To everyone-

[Cory]

Everyone has been speculating about the game for the last few days and all, and thats cool, if it gives you something to think about for the next few days, whatever.

But all the talk about hacking into the rulebook is just hideous, imho. Lets everyone just chill out, and enjoy the surprise on Saturday.

Im sure it probably is all in good fun, but how is anyone supposed to know that? FIRST goes and does *us* a service by releasing it early so we dont have to rush to download it all at once. What's the first thing that comes up after this? "Oh, guys, I wonder how long it would take to crack that password?" (Im not directing that at anyone in specific.) FIRST didnt intend to get stabbed in the back by giving us information early, for our convenience.

The build season takes up enough of our lives, we dont need to make it even longer by getting a head start!

Cory

[Case]

Honestly, I think very few people acctually considered attempting to crack the manual. It was a challenge presented to a bunch of engineers in training and you expect us not to disuss the feasability of cracking it. discussion for the sake of discussion, at least it is for me.

[Wetzel]

Perhaps you missed the part about them not giving out the manual in paper OR on a cd in the kit anymore? They are attempting to save money by not handing it out, and not paying for a larger bandwidth pipe by spreading out the demand.

We are geeks. We take things apart to see how they work(often voiding warenties). We wonder how things work. We revel in the technical.

Wondering how FIRST locked something up is only as natural as wondering how the Innovation FIRST controllers work.

Wetzel

[Cory]

That may be so, however, how should we expect people to react to this? If FIRST was watching these conversations, would we want them to see what we're saying?

An analogy:

Lets say I discuss stealing the answers to my Calculus final. Maybe Im not going to really do it, but who is to know?

Overall, it really isnt an appropriate topic on these boars. This isnt an issue of conflicting viewpoints. This is an issue of the forum's rules.

Cory

[Wetzel]

Originally Posted by Cory

An analogy:

Lets say I discuss stealing the answers to my Calculus final. Maybe Im not going to really do it, but who is to know?

Cory

And I maintain that you have the right to discuss it. Only by understanding how they could be stolen can they be well protected. The same is with physical security. I find it an enjoyable excersise to talk with friends on how to break something (break in, wear out) and ways to counter. In the natural world, this is called evolution. One plant creates an inseticde to kill the bug eating it, the bug devlops an immunity or goes elsewhere.


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~
Civil Rights advocate

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

And I maintain that you have the right to discuss it. Only by understanding how they could be stolen can they be well protected. The same is with physical security. I find it an enjoyable excersise to talk with friends on how to break something (break in, wear out) and ways to counter. In the natural world, this is called evolution. One plant creates an inseticde to kill the bug eating it, the bug devlops an immunity or goes elsewhere.

Just because you have the right to do something, doesn't make it ethical, or courteous. I have the right to attach together a string of expletives here, but that doesn't make it a good thing to do.

FIRST is doing something nice for us, and the first thing that happened is people started a discussion on what it would take to take advantage of the situation. It doesn't matter if anyone actually does it; just the fact that this discussion exists is probably already making FIRST think twice about doing this again.

Let's say a high school is going to have an assemly as a reward for all of the students trying so hard in school. They're going to have a big movie in the gym and everyone is going to get out of their afternoon classes to watch it. What a nice thing to do. Then, a big discussion starts up amongst the students about how they can use the movie sneak out of school. Guess what's going to happen? NO MOVIE, that's what. It doesn't matter if the talk was serious or not: the talk alone is enough to signal a threat. And you know what - a lot of the students that had nothing to do with the escape plan talk are going to be VERY angry at the people doing the talking because these few people ruined it for everyone else.

So yes, you have the RIGHT to discussion, but you DON'T have the right to the "movie" - that is a privilege that can be taken away if privileges are abused.

-Chris

[Joe Matt]

This is just like collusion from last year. Everyone will have an opinion on it, but nobody will have the final one. Frankly, we are beating a dead horse here. More feelings will be hurt and more reputations ruined because of this.

Just drop it....

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=23313

[Ken Leung]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

We are geeks. We take things apart to see how they work(often voiding warenties). We wonder how things work. We revel in the technical.

Wondering how FIRST locked something up is only as natural as wondering how the Innovation FIRST controllers work.

Wetzel

Curiosity is a good thing. It drive people to use their imagination and problem solving skills. But do that justify what you are trying to find out? Well, it depends. It is great that you have good intentions, in this case, trying to learn something. But sometimes good intention isn't good enough. History told us a lot of people had great intentions when they wanted to do something, but their action were not approved by everyone else because of the consequences of those actions, not because they had good intentions.

In order words, a lot of times the rest of your action determines if you are doing something right or wrong. In this case, if you are trying to crack the pdf files FIRST released ahead of time even though they do not wish anyone to read them before the game is revealed, then you violated their trust. It doesn't matter if you keep it a secret and never say anything about it. You are the one who have to live with your action, and its consequences. If FIRST found out and stop providing the pdfs ahead of time in the future, then your action (that you thought was harmless) affected everyone else in the FIRST community. If FIRST never found out? Well, then you will have to live with it the rest of your life. You can probably brag to your friends what you've accomplished, and some may or may not approve.

You may or may not agree with FIRST in releasing these files ahead of time. What's done is done. The important point is FIRST trusted everyone to wait until Saturday morning. What you do with that trust is up to you.


Like JosephM said, this topic is probably beaten to death. Chances are, FIRST will think twice about it next year. No need to argue what's right or wrong. At the end, all of you is responsible for your own action. It is time like this when you test out who you truely are. I just hope you don't find something you dislike about yourself.


Let's take a break, go get yourself a cup of hot tea (or whatever suits you), sit in front of the fire place or TV, and relax :-). You are about to approach insanity in the next few months. Enjoy your sanity while you can.

[KenWittlief]

there is a bit of a paradox going on here.

Anyone who is intelligent enough to hack open the PDF files, wouldnt need to. If you are that brilliant and understand technology THAT well (to be able to pull it off) then you could breeze through this whole design cycle with one side of your brain tied behind your back.

but is a mute point anyway. The encription is secure enough that you would have a better change of guessing next weeks lottery numbers.

I personally dont think this is an issue of violating the trust that FIRST has placed on anyone. If they trusted us, the files would not be encrypted. They would have posted them and told us to go ahead and download them, but not to peek until Saturday - or even better they could have given the files one of the adult mentors on each team - so I wouldnt say FIRST is 'trusting' us with anything, not really. This is like putting a milkbone on a dogs nose and telling him to wait until saturday.

Everyone wants to know whats in those files. Wondering how hard it would be to open then is not a sin. Talking about it is not a sin against FIRST - its natural human curiosity.

If anyone WAS able to open them that quickly, forget about the FIRST program - go talk to NSA or the FBI - they will make you a career offer you cant refuse :c)

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Ken Leung

Chances are, FIRST will think twice about it next year.

And maybe that is just the reasoning behind the whole "let's break the system" mentallity.

I know that the first time I read the fact that there would be no hard copy or CD of the manual available for teams I was very dissapointed. I mean, I loved the CD idea, and remember the video that was on that cd a few years ago with Dean and Woddie designing the game. That video was awesome!! lol

But, the mentallity of "let's threaten to break the system in hopes that it doesn't return" is just foolish.

Although there have been times that rules were blatently broken on robot design and then they were eventually "accepted" into the rules by FIRST.

(need I mention the whole tape measure controversy of 2002??)

[Aignam]

Let's discontinue this conversation. Nobody will crack the manual, and if they attempt to, they're a bad person. What more can you say? Creating needless threads on ChiefDelphi about a discussion happening elsewhere is more of a disservice to FIRST-ers than is a simple joke gone overboard. Nobody is seriously going to crack the manual. I don't know what it counts for, but it is military encryption. And if they do attempt to, there's no question that their actions are immoral. So what is there to discuss?