I had a very disturbing discussion with someone the other day about the DMCA, and part of it discussed this sort of thing.
Why should the public have the right to examine the things they buy, he asked. Why do they need to do it. It's not their job. Why is it a guaranteed right, he asked.
Well, I said, how do people know what they are buying -- how can anyone know whether what they are buying is safe, or quality merchandise, I ask. How can you be sure you are buying a safe, or well built car, I ask, if you can't examine it?
Well thats not your job, he says. Companies who make bad products will be discovered, he said, and no one will buy from them. I own a company, he says, and I have to ensure I make good products, else people won't buy them.
How do they get found out, I ask, if it is illegal for people to examine their product? Consumer protection agencies, he says. How do the consumer protection agencies get around the law, I ask. He's talking about government agencies, he tells me.
Well then, I ask, why should I trust a government agency to disagree with a company when quite clearly those companies have enough influence over government to get laws like DMCA passed?
How then, I ask, do we ensure that companies make safe or good quality products, I ask? Laws, he says. How do we know that companies aren't breaking the laws, I ask? Well, he says, eventually, people will find out that the product is bad quality, and then others wont buy it, he says.
We have a right to safety, he says, but only after we know something isn't safe.
I said, how can one company compete with another company if they aren't allowed to see how the other company's product works, even in the slightest? They don't need to know how it works, he tells me, they only need to know what it does. How do you know what it really does if you don't know how it does it, I ask. You shouldn't need to, he says. Why would you want to copy someone else's work if you want to make your own product? So then, I ask, how do you know you can make a better product if you don't know for sure that you can make a product that is *as good*? That's the gamble of competition, he says.
You don't need to know how it's done, you just have to gamble and hope you can guess. Lotsa luck, I say. You don't need to make your product work with their format either, he tells me; you just make your own format, and if your program is better, people will use it regardless of format.
Fuck standards, basically.
So what about the computer I own. Don't I have a right to see what's on it? Don't I have a right to control what it does? Yes, he tells me, and you exercise that right by deciding not to put a given product on your computer. So how do I know whether or not to put a given piece of software on my computer? Well, don't put it on there if you don't trust it. How do I know if I can trust it if I don't know how it works? Base it on the reputation the company has for other products. How do I know those are trustworthy if I can't examine them, either? Base it on the experiences people have had with them. But how can I trust ay piece of software if the only thing I have to go on is the word of the companies who make them? You have to trust someone, he says, otherwise thats paranoia.
"The law is the law" attitude is unamerican, undemocratic, and anyone who thinks that people, including themselves, living in (what is supposed to be) a free democratic society, should let the government control them (instead of they controlling their government), they should be given free plane tickets to countries with wonderfully compliant societies such as Iran, China, Libya, and Afghanistan, where they will be free to encourage others to submit to the will of the government.
The courts are the only arena where the DMCA will be chipped away until it falls apart, but that can't happen if we stage 'free hacker-x' demonstrations every time the DMCA is to be put on trial.
Well, unless you've got a better idea than sitting on our asses and crossing our fingers, hoping crotchedy old Luddite judges and ass-talking, cocky, cheap rookie lawyers will change the situation, please, by all means, suggest it. I didn't see you suggest a practical idea, either.
Although Skylarov may be guilty of the latter, he committed these acts outside of US jurisdiction in a country whose laws do not forbid the practice.
Except that MPAA v. 2600 set the precedent that says that TELLING someone how to FIND a tool that will let you circumvent methods designed to control access or duplication to a copyrighted work, is also illegal under this code.
Which he did do at DC9, by telling people where they could find his software.
PS I wish the DefCon ppl would release the contents of his speech, soon, and publicly, so ppl could see clearly what nonsense he was jailed for.
Oh no. You mean he *can't* go and risk his life to bring AOL to starving Ethiopians?
What is he gonna do with his life now -- make better than the national average, live at a decent first-world standard of living, and have enough money in his bank account to live on when he retires?
You're so cruel.
Yes college kids, you too can blow $100,000 on a college education so you can set up FidoNet nodes in Ghana, for free.
Point is, it's not unreasonable to expect that if tech skills are really in demand, they would be willing to spring for above average compensation, at least by their standards.
This story is as paranoid and alarmist as most./ stories are, but I don't see any hard evidence. All I see is Henson's site (which we can't see anymore) and a couple references to california law. I don't even see so much as a link to a badly reported Reuters Yahoo story.
Doesn't anyone have anything substantive aside from that poorly updated xenu.net site?
The company I work for, way back in 1850, used carrier pigeon to transmit news and stock info from Germany to Belgium because it took the pigeons two hours less, or half the time, than man-made transport to make the trip.
I'm surprised someone in our company didnt set one of these up.
Oh okay, it would be hell, but I can dream. Honestly, wouldn't it be nice to drop by this site, with a per-BBS message board, and find yourself chatting again with people you haven't typed to since you got an ISP?
Biggest problem: anachronisms.
It looks like when guessing location, Jason went to a current exchange-to-locality database. Unfortunately, a lot of ACs have changed since the big BBS days, so that while 617-581-XXXX is now Cambridge MA, it used to be Lynn MA (now in 781 [and 339]).
I guess this is all thanks to Disney. Anyone who went to EPCOT Center in the mid-to-late 80s probably saw the dismal sci-fi heartwarmer Captain EO starring an appropriately glitzy Michael Jackson.
Part of EO's attractiveness was that it was in polarized 3-D (remember the gray glasses with ugly bright plastic frames). To add to the 3-D effect though, the theater included ambient laser light, radially pointed neon lighting, and a few other spotlight effects choreographed to the movie. So when EO fired a beam from his love ray (or whatever) or when his ship went into ludicrous drive (again, whatever), the beam or burst would fly out of the screen and past the viewer.
I imagine this is a lot like that, and I can't say I'd be bothered.
I know that l0pht tried this very same security mechanism around 1996-98, as suggested by one of my favorite l0pht quotes:
"If you want to break into our place, you had better take down our net connection."
Unfortunately, despite @stake.com's front-page claims that "all old l0pht material is available on this site", not everything is.
They had a video camera pointed at their door, at what looked like a 10-15 foot distance. The picture was clear and fairly good size. I've no idea how often it refreshed. Of course, this setup assumes that all intruders will be barging in through the front castle gate.
I've considered doing the same thing in my new apartment, since I own two webcams that I can't use at work anymore.
Seems to me there are lessons to learn from JWZ's experience. One, don't use a crappy teenybopper-vidchat-designed Quickcam for this unless you can get nice sharp pictures from it. Two, go for a higher refresh rate than 30 seconds -- if it takes someone less than 30 seconds to walk from the door to the cam, its not a good idea is it? And three, try not to put it right behind the door and plainly visible.
--Keith "And four, make sure the audio is muted so they don't hear the fake 'cha-click' sound" Tyler
Foreseeable problems with implementing this technology:
1. Napster will have to invalidate old versions of the software, forcing everyone to DL a new (and probably quite larger) version with the fingerprinting tech.
2. The tech will not live up to expectations, but it will then be set to be hyper-sensitive, pleasing the record industry but making false positives and thereby shutting out content that it shouldn't.
3. Just like people garbled and ciphered artist names to get around the filename block, people will encode and garble the audio data to get around fingerprinting. Possible ways around fingerprinting:
- Invert every byte of the audio data
- Add a repeated sequence of values to the audio byte data (like a One Time Pad, perhaps)
- Split song files into smaller chunks to send over Napster which can then be lumped together into one complete file -- a lot like the way files are and have been transmitted over Usenet already for years.
- Combinations of the above, etc.
But have little fear, since this announcement is almost assuredly just a stall tactic. Given Patel's blurry and skin-deep perception of technology, Napster's lawyers figure they can convince her that the tech will take some time to be ready for prime time, and then be implemented into Napster client software and rolled out. They say it will take some months to make that happen. However, they are also looking forward to a rehearing much sooner than that, which will at any rate very likely involve putting a stay on Patel's court orders until they decide whether to even have the rehearing or not.
FWIW, I followed the Microsoft antitrust case, and I can't say I was that impressed with David Boies. He got lucky. From what I could tell, he basically flubbed everything, not bothering to drive home the points that would have made the case more clear cut, for fear that he would lose the judge in even an ounce of technical explanation. He's too much of a gambler to win a more hairy case like this one. This banking-on-a-rehearing that they are doing seems very risky to me.
One, the major backbones are maintained by a small number of companies. Especially now as CLECs die like mayflies and regional ISPs and ILECs get gobbled up by nats and multinats. (In the ISP arena, from my experience, the bean counters are even willing to risk total pipe saturation than to pay the expense of the expansion they need to meet sales estimates -- never mind ensure backbone redundancy!) But basically, you have a small number of companies who though individually are expanding their pipes, on the whole the expansion is not enough. Not only that, but the complexity (not just technical but administrative and accounting-wise) of multiple pipes from multiple vendors and peers is considered unnecessary, when they can just get bigger/more pipes from the same upstream.
Two, the consumer focus on Internet isn't reliability -- it's speed. The popularity of DSL in the face of its gaping unreliability is a sure sign of this. In order to serve customers, ISPs/ILECs only need bigger pipes, not "better" ones. Customers will complain about a day or two's worth of downtime, but in the end rarely is the information or method of communication important enough for there to be a viable market in reliable connectivity over fast connectivity.
Basically, if you want any of the old Internet traits -- reliability, noncommerciality, technical assurance -- you'd be better off making your own Net. (Honestly I dont know why one hasnt sprung up already.)
Bah! That never stopped a true tinkerer. Though most of them are careful enough not to bust the flashbulb in the first place, and when they do, they give up or find another bulb-like thing.
I'm surprised that 2 AA's caused the spark you talk about, but then again I've seen the kind of sparks a 9V can make.
Someday I'll show you the gouge in the screwdriver that I accidentally shorted across live AC current. I'm only here today thanks to the insulative nature of the handle. As they say, plastic makes it possible...:)
If this was posted by someone I know, please drop me an email. It sounds real familiar.
In fact, if this isn't someone I know, the story is even more scary, cause it means the same exact thing is happening to lots of once-traditional, once-local ISPs.
In practical terms, a dedserv ISP will do patches on OS software in bulk at specified intervals. It may be that the patch desired would have been installed during the next scheduled time for patching that box, which may be done weekly, once a month or once every two months, etc., depending on how many servers they have to maintain and how much staff they have (their problem, not yours, but simply a possible explanation).
Now, if you call the ISP and demand that they install a patch Immediately If Not Sooner, they probably charge you time & labor for this work which is essentially special attention to the box, as it breaks from the set patching schedule (which probably is part of your service agreement).
I dunno the Communitech patching and service scheme, but this seems a likely answer to the question, which is obviously coming from an upset and nervy customer.
Yes. Mission Hill, corner of Tremont and something. I actually lived down the block from there for about six months but never went in -- we tried once near last call but got kept out. I've bee in there once. It's probably too small for a geek bar, but I used it as an example of a good location because its probably cheaper than two floors and 2,000 sq ft in a well traveled part of Cambridge or Boston.
I do remember at least hearing about Cybersmith and Liberty Cafe. Cybersmith was probably still around my freshman and sophomore years, but we had no need for it as we had an online lab in our dorm. I remember meaning to visit Liberty Cafe but forgot about it, or else couldnt find people who were also interested. But regardless, I dont think either of those were actually bars, just coffee shops.
Which illustrates why I might go with a smaller space, because the cybershops that go all out with haute couture interior decorating and the finest strong coffees in a spacious storefront tend to go out of business.
Alcohol behind lockable cabinets or a separate closable bar so that you can serve coffee and websites after the bar closing time and be open all night.
Dont forget a free email account with your first pitcher.
And no pisswatery beer.
I also recommend tabletop / board games. You could even have tournaments. Beats frickin' karaoke. Hell, at a place like that I could have some interesting MTG games.
I had the same idea about a year ago, but personally I dont have the funds nor associates who think its a good idea, nor do I relish the idea of having to fight Boston's repressive tendencies. I'd open it in a tight place like Flann's, call it something corny like "The Root Sheller," and wait for Cambridgiophiles to deign to visit it. (Maybe it's not such a great idea.)
Let me guess, you don't see what's so interesting about hacking, either.
Consider this a social hack. Which to some, is indistiguishable from a prank, such as putting a whoope cushion on someone's chair or putting a bucket of water on top of an ajar door. Though these things are not quite in the same league with managing to get the government of New Zealand to recognize a fictitious sci-fi knightly order as a religion.
Of course, Heinlein readers already turned a fictitious religion into a reality (temporarily anyway), so this one loses some originality points.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a very disturbing discussion with someone the other day about the DMCA, and part of it discussed this sort of thing.
Why should the public have the right to examine the things they buy, he asked. Why do they need to do it. It's not their job. Why is it a guaranteed right, he asked.
Well, I said, how do people know what they are buying -- how can anyone know whether what they are buying is safe, or quality merchandise, I ask. How can you be sure you are buying a safe, or well built car, I ask, if you can't examine it?
Well thats not your job, he says. Companies who make bad products will be discovered, he said, and no one will buy from them. I own a company, he says, and I have to ensure I make good products, else people won't buy them.
How do they get found out, I ask, if it is illegal for people to examine their product? Consumer protection agencies, he says. How do the consumer protection agencies get around the law, I ask. He's talking about government agencies, he tells me.
Well then, I ask, why should I trust a government agency to disagree with a company when quite clearly those companies have enough influence over government to get laws like DMCA passed?
How then, I ask, do we ensure that companies make safe or good quality products, I ask? Laws, he says. How do we know that companies aren't breaking the laws, I ask? Well, he says, eventually, people will find out that the product is bad quality, and then others wont buy it, he says.
We have a right to safety, he says, but only after we know something isn't safe.
I said, how can one company compete with another company if they aren't allowed to see how the other company's product works, even in the slightest? They don't need to know how it works, he tells me, they only need to know what it does. How do you know what it really does if you don't know how it does it, I ask. You shouldn't need to, he says. Why would you want to copy someone else's work if you want to make your own product? So then, I ask, how do you know you can make a better product if you don't know for sure that you can make a product that is *as good*? That's the gamble of competition, he says.
You don't need to know how it's done, you just have to gamble and hope you can guess. Lotsa luck, I say. You don't need to make your product work with their format either, he tells me; you just make your own format, and if your program is better, people will use it regardless of format.
Fuck standards, basically.
So what about the computer I own. Don't I have a right to see what's on it? Don't I have a right to control what it does? Yes, he tells me, and you exercise that right by deciding not to put a given product on your computer. So how do I know whether or not to put a given piece of software on my computer? Well, don't put it on there if you don't trust it. How do I know if I can trust it if I don't know how it works? Base it on the reputation the company has for other products. How do I know those are trustworthy if I can't examine them, either? Base it on the experiences people have had with them. But how can I trust ay piece of software if the only thing I have to go on is the word of the companies who make them? You have to trust someone, he says, otherwise thats paranoia.
Trust the corporations. Otherwise you're nuts.
"The law is the law" attitude is unamerican, undemocratic, and anyone who thinks that people, including themselves, living in (what is supposed to be) a free democratic society, should let the government control them (instead of they controlling their government), they should be given free plane tickets to countries with wonderfully compliant societies such as Iran, China, Libya, and Afghanistan, where they will be free to encourage others to submit to the will of the government.
The courts are the only arena where the DMCA will be chipped away until it falls apart, but that can't happen if we stage 'free hacker-x' demonstrations every time the DMCA is to be put on trial.
Well, unless you've got a better idea than sitting on our asses and crossing our fingers, hoping crotchedy old Luddite judges and ass-talking, cocky, cheap rookie lawyers will change the situation, please, by all means, suggest it. I didn't see you suggest a practical idea, either.
Although Skylarov may be guilty of the latter, he committed these acts outside of US jurisdiction in a country whose laws do not forbid the practice.
Except that MPAA v. 2600 set the precedent that says that TELLING someone how to FIND a tool that will let you circumvent methods designed to control access or duplication to a copyrighted work, is also illegal under this code.
Which he did do at DC9, by telling people where they could find his software.
PS I wish the DefCon ppl would release the contents of his speech, soon, and publicly, so ppl could see clearly what nonsense he was jailed for.
What is he gonna do with his life now -- make better than the national average, live at a decent first-world standard of living, and have enough money in his bank account to live on when he retires?
You're so cruel.
Yes college kids, you too can blow $100,000 on a college education so you can set up FidoNet nodes in Ghana, for free.
Point is, it's not unreasonable to expect that if tech skills are really in demand, they would be willing to spring for above average compensation, at least by their standards.
--
--
Doesn't anyone have anything substantive aside from that poorly updated xenu.net site?
--
The company I work for, way back in 1850, used carrier pigeon to transmit news and stock info from Germany to Belgium because it took the pigeons two hours less, or half the time, than man-made transport to make the trip.
I'm surprised someone in our company didnt set one of these up.
--
Oh okay, it would be hell, but I can dream. Honestly, wouldn't it be nice to drop by this site, with a per-BBS message board, and find yourself chatting again with people you haven't typed to since you got an ISP?
Biggest problem: anachronisms.
It looks like when guessing location, Jason went to a current exchange-to-locality database. Unfortunately, a lot of ACs have changed since the big BBS days, so that while 617-581-XXXX is now Cambridge MA, it used to be Lynn MA (now in 781 [and 339]).
--
I guess this is all thanks to Disney. Anyone who went to EPCOT Center in the mid-to-late 80s probably saw the dismal sci-fi heartwarmer Captain EO starring an appropriately glitzy Michael Jackson.
Part of EO's attractiveness was that it was in polarized 3-D (remember the gray glasses with ugly bright plastic frames). To add to the 3-D effect though, the theater included ambient laser light, radially pointed neon lighting, and a few other spotlight effects choreographed to the movie. So when EO fired a beam from his love ray (or whatever) or when his ship went into ludicrous drive (again, whatever), the beam or burst would fly out of the screen and past the viewer.
I imagine this is a lot like that, and I can't say I'd be bothered.
--
"If you want to break into our place, you had better take down our net connection."
Unfortunately, despite @stake.com's front-page claims that "all old l0pht material is available on this site", not everything is.
They had a video camera pointed at their door, at what looked like a 10-15 foot distance. The picture was clear and fairly good size. I've no idea how often it refreshed. Of course, this setup assumes that all intruders will be barging in through the front castle gate.
I've considered doing the same thing in my new apartment, since I own two webcams that I can't use at work anymore.
Seems to me there are lessons to learn from JWZ's experience. One, don't use a crappy teenybopper-vidchat-designed Quickcam for this unless you can get nice sharp pictures from it. Two, go for a higher refresh rate than 30 seconds -- if it takes someone less than 30 seconds to walk from the door to the cam, its not a good idea is it? And three, try not to put it right behind the door and plainly visible.
--Keith "And four, make sure the audio is muted so they don't hear the fake 'cha-click' sound" Tyler
--
1. Napster will have to invalidate old versions of the software, forcing everyone to DL a new (and probably quite larger) version with the fingerprinting tech.
2. The tech will not live up to expectations, but it will then be set to be hyper-sensitive, pleasing the record industry but making false positives and thereby shutting out content that it shouldn't.
3. Just like people garbled and ciphered artist names to get around the filename block, people will encode and garble the audio data to get around fingerprinting. Possible ways around fingerprinting:
- Invert every byte of the audio data
- Add a repeated sequence of values to the audio byte data (like a One Time Pad, perhaps)
- Split song files into smaller chunks to send over Napster which can then be lumped together into one complete file -- a lot like the way files are and have been transmitted over Usenet already for years.
- Combinations of the above, etc.
But have little fear, since this announcement is almost assuredly just a stall tactic. Given Patel's blurry and skin-deep perception of technology, Napster's lawyers figure they can convince her that the tech will take some time to be ready for prime time, and then be implemented into Napster client software and rolled out. They say it will take some months to make that happen. However, they are also looking forward to a rehearing much sooner than that, which will at any rate very likely involve putting a stay on Patel's court orders until they decide whether to even have the rehearing or not.
FWIW, I followed the Microsoft antitrust case, and I can't say I was that impressed with David Boies. He got lucky. From what I could tell, he basically flubbed everything, not bothering to drive home the points that would have made the case more clear cut, for fear that he would lose the judge in even an ounce of technical explanation. He's too much of a gambler to win a more hairy case like this one. This banking-on-a-rehearing that they are doing seems very risky to me.
--
YFTS "and I stopped pumping gas and ran".
--
Dammit, I need a new place, with space for a workshop.
--
% telnet slashdot.org 80
Trying 64.28.67.150...
Connected to slashdot.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 05:22:53 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_perl/1.24
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Connection closed by foreign host.
--
One, the major backbones are maintained by a small number of companies. Especially now as CLECs die like mayflies and regional ISPs and ILECs get gobbled up by nats and multinats. (In the ISP arena, from my experience, the bean counters are even willing to risk total pipe saturation than to pay the expense of the expansion they need to meet sales estimates -- never mind ensure backbone redundancy!) But basically, you have a small number of companies who though individually are expanding their pipes, on the whole the expansion is not enough. Not only that, but the complexity (not just technical but administrative and accounting-wise) of multiple pipes from multiple vendors and peers is considered unnecessary, when they can just get bigger/more pipes from the same upstream.
Two, the consumer focus on Internet isn't reliability -- it's speed. The popularity of DSL in the face of its gaping unreliability is a sure sign of this. In order to serve customers, ISPs/ILECs only need bigger pipes, not "better" ones. Customers will complain about a day or two's worth of downtime, but in the end rarely is the information or method of communication important enough for there to be a viable market in reliable connectivity over fast connectivity.
Basically, if you want any of the old Internet traits -- reliability, noncommerciality, technical assurance -- you'd be better off making your own Net. (Honestly I dont know why one hasnt sprung up already.)
--
I'm surprised that 2 AA's caused the spark you talk about, but then again I've seen the kind of sparks a 9V can make.
Someday I'll show you the gouge in the screwdriver that I accidentally shorted across live AC current. I'm only here today thanks to the insulative nature of the handle. As they say, plastic makes it possible...
--
In fact, if this isn't someone I know, the story is even more scary, cause it means the same exact thing is happening to lots of once-traditional, once-local ISPs.
--
Now, if you call the ISP and demand that they install a patch Immediately If Not Sooner, they probably charge you time & labor for this work which is essentially special attention to the box, as it breaks from the set patching schedule (which probably is part of your service agreement).
I dunno the Communitech patching and service scheme, but this seems a likely answer to the question, which is obviously coming from an upset and nervy customer.
--
--
Yeah, and if there was a tunnel under the Russian Embassy, you'd think Putin would have used it to avoid the rain.
Each person copy one sentence.
Post each sentence in reverse order, starting with the last one and working towards the first.
Mod each post up to 5.
Then, the only way to read the text (properly and in 'infringing' form) is to set your comment display options to Oldest First and Threshold: 5.
I wonder who is at fault there. Ah, I should have gone into law.
They ought to have Obfuscated Precedent contests.
Flanns? As in "Flann O'Briens Pub"?!?
Yes. Mission Hill, corner of Tremont and something. I actually lived down the block from there for about six months but never went in -- we tried once near last call but got kept out. I've bee in there once. It's probably too small for a geek bar, but I used it as an example of a good location because its probably cheaper than two floors and 2,000 sq ft in a well traveled part of Cambridge or Boston.
I do remember at least hearing about Cybersmith and Liberty Cafe. Cybersmith was probably still around my freshman and sophomore years, but we had no need for it as we had an online lab in our dorm. I remember meaning to visit Liberty Cafe but forgot about it, or else couldnt find people who were also interested. But regardless, I dont think either of those were actually bars, just coffee shops.
Which illustrates why I might go with a smaller space, because the cybershops that go all out with haute couture interior decorating and the finest strong coffees in a spacious storefront tend to go out of business.
Alcohol behind lockable cabinets or a separate closable bar so that you can serve coffee and websites after the bar closing time and be open all night.
l
Dont forget a free email account with your first pitcher.
And no pisswatery beer.
I also recommend tabletop / board games. You could even have tournaments. Beats frickin' karaoke. Hell, at a place like that I could have some interesting MTG games.
I had the same idea about a year ago, but personally I dont have the funds nor associates who think its a good idea, nor do I relish the idea of having to fight Boston's repressive tendencies. I'd open it in a tight place like Flann's, call it something corny like "The Root Sheller," and wait for Cambridgiophiles to deign to visit it. (Maybe it's not such a great idea.)
BTW, have you seen jwz's notes on the DNA Lounge that he is building in SF? Dunno if he has 'geek bar' in mind, but his experience is still helpful:
http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/latest.htm
Kdt
Let me guess, you don't see what's so interesting about hacking, either.
Consider this a social hack. Which to some, is indistiguishable from a prank, such as putting a whoope cushion on someone's chair or putting a bucket of water on top of an ajar door. Though these things are not quite in the same league with managing to get the government of New Zealand to recognize a fictitious sci-fi knightly order as a religion.
Of course, Heinlein readers already turned a fictitious religion into a reality (temporarily anyway), so this one loses some originality points.