Real hackers

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Fri Feb 6 14:12:09 1998

<>> The name hacker has been dragged through the mud for far too long.
<>> There's almost no real record of the 1st and 2nd generation hacks. (1
<>> were the hacks at MIT. 2nd were those at Berkeley and elsewhere, who
<>> adjusted the Hacker Ethic to allow for making money. 3rd are the
<>> present-day warez loosers. [They're here for refrence. Technically,

Being one of the first generation hackers...

Some of my better hacks was blueboxing and using it to call MITS about
hardware bugs. The college dorm pay phone that always gave money back
(the trick was truly hiding the diodes used so TPC didn't find them
easily). Running a VLF (160khz) site, using FM on CB in the early 70s
when it wasn't full of "breaker breaker". Though the three 12v car
batteries used to power the 26v line on G's minuteman missle computer
in the early '70s was pretty crufty. Sending 4800 baud data through a
repeater while a principle engineer from RCA was telling us it couldn't
be done. It can be handy not knowing you can't. ;) Sometimes it was as
silly as putting a speaker to the link lamp of a PDP-8 front pannel and
coding music. By the early '80s hacking was going to disrepute as the
tech wars style came in. Early hacking was serious doing it on zer0
budget, the technically difficult with bailing wire or the subtle
application of brute force. Most of all hacking was doing it with minimum
docs and piecing the picture from it's smoke signals.

that was hacking as I knew it. the last remnents I see todat is people
talking about getting an old PDP-8 or 10 and using a modern IDE disk so
they can power it up and run it affordably.

Allison
Received on Fri Feb 06 1998 - 14:12:09 GMT