219 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
219 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2010-05-07T16:46:28.000Z'
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title: What it means to be a hacker (2008)
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url: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0802/msg00027.html
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author: chiquita
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points: 73
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 3
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1273250788
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_chiquita
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- story_1328054
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objectID: '1328054'
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---
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[Source](http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0802/msg00027.html "Permalink to <nettime> Rop Gonggrijp: What it means to be a hacker")
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# <nettime> Rop Gonggrijp: What it means to be a hacker
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[www.nettime.org][1]
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Nettime mailing list archives
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| ----- |
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| ** Patrice Riemens on Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:36:42 +0100 (CET) ** |
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[[Date Prev][2]] [[Date Next][3]] [[Thread Prev][2]] [[Thread Next][3]] [[Date Index][4]] [[Thread Index][5]]
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| ----- |
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| **<nettime> Rop Gonggrijp: What it means to be a hacker** |
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* _To_: nettime-l {AT} kein.org
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* _Subject_: <nettime> Rop Gonggrijp: What it means to be a hacker
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* _From_: "Patrice Riemens" <patrice {AT} xs4all.nl>
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* _Date_: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:53:15 +0100 (CET)
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* _User-agent_: SquirrelMail/1.4.11
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* * *
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>From 2600 magazine, Winter issue - #4, 2007
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(<http://www.2600.com>)
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What it means to be a hacker
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by Rop Gonggrijp
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My most recent confrontation with what it means to be a hacker started
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in March of 2006, after I went to vote for the local council of
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Amsterdam. At the polling station, I had to use a brand-new electronic
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voting machine that the city was renting from a company called Sdu.
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In fact, Amsterdam had contracted the entire election as a turnkey
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service, Sdu was even training the poll-workers. This "voting machine"
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was in fact a computer with a touch screen running Windows. To make
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maters worse: inside each computer was a GPRS wireless modem that sent
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the election results to Sdu, which in turn told the city. I had not
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been blind to the problems of electronic voting before, but now I was
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having my face rubbed in it, and it hurt.
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Perhaps I should quickly introduce myself. My name is Rop Gonggrijp
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and I'm a dutch national that lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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Some of you will know me as I have been mentioned in this magazine as
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well as been a regular guest on Off the Hook for almost as long as the
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show exists. I'm one of the main organizers for these Dutch hacker
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events. Between 1989 and 1993 I published Hack-Tic, a magazine not
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unlike 2600 except that it was written in Dutch. During the late Hack-
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Tic years I co-founded XS4ALL, which still is one of the larger ISPs
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in The Netherlands.
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I guess I became part of the hacker community sometime during the
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early 1980s while playing with my fathers 300 baud acoustic modem,
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although arguably I was hacking before when I was soldering FM-
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transmitters together with a friend at age 12. But after reading
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Steven Levy's book 'Hackers, heroes of the computer revolution', I
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knew what I was and that I was to be part of a global community, even
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if I could only knew a few other hackers around me. Imagine my relief
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when I went to Hamburg for the 1988 Chaos Communication Congress to
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find a few hundred other hackers. After that I was hooked, and by 1989
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I was one of the organizers of the first European hacker event: the
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Galactic Hacker Party. Long and formative years of exploration, mayhem
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and mischief followed, during which, among many other things, we found
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and shared many new and interesting ways of making free phone calls.
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And when we got our hands on the keys to the nuclear bunkers that
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underlied some subway stations in Amsterdam, we promptly organized
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tours there for all our friends and their friends. But even behind the
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greatest mischief was the motivation to educate, to sharpen the minds
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of fellow hackers and of the population at large.
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XS4ALL, the Internet provider, was much more a political statement
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than anything else. The Internet back then would never make any money:
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way too difficult and freaky for the general population. I left XS4ALL
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in 1997 and started a computer security consultancy, and then after
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that a company that builds voice encrypting mobile phones, but I kept
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going to hacker events and co-organizing our own event every four
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years.
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Fast forward to 2006 and the local elections. I was angry because I
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felt my election had been stolen: there was no way to observe a count,
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one just had to believe that this wireless-equipped black-box Windows
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machine was counting honestly. I knew a little bit too much about the
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risks associated with computer technology to go along with that. I
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wasn't the only one that was angry: my longtime friend Barry came home
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from that March 2006 election with the exact same story that I had
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come home with: trying to reason with poll-workers that clearly felt
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that only the medically paranoid would distrust such a wonderful shiny
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box. When we met later that day we vowed to not only get mad, but to
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do something about it.
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Which wasn't going to be all that easy. By the time Amsterdam had
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gotten electronic voting, it was pretty late in the game: Amsterdam
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(pop. ~750k) was the last city in The Netherlands (pop. 16.5M) to
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get electronic voting. Some cities were renting the same system as
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Amsterdam, but the vast majority was using an older system made by
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a company called Nedap. While I studied the legal requirements for
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electronic voting, I became even more convinced that all of these
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'machines' (that were all in fact computers) needed to go if we were
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to have transparent and verifiable elections. The regulations treated
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these systems as if they were indeed mere 'machines': they worried
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about the amounts of humidity and vibration they could withstand and
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they made sure nobody would get shocked from touching one. Computer
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security wasn't even mentioned. But the biggest problem wasn't the
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lack of security, it was the lack of transparency. We got together a
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small group of like-minded people and started planning a campaign.
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There had been previous attempts to raise the question trustworthiness
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in relation to voting machines, but the ministry of the interior was
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used to painting the opponents of electronic voting as technophobe
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luddites. Given that half our group consisted of hi-tech-loving
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hackers this was an approach that wasn't going to work this time.
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During the next year and a half we managed to get the attention of the
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media. We claimed that the Nedap 'machines' were computers and not
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'dedicated hardware' (as the manufacturer claimed) and that they could
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just as easily be taught to play chess or lie about election results.
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The person selling these computers in the Netherlands wrote wonderful
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long rants on his website, and in reaction to our claim he said he did
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not believe his 'machines' could play chess.
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So we caused a true media frenzy when we got hold of a Nedap voting
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computer and made it play chess. (We also made it lie about election
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results.) There was a debate in parliament, during which the
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responsible minister promised to appoint two committees. That next
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election, an international election observation mission studied the
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problems with electronic voting in the country which until then had
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always been the example country for uncontroversial e-Voting. In their
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report, they advised that this type of voting computers "should be
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phased out" and the two committees also wrote very harsh reports about
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how these 'machines' came about and how they should not be used in
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the future. A lot more happened: we threatened to take the government
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to court on several occasions, and we even won a case in which the
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Nedap approval was nullified. But by then the ministry had already
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decided to throw in the towel, retracting the legislation that allows
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electronic voting. The next elections in The Netherlands will be held
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using pencils and paper. (Which is really quite OK since over here
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we've only got one race per election, so counting by hand isn't all
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that hard.)
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One of the things that struck me about this campaign is that in order
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to win, we've needed almost every hacker-skill imaginable. Imagine
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all the stuff you can learn from this magazine, or from going to (or
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helping organize) a hacker convention. From general skills such as
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dealing with the media or writing press-releases to social engineering
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(getting hold of the system), lockpicking (showing the mechanical
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locks were bogus, the same 1 Euro key was used all over the country),
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reverse engineering (modifying their 68000 code without access to
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source) and system administration (website). Having published a hacker
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magazine and done the ISP, I was no stranger to conflict: at XS4ALL we
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had had serious issues with the infamous 'church' of Scientology as
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well as with the German government. Also the international contacts
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I got from growing up in the hacker community paid off: the hack was
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very much a Dutch-German project, and we're still working together
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tightly to also get rid of these same 'machines' in Germany. At
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certain moments I had the funny feeling that somehow this was the
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project that I had been in training for all these years.
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So I guess what I'm saying is that if you are a hacker, if you're
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going to hacker conventions, if you like figuring stuff out or if you
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are building your own projects.... Please realize that, possibly by
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accident, you may also possess some truly powerful skills that can
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help bring about political change, and that these skills will become
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more and more important as technology becomes a bigger part of ever
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more political debates. So if you don't like the news: go out and make
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some of your own!
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# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
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# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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# more info: <http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l>
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# archive: <http://www.nettime.org> contact: nettime {AT} kein.org
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* * *
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* Index(es):
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* [**Date**][4]
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* [**Thread**][5]
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[1]: /
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[2]: http://www.nettime.org/msg00026.html
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[3]: http://www.nettime.org/msg00028.html
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[4]: http://www.nettime.org/maillist.html#00027
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[5]: http://www.nettime.org/threads.html#00027
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