I have been thinking about this whole UD thing. Remove the drama and all the "my team is better than yours" and think about it a little more. Why is this bothering me at all?
For me all this is fascinating. The difference between "them" and "us" is that those of us who are truly into understanding what we are actually doing with our phones, are manipulating code down to the base or even those very few who are actually changing the base code, consider ourselves to be included in the exclusive hacker community of phone mods, or at least if you do not, I do.
I say hack the world, and not in the same way our media has twisted the meaning of hacking. I mean truly jump into the code, pull it apart, change it, manipulate it, alter it and make it better. Discover and adventure through the lines of code, the numbers and characters, understand without benefit of years and years of college computer programing courses. Using only your ability to understand and manipulate code.
I am old school though, I started with a 150bd acoustic coupler modem, two 256k 8 inch floppy drives, CPM and a 8bit micro-coprocessor. The infancy of computers. There was nothing, no books, you had to discover things on your own. No explaining, no wiki anything. These forums, what the talented among us are able to do reminds me of how things used to be. It reminds me of the BBS services where you dialed in over an analog phone line, and posted what you had learned, what mainframe you were able to gain entry into, what phone numbers were answered by a modem. 1979, over 33 years I have been involved in this fringe culture, this "hack the world mentality" this movement as it were.
Sure we flamed each other on BBSs, that is where the term came from. When someone would say something that was stupid or ignorant, we flamed away. Sure, we fought, we posted things about each others mothers, we insulted and harassed each other. Sure we did these things, but we were children, kids really, I was 12 years old. It's what kids do. My team is better than yours, neener neener neener.
But what we didn't do, even as children, is steal each others fame or glory. We didn't claim to have hacked something we didn't. We never took someone's war dialer to pass it off as our own. We didn't steal code and say it was ours when it was obviously was not. We had a certain hacker mentality, a hacker honor if you would. Never, ever, would we claim to be what we were not. And those who did were outcast. They were thrown out, forgotten, laughed at, shamed.
All the drama aside, all of the garbage and "my ROM is better than yours" posters, all the name calling and flaming, fact is that BD claimed code was his, when it obviously is not. This might be a hard lesson for him, but maybe he will learn and come out of it a better person. Until that time, personally, I believe he should have to exist outside this community. He should have to work for his place among all those that have truly done something, have truly hacked and made available code that we all enjoy. All those people who create and change things, who manipulate code so we are all able to do what people who do not exist on the fringe cannot do. Those are the people who should be able to brag. They should be able to swagger through the forums as proud, intelligent, hackers of code. They have truly done something special, and without them none of us would be here exchanging ideas or creating anything at all new. BD should not be included in that group, not until and unless he can actually do something on his own, and prove he is deserving, oh yeah and apologize.
Actually I think if I was BD, I would change my name. I would start a new online persona. I would try to learn as much about truly hacking the code as possible. I would build all over again and never make the mistake of trying to include myself among those who are truly doing something, by stealing their bragging rights. Their code.
I am sure many of you have read this before, or perhaps have seen bits or parts of this. I am going to post it anyway. It hails from a time when computer hacking still held some of it's allure and not so much of the negative media attention. It shows how we thought back then, and how I see some of those who are hacking code now and post on these boards.
[SIZE=+1]The Hacker's Manifesto
[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]Another one got caught today,[/SIZE] it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested After Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of a Hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
[SIZE=+1]I am a Hacker,[/SIZE] enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with School... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in Junior High or High School. I've listened to Teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work, I did it in my head..." Damn kid, probably copied it. They're all alike.
[SIZE=+1]I made a discovery today.[/SIZE] I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed up. Not because it doesn't like me...Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
[SIZE=+1]Damn kid.[/SIZE] All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... A door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addicts veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it, this is where I belong..." I know everyone here, even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all.
[SIZE=+1]Damn kid,[/SIZE] tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike...
[SIZE=+1]We've been spoon-fed[/SIZE] baby food at School when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
[SIZE=+1]This is our world now,[/SIZE] the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us Criminals. We seek after knowledge, and you call us Criminals.
[SIZE=+1]We exist without skin colour,[/SIZE] without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us Criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us, and try and make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the Criminals.
[SIZE=+1]Yes I am a Criminal,[/SIZE] my crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
[SIZE=+1]I am a Hacker,[/SIZE] this is my Manifesto. You may stop the individual, but you can't stop us all. After all, we're all alike.
[SIZE=+1]The Mentor[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]I know this doesn't specifically have another to do directly with the news post. I know that it doesn't necessarily directly apply as well. It's more of the "feeling" I end up with after reading it. It wasn't until reading this again after all these years that I truly understood why BD's actions really bothered me.
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