Team 548 Einstein Statement

[RobotsVsKittens]

This is poorly written and a less than ideal admission of guilt.

Unfortunately, to further demonstrate the issue, and making a poor decision, they created a 3 second field
interruption in match 2.

Who is 'they'?

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by RobotsVsKittens

This is poorly written and a less than ideal admission of guilt.

Who is 'they'?

While I don't like it either, the usually plural "they" is commonly accepted as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.
I'm like you - I personally don't use it on principle, and I cringe when I see it, but it's not incorrect per se.
I don't know that it's poorly written - like SAM said, it reeks of lawyerspeak - and understandably so. This team has strong ties to its sponsors, as many do, and when people's livelihoods are at stake, you bet the lawyers are called in.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by RobotsVsKittens

Who is 'they'?

In this case, "they" refers to the individual who caused the interference. I could go into all the grammar, but in this case it's the best word if you want to keep anonymity for the person in question.

[quinxorin]

Originally Posted by RobotsVsKittens

This is poorly written and a less than ideal admission of guilt.



Who is 'they'?

Presumably 548 was using "they" as a singular pronoun, to prevent revealing whether the individual was male or female.

[JesseK]

Without locking down the entire field environment (i.e. banning personal laptops for driver's stations), how could FIRST prevent this type of issue in the future? This is more of an industry-directed question rather than a FIRST-directed question.

[quinxorin]

Originally Posted by JesseK

Without locking down the entire field environment (i.e. banning personal laptops for driver's stations), how could FIRST prevent this type of issue in the future? This is more of an industry-directed question rather than a FIRST-directed question.

There are many ways to prevent this issue. The Einstein Report details FIRST's plans on how to secure the field.
Furthermore, it took twenty one years for someone to do this. I expect it to take just as long before the next incident.

[steverk]

Originally Posted by quinxorin

it took twenty one years for someone to do this. I expect it to take just as long before the next incident.

Let's hope there is never another incident.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by quinxorin

There are many ways to prevent this issue. The Einstein Report details FIRST's plans on how to secure the field.
Furthermore, it took twenty one years for someone to do this. I expect it to take just as long before the next incident.

Correction -- it took only 3 years for it to happen on the field. The new control system started in 2009. Taking the report results and looking back, I believe one of my former students happened upon something similar in 2009 when he was figuring out how to wrap data into packets for use on a driver's station custom Java display. (For the record, he didn't tell us he found it and he graduated in '09. While his software was brilliant our robot had fundamental mechanical flaws that year). The problem I foresee is FIRST losing trustworthiness in any team that breaks a small rule on the field (namely, no cell phones for the guys who are the pit crew).

From an IT/IA perspective, the plans FIRST described in the report are vague at best, yet it's probably best that way. If we openly crowd-sourced amongst our intelligent community engineers to figure out how the FRC system could be vulnerable, then the companies working on securing the field would be better-equipped to understand what 0-day issues need to be addressed.

@Alec:
I too dislike putting my 6 vacation days, 100's of hours, and several dollars of support at the mercy of GP in such a competitive program. Yet at this point we should contribute to the solution rather than further highlighting the problem.

[BrendanB]

Kudos to 548 for coming out and releasing a statement. I still love your team!

Let's not rehash all of this again guys as we still don't know what happened. 548's report differs from FIRST's report but that doesn't tell us which one stands true at the end of the day. There were still other factors that played into this aside from the individuals action(s).

[Renee Becker-Blau]

I think that 548's Steering Committee did a good job at responding to and handling the situation. Any mentor or student on a team is a representative of that team and officially associated with the team. This isn't just because you're wearing a team's t-shirt or branding, it's also because students and mentors officially register with a team through FIRST. If an individual on a team is involved in a negative situation, the leadership of the team is brought into the situation as well (ex-Football and Basketball players acting inappropriately).

Jon made a good point:

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

By stepping forward as a team, publicly apologizing, and clearly stating that the individuals actions were not representative of the team, this team is performing the necessary PR to move past the incident.

I'm glad that FRC 548 has come forward and publicly apologized for the actions of the individual. I hope this will help to diffuse any potential negativity that could occur at future events towards students and mentors on the team.

As for the individual, Jon and Andrew make great points:

Originally Posted by JVN

There are any number of things which could have been done after Einstein to fix this issue. Don't fall into the trap of "he spoke up and was ignored so he had to make his point." There are plenty of ways to get "unignored" (later on) without knowingly sabotaging an event.

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

As it stands the person went from doing the right thing to being an attacker when they tried to "demonstrate" the vulnerability.

Renee

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by RobotsVsKittens

This is poorly written and a less than ideal admission of guilt.

I cannot disagree more. 548 did not have to release this statement at all - and I'm sure it was a difficult thing for them to write and distribute. But they chose to do it, because it was right, and that means it is time to put down the pitchforks and torches.

It takes balls to associate one's team or company with an incident like this. The team wrote and released this statement with the full knowledge that (fair or not) some people might look at them a little differently for a while (it's just human nature...and yes I am aware that a large portion of the FRC community already knew/thought they knew the team anyhow).

Hopefully now we can move forward.