On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:22:55 +0300 "Mihai Popescu B.S."
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have read the undeadly.org article about how to "play" with airport
> security. I don't know who is the guy acting like this on an airport,
> but my brain triggered something I read in the past, about a well
> known guy from open source who was throw out from an airplane by the
> security team.
>
> Just my thought, maybe not related to misc ... but I think this story
> is not in the line of good old undeadly.
>
Hi Mihai,
I wanted to thank you for both reading the articles on www.undeadly.org
but more importantly, I wanted to thank you for voicing your opinion.
You could have voiced your opinion on undeadly in the comments, rather
than here on misc@ but I somewhat understand why you decided to use the
mailing list instead. Comparing me to insane antics of Richard Stallman
is an extremely offensive opinion, so you probably worried your opinion
would have been deleted from undeadly.
You didn't need to worry. On undeadly, we let conflicting opinions
stand. Only with reluctance will we delete the most blatant spam/libel
(i.e. trolls) to keep the site usable.
My article was just a humorous retelling of the very typical problems
seen by people traveling. The trouble with humor is it can make no
sense across language or cultural barriers. I like to think the world
is a better place when we can laugh, but unfortunately, due to cultural
and language differences, some people will not understand or appreciate
all of the jokes.
If you asked me to understand a language other than English, I would
fail miserably, but if you asked me to understand jokes in another
language or from another culture, I would fail even worse. You would
have to explain the jokes to me, and even then I might not get them due
to lack of experience.
If you really want to understand all of the pointed humor in the
article, you'll need to do a lot of reading and learning. For example,
the phrase "U.S. Department of Homeland Theatrics" I used in the article
is pointed joke referring to the phrase "Security Theater" originated by
Bruce Schneier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier
http://www.schneier.com
The complete nonsense Jacob Meuser (jakemsr@), Jim Razmus (jim@) and I
went through at Canadian Customs not only highlights ineffective and
fake security measures, but also shows the lack of understanding most
people have of open source software. All of us were very glad to be done
wasting our time with pointless questions from ignorant people. We did
not cause or prolong their nonsense, instead we complied their requests
and suffered through their nonsense like all rational people do.
As for laughing about it and laughing at them afterwards, as well as
laughing publicly, this is a good and even beneficial response. The more
people who openly laugh at fake security, the better everyone will be.
I'm sorry you did not see the humor or the points in the article, but it
was better for me to try to write an entertaining but pointed article
involving the issues everyone faces when traveling. I will agree it was
not a typical, highly technical article for undeadly, but I hope you
realize we work on undeadly for fun, so occasionally breaking up the
technical bits with joking around should be expected.
kind regards,
jcr
--
The OpenBSD Journal - http://www.undeadly.org
