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Originally Posted by boomergeek
I did read your whole post: my point is: the heat of a loss is never the time to publicly insinuate that someone may have the ability to cheat and used it against you. I don't know how Brandon could have written it publicly and still be graciously professional. Maybe you can suggest a few sentences of what he could have publicly written that would have been appropriate to get his sentiments across.
Insinuating problems should be investigated or blamed on the dishonesty efforts of others without any real evidence is a "sour grapes" meme that unintentionally disparages the competition. Brandon seems to have acknowledged this: you seemingly have not.
If you play a friendly card game and lose, it is not appropriate to immediately publicly ask if one of the friendly players cheated in the timeframe that the valid winners are enjoying their props.
One can choose the level of awareness to the potential for cheating. FIRST tries to be friendly, professional, and gracious.
I do not know how Brandon could have publicly approached the subject of his feeling his team was likely a recent victim of cheating at a FIRST competition in a manner would be seen as graciously professional.
If you can, I will certainly admit I was wrong and apologize to you.
I don't think Brandon should be ashamed: in fact, he's better for having made a mistake and admitting it and moving on. You seemed to imply that Brandon had just chosen the wrong words. I think it's not the words that were the issue- it was the sentiment, timing and location of that sentiment.
There is a huge amount of this competition that is mostly an honor system.
There are also many EASY ways to cheat that do not involve hacking- I'm going to assume that those ways to cheat aren't used sufficiently to worry about and I'm going to spend my energy elsewhere.
Are you starting with the position that there are likely enough cheaters involved in FIRST that we should spend our brainpower looking for them?
I have focused my brainpower on looking for the understanding of the laws of nature on highly complex equipment causing the seemingly nefarious robot behavior. I view it as time better spent.
I think we can agree that the right time to be broadcasting talk about potential hacking victimization is not the day the winning team is supposed to be celebrating their win.
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I already said, multiple times, I think he approached the topic wrong, and I would hope he learned that. That being said, being concerned (albeit and admittedly mistakenly) about the security of the arena network is not sour grapes. It's a concern. He voiced it, he was educated, he has learned something, this thread was enlightening for many people, myself included.
As far as an example, I would have approached it something like this:
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Originally Posted by Alternate Universe Me
I noticed some strange behavior with our robot and others at the FLR regional, and I was concerned it may have been a result of teams tampering with the communications network and attempting some kind of malicious gameplay. What do you guys think? Do you have any other suggestions for what could be the cause?
For reference, the symptoms I noticed were:
(symptoms go here, perhaps without naming specific teams or matches)
Thanks for your input in advance!
Matt
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I also do not think Brandon has anything to be ashamed of, and I do believe he has certainly learned. I also don't think his concerns cast a shadow on the teams that won the event, it wasn't as if he accused them of cheating, and I certainly don't believe they'd have taken it that way.
FIRST is supposed to inspire STEM and show students what the 'real life' does with it, and in the real life there will always be people looking to undermine the system to their own personal gain. I don't think (thankfully) it's present at a great capacity in FIRST, but I am concerned it could be if people stop asking "What's really keeping us secure here?" however I think you'd have to be a fool to think it's not there at all.
It seems to me your gripe is more with being disagreed with, than the topic at hand. Based on that, and the fact that at this point I believe I've made my case on this matter as abundantly clear as I can, and I am stepping out of the discussion unless the topic becomes more relevant to the actual original topics of this thread. If you really insist on following up, then you're welcome to PM, IM, email or carrier pigeon me.