Deth Veggie has been a close friend for over a decade, and his position in the Cult of the Dead Cow came around in the early years of knowing him. Founded in 1985, the group went from textfile-writing to world-wide media mavens to security pundits. Along the way, they found themselves in a great and unique position as "hacker celebrities". As the image grew somewhere out of control, I knew many of the members as friends, and saw both sides of the story.