Checked the email upon waking up this morning to find a new follower on the twitter. Once I was fully awake and able to focus on a computer monitor, I checked the tweet timeline to discover that this new follower might be interested in joining the this sock puppetry class. So I decided to check the profile:

Rechecking the early tweets from self-proclaimed CAPTAIN of the LulzBoat I realized this could be big trouble for all of us. The LulzBoat for those who’ve not been paying attention this past week are a serious group of mischief makers and operate under the twitter ID @LulzSec. Recent LulzBoat projects have garnered gloabal attention. Here’s a brief summary of what they claim to have been into this past week:

• Running a story on multiple PBS news sites that Tupac Shakur is alive and well and living in New Zealand
• Slipping into a Sony database and grabbing and releasing tons of stuff such as passwords that were stored in plain text and movie coupons
• Sucking emails and passwords and other information security type stuff from a website affiliated with the FBI in Atlanta

On many levels, I agree with EnderRed’s opinion that such mischief is problematic and is not something we should uncritically endorse.

I’m also a bit freaked out by the sort of attention that could come down on our course for being affiliated with such a renegade group. But it’s also highly improbable that were this character to truly be the CAPTAIN of the Lulzboat, then he or she would probably be to busy to get involved in this Sock Puppetry class. I therefore threw caution to the wind and replied to the CAPTAIN thusly: