360 DEAR HACKER

360 DEAR HACKER

Label Taiwan as “Taiwan.” Do not act like the coward Google: they re- moved the insulting suffix when facing massive protest from Taiwanese netizens but reverted after pressure from the Chinese government who threatened to block Google from the search engine market in China. Sadly, Google is not the only one. Many U.S. corporations do the same when facing threats from China.

Keep up the good work and use your independent thinking—not only independent from the U.S. government, but from other governments as well!

(Google has changed their map.google.com and removed the offend- ing suffix when searching for “Taiwan,” so I will no longer call them coward.)

Tim Taiwanese Liim New Jersey

We all knew it was inevitable that 2600 would wind up in the middle of this conflict. But let’s get a few things straight from the outset. We are not referring to Taiwan as “Taiwan, province of China.” We are merely accessing an official list of coun- tries and that list happens to be worded in this manner. The mere fact that Taiwan is represented at all on the list has annoyed mainland China, so it’s a bit of a two- edged sword. It would solve nothing if we went in and changed our copy of the list and it would open us up to having to change all of the other names that people have a problem with. Then there would be people who have a problem with us changing the list. We would then become mired in the world of international con- flict where we wouldn’t stand a chance of addressing those issues that really mat- ter to us—like fixing the definition of the word “hacker.” The solution to the Taiwan issue is to fix the list and if voicing opposition in this forum helps achieve that end, then we’re happy to be of service.

There are those in Taiwan, incidentally, who believe that mainland China will even- tually be reunited under the Taiwanese flag. They consider all of the provinces of mainland China to belong to the Taiwanese regime. That, coupled with the fact that Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China, gives a much more positive spin to the whole “province of China” moniker. It all depends on how you define China. But seriously, the one sure way to solve this problem is, rather than start a fight with us, to declare independence from the mainland. It may take a civil war and several million lives but ISO 3166-1 will be changed.

OUR BIGGEST FANS

Dear 2600:

I subscribe to a computer security forum and have met a person who knew Kevin “back in the day.” And I have recently learned a little more about “poor, misunderstood” Kevin Mitnick. Did you know:

a) That he’d been arrested as a juvenile? And that by continuing to engage in the kind of behavior that had gotten him arrested as a juvenile got into trouble (again) with the law?

b) That he and/or his friends did in fact change the class of service on home phones to payphones? So that whenever they picked up the receiver a recorded voice asked them to deposit twenty cents?

c) That he and his friends redirected operator assistance calls, answering them themselves?

d) That in 1981 he physically broke into a Pac-Bell office stealing a list of