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.
Projects
Between roughly 1995 and 2006, 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).
You're the Man Now, Dog!, YTMND-O-MATIC and YTMND, disgu.st weblog, dustindiamond.com and the pr0n-o-matic, are the creations of Max. He also registered the domain internetsserviceteam.com, put up an official corporate web page[1], and essentially formalized the existence of the group.
Other projects by active members include dickcream.com by sodae, the troll database by mef, and to a lesser extent, fuzzy pink memories, a quote database 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.
