insert clever quip about ubiquity here
i just received the following email:
chris clarified a few of my rantings, and made sure i had the facts. in my incensed rage about my impotent bike lock i was a bit harsh in my railing against chris. in my earlier post i claimed that chris had posted a video about the bike lock vulnerability. this is not the case. the wired article with the video link quoted comments chris made.
chris did not author or post any video, merely gave a textual description. arguably my post was inaccurate, but i’m still mad. not at chris brennan, who is really quite a nice bloke as he contacted me to clarify my post, even though i disabused him – but at the bike theives who have repeatedly stolen my bikes over the years.
i have lost 5 bikes to grubby-handed, mouth-breathing, slack-jawed yokels. truly, i should be in debt to chris brennan – as without him many avid cyclists would be in the dark at their risk to the above-mentioned yokels. however anything to do with bike theft throws me into a blind rage.
chris used an well formed analogy to describe his freeing of information:
is the metaphor too harsh? certainly not. however, i’m not sure i follow the logic. i agree that if i’m sick – my doctor has to tell me about the disease. but if my doctor walks into the waiting room and blurts out in front of everyone that i’ve got cancer, then yes, the information does get to me – but i’m not just sick, but embarrased as well. the information gets to people who don’t need to know it. that’s my beef with the article in general. but i certainly shouldn’t be upset with chris. wired deserves any contempt or nose thumbing i might seek to dish out.
chris was merely the source in the article that wired chose to publish. to push the above analogy chris was the well-mannered and considerate doctor murmering in the ear of the loud-mouthed nurse – wired. and in the defence of chris (i’m all about that now) – he cites that the bike lock companies were well informed, well in advance of this article, and ignored the risk.
to seal the quality and character of the object of my earlier missive, check out how chris ends his email in response to my spite:
ah chris, it’s not only my bike i love now.
update shortly after i published my first article i found this site and was quite worried i was going to get my butttocks throughly kicked. luckily, chris turned out to be quite pleasant.
Categories: bike / |
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Thanks for the follow-up. I wasn’t really too mad about your initial blog because it was a natural reaction for a lot of people and I’d been through it many times before stumbling across your blog.
I sincerely wish there was a way for me to contact each and every honest lock owner, but as you know that number probably approaches the millions. I feel while though the information undoubedtly caused a rise in theft, it exponentially raised the awarness and likewise limited the amount of trouble that would have been caused had I not spoken up. Truth is, the information would have come out sooner or later from someone – and if it were to come out later the only people who would’ve gotten a head start would be theives, then you’d be extra mad ;)
Cheers,
Chris
— Chris Brennan Nov 8, 09:19 pm #
It’s not unlike computer security, where it’s now considered bad practice to post vulnerabilities publicly before the owner of the offending application has had an opportunity to provide a patch. However, it used to be much more difficult to get software makers to respond to requests for patches. So people had to take public action to force their hand. And the result? Innocents were injured.
While not an ideal option, I believe that Chris’s action was a necessary evil. Me, I just cycle with a pet tarantula, and leave it on my bike seat while I’m inside shops.
— paul Nov 9, 11:02 am #