typed, but you know how legends grow. There are many tales to be told from those days, of the two-inch thick fanfold printout containing an American university's entire stock of dirty limericks -- surely the first online porn stash; of that most peculiar business with the TV company; of... but I am not the sort of man to tell them. Not yet, anyway.

Jez, you have my public key.