The girl was no older than twelve and no younger than eight, had shockingly purple hair, and was waiting for her soldering iron to heat up. I sat down at her table, carefully, so as not to disturb anything.
My own badge still had the mandatory plastic casing on it. Our con had its own circuit board badges, even today, but if you got caught hacking one in public and a Fed happened to be around, you could be in trouble.
If you happened to be a Fed, and you didn't put a stop to it, you could be in trouble. But she hadn't done anything, hadn't even touched the soldering iron to the badge yet. The plastic casing was off, but in itself that wasn't illegal.
As for Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker, it wasn't as if she could hide behind the excuse that she didn't realize she was doing anything wrong. The anti-badge hacking laws were nearly as old as she was. Con organizers had to get official approval for their badge designs, and electronic badges like these required a token effort from the organizers to keep them from being hacked, such as plastic casing. But the fact that the anti-modding laws were a normal part of her con experience wasn't stopping her.
"What are you going to do with your badge?"
She looked up as if noticing me for the first time. I wasn't exactly unusual around here. Thirtysomething white guy, beard, black t-shirt with geek jokes. One of thousands. I never got spotted as a Fed, but the way her eyes narrowed made me wonder if she'd figured me out already.
After a moment's assessment, she held up her badge and pointed at the QR code on the embedded e-ink display.
"I'm going to make it point to my blog instead," she said, all matter-of-fact, a slight tilt to her chin when she said it. "And before you ask, it was all my idea. Nobody helped me."
Another asinine law, but this time she was following it. There were strict regulations on creative development these days, particularly in the fields of computers and electronics. Anyone not working for a corporation was supposed to work on their own. No community involvement, no brainstorming. It'd been a nice try at killing off the open source movement, but after three years of that, open source hadn't gone anywhere.
So maybe Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker was just proud of herself. Maybe she just wanted it to be her accomplishment and no one else's. She probably got asked all too often if her father helped her with her projects.
She put a micro-USB port onto the back of the badge and soldered it on, and as I watched, a whole new badge was born. When she was finished, she uploaded her image, e-ink display blinking to show a brand-new QR code.
I couldn't help but grin. There was definitely hope for the future.
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Re: Prompt 5
Date: 2011-06-06 08:46 pm (UTC)My own badge still had the mandatory plastic casing on it. Our con had its own circuit board badges, even today, but if you got caught hacking one in public and a Fed happened to be around, you could be in trouble.
If you happened to be a Fed, and you didn't put a stop to it, you could be in trouble. But she hadn't done anything, hadn't even touched the soldering iron to the badge yet. The plastic casing was off, but in itself that wasn't illegal.
As for Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker, it wasn't as if she could hide behind the excuse that she didn't realize she was doing anything wrong. The anti-badge hacking laws were nearly as old as she was. Con organizers had to get official approval for their badge designs, and electronic badges like these required a token effort from the organizers to keep them from being hacked, such as plastic casing. But the fact that the anti-modding laws were a normal part of her con experience wasn't stopping her.
"What are you going to do with your badge?"
She looked up as if noticing me for the first time. I wasn't exactly unusual around here. Thirtysomething white guy, beard, black t-shirt with geek jokes. One of thousands. I never got spotted as a Fed, but the way her eyes narrowed made me wonder if she'd figured me out already.
After a moment's assessment, she held up her badge and pointed at the QR code on the embedded e-ink display.
"I'm going to make it point to my blog instead," she said, all matter-of-fact, a slight tilt to her chin when she said it. "And before you ask, it was all my idea. Nobody helped me."
Another asinine law, but this time she was following it. There were strict regulations on creative development these days, particularly in the fields of computers and electronics. Anyone not working for a corporation was supposed to work on their own. No community involvement, no brainstorming. It'd been a nice try at killing off the open source movement, but after three years of that, open source hadn't gone anywhere.
So maybe Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker was just proud of herself. Maybe she just wanted it to be her accomplishment and no one else's. She probably got asked all too often if her father helped her with her projects.
She put a micro-USB port onto the back of the badge and soldered it on, and as I watched, a whole new badge was born. When she was finished, she uploaded her image, e-ink display blinking to show a brand-new QR code.
I couldn't help but grin. There was definitely hope for the future.