342 DEAR HACKER
342 DEAR HACKER
Dear 2600: Just wanted to let you know—your bright light is soon to be extin-
guished. One more major terrorist attack and your (and your type’s) relevance will cease, your moment will have passed. This is the price you will pay for your arrogance and ignorance of human nature and history. Thinking any societal structures are infinitely perfectible— what dreadful nonsense. Don’t blame anyone else (da man) for loss of civil liberties—look at da man in da mirror. When security and law and order are recklessly neglected and chaos and uncertainty threaten, the balance of societal priorities shifts. To quote Aragorn: “Are you scared? You’re not scared enough.” Better get used to your nightmares, they ain’t going away anytime soon. Enjoy the darkness.
P.S. I hear BuSpar is good. Kr00lee-O
It may be a paranoid reaction but sometimes we get the distinct feeling that there are people out there who don’t like us.
Dear 2600:
I was browsing the latest mag at Barnes & Noble here in Austin, Texas. I noticed some rant about emoticons and stuff. This was total rambling, no real meat (where’s the beef?). Anyway, I was talking to my dad this past summer. He was an Army Intelligence Officer in Vietnam. He said they used to use emoticons back in the ’60s, on teletypes, before the Internet. Can you guys screen these articles a little better? This totally turned me off and I didn’t buy this issue.
ByteEnable You didn’t buy the issue solely because you disagreed with the conclusions
reached by one short article? We’d be amazed if you’ve ever bought anything with differing opinions. Hopefully, we can get someone in the military to back up your dad’s story or there may be some trouble.
OUR BIGGEST FANS
Dear 2600: I’ve been meaning to mention my thoughts about the magazine’s ar-
ticle policy. Personally, I think one part of the article submission policy is unfair. The part saying that all articles submitted to the mag must not have been submitted anywhere else first. Let me give a little anal- ogy here: it would be much like Coca Cola telling all Coke drinkers that they can only drink their product if they haven’t drank Pepsi a day or two before drinking Coke. It’s unrealistic to think in the span of about three months (actually, over three months for those buying the mag from Barnes and Noble and other stores) that people will always remember they submitted an article to 2600 that they’d really like to submit elsewhere as well, or simply want to be bound by such control freak type policies. As is often said in the mag, in some form or another, the exchange of info is and should be free. Such a policy doesn’t exactly encourage such a thing, at least during the excruciat- ingly long wait to see if an article sent gets printed or is thrown away like so much trash.
One thing I think is pretty much certain. No matter what I or anyone else says, that policy will, of course, not change. That’s unfortunate. At least for us article writers it is. And, let’s not forget something else here. Every time a copy of the mag is sold or someone subscribes you’re making money. Money off of other people’s hard work. Therefore, doesn’t it stand to reason that with that being the case that it’s only fitting and right that you listen a bit if such people voice such opinions as this?
Captain B Your analogy is a strange one to say the least. But it’s flawed for the simple reason
that you’re conjuring up an absurd restriction placed on consumers and comparing it to the guidelines we ask our writers to abide by. We place absolutely no restric- tion on who can consume—or read—our magazine. To do so would be insane and self-defeating. But our writers are helping to determine the nature of the magazine and for that we have to insist on a certain level of standards. It’s a disservice to our readers to simply reprint information which can be found in other publications or on the Internet. The readers are the people we must ultimately answer to and that is why we make this rather simple stipulation. With relatively few exceptions,