Internets Service Team
The Internets Service Team (IST) is a group of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) users dedicated to bringing you, the user (Y,TU), the best in Internets Experience (IE).
Contents
History
Roughly centered around a particular EFnet channel, The IST technically existed as early as the mid-1990's, when the present-day members had each individually discovered the internet and its myriad wonders. The group originally was unformed and existed in a pool of users who all shared the common bond of extensive late-night IRC use. General boredom, and a common interest in website development and making a buck off of the internet, led a few such users to rise up and create, if only for the sake of creation.
The name "Internets Service Team" was coined after it was discovered that frequent sightings of an IRC client with the nickname carl_ and a dynamic-appearing host matching *.internetsserviceteam.com were actually visitations from a honeypot -- a bot which was intended to catch spam and virus spreading bots -- which was set up by xs4all.net administrators. After an eventual curious whois lookup, it was discovered by founder Max Goldberg that the bot had actually been given a hostname with a domain that did not exist. He then registered it, and thus, the IST concept was born; in some sort of lethargic and uninterested sense, likely entirely accidentally, Max formalized -- and the term formalized is used ridiculously loosely -- the existence of the group.
Projects
Since approximately 1995, the IST have birthed several one-hit wonders and projects, almost all of which are considered spectacular failures by someone or another. The projects are generally developed by a single person with little or no outside help, but there have been occasions where another "member" will assist in development (and quite possibly break something). clay is well established as a source of inspiration for all.
You're the Man Now, Dog!, YTMND-O-MATIC and YTMND, disgu.st and the disgu.st weblog, dustindiamond.com and the pr0n-o-matic, are the creations of Max. He owns the internetsserviceteam.com domain, on which an official corporate web page[1] can be found.
Other projects include dickcream.com by sodae, the troll database by mef, a now-defunct quote database and the thread-is-dead killer vB plugin by jon.
Membership
Group membership is not clearly defined; there is no initiation, and there is no verification. In fact, it is a lot like "being cool", and if you had to read this article to learn about the IST, you are not cool. There is no one you can ask to join the IST.
