Bloodaxe insisted passionately that LoD were through with hacking for good. There was simply no future in it. The time had come for LoD to move on, and corporate consultation was their new frontier. (The career options of committed computer intruders are, when you come right down to it, remarkably slim.) "We don't want to be flippin' burgers or sellin' life insurance when we're thirty," Bloodaxe drawled. "And wonderin' when Tim Foley is gonna come kickin' in the door!" (Special Agent Timothy M. Foley of the US Secret Service has fully earned his reputation as the most formidable anti-hacker cop in America.)

Bloodaxe sighed wistfully. "When I look back at my life... I can see I've essentially been in school for eleven years, teaching myself to be a computer security consultant."

After a bit more grilling, Bloodaxe finally got to the core of matters. Did anybody here hate them now? he asked, almost timidly. Did people think the Legion had sold out? Nobody offered this opinion. The hackers shook their heads, they looked down at their sneakers, they had another slug of Coke. They didn't seem to see how it would make much difference, really. Not at this point.

Over half the attendees of CyberView publicly claimed to be out of the hacking game now. At least one hacker present -- (who had shown up, for some reason known only to himself, wearing a blond wig and a dime-store tiara, and was now catching flung Cheetos in his styrofoam cup) -- already made his living "consulting" for private investigators.

Almost everybody at CyberView had been busted, had had their computers seized, or, had, at least, been interrogated -- and when federal police put the squeeze on a teenage hacker, he generally spills his guts.