Hackers Hall of Fame 445
An anonymous reader writes "tlc.discovery.com has a nice feature called Hackers Hall of Fame. They have included 15 bios of modern and not so modern hackers and crackers. " Definitely a few names that probably don't deserve to be on the list, but for the most part this is a good list.
Amusing what I found in the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I dunno (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:1, Interesting)
I can't stand Microsoft and Bill really irritates me. But the work they did at first was truly in the hacker's work. I mean 8.3 file names, tell me that isn't a hack?
(Ok, I defended Bill Gates, there goes my karma.)
Cap'n Crunch (Score:3, Interesting)
They forgot something! (Score:5, Interesting)
One day, programmers saw Rober Morris Sr go to a Multics console. He called everyone in the room to him. Then, once he had everyone complete attention, he hit three keys at the same time on the console... and crashed Multics completely.
He then left the room without saying a word, leaving all the others scratching their heads...
I don't know if the story is true, or what were the three keys he pressed, but with a father like that, it's no wonder young Robert Morris Jr ended up a hacker!
Neal sez... (Score:5, Interesting)
He's right, y'know, though I'm not sure that should get Bill into the Hacker Hall of Fame.
OTOH if you took out RMS, Denny & Ken, esr, and Linus, then added Bill, that gallery would appear more homogeneous...
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:5, Interesting)
Paul Allen may be more 'techie' but BASIC for the Altair, as well as their previous projects, like the Traf-O-Data stuff, were really, really, joint collaborations. It wasn't a Wozniak/Jobs relationship, where one guy did the tech stuff and the other guy did the marketing. They *both* did the tech stuff, but Bill was more comfortable doing the business stuff as well.
Check out the Tandy Model 100 -- it's a super elegant piece of early portable computing with a great (for the time) BASIC-enabled OS. Creating that system was Bill Gate's last project that he personally pulled off alone, and it is really a fantastic system.
You may be able to have issues with his later business practices, and I'd agree that he was never part of the hacker culture, as evidenced by his early concern for copyrights when others were sharing everything, but the guy could definitely pull his weight on the code side.
Youngsters these days (Score:2, Interesting)
Bill, I think, is a business man, and maybe a manager; call him a social engineer, and I'll buy it. But to put him in the same group with Dennis Ritchie and Linux Torvalds? I just don't buy it.
Re:Cap'n Crunch (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably for the same reason they omit his "energy workouts" that he was trying to get the younger boys at H2K to do with him.
Re:wont see their names... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is true! I feel Alan Turing and some of his colleagues deserved mention for breaking the Nazi's Enigma code. I suppose building a pioneering computer and helping to save the world from Fascism is way less important than the exploits of
Kevin Mitnick.
Re:Cap'n Crunch (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:3, Interesting)
Bill Gates and the Handheld TRS-80 (Score:4, Interesting)
The guy wrote software for consumer-grade hardware that is still in use 20+ years later - he may be a putz, but he can hack.
-Steve
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the issue at hand isn't whether Bill Gates WAS a hacker. Obviously, Bill and friends were at one point even if they aren't now. The point of contention is whether or not his hacking was actually significant enough to warrant putting him in a HOF, or if his significant contribution is actually in the realm of business and that's just getting confused with his hackish start.
I mean, is introducing a ground-up BASIC interpreter that most people don't know about as significant as Condor's "work"? Cool as it may be, I'll bet more people know about Mitnick's exploits than Bill's. Tough call, really.
Handles? We don't need no Steenkin' HANDLES! (Score:3, Interesting)
Bah!
Then as you peruse the other persons listed the author drops the whole classification scheme altogether. I think up against a deadline perhaps.
So, no more time for posing, time to crank out the (junk) article/feature. BAH!
I first started using UNIX systems by the courtesy of rms. His account on the *.ai.mit.edu cluster was unprotected by a password and his MOTD would welcome you and suggest you set up a profile and a DOTDIR variable to keep your rc's and other state within.
It was GREAT. Can you imagine such a thing? After some time he had to stop this and I'm sure it killed him to do it.
This author is (as usual for "journalists) treading in deep water and is lost. Why even try to be l337 and act like you know what or who a Hacker is or what a Cracker is contrasted to a Hacker and What Crackers were also Hackers, etc...
Since I'm in Virginia I suppose I'm a Cracker Hacker.
Re:So if 99% of people say 'supposably'... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. Languages evolve. If that word evolves that way, then so be it.
My favorite theoretical case is in Larry Niven novels where "bleep" and "censored" become actual swear words that will get you shocked looks in certain company.
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:2, Interesting)
but i do remember poke 65497,0 overclocks my old COCO3 =)
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:5, Interesting)
I also remember writing self-modifying code in BASIC by clearing the screen, PRINTing the desired line of new code, writing the keycodes for "up-arrow up-arrow return" into the 64's 10-character keyboard input buffer, and stopping execution. The keyboard reader would interpret those as having been typed manually and would move the cursor to the line in question and send a return, and the BASIC interpreter would insert that line into the already-loaded program. Follow the line of code with "RUN $LINENUM" and voila!, your program would have successfully altered itself and resumed execution.
Finally, I'll never forget the day my parents broke down and bought me the "C=64 Macro Assembler" and "Programmer's Reference Manual". I didn't know at the time that Assembler was supposed to be difficult to learn - I thought it was a super-simplified BASIC and treated it accordingly: "Hmmm, I need to set a variable. What command sets a memory location to a value? (Scanning the opcode list in the PRM...) Oh, this'll work! (Typing: LDA, 42; STA $C001)."
Heck, I learned binary math by working through the examples to calculate sprite bitmaps. Man, I loved that little machine.
Ian Murphy? Horseshit (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.attrition.org/errata/c
In the 70's the Ian Murphy was active in, and repeatedly arrested for: shoplifting, vandalism, and petty theft (mostly at Radio Shack), however; his parents position in the community allowed them to protect him from prosecution. In 1981 he was found guilty of felony fraud and theft. Simply put, he was having high school students steal computer equipment for him. He would them remove the serial numbers and "fence" or sell the stolen equipment. He was eventually caught, convicted, and spent considerable time in prison and/or on probation. Ian claims to have "been the first convicted hacker", and the "first hacker ever convicted of a crime" (which is of course blatantly false). His felony convictions had nothing to do with hacking, but instead felony theft and felony fraud. He has repeatedly tried to capitalize on his felony (and other) convictions. Since most people neglect to verify his claims they take him at face value and falsely believe him to be some kind of hacker or security expert.
Ian A. Murphy is nothing more than a middle aged convicted felon, con artist and petty thief with a long history of running scams. He has virtually no technical skills (which should be obvious), no formal education, no computer training, and no security training. He knows just enough computer lingo and jargon to baffle his audience (provided they lack a technical background). He claims to have been employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a member of a covert assassination team, and also claims to have been a Navy SEAL. Subject claims to have been taught information warfare by the National Security Agency (NSA). His tradecraft is very poor, and the official records indicate that his claims are totally false. Official government documents indicate that he was never an employee, nor a contractor. It should be mentioned that the subject has been committed to psychiatric facilities several times for "being delusional".
Official Navy documents indicate that the subject enlisted for duty on 6/27/74 in Philadelphia, PA. However, he never made it through boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Ian was thrown out after several weeks, and listed as "unsuitable for military service". Officially since he never graduated from Boot Camp the Navy never offered him any type of job. He was given an General Discharge (which is bad news), and was never given any awards or decorations. The Navy confiscated all uniforms, clothes, and equipment from him and literally tossed him out with only the clothes on his back, and a one way bus ticket home. Navy records indicated the he was a high school drop out with no technical training. Despite what Ian has repeatedly claimed, he was never a Navy SEAL, never a Green Beret, Ranger, Spec Ops, etc.
Much, much more to read there.
Re:Stealing the Mona Lisa... (Score:3, Interesting)
You could argue that others were willing to bring the PC Revolution to the masses, but Microsoft was certainly the most agressive and successful at doing so.
It's just like Henry Ford -- he wasn't the first to use assembly line and mass marketing techniques, but he was most successful at doing so, and thus his name is in the history books.
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po (Score:3, Interesting)
i dont know about his being hailed as a hacker of fame (dont get me started on a few others on that list too) but he definately had a huge impact the computer community AND the hacker community.
(im not worried, flames keep me warm in the winter)
Two nominees: John Walker and Steve Gibson (Score:2, Interesting)
John Walker, founder of Autodesk, creates and gives away a lot of great stuff, including astronomy, math, and science programs. His web site is great: fourmilab.net [fourmilab.net]
Steve Gibson, author of the SpinRite utilities that date back to MS-DOS days at least, is also a prolific creator of lean, mean, free stuff. His web site, grc.com [grc.com], has a catalog of cool little Windows utilities for changing settings, detecting spyware, closing security holes, etc., for Windows. In true hacker style, he prefers to do his coding in assembly language, and his stuff is consistently high-quality and useful. For example, try out wizmo, a little program that can be used to trigger the screen saver and to change other settings, plus has a built-in graphical gravitational simulator, and all in about 37K of code!