From: huffman@NOSPAMaccess1.net (Bill Huffman)
Subject: BC3K - History of Mr. Smart's Flame War
Date: 03 Nov 1998 00:00:00 GMT (original)
Message-ID: <363e9f02.266204539@news.access1.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.space-sim

HISTORY OF THE DEREK SMART FLAME WAR

When the archives are discussed, that is a reference to http://follies.werewolves.org/archives.

PRE-HISTORY YEARS (before BC3K)

The very beginnings of this story have never been chronicled for Derekology. I assume that Derek Smart was born. Come to think of it I believe that Mr. Smart has even admitted to being born. (A Derekologist must learn to be very careful. Any truth or fact may be denied or lied about no matter how obvious it may seem at the time. E.g., the agreement that Derek's lawyer made that was to lead to the removal of my web page was later denied by Derek) Note: these very early years are based entirely on Mr. Smart's word. If you're a derekologist, you should know what that means.

-Mr. Smart was born to a British mother and an American father. Mr. Smart's mother was white and his father was black. When it's mentioned that Mr. Smart appears black, he always seems to point out "I come from a mixed origin, I am proud to be whatever I am, black, white or mixed." (posted 5/9/97)

-(update 5/3/00) In an email to Daktari recently, Mr. Smart claimed he was adopted. So the accuracy of this Pre-history section is apparently brought into question by conflicting statements made by Mr. Smart. (If you're a derekologist, you shouldn't be suprised by this development.)

-The American father (now deceased) was career US military.

-Mr. Smart grew up in England (and still has a very pleasant British accent).

-Mr. Smart as a kid was a computer hacker, writing computer viruses. (I'm not making this up. Derek actually said this.) This activity foretold the future and predicted BC3K, the biggest virus ever produced! Derek distributed pictures of some buddies that participated in this early hacker activity with him in the Exposed Years.

THE EARLY YEARS (before BC3K release)

The main source for this section THE EARLY YEARS (before BC3K release) is the 11 page story at the end of the BC3K manual. A copy is available in the archives/bcstory.

-When Mr. Smart was in London he started working on his game 1988-1989.

-Mr. Smart admits he had no PhD at this point in time. (see Mr. Smart's Anthology Of A Flamewar - The Last Dance)

-Mr. Smart moved to the USA in 1989.

-In October 1992, Derek signed with BC3K's first publisher. In a post made before Interplay was announced as a distributor, Mr. Smart said that BC3K had a total of 4 publishers (IIRC).

-By January 1993 the publisher (Intracorp?) had dropped BC3K.

-By March 1993 another publisher had picked up and dropped BC3K.

-In early 1993 Derek came out with BC3K demo 3.0. The manual is available in the 93demoManual.txt Derek says, "The purpose of this demo is to ensure that GALCOM operatives remain confident that this program will be worth the wait. A whole bunch of features have been disabled such as trading, docking, personnel deployment etc." It seems this is a ploy to claim that unimplemented code was just "disabled". It serves Mr. Smart well over the years.

-A new publisher (Mission Studios) picked up BC3K and lots of work was done and paid for. But, it was dropped again by the end of 1994. This began the search for another publisher to pay off Mission Studios and to cover the rest of the development.

-On May 10, 1995 Three Sixty Pacific announced that they'd signed with Mr. Smart to complete BC3K. Here's one poster's reaction (ANewPublisher.txt) "After seeing the huge demo about a couple years ago (about 12 meg or so in many pieces) and all the hype in the readme's, it has made me wonder why anyone will pick it up at all. The game just really stunk."

editorial note: You have to hand it to Mr. Smart, he is persistent and determined. It's just too bad that such fine attributes have been wasted producing such a sad example of gaming. I think it might point out a major Mr. Smart weakness, a lack of objectivity that leads to lots of other problems including an inability to execute to expectations that he has set.

-360 Pacific didn't last long, by August 1995 Take2 had picked up BC3K and paid off Mission Studios.

-August 1995 Take2 announced "Yes, BC3000AD has been in development for a long time (o.k. a really, really long time), but the game is in Beta now and it WILL be worth the wait."

-December 15, 1995 Derek announced "THE RELEASE DATE OF BATTLECRUISER:3000AD HAS BEEN PUSHED BACK TO JANUARY 15TH 1996." (see BC3KTardiness.txt) This post is also the earliest post I've found where Mr. Smart claims a PhD.

-2/12/96 is the first date I've found for Derek posting on the Usenet. Prior to that, he posted very frequently on AOL and I think also on Compuserve. The Deja Usenet archives are very sketchy back this far so this may not really be the first post. Most of the posts in the AOL Take2 forum has been lost except for some much later posts salvaged by Fthx that are available in the archives. There's also a few that were cross posted to Usenet by someone else, like the example directly above. However, there's plenty of evidence that the flame war was going on in AOL, at least, before it spilled over into Usenet. Since it was pay by the minute and in it's very own forum, the flaming was relatively mild and sporadic.

-2/16/96 was Mr. Smart's first flame on Usenet, "Here we go again. What's the matter with you people." Only a mild one but, a first is a first.

-2/21/96 was Mr. Smart's first Derekism spoken on Usenet, "Give me more credit than I am due." The most famous Derekism today is probably, Some people have even questioned my insanity. But, I never doubt.

-Sometime before May 1996 Mr. Smart suffered some personal trauma or sadness when his wife left him. He said it was because of time and effort he'd put into BC3K.

-April-May 1996 After Mr. Smart botched the agreed upon release, Take2 demanded that, if the effort was to continue then, responsibility for BC3K would be brought in house.

-June-Sept 1996 Derek had signed the contract agreeing to give control to Take2 but, he didn't cooperate. From Derek's own words, it appears he fought them every step of the way. He didn't cooperate in modifying the game to fit into the agreed upon schedule. He didn't cooperate with his development team's decisions or direction. He even worked on a different build than the rest of his team worked on. In a following quote from Derek, he even admits that his build had a whole bunch of fixes in it that were not in the Take2 build. Why hadn't Derek released his fixes to his development team's build? He instead played "chicken" with Take2, assuming they wouldn't go through with the planned deadline if their build was too pathetic unfortunately, he was wrong.

-September 1996, Mr. Smart allegedly attacked a coke machine at Take2 when he was told Take2 was releasing the game anyway. Allegedly, security had to escort Mr. Smart off the premises. see CGWarticleCoke.txt A curious note, Mr. Smart still says he didn't find out that they really shipped until he went and bought his own copy. I don't know why he likes to say this unless, he was so convinced that they wouldn't do what they had always said they were going to do, that he didn't believe it until he actually went across the street from his home and bought a copy of BC3K for himself. If that's the case then, it's just another example of the amazing blind spots that Mr. Smart can suffer from due to his lack of objectivity.

note: In the following months you could always "trigger" Mr. Smart by mentioning the "Coke" incident.

-October 1996 Take2 released BC3K as an incomplete game. My guess is that Take2 went through with the release in large part because Mr. Smart had not cooperated with the BC3K development team and Take2 didn't see any other choice except walking away and taking a big lose on the whole deal. I speculate that, part of the rational for their decision could have also been that Derek told them he had a build with many of the problems already fixed. I think that this overall interpretation is the same conclusion reached by Dean Gordon in his review of the flame war pointed to in http://home.san.rr.com/follies. Derek vehemently objected to this interpretation then, he put out his story at the end of the manual that seems to completely support the hypothesis that he had been extremely uncooperative with Take2 and his own development team. Here's a more recent post where Derek admits that he was determined that Take2's efforts to ship BC3K would fail.

Derek posts on 09 Dec 1999 to Newsgroups: alt.fan.elite, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.space-sim,
"Their [Take2] focus was to ship the game. Period. I was determined that it would *never* happen and that I'd rather go home, rip out the Chase engine, take a royalty hit and try to finish it."

This is exactly what happened. The problem is that with the lead designer determined to sabotage his own release it is a recipe for disaster. Disaster is what we got but Derek has tried to place all the blame on Take2! I think it's obvious where the real blame lies.

THE PATCH AND MANUAL MONTHS (after release but, before exposure)

-At this point most of the flame war was still not out on Use-net. The main topic was of course problems trying to get the game to run and to get a manual so the game could be played. However, foreshadowing the great fraud discoveries involving Derek, there was the ACAS insanity. ACAS was a web site that claimed to be an independent computer game Award company and supporter of the gaming industry. The months of 11/96 and 12/96 involved some fun threads where it seemed to become obvious to everyone that ACAS was some kind of poorly concealed front for Derek. The sole function of ACAS in its short life was apparently to award the TRON award to BC3K 1.0 for leading edge AI in the whole industry.

-This was the start of the "Blame It on Take2" phase of the Flame War. Mr. Smart would blame almost everything on Take2.

-During this period the flame war topics were primarily about Derek blaming everything on Take2, patches not being done as promised, manual not being available as promised, general flames being fired back and forth,

-10/96 Mr. Smart did his best to get people to buy and keep the DOA game. October 1996 when Usenet posts were just starting to make it look like the game might be total junk, Derek posted. "Once the patch is released it WILL solve 99% of these problems because 50% of them were already solved in the version that did not make it to master. It was sitting on the Take2 BBS while the company gave the team some days off!! They shipped v199z when v199z.4 (I think) was sitting on the Take2 BBS. The MASTER version was to be v1.00a. The patch will clearly display the versions as we go along."

-November 12, 1996 Derek posted (on AOL) "RE:patch d This patch will be a major patch which marks (a) the completion of the game's missing features, ie orbital flight model, probe ORBSCAN logic and fixes several bugs in the space and surface models. Any problems found with the version will be fixed and a final BC3K v1.1 will be released at the END of November." see ClassicMrWoody.txt note: The D patch actually came out in October 1997. Version 1.1 was renamed to 2.0 and is being released by Interplay as a bargain bin title packaged with another game. This was a couple years late (When Derek had said about 2 weeks!) plus, customers had to pay $10. Of course, by this time it didn't really matter.

-Here's an excellent post that covers this period very well. I wasn't really involved at the time so this is very much appreciated and interesting. Post from Daniel Evans.

-As I understand what went on in AOL and Compuserve, Mr. Smart was a laughing stock and the center of the flame war in these forums. The main body of the flame war moved from AOL and Compuserve into Usenet during this period as the AOL and Compuserve forums were discontinued and Derek modified his posting habits. However, some more input from some folks that actually observed the AOL or Compuserve exchanges would be very appreciated. This is interesting for two reasons. First, it further establishes this flame war as the biggest and longest in history. Second, Mr. Smart seems fond of the misconception that the flame war was about Take2 botching the release of the game. You may reference the following directory for posts that were made to Usenet but indicate to me the flame war was going strong before it ever moved to Usenet. Before1997

-12/96 As an example of how nasty it was getting, someone started up a humorous thread titled 'Derek buttfucks sheep'.

-As the flame war moved to Usenet, the flame war topics were centered around things like where is the promised FAQ? Where is the promised manual? Derek blaming everything on Take2. Derek claiming that he didn't get paid by Take2. (A report filled by Take2 with a federal overseeing agency contradicts this.) Derek insulting customers. Derek insulting bystanders. Derek proving he could be a most entertaining fellow, at least when he didn't want to be. Derek claiming he warned people the game wasn't playable from the beginning. Derek saying he only flames in self defense. Derek telling his customers in Europe they wouldn't be supported then denying he ever said that.

-1/97 Most of the threads were about the horrible reviews that BC3K received.

-2/97 There was a few month lull in the flame war because people just weren't that interested in the crappy game and the initial outrage at being ripped off had died down. Derek moves his flaming to Use-net starting this month and the Use-net flame war really starts to pick up steam.

-2/97 The C4 patch meant the game was kind of playable. I suspect that if Derek had cooperated with the development of his game, it could have been released in a state close to this plus even a manual might have been done. The problem now was that there was no manual. Most of the complaints were now about the manual and really potential fans were starting to drop like flies. Also, because of record returns, many places had BC3K in the bargain bins already.

-2/16/97 Mr. Smart said, "I would like to assure you AND give you my personal guarantee that my midnight on 3/01/97 a complete manual in Word 7 and Adobe Acrobat format (which I am currently wrapping up) will be online at http://www.bc3000ad.com/Commanders_Forum/". It was never available in Word format. A "preview" manual was available in August 1997. The complete manual was finally made available many months later, January 1998.

-2/20/97 Mr. Smart makes some racist insults against an oriental and all hell breaks loose. (see TOEFL posts in FamousFlames)

-2/97 Derek's best quote of the month, "Again, let me apologize to all orientals who were offended by my post. The rest of you can kiss my ass if you think I'm racist."

-2/97 & 3/97 This was also the wonderful pre-Europe release period. During this period, Mr. Smart firmly established Derek bashing as an international pass time. There were brief periods of time he said the European release wouldn't be supported. He said the European release would be dud units and you wouldn't be able to patch them with his patches. For some reason he seemed to be especially hostile to the earliest European customers and managed to recruit a number of long-term naysayers.

-3/16/97 Derek had a run in with some magazines. In particular one magazine (Boot) even printed an article where experts stated that the neural net in BC3K was a lie. This caused Mr. Smart to go off the deep end and in email, threaten physical violence against the author. As part of Derek's on-line response, he made a post in which he waved his PhD in their faces and said that if they wanted more detail about how it worked, they should have looked up his dissertation because, it's published and available. He said they should do their homework, it avoids so many hassles latter. This proved important later as Derek's biggest known lie, his PhD, started to unravel. see Post01DoYourHomework.txt

-3/97 Derek's best quote for month, "It does NOT need support because it works!"

-In this early period of 1997 a statement that Mr. Smart allegedly made in the AOL forum that he had spent 3.5 million dollars of his own money developing BC3K made it into the Usenet record via a thread involving Mark Asher, Derek Smart and someone else. On 2/22/1997 Derek said, "If they think, this game has not cost me $3.5 over the past 7 years, someones got a faulty Pentium chip in their brain."

-4/97 Derek had established himself as a real nut and there was getting to be more flames about Derek than about BC3K. The C5 patch was delivered without the promised manual. The manual became a VERY touchy subject. It had replaced coke machines as the easiest why to get Derek to explode.

-4/97 Derek's best quote of the month, "The best defense is a crippling, definitive and unceremoniously cruel offense. After all, I am under military command and I don't plan on running for diplomatic office."

-5/97 Derek's top quote of the month, "Is it me or are you just oozing with stupidity? The BC3K fame directed at US the gaming community for crying out load. Do I have to spell it out for you? Yet YOU can tell ME I have a communicating problem? I least when I lay it on you, you seem to understand quite well what I'm saying. Go figure."

-6/11/97 Derek was saying he could re-release BC3K on his own if he wanted to. Where would he get the million to do this? "I can raise a close to a million in a week if I did the paperwork. ... Besides, I don't need a million to publish BC3K."

-6/14/97 Derek said, "I got a $175k loan back when I didn't even have BC3K 25% finished. I'm still paying off this loan if you must know."

-6/97 Derek's best quote for the month, "Perhaps one day in the future, I'll do a manual. But for now, I'm too busy doing add-ons for an unstable and still partially unfinished game to worry about something as trivial as a manual."

-During this period, Mr. Smart hatched his pay for the final patch plan. After overwhelming cries of foul from customers, Mr. Smart eventually reconsiders.

-Summer 97 The C5 patch was done in April apparently in preparation for the demo in the CGW. This sparked some good laughs. Among them was a Derek statement that CGW was having an extra big problem with CD thefts out of the mag because people wanted BC3K so bad. Another episode was a Derek statement that CGW messed up the patch he gave them and someone from CGW posted the exact email directions from Derek and he had messed up the directions.

-8/6/97 & 8/8/97 Derek posts what is probably the most vile post I've ever seen, the infamous piss in mouth flame. see PissInMouth.txt This lead to me wondering if there might be a way to rid the news group of this scourge. I thought that Mr. Smart was possibly a pathological liar. I remembered someone from my past with that affliction. I learned I couldn't trust a word they said. When they made a statement that put them in a favorable light, I could almost count on it being a lie. Previously, I'd noticed that Derek had not responded to queries about his PhD. That had always seemed strange to me because I'd rarely seen him pass up a chance to brag. But, I had always just dismissed it as maybe Derek just didn't see the post. However, at about this same time, Derek responded to a medical doctor that had asked about his PhD. Derek said, "What's it to you? Still struggling with your high school diploma????" (see MDRequestsPhDInfo.txt) Putting it all together, I concluded that his PhD was probably fake.

-8/8/97 I fire the first volley in the PhD wars. I say that I believe the PhD is probably a fake and I challenge Mr. Smart to name his school. For good measure, I threw in some old fashion goading to make sure he didn't just ignore the post then, I leave for a two week vacation. see phdWarFirstVolley.txt

note: the source for all Derek Smart posts in the following stuff up to Derek Smart Fraud Day is PhDFraudAnthology

-8/9/97 Derek responds with a bet to my challenge. I'm sure he was hoping to distract the whole issue with this red herring bet. Another thing that made this day interesting in the flame war is it is the day that Derek stopped calling his flame war antagonists naysayers and started calling them detractors.

-8/22/97 I guess all the stress of wondering whether his fraud would be exposed got to Derek? Or, maybe he thought he could get rid of the rest of the detractors by flaming? In any case, his posts got even more vicious. It got to be so bad that this day was declared to be the first official "DEREK-SMART-SAYS-FUCK-YOU DAY".

-8/25/97 I return from vacation and I'm excited to see what I interpret to be, a Derek running scared and I'm convinced, more than ever, that Mr. Smart is a fraud. After barely being able to survive the uncontrollable laughter due to Nai-Chi's FAQ, I shrug off Derek's bogus bet, state why I believe that Derek doesn't have a PhD and say "I will promise to never again post an article to a Derek Smart or a Battle Cruiser thread again if your PhD is confirmed. My last Derek Smart post would be a public apology for calling you a habitual liar."

I then visited the technical librarian at my work and asked her to get me a copy of Mr. Smart's dissertation. All I told her was that he went to a school in the USA or England and that his dissertation was on Artificial Intelligence. When she stated that it would cost about $75 to get a copy, I told her, "Well, let's take a look at the abstract first before we decide to order it." I then chuckled to myself.

THE EXPOSED YEARS (after Mr. Smart's PhD fraud is exposed)

-8/26/97 I hear back from the librarian that the dissertation can't be found. She says that she should have found the dissertation. She says she will look and see if he's ever published anything. I posted a message to Usenet that there was now verifiable evidence that Mr. Smart didn't have a valid PhD.

Later that day, I get the following email from the librarian.

--------

Subject: Dissertation-Smart

Bill,

Here is where I have searched besides the Dissertations Abstract Online and Sci Search.
UMI- both on line and telephone
IEEE and IE(UK) database from1988 forward. Doesn't seem he has written anything for those pubs.
ACM Guide to all ACM Pubs. no luck
OCLC online nothing no books, dissertation, or papers
Stanford Technical papers database
Cambridge UK Technical papers database.

If he would tell you the university where he did his paper I could get it. I have a funny feeling he has not done one yet and possibly he doesn't even like to write since I can't find anything.

I will keep thinking where else I could look, but for the moment the outlook isn't very positive.

Sorry I could not find it for you.

--------

I especially enjoyed the part "I have a funny feeling he has not done one yet". It was her diplomatic way of trying to say she didn't think he really had a PhD. (I confirmed this in a later conversation.)

-8/27/97 The first, the original "DEREK SMART FRAUD DAY", this is the day that Derek's fraud became obvious to the general ng reader because there were multiple people that posted they couldn't find his dissertation and he changed his story from "it's published and listed" to "in submitting the BC3K code for copyright, the entire thing is suppressed." After a post by Fthx (IIRC), I realized that it all meant that Mr. Smart was a fraud. There was much gloating, crowing, laughter and rejoicing. Derek said he was going away and wouldn't be back until BC3K 2.0 was on the shelves.

-9/19/97 Derek starts posting to the newsgroups again. To everyone's surprise he's still tagging a PhD after his name.

This is where the 3/16/98 post came back to haunt Derek. After he started posting again, people got on his case about his PhD. He claimed it was all suppressed and that his school was too personal to mention the name. When they brought up the fact that he had said it was published and listed he lied and said that he had said that just to send me off on a wild goose chase. He had apparently forgotten about the 3/16 post or was hoping it wouldn't come up. To this day he still sticks to this story and just ignores the fact that the 3/16 post was ever made.

-10/1/97 Derek lies, "when I left, I said that I would be back once D patch out." He said he would be back in a week, indefinitely and when BC3K 2.0 was on the shelves but, never mentioned the D patch.

-10/3/97 Derekology is established as a bona fide and real academic study at a renowned accredited university that can't be named because it is too personal. This raised Derekology up out of the gutter and made it the great intellectual pursuit that it is today. Many PhDs in Derekology have been bestowed, since. THIS IDIOT, DEREK CAN'T OFFER PROOF THAT DEREKOLOGY DOESN'T EXIST. (Note the all caps above is a satire of a quote of Derek's in the presentation of Mr. Smart's PhD fraud. http://werewolves.org/~follies/PhDFraud)

-10/6/97 Derek was back to his old flaming ways.

-10/97 & 11/97 This period was the killfile follies. Derek claimed he killfiled all the detractors. Yet, he asked supporters to send him copies of detractor posts so he could respond to them and he sometimes just responded without asking for a copy first.

-Early 12/97 BaZ sees an old claim made by Derek on Fraud Day that he has a Novell Certificate. So he calls Novell and finds out that if it were true he should have been in their records but, he wasn't! This triggered one of the funniest episodes in the flame war. Derek sent copies of his alleged Novell Certificate as will as some other stranger pictures. In one Derek brags that it is of him and some buddies that wrote a computer virus. This also triggered another hilarious episode where Derek claimed his Mercedes convertible had EXTRACTED roll bars.

-12/97 Derek SPAMs the ng. Derek started posting huge copies of past posts in response to things he didn't like. He then blamed his spamming on the detractors!

-12/97 The top Derek quote of the month was, "Listen buttfuck, if any game was released incomplete, it too would*need* to be patched in order to make it work. Now, go back to fucking your mother, now that you're done with yoursister."

-February 1998 Apparently, in a bold and desperate attempt to get someone interested in re-releasing BC3K, Mr. Smart makes BC3K a freeware title.

-2/98 One fun thread was proof that Derek got paid a huge sum of money by Take2. This was funny because Derek had said that Take2 had stiffed him and he hadn't gotten paid. huffman addition 11/10/98: Mr. Smart gave a bunch more detail about this in a post available in archives/1NotSmart/1PR in a file called DerekExplainsFinancials.txt

We are now entering the period of the flame war where Mr. Smart hires a lawyer to join in on the fun. The full text of the email exchanges with the lawyer and me are available in BashersForJustice Note: Mr. Smart had threatened lawsuits against many people on Usenet. This was the first time he actually got a lawyer to make additional threats for him (AFAIK).

-3/12/98 Derek declared that he was going to sue the detractors and silence the opposition's side in the flame war. As it turns out, Derek's threats proved to be nothing more than an attempt to use the legal system as a scare tactic to squelch free speech and the truth on the Internet. This is in Part2a.txt in the above directory.

-3/16/98 Fthx (I assume) and I both received emails from Eric Rotbard, Derek's attorney. Fthx chose to ignore it. I understand that he wrote one letter to the AOL attorney and that was the end of that. (He used AOL to store his BC3K archives on the web.) I responded and cooperated fully with Mr. Rotbard. It was quickly agreed that we would use a third party lawyer to validate the PhD. However, that is as far as we ever progressed. This is in Part2a.txt in the above directory.

-3/17/98 Dan Brooks a fanatical Derek supporter (who claims he's not a Derek supporter) gushed out 41 euphoric posts on just this one day because he's so thrilled that Derek is finally going to crush his antagonists.

-3/28/98 In email, Derek's lawyer tried to pass off a bogus diploma as being equivalent to a real PhD. I didn't fall for it and said that checking to make sure of accreditation is not tangential to the issue. It is the issue. This is in Part4a.txt in the above directory.

-4/27/98 Eventually, Derek reneged on the deal after it became obvious that I was going to require that a check for school accreditation be done.

I believe that in Mr. Smart's last email to me he threatens severe physical violence. Here's my protest to the lawyer. Note, the all capitalized words are Derek's capitalization not mine.

------------------
It seems that he is threatening possible illegal action against me with his statement, "I WANT to teach Huffman a lesson and NOTHING is going to stop me from doing it." and his statement "I'm only interested in destroying him. Period." This could very easily be interpreted to mean that not even the law is going to stop him and he doesn't even care if he goes to prison as long as he destroys me.
------------------

From my perspective, at this point in time Mr. Smart had exhausted all legal avenues to get me to take down my web page. When he says NOTHING is going to stop him from destroying me, the only thing it can mean is severe violence (e.g., murder or arson)? This is in Part8a.txt in the above directory.

-By 5/28/98 I'd updated the web page to include another firmly established fact to the existing 3 other firmly established facts. "FACT 4: Derek's lawyer did not produce proof of a PhD. (Derek reneged on an agreement that would have removed this page.)" see http://home.san.rr.com/follies click on the link to PhD Fraud.

-5/28/98 I made the following magnanimous offer to Mr. Smart. "Note to Derek: If you publicly admit in this newsgroup that your "alma mater" was not accredited, my offer to you that I will take down my PhDFraud web page and put up a DegreeMill (or something) web page is still good. Or, if you publicly name your "alma mater" then, I offer to take down my web page and not put up another. These offers are being made in the spirit that the truth should prevail!" Mr. Smart's response was the non-sequitur "You, my friend, will *NEVER* get a free ticket out this unless you walk away - in defeat. ... I - will - make - you - pay. This, I promise." (The only way it makes sense to me as a response is if in fact he was and is threatening physical violence.)

-7/23/98 (on or about) It was announced that Interplay would distribute BC3K 2.0 (AKA BC3K 1.1 and BC3K Developers Edition) as a budget bin title for $20. Later it became $15 for a Star Trek title and BC3K both on the CD together.

-8/27/98 In honor of the first anniversary of Derek Smart Fraud Day, I presented the Web page dedicated to Truth, Justice and the Derek Smart Flame War, Anatomy of a Flame War at http://home.san.rr.com/follies

-September 1998 Mr. Smart says he released the final version to Interplay QA for final testing.

-10/13/98 Mr. Smart brags about being a member of Mensa as proof that he really has a PhD when he says, "Most of them could never fathom that someone like me who has worked for most major companies around the globe (including IBM, Novell, Compaq, to name a few), a member of MENSA (yes, I am. Let them go check) while I was in the UK, a holder of two prior degrees, a wall of certificates and diplomas *and* with cutting technology and superiority in various aspects of my career, could possibly earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science." Someone (Aldus Mayhem) calls Mensa and finds out that Derek apparently lied about being a member of Mensa! This spawned a whole bunch more very funny posts. see Mensa posts.

below here is an update done in December 1999

note: Someone else more recently checked and it was verified that Mr. Smart apparently lied about ever being a member of Mensa.

note: If you'd like to see what Derek has on his "wall of certificates and diplomas", Derek made some scans available and I wrote a tribute to Derek's great achievements and made links to them.

-End of December 1998 BC3K release 2.0 hits the bargain bins. Of course it didn't work at first and patches were done to get the 3D cards to be recognized and working properly.

-12/98 Derek's quote of the month, "Yet another intellectual thread ruined by these anti-social screw-ups."

THE BANKRUPTCY YEARS (after it was revealed that Derek Smart had declared bankruptcy)

-2/99 The quote of the month, "Here, I'll humor you before I killfile you. Just to advertise your blatant stupidity. ... Thanks for buying it and making me pennies richer. Guess who the joke is on."

-3/99 Quote of the month, "As I have said time and time again, there is a fine line between 'a gamer' and 'an anti-social misfit who *thinks* he/she is 'a gamer'."

-5/21/99 Louis JM revealed that Derek Smart declared bankruptcy here's his post. Mr. Smart of course threatens to sue Louis for this. He even threatens to sue me! He says that since I reposted a copy of Louis' post I had violated the law that says that credit reports are private! Louis posted a public court record not a credit report. Of course Derek claims that his lawyers and other secret sources have verified his interpretation and that everyone is going down in destruction once he files his case.

-8/22/99 "Derek Smart Says F-ck You Day" is celebrated by posting a tribute to Mr. Smart's "F-cking" posts

-8/27/99 The third "Derek Smart Fraud Day" celebration is a tremendous success! After some of the initial celebration died down, Derek posts some nonsense about a specific diploma mill being a good example of how you can get a valid degree like his. I cross post it to alt.education.distance and a few PhD's including Dr. John Bear himself join in on the fun.

-9/3/99 Derek admits that an accredited college did not grant his diploma like he'd been claiming. This was forced because Dr. John Bear came into the newsgroup and said that he'd never heard that anyone had totally suppressed his or her PhD like Derek had been claiming was done. This was a most successful "Derek Smart Fraud Day" celebration. I thought it couldn't be topped. I was quite sure that Derek had gotten a bogus diploma from a con-artist (i.e., degree mill) rather than a marginal unaccredited school but that it could never be proven without the school name. To my surprise the crowning glory was laid in our laps a week later. The truth became known.

-9/10/99 Derek admits that his diploma came from a degree mill! This was forced because Derek had admitted that it was a degree mill in email to Ed Bain. Ed saw Derek's lies snowballing again and Derek started personal attacks on Ed himself after Ed tried to intervene with some corrections to Derek's lies and false accusations against others. Ed became feed up with Derek's lies and after a warning to Derek didn't stop it, Ed posted the email.

-10/21/99 Derek forges a racist email message and posts it in the newsgroup in a desperate attempt to smear the detractors with racism. Of course Derek bungles the attempt and provides more funny antics and comedy for all.

-11/23/99 to 11/26/99 The Thanksgiving Freedom of Speech Battle took place. Derek takes down the two web sites dedicated to the flame war by Bill Huffman. Derek claimed that he had a full-blown offensive campaign in motion. California lawyers, the FBI and San Diego local law enforcement were allegedly all working together to put a stop to the flame war. He also threatened Huffman's employment again. Derek also started threatening other people in the newsgroup with legal action.

-11/23/99 Access1 told me on the phone that my account was taken down for libel.

-11/24/99 I wrote the following email to Access1.

-11/26/99 I got a call from Access1. In this call they said that libel was not the issue. The site was taken down purely on grounds that there was a copyrighted head bust from Derek's game on the web site. Spike also contacted Access1 and they told him the same thing. Spike posted this information (in alt.games.bc3000ad) and broke this part of the story first. The Access1 representative also admitted that no "legal authority" had contacted them. It was just Derek not even his lawyer. Access1 wanted to know if they restored my account could I guarantee that Derek wouldn't call them again. Of course I couldn't, they offered to give me a refund. If I'd pushed it I think that they would have put the site back up without a "Derek-free guarantee". I thought a refund and being rid of Access1 was an acceptable compromise. I wrote a page that tries to express my thoughts and feelings at that time.

-12/2/99 I started putting the web sites back up on http://www.san.rr.com/follies.

-Dec 1999 to late 2000 Mr. Smart threats took on a new slant. I guess he thought that people were no longer believing his silly threats of suing first it was for libel then changing to suing for harassment, so he started claiming that detractors were going to be thrown in jail. He was never really clear on what the charges might be but he started claiming that DA's, Police, FBI and even the State Department were soon going to be bringing detractors to justice. These stories sufficed for Mr. Smart for almost a year. He's now pretty much back on the story that he is going to sue for libel.

-Dec 1999 to February 2000 Mr. Smart moved to a new place in Sunrise. His claim was that he did it to move further away from Louis. A funny part of the story is that he claimed that he bought a new house because Louis knew where his old house was. He also claimed that he was having a new pool built in his new house before he moved. He then put his new address right in his sig and therefore appeared in his posts to the newsgroup. Mr. Smart apparently lied about buying the house because the public records indicate that the place that he moved too did not change ownership.

-First Quarter 2000 Mr. Smart claims that the BCM demo will be out by first quarter 2000.

-Second Quarter 2000 Mr. Smart had been referred to as a megalomaniac for years. The Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) comes under direct study by derekologist. The conclusion is that Derek's personality may not be as unusual as was once thought. He seems to fit the description down to the smallest detail a classical full blown case.

-07/00 Mr. Smart tried to get Todd Alan Yarbrough fired. Todd was a game developer that specialized in graphic design. Derek posted BCM screen shots and claimed they were kick-ass and asked for people's opinion. Todd made some constructive suggestions. This sent Derek into a hateful rage and he tried to get Todd fired by contacting his employer.

-07/05/00 The web site was moved to http://follies.werewolves.org

-July 2000 The first post I can find where I reveal that Mr. Smart's so-called famous critically acclaimed AI engine appears to really be a simulation engine. This is a fun topic because Mr. Smart refuses to accept the obvious and use this more obvious terminology, instead he claims that asteroids and planks of wood have AI in his game. It's also funny to remember that it was claimed on the box of BC3K 1.0 that the game contained a Neural Net. This claim was debunked in two articles that T. Liam MacDonald wrote for Boot magazine published in the January/February 1997 issues and Derek never again publicly claimed that his AI engine was a Neural Net. Perhaps if Mr. Smart ever admitted that his AI engine was really a simulation engine, he's afraid that he would have to give his TRON award back to ACAS?

-07/18/00 PJL, JackyO and Joe Bsfilter actually met in person and have a few laughs together. (Mr. Smart says he might show up but he doesn't.)

-07-31-00 One of the most hilarious threads in Flame War Follies gets a grand cherry on top. It all began when the Mars probe was lost trying to land on Mars. (It was later found out to be due to a misunderstanding between using the metric system versus the old standard system of measurement.) Mr. Smart posted that you could go to the spot on Mars in BC3K and actually see what the terrain looked like in the area the Mars probe was supposed to land. People didn't believe Derek so Derek sent the "proof" to Lemming. Lemming happens to be a solar system and space exploration hobbyist. In the ongoing threads Derek stated that Jupiter had a surface, the Venus cloud cover was incomplete, Mercury had a surface of molten lava, NASA had detailed elevation survey maps of all nine planets which were used in BC3K, and Derek claims that he owns a piece of metal that came from Mars. (Of course it turns out that any similarity between the depiction of the terrain in BC3K and any of the planets' terrain is totally coincidental, including Earth.)

-02-17-01 A journalist posts on a distant learning web group that I frequent and asked for contacts of people that had been ripped off by degree mills. He was having trouble finding anyone willing to talk to him. I suggested in email to him that Mr. Smart might answer some of his questions if it were kept confidential. When contacted, Mr. Smart went into one of his blind rages and made one of his big huge rants filled with libelous lies on the web group. His post was almost immediately deleted by the site administrators for just being personal insults but it was hilarious that Mr. Smart was so eager to spread the Flame War Follies into new territory. In email exchanges with the site administrators Mr. Smart made the hilarious claim that the hundreds of posts I had made to that web group (never once did I mention Derek Smart) were all done because of some devious unspecified plan I had to undermine Mr. Smart.

-First Quarter 2001 Mr. Smart starts claiming that he is going to make his big move to destroy his detractors as soon as BCM is released.

-March 2001 one of the most brilliantly hilarious creations in the Flame War Follies is released, Derek Smart's Desktop Commander