I have to say I wanted a unicorn chaser after reading some of the posts in this thread. Kudos to everyone who posted without descending into run-of-the-mill Internet flamewar territory.

Yes, anonymous existed for at least several years in its current incarnation before turning its attention to Scientology. If you know anonymous as that "anti-Scientology group", you do not really know anon.

It's a loose collection of more-or-less anonymous people of various backgrounds and bents that serves, at least in part intentionally, as one of the best examples of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory that we have.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Characterizing anon is a task fraught with peril (I'm looking at you, Fox News), but griefing does figure prominently in anon's collective headspace and history, especially if it can be done in relative anonymity from the comfort of one's own chair. Anon regularly raids social networking sites, Habbo Hotel being the canonical example, and also harasses cam-girls on a regular basis. Attacks occasionally do extend to the real world, for example spamming phone lines like #11 November describes.

Anon is a collection of different people with different motives, it's not necessarily all good or all evil. Some anons bait online predators in child-oriented chat rooms in order to fish for their personal information and turn it over to authorities, or to scare them away from the chat rooms. Other anons bait online predators because the predators are easy targets for griefing, lead them on for a while as prettygirl13 and then hit them with "This is the FBI, this chat has been recorded...", solely for the lulz of freaking out the predator. Sometimes anon helps put child predators in jail, sometimes anon himself posts child pornography (briefly, before it gets pulled and the IP gets banned).

So it may be a bit naive to say "Anon would NEVER..." or "Anon has changed his ways, he's good now." In my (limited) experience, the attack on epileptics would be above-average evil for anon, more evil than anything I've personally witnessed while lurking. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that it was anon. I wouldn't completely rule out the CoS theory, either, from what I've heard about them. I hope whoever did it gets nailed for it. I'm afraid we may never know for sure, depends on how the attack was executed and what logs are available, or maybe whether the perp ever develops a conscience.

My landlady here in Taipei uses the fan method described in the comments above to count rent. Too bad it's not shown in the video, it's very impressive. Leaves me feeling like it would be a bad idea to go up against her in Mahjong.

Re-spawn in 3, 2, 1... Crap.