Seriously, would you show this thread to an IT professional in the
Marines or the Department of Defense?

Either:

a) you deliberately posted the username & password of an FTP account
in order to entrap people responding to your post (regardless of
whether they were trying to help you), or

b) you foolishly and unthinkingly posted same and, embarrassed, are
trying to cover for your gaffe so clumsily that you actually threaten
people who responded by invoking 'Federal offense', or

c) you are so bored that you're trying to entertain yourself by
wasting our time.

I prefer to believe b).  I am enough of an optimist that I prefer to
see the human capacity for stupidity and embarrassment than to see evil.

Please go back and re-read this thread from the beginning,
dispassionately, and tell me if you would be either brave enough to
foolish enough to walk into a legal contract with a developer who
posts a client's FTP login information to a listserve with thousands
of users worldwide.  And then laughs at and then threatens those who
attempt to use them.  Seriously, why on earth would you risk working
with someone like that?  How could you trust them?

Brad, any way you cut it, you really screwed up here.  If I were in
your position I'm not sure how I would pull my ass out of the fan
blades.  You could try this:  Wipe the grin off your face.  Stop
making jokes.  Stop posturing -- you've already shown everyone your
underwear and you aren't going to persuade anyone that it didn't
happen.  Get really fucking serious.  You just shit on your
professional reputation in public, in a very large room packed with
your peers.  Joking about it, denying it happened, and acting like
anyone who saw you do it is out to get you are just more
games.  Nobody who's read this thread is going to believe you did
anything but shit your pants on stage.  I think you just have to
relax and admit you screwed up.  Get humble, stay that way, and maybe
people will be more willing to listen to you next time.

At this point, I don't know.  There might be someone willing to work
with you on this project, say someone so desperate for work that
they'd risk a lawsuit or whatever your next trick might be.  The only
way I'd be willing to get involved in this project would be if I
could deal directly with the client and not with you.  Please
understand that I'm not saying this just to be mean.  I don't know
you, you're probably a perfectly harmless guy, maybe even a nice
guy.  But you crossed a line.  It's like, you go a party and some guy
suddenly starts yelling and waving a knife at people, then
laughs.  Well, sure, ha ha, but you aren't too likely to go up and
start a business relationship with him, are you?

This discussion is obviously WAY off topic for PHP.  I'm posting this
message to the list not to embarrass you further but because things
have gone so far off the road the we need to talk some serious blunt
truth here to get back on track.

I feel compassion for you.  You probably really do need help with the
phpBB problem, but you've asked in such a disfunctional way that
you've alienated one of the best pools of potential helpers you could
find.  You might try asking for help in the phpBB forum (where you
really should have started), but when you do I urge you to stay calm,
be sedate, don't joke, don't threaten, be cool, and be respectful.

Good luck, man.

Paul

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