What seems like a long time period at age thirteen seems significantly shorter when you're over double that age. With that in mind, the entire "hacker phenomenon" should be viewed as an extreme bit of ephemera, the result of a naive convergence between technology and what can be stereotyped as 1980's teenage angst and rebellion. The "hacker kid" made famous in every 1980's movie became (in a matter that Jean Baudrillard would be proud of) not only a reflection of ourselves, but an ideal we aspired to as well... and was really only a viable archetype for less than ten years. This should be kept in mind by any third-party who's attempting to put this scene in some sort of historical perspective. While there might be "hackers" in some sense even in the new millennium, this file specifically relates experiences of those of us who saw John Hughes movies at an actual movie theater back in the 80's. ("Hackers" generally meaning self-described phone phreaks and those who obtained unauthorized access to corporate computer networks, not just people good with computers).
These ramblings were inspired by my recent discovery of some old BBS buffers and text files I had booted up on my old Apple IIe while recently visiting my parents' house. Luckily (or unluckily) for you, I have a near-photographic memory of all of these events. (Too bad my post-high school years are rather hazy...) ;)
This surely has thousands of corollaries from around the country. My question is: where are you all now?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @07:32PM
We're no longer mired in that ego-centric, overly-simplified world where everything revolves around us and all morality issues are black (those I don't agree with) and white (those I agree with). With age comes perspective, aka wisdom, and you realize that as clever as it is to blow a plastic whistle into a phone, in the bigger picture it doesn't really make one a counter-culture rebel. We realized you don't need to "fight the man" to give yourself self worth nor define yourself. We've gone on to bigger and better things where some of us are part of shaping and inventing the future, some of us have become "the Man", and some of us not, but most of us living our lives. There are some who never moved on, like a withered Baby Boomer who tries to dress young, say "hip" phrases, and do drugs to show he's still "cool", but everyone around him shakes their head and are embarrassed for him.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @08:43PM
With age comes perspective, aka wisdom
Sometimes true. Other times, not so much. If someone spends their entire life smoking marijuana and sitting on a couch, they won't have much useful wisdom to offer (Except maybe about smoking marijuana and sitting around doing nothing...). What wisdom someone has to offer depends on the subject.
We've gone on to bigger and better things
Unless you've become an activist fighting against the government violating the constitution and our rights, I wouldn't say this.
some of us have become "the Man"
This is demonstrably worse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @07:41PM
My question is: where are you all now?
Not in jail. At some point people got more serious about what used to be "harmless investigative activity" and the wise ones among us learned where the new borders were being drawn--and went legit.
The "cool" ones ended up being caught and set up (or else turning into hardcore crooks).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @10:43PM
Right. This is it. Many hackers come from depressed areas because of the sense of control they never received elsewhere. Many were hit hard by the bubble and the recession in those already downtrodden areas. All that some of us have is the self satisfaction of not using our skills for selfish intent or ending up in prison during the last 15 years.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 01 2015, @08:06AM
That's right. The whole hacker meme got blown completely out of proportion. People got scared of the hacker boogieman, and this powered draconian legislation to restrict and criminalize hacking. When a 16 year-old can break into a computer system, it almost always meant the security was a joke, maybe even non-existent, not that the kid was some sort of transcendent genius capable of taking control of the whole world unless carefully monitored and restrained.
It's very much not worth being too inquisitive, not with so many organizations adopting a "shoot the messenger" attitude towards anyone poking around and discovering problems. Let them find out they've been pwned after real criminals break in.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 30 2015, @07:43PM
I hadn't thought of the discrimination against 300 baud users in something like 30 years, thanks. Tandy direct connect modem I with power and answer/originate and manual dialing and 300 baud only, and it was in fact $200 or so in '84. By '92 I was buying my own 14.4 for like $50, times change fast. Technically my father's modem. I ended up with hand me downs so I had my own XT clone with an autodialing internal 1200 by '86 or something like that.
Before there was emacs vs vi, at least at home, there was procomm vs telix and I was a telix guy. Quite an advanced terminal.
I lived in an area where the local LATA had something like 60 boards, more than I could keep up with, and the constant stories about someone getting busted kept me more or less on straight and narrow. Also by the time I was done reading the boards and uploading/downloading issues of Phrack and playing tradewars2000 and a bunch of other door games on about three boards at once I ran out of desire to get outside my LATA. I did have a few interesting parental conversations along the lines of how the hell did our phone bill go from something like 20 phone calls in the LATA to something like 400 of which each cost like ten cents termination (which, although zero cost for minute, still cost me something like forty bucks that month and mom was not amused because this was the old days when $5 for a phone bill was about normal) Overall I think they were happy I wasn't into booze or drugs.
The linked story missed nets. There were a couple (competing, logically) networks like fidonet etc. I got into that. Basically what was fido culture became usenet culture became reddit culture, although IQs were a hell of a lot higher back then. I'd say networks took over in the late 80s and we went from 60 separate mostly quiet boards to maybe 40 connected to all manner of nets.
By the late 80s I got usenet and shell access on some dude's system. My mom paid one subscription bill using a personal check while all confused about the whole situation (wait, you're buying a computer from this guy?) In those days people paid like six months at a time for $30 or something. Having a job, I got around to getting my own banking and stuff and either sent in money orders or personal checks to renew. Anyway I was by far one of the most popular kids in school with my access to rec.pyrotechnics and a.s.s.t.r or WTF it was called. Binaries were surprisingly unpopular and this was some years before the first spam, the C+S lawyer spam. Having a real internet email address (albeit on a UUCP link to a shell box) I had access to an email interface for archie and a FTPserv where you'd send the ftp bot an email with what would later be called a URL and it would email you back an attachment and with a lot of Fing around I was now distributing Phrack issues by downloading straight off some FTP server on the internet (figure 1990 or so). From memory it was a nightmare, it sent uuencoded email in the pre-mime era and you'd save the entire email on the shell box, uudecode it, then kermit it off the shell box (or was it zmodem by then?)
I had a SLIP account by 1993, better than my university provided (just shell there, and they kicked people for using slirp or whatever it was called) or so and off I went from there. Showed my dad a coffee pot web cam in 1993 or 94 using this new NCSA Mosaic browser or whatever it was called, he was unimpressed. The SLIP account worked with this "linux" thing I downloaded from a local board, one floppy disk at a time, called SLS linux. I never actually used anything but linux online at home until my wife moved in with me just before the turn of the century and she had a windows box. Linux was simple and made sense given experience with sunos (later renamed slowaris or solaris) and hp-ux at uni. Windows on the other hand was an absolute nightmare of drivers and dialers and just BS stacked on BS until W95 or W98 or so. I had DSL and a linux box doing NAT by the turn of the century, haven't used a phone modem since.
It was a very narrow window of criminality that the linked dude fell into and I didn't. Just a couple years older and skip all that crime BS just pay for compuserve (like AOL but smart people and text mode) and pay your damn phone bill, or a couple years younger and you'd be doing stuff for free on the family internet connection. Kids just a couple years younger than me grew up trolling discussion boards on prodigy (prodigy was like AOL but somehow even less cool)
(Score: 1) by jimtheowl on Monday November 30 2015, @07:48PM
Now that, I would have liked to hear about.
Even better; post the abandon-ware to one of the retro computing sites.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tibman on Monday November 30 2015, @07:49PM
He didn't try hard enough! You could connect for several hours without authenticating before they bumped you off. You had to dial manually though (not using the compuserve program). Discovering that as a teenager was amazing. You could get internet from any place that had a phone. There was also a 1800 number you could call that would tell you the closest compuserve dialup so that you could avoid any long distance charges (yes, it use to matter how far away were calling).
Still reading the article (it is long) but wanted to post that.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 30 2015, @07:58PM
Before they had a graphical front end, there was only text, like say 1984 or so. In that era, they were trying to gain customers and if you actually purchased (or were gifted) software, depending on mfgr of course (TRS80 yes, others, I donno) then you'd get a half sheet carbon copy paper thing where you'd open it and get a demo compuserve account good for X hours or days or whatever. I had several and those got a lot of use. Compuserve used to be extremely expensive and billed per hour in those days. I remember they had "cb simulator" which was basically IRC and they had a truly awesome text mode star trek game (and it better be for what you're paying per hour). Hardware like modems came with compuserve demo accounts. I remember buying close out special 1200 baud modems for $5 to get "free" $6 compuserve demo accounts or whatever they were worth exactly. The Radio Shack guy was all WTF is some kid going to do with like ten obsolete modems... I had a plan and it worked, whatever the exact numbers were...
Toward the end compuserve had an AOL-ish graphical front end and sold internet connectivity but I was long gone by then. That was like IBM-PC clone era. Right around the time this new video standard called analog VGA was shipping.
(Score: 1) by skater on Monday November 30 2015, @08:43PM
Right. My dad booked us on Pan Am for a trip to Florida in 1984 via CompuServe's SABRE connection using our Hayes Smartmodem 1200. Later we switched to GEnie after we moved and CompuServe no longer had a number local to us.
I still have the Hayes. It's very cool, with its red LEDs and aluminum case. I see them going for >$100 on eBay right now...wow.
When I was in high school in the late 80s/early 90s, I learned about BBSs. One local BBS eventually joined FIDOnet, another joined WildNet. I remember talking with a SYSOP from Alaska via FIDO who found it cheaper to crash send her messages back to the BBS I used, so my messages would take several days to reach her, then I'd get a response from her the day after she wrote it. (Inter-LATA rates being cheaper than intra-LATA.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @10:39PM
A never ending sense of amusement is when posts on security or insecurity come up, the only people that comment with a real, practical experience fed comment are all posting anonymously.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday December 01 2015, @01:38AM
There was nothing but card catalogs and the dewy decimal system when I was a teenage kid, but boy was it cheap. I could spend all day in the library. And I was always on the good side of the spinster (librarian). You'd be surprised how much access offering to re-shelve a cart of returned books (and doing it correctly) would buy you. I got to visit the "white gloves room". I got to listen to the guarded music collection. I got access to the original WWI newspaper archives - not just the microfiche.
In college I finally got access to a "real computer". (My smart phone has more power). It was 300 baud to the main campus computer (which was 200 miles away from the branch campus I attended). Read paper tape in for 20 minutes, wait two hours for a compile shot, waste a roll of yellow tty paper on error corrections, rinse, repeat. Break for pizza.
From there I went to work as a programmer, and never did mess with personal computers for some years afterward. Missed that whole personal computer scene in spite of being an electronics nut, and building my own tube (valve) radios from nothing but electrical diagrams and parts.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @02:09AM
Where am I now? Unemployed because I ...
... have multiple degrees in computer science.
... use Linux on a daily basis.
... use BSD on a daily basis.
... have experience with 10 programming languages.
... have originated open source projects.
... have maintained open source projects.
... have contributed to open source projects.
But I am unemployable because I am ...
... not a blogger.
For you see, the socialites have taken over, and hackers have no future.
The Future Is Social and if you are Not A Blogger then you Do Not Exist.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday December 01 2015, @04:57AM
Yes, but no. There is plenty of work for people who want to "do" rather than "talk". That said, blogging is a fun way to recap shit you've just dealt with.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @06:55AM
I have been considering blogging about my computer projects.
When searching for tips, I often come across some blog sombody posted when they did something similar. Half the time, I suspect they post mainly for their own benefit (notes are notes).
Blogging has the advantage of showing perspective employers you are more than all talk.
I am assuming you are using "blogging" in the generic sense, and not the specific website.
I recently sent Novel a correction on their disk image recovery instructions. I don't think they tried them with an actual failed drive. (Have yet to write it up myself though.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 01 2015, @05:52PM
When I had the choice of linux, or spending money to learn something else, I chose to not go with the free option. I figured everyone else cheap would, too.
That's not a knock against Linux, that's be acknowledging that I cannot be the best of the best, in order to rise above the rest who also spent time using the free operating system due to the low barriers.
It was better for me to pick a niche and become good at it than very good at a product where only it pays to be the best, and exploitable if you aren't.
It sounds like you have been quite exploited.