Samizdat

Prologue

“The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don’t do this; they’re proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser.”

and

“Sociologists, who study networks like those of the hacker culture under the general rubric of “invisible colleges,” have noted that one characteristic of such networks is that they have gatekeepers–core members with the social authority to endorse new members into the network. Because the “invisible college” that is hacker culture is a loose and informal one, the role of gatekeeper is informal too. But one thing that all hackers understand in their bones is that not every hacker is a gatekeeper. Gatekeepers have to have a certain degree of seniority and accomplishment before they can bestow the title. How much is hard to quantify, but every hacker knows it when they see it.”

-Eric Steven Raymond, How to Become a Hacker, Thyrsus Enterprises, 2001.

I publish these communications from Mr. Martin Wehrmeyer (aka brotherBox, @aBoxMaybe, @luceatnobis), who demanded that I embargo his surname and refer to him by the alias brotherBox and in no other way, using bold for the usual reasons. I break up his long paragraphs to make them easier to read. My editorial comments are few, included in parentheses, while Mr. Wehrmeyer’s statements are bracketed in quotation marks.

This article includes a response that Mr. Wehrmeyer wrote to me when I invited him to review an early draft of my article about Z 3301. I felt that his response, which immediately follows, was sane and meaningful.

Bizarrely, Wehrmeyer quickly turned execrable, extracting an excerpt from that draft, twisting it to his purposes, placing me in an impossible position: Ms. Bogaerts demanded confidentiality from me, yet she inserted herself into an argument that I was keeping her out of. When she ordered me to “leave Marcus alone,” meaning Mr. Wanners, I declined. Read the rest of this entry »