[Noisebridge-discuss] Couple of things

LinkReincarnate linkreincarnate at gmail.com
Sat Mar 23 17:16:16 UTC 2013


Thefts: I'm sorry that people are having their stuff taken (its happened to
me a couple of times too)  But the idea of locking down the space is not
the solution.   I come to noisebridge for the people not the stuff.  if the
stuff were not there I would still come but if the people were not there I
would not. I would rather keep having my stuff walk away than to close the
space to the public. Just to be clear here. Creating a more closed space
is  a greater evil than having to take your stuff home or risk it walking.
Take a visit to any of the other hackerspaces (that have a no unsupervised
nonmember policy)  during their off hours and you will see why. You turn a
vibrant alive space into a mausoleum in a surprisingly short amount of
time.  The reason I come to Noisebridge is because of it's open door policy
and the fact that there is always someone there.   In fact a place like
this is just what is needed to combat geek depression but I digress.

I am not against the idea of doing something in the space to increase
security and prevent theft.  I just dont think that making the space less
public is the way to go.  Maybe a rfid door system where people can put
tags of stuff they do not want to leave the space without them. If an alarm
goes off then you have some proof on which to confront a suspected thief
and everyone in the space is notified of who the thieves are.  I would be
willing to implement this system with a little help.

Homeless people: All the hate on homeless people is starting to get on my
nerves.  I mean lets just take people we could be depending on to help the
space and shit all over them.  God forbid any of YOU become homeless.  Stop
kicking people when they are down. Not to mention the fact the when someone
is cleaning the space 90 percent of the time it's one of the homeless
people.

"That's not hacking": As far as the whole "thats not hacking crowd"  get
over yourself. I'm not going to step into the trap of enumerating counter
examples or arguing why some activity is in fact hacking. I'm going to
OFFICIALLY call you out (under the official hacker dueling rules you get to
chose the method of duel) on being an elitist instead. If all you want to
do is be exclusionary and work on your computer then just stay home.  Or go
to one of those commercial hackerspaces. You can be as exclusionary as you
like (no homeless people because everyone pays dues and they are high) and
even have complete control over your space.  There is enough elitist
bullshit in the workplace  dont drag it into Noisebridge.  If I wanted to
be a part of elitism I wouldn't have a membership to a hackerspace, I'd
have one to a country club.

I'd like to close by telling you a true story.  I was at the space one
Tuesday night after a meeting.  At this meeting the topic of door security
was being fervently discussed.  I disagreed then with the views that were
being expressed but I thought for the sake of the group I would apply the
ideas being discussed because my opinion was in the minority and there was
(and still is)a chance I was wrong.   I vowed to myself that I would be
more vigilant towards security at noisebridge.  The first opportunity
presented itself that night.  A person who I had never seen at noisebridge
said they wanted to use the PC attatched to the laser cutter to download
software licenses.   Because of the mindset that I was in I immediately
began prodding this person for more information.  The answers to the
questions that I was asking were not doing anything to assuage my fears
that this person was going to bring harm to noisbridge.  So in my overly
suspicious frame of mind I stayed (i had been about to leave) to watch and
make sure that noisebridge would not end up with the bsa breathing down our
neck because someone stole the license key to our version of windows (which
had already happened once).  The person realized that I thought something
was up and allowed me to see that what they were doing was on the up and
up.  This facilitated a discussion where I found out who this person was
and what they did.  This person was kinda a hero to me but I was basically
accusing him of stealing from noisebridge.     The point is we should not
be so concerned with security of stuff (things) that we allow it to poison
the interactions and first impressions with the people of noisebridge.
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