This Day in Geek Quotes

April 8, 1974

2012-04-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'"

- Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, in People magazine, April 8, 1974.

2003

2011-11-05T12:00:00.000-04:00

"My reasons for putting Linux out there were pretty selfish. I didn't want the headache of trying to deal with parts of the operating system that I saw as the crap work. I wanted help."

- Linus Torvalds (Creator of Linux) in an interview with Wired,
"Wired 11.11: Leader of the Free World" by Gary Rivlin, November 2003.

Memorable Interview: Kevin Mitnick

2011-10-26T08:00:00.003-04:00

"You can have the best computer set-up in the world but, if someone can convince a member of staff to let them in, all that is useless. The weakest link in any security chain is always human."
- Kevin Mitnick in "The hacker's tale: an interview with Kevin Mitnick"
An interview with the Financial Times
Published October 26, 2002

The hacker's tale: an interview with Kevin Mitnick

By: Nikola Strahija on October 26, 2002

Firstly, to set the record straight, are you a hacker or a cracker?
Definitely a hacker. Crackers go into systems for financial gain or to deliberately cause damage. My motivations were those of the prankster and explorer.

When I went into systems I was usually just looking around or on the search for specific software for personal use. I've served my time and those days are now over.

How did you first get interested in computers?
Actually it was magic that was my first love. I was a member of the Junior Magic Club from an early age and I'm still fascinated by the power of illusion.

Then when I was 13 I got my amateur radio licence and got into electronic communication. Finally I saw a computer and swept floors at a Radio Shack so that I could use it.

Was your experience and notoriety a help or a hindrance in prison?
There have been hackers in jail who were threatened in order to get them to work for criminals, but fortunately I wasn't one of them.

The main problem was the myths that were flying around. I was held for four and a half years without bail, eight months of those in solitary, because the authorities believed their own hype and were afraid I'd start World War Three from the nearest phone box.

I've been accused of a lot of things, including hacking the Pentagon and the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Why would I want to go there? They're heavily guarded and there was no interesting software to check out.

I've also been accused of being the inspiration for the film WarGames but when I met the scriptwriter a few years later he said he'd never heard of me.

So now you've published a book on social engineering. What is it and why is it so important?
Social engineering is the side of hacking that seldom gets mentioned. It's using people to subvert technology.

You can have the best computer set-up in the world but, if someone can convince a member of staff to let them in, all that is useless. The weakest link in any security chain is always human.

The skills of social engineering are used by hackers to replace genuine technical knowledge. Today's script kiddies may not be able to code but, if they can convince instead, they don't need to.

Surely it can't be as simple as just asking for a password?
Sometimes that's all it takes. In practice it usually takes several calls using different personae before you can get all the keys you need for access.

People like to help each other and, by establishing rapport and building trust, the determined individual can get what they want.

Other techniques include setting up a situation so that the mark, or target, comes to you for help. You can even use intimidation, although it's use is very limited.

If someone calls needing to get a report to your boss and verbally bullies a staff member by threatening to make them lose their job they might let something slip that could give access.

Is it ever possible to achieve total security in business without losing custom?
While no system is ever going to be totally secure, companies need to establish a balance between maintaining proper security and giving good customer service. You can't shut yourself away and stay in business but, with the right tools, you can get an acceptable level of security.

It's really a process of education. Think about how much money companies spend on IT hardware and software protection and compare that to the training budget for teaching staff how to deal with social engineers. It's pounds to pennies.

Teach all the staff, not just the IT department, and you'll get a much better return on investment than by buying another firewall.

What's the single most important rule for anyone with access to company secrets who wants to avoid being the victim of social engineering?
To paraphrase Jefferson, the price of computer security is eternal vigilance. Always ask yourself what proof you have that the person at the other end of the phone is who they say they are.

If they're legitimate they won't mind you checking. If they're not, you've just saved your company large amounts of time and money.

Is this the rationale behind the new consultancy?
Well I've bills to pay like anyone else so the consultancy seemed to be the best way to use my skills and help companies avoid being attacked by hackers and crackers.

By combining technical expertise with social engineering training you can offer a more complete security package.

You're still under heavy restrictions until the end of your parole in 2003. How has this affected you, and what are your plans when the restrictions are lifted?
I was banned from touching mobile phones, computers or accessing the internet which meant I couldn't use my skills effectively to support myself.

My parole officer has since allowed me access to a laptop and mobile so that I could write my book, but the internet is still off limits. Once I'm free to travel again there's a host of places I want to go, but CeBIT and COMDEX look very interesting.
Source: Financial Times via Xatrix Security

October 6, 1997

2011-10-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

"I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders."

- Michael S. Dell, CEO of Dell Computer, in response to being asked at a Gartner Group symposium what he would do if he woke up in the body of Steve Jobs.

October 1, 2002

2011-10-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

"You can't stop technology. Even if they succeed in shutting down those particular services, new services will spring up. It's the nature of the Internet."

- Shawn Fanning, founder of Napster, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

"Napster creator ponders his legacy" by Nick Wingfield, October 1, 2002.

September 11, 1773

2011-09-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

"There never was a good war or bad peace."

- Benjamin Franklin

July 10, 1997

2011-09-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

"Steve Jobs is not a credible CEO or anything else for Apple. The worst thing would be to appoint Steve CEO, except that it would give Steve the opportunity to preside over both Apple's birth and death."

- David Coursey (Industry commentator) in the San Jose Mercury News, July 10, 1997.

July 11, 1990

2011-07-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

"Speech is speech. It doesn't matter if it is words on paper or bits on bytes."

- John Perry Barlow (EFF Founder) in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner, July 11, 1990.

June 11, 1984

2011-06-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

The Mac is the first computer good enough to be criticized. ... The IBM PC is beneath comment. It's been known for 12 years how to do a good-looking display and IBM didn't put one on its machine. You can't have any favorable comment beyond that. That is the ultimate in know-nothingness.

- Alan Kay (Apple Fellow) in an interview with InfoWorld, June 11, 1984.

June 1, 1971

2011-06-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

Thirty-five years before the launch of Twitter, American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist Herbert Simon coins the term "Attention economy" in the essay "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" published in Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest by The Johns Hopkins Press on this day on June 1, 1971.

"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." (pp 40 - 41)

In his paper, Simon recognizes that many designers of information systems incorrectly represented their design problem as information scarcity rather than attention scarcity, and as a result they built systems that excell at providing more and more information to people, when what was really needed were systems that excelled at filtering out unimportant or irrelevant information.

May 17, 1986

2011-05-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

"Happiness is the only thing life's about. You don't buy a computer unless you think it's a road to greater happiness. You don't do anything in life unless it's for happiness. That's the only way you can measure life, by the number of smiles per day. It's food, fun, and friends."

- Steve Wozniak in his valedictory address
University of California, Berkeley, May 17, 1986.

April 23, 1963

2011-04-23T08:00:00.001-04:00

Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network

J. C. R. Licklider, the Director of Behavioral Sciences Command & Control Research at ARPA, distributes a memorandum that will often later cited as the origin of ARPAnet, the packet switching network that was the forerunner of the Internet, to his colleagues, "the members and affiliates of the intergalactic network." In the memo he outlines the challenges that would be presented in their efforts to establish a time-sharing network of computers with the software available.

ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY
Washington, D.C., April 23, 1963
MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network
FROM: J. C. R. Licklider
SUBJECT: Topics for Discussion at the Forthcoming Meeting

First, I apologize humbly for having to postpone the meeting scheduled for 3 May 1963 in Palo Alto. The ARPA Command & Control Research office has just been assigned a new task that must be activated immediately, and I must devote the whole of the coming week to it. The priority is externally enforced. I am extremely sorry to inconvenience those of you who have made plans for May 3rd. Inasmuch as I shall be in Cambridge the rest of this week, I am asking my colleagues here to re-schedule the meeting, with May 10th, Palo Alto, as target time and place.

The need for the meeting and the purpose of the meeting are things that I feel intuitively, not things that I perceive in clear structure. I am afraid that that fact will be too evident in the following paragraphs. Nevertheless, I shall try to set forth some background material and some thoughts about possible interactions among the various activities in the overall enterprise for which, as you may have detected in the above subject, I am at a loss for a name.

In the first place, it is evident that we have among us a collection of individual (personal and/or organizational) aspirations, efforts, activities, and projects. These have in common, I think, the characteristics that they are in some way connected with advancement of the art or technology of information processing, the advancement of intellectual capability (man, man-machine, or machine), and the approach to a theory of science. The individual parts are, at least to some extent, mutually interdependent. To make progress, each of the active research needs a software base and a hardware facility more complex and more extensive than he, himself, can create in reasonable time.

In pursuing the individual objectives, various members of the group will be preparing executive the monitoring routines, languages amd [sic.] compilers, debugging systems and documentation schemes, and substantive computer programs of more or less general usefulness. One of the purposes of the meeting–perhaps the main purpose–is to explore the possibilities for mutual advantage in these activities–to determine who is dependent upon whom for what and who may achieve a bonus benefit from which activities of what other members of the group. It will be necessary to take into account the costs as well as the values, of course. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it is much more likely to be advantageous than disadvantageous for each to see the others’ tentative plans before the plans are entirely crystalized. I do not mean to argue that everyone should abide by some rigid system of rules and constraints that might maximize, for example, program interchangeability.
But, I do think that we should see the main parts of the several projected efforts, all on one blackboard, so that it will be more evident than it would otherwise be, where network-wide conventions would be helpful and where individual concessions to group advantage would be most important.

It is difficult to determine, of course, what constitutes “group advantage.” Even at the risk of confusing my own individual objectives (or ARPA’s) with those of the “group,” however, let me try to set forth some of the things that might be, in some sense, group or system or network desiderata.

There will be programming languages, debugging languages, time-sharing system control languages, computer-network languages, data-base (or file-storage-and-retrieval languages), and perhaps other languages as well. It may or may not be a good idea to oppose or to constrain lightly the proliferation of such. However, there seems to me to be little question that it is desireable to foster “transfer of training” among these languages. One way in which transfer can be facilitated is to follow group consensus in the making of the arbitrary and nearly-arbitrary decisions that arise in the design and implementation of languages. There would be little point, for example, in having a diversity of symbols, one for each individual or one for each center, to designate “contents of” or “type the contents of.” It seems to me desirable to have as much homogenity as can reasonably be achieved in the set of sub-languages of a given language system–the system, for example, of programming, debugging, and time-sharing–control lanugages related to JOVIAL on the Q-32, or the system related to Algol (if such were developed and turned out to be different from the JOVIAL set) for the Q-32 computer, or the set related to FORTRAN for a 7090 or a 7094.

Dictating the foregoing paragraph led me to see more clearly than I had seen it before that the problem of achieving homogeneity within a set of correlated languages is made difficult by the fact that there will be, at a given time, only one time-sharing system in operation on a given computer, whereas more than one programming language with its associated debugging language may be simultaneously in use. The time-sharing control language can be highly correlated only with one programming and debugging language pair. Insofar as syntax is concerned, therefore, it seems that it may be necessary to have a “preferred” language for each computer facility or system, and to have the time-sharing control language be consistent with the preferred. Insofar as semantics is concerned–or, at least, insofar as the association of particular symbols with particular control functions is concerned–I see that it would be possible, thought perhaps inconvenient, to provide for the use, by several different operators, of several different specific vocabularies. Anyway, there seems to me to be a problem, or a set of problems, in this area.

There is an analogous problem, and probably a more difficult one, in the matter of language for the control of a network of computers. Consider the situation in which several different centers are netted together, each center being highly individualistic and having its own special language and its own special way of doing things. Is it not desirable, or even necessary for all the centers to agree upon some language or, at least, upon some conventions for asking such questions as “What language do you speak?” At this extreme, the problem is essentially the one discussed by science fiction writers: “how do you get communications started among totally uncorrelated “sapient” beings?” But, I should not like to make an extreme assumption about the uncorellatedness. (I am willing to make an extreme assumption about the sapience.) The more practical set of questions is: Is the network control language the same thing as the time-sharing control language? (If so, the implication is that there is a common time-sharing control language.) Is the network control language different from the time-sharing control language, and is the network-control language common to the several netted facilities? Is there no such thing as a network-control language? (Does one, for example, simply control his own computer in such a way as to connect it into whatever part of the already-operating net he likes, and then shift over to an appropriate mode?)

In the foregoing paragraphs, I seem to have lept into the middle of complexity. Let me approach from a different starting point. Evidently, one or another member of this enterprise will be preparing a compiler, or compilers, for modifying existing programs that compile FORTAN [sic.], JOVIAL, ALGOL, LISP and IPL-V (or V-l, or V-ll). If there is more than one of any one of the foregoing, or of any one of others that I do not foresee, then it seems worthwhile to examine the projected efforts for compatibility. Moreover, to me, at least, it seems desireable to examine the projected efforts to see what their particular features are, and to see whether there is any point in defining a collection of desireable features and trying to get them all into one language and one system of compilers. I am impressed by the argument that list-structure features are important as potential elements of ALGOL or JOVIAL, that we should think in terms of incorporating list-structure features into existing languages quite as much as in terms of constructing languages around list-structures.

It will possibly turn out, I realize, that only on rare occasions do most or all of the computers in the overall system operate together in an integrated network. It seems to me to be interesting and important, nevertheless, to develop a capability for integrated network operation. If such a network as I envisage nebulously could be brought into operation, we would have at least four large computers, perhaps six or eight small computers, and a great assortment of disc files and magnetic tape units–not to mention the remote consoles and teletype stations–all churning away. It seems easiest to approach this matter from the individual user’s point of view–to see what he would like to have, what he might like to do, and then to try to figure out how to make a system within which his requirements can be met. Among the things I see that a user might want to have, or to do, are the following:

(Let me suppose that I am sitting at a console that includes a cathode-ray-tube display, light-pen, and a typewriter.) I want to retrieve a set of experimental data that is on a tape called Listening Test. The data are called “experiment 3.” These data are basically percent- ages for various signal-to-noise ratios. There are many such empirical functions. The experiment had a matrix design, with several listeners, several modes of presentation, several signal frequencies, and several durations. I want, first, to fit some “theoretical” curves to the measured data. I want to do this in a preliminary way to find out what basic function I want to choose for the theoretical relation between precentage [sic.] and signal-to-noise ratio. On another tape, called “Curve Fitting,” I have some routines that fit straight lines, power functions, and cumulative normal curves. But, I want to try some others, also. Let me try, at the beginning, the functions for which I have programs. The trouble is, I do not have a good grid-plotting program. I want to borrow one. Simple, rectangular coordinates will do, but I would like to specify how many divisions of each scale there should be and what the labels should be. I want to put that information in through my typewriter . Is there a suitable grid-plotting program anywhere in the system? Using prevailing network doctrine, I interrogate first the local facility, and then other centers. Let us suppose that I am working at SDC, and that I find a program that looks suitable on a disc file in Berkeley. My programs were written in JOVIAL.

The programs I have located throught the system were written in FORTRAN. I would like to bring them in as relocatable binary programs and, using them as subroutines, from my curve-fitting programs, either at “bring-in time” or at “run-time.”

Supposing that I am able to accomplish the steps just described, let us proceed. I find that straight lines, cubics, quintics, etc., do not provide good fits to the data. The best fits look bad when I view them on the oscilloscope.

The fits of the measured data to the cumulative normal curve are not prohibitively bad. I am more interested in finding a basic function that I can control appropriately with a few perimeters than I am in making contact with any particular theory about the detection process, so I want to find out merely whether anyone in the system has any curve- fitting programs that will accept functions supplied by the user or that happen to have built-in functions roughly like the cumulative normal curve, but assymmetrical. Let us suppose that I interrogate the various files, or perhaps interrogate a master-integrated, network file, and find out that no such programs exist. I decide, therefore, to go along with the normal curve.

At this point, I have to do some programming. I want to hold on to my data, to the programs for normal curve fitting, and to display programs that I borrowed. What I want to do is to fit cumulative normal curves to my various sub-sets of data constraining the mean and the variance to change slowly as I proceed along any of the ordinal or ratio- scale dimensions of my experiment, and permitting slighly different sets of perimeters for the various subjects. So, what I want to do next is to create a kind of master program to set perimeter values for the curve-fitting routines, and to display both the graphical fits and the numerical measures of goodness to fit as, with light-pen and graphics of perimeters versus independent variables on the oscilliscope screen, I set up and try out various (to me) reasonable configurations. Let us say that I try to program repeatedly on my actual data, with the subordinate programs already mentioned, until I get the thing to work.

Let us suppose that I finally do succeed, that I get some reasonable results, photograph the graphs showing both the empirical data and the “theoretical” curves, and retain for future use the new programs. I want to make a system of the whole set of programs and store it away under the name “Constrained-perimeter Normal-curve-fitting System.”

But, then suppose that my intuitively natural way of naming the system is at odds with the general guidelines of the network for naming programs. I would like to have this variance from convention called to my attention, for I am a conscientious “organization man” when it comes to matters of program libraries and public files of useful data.

In the foregoing, I must have exercised several network features. I engaged in information retrieval through some kind of system that looked for programs to meet certain requirements I had in mind. Presumably, this was a system based upon descriptors, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, and not in the near future, upon computer appreciation of natural language. However, it would be pleasant to use some of the capabilities of avant-garde linguistics. In using the borrowed programs, I effected some linkages between my programs and the borrowed ones. Hopefully, I did this without much effort–hopefully, the linkages were set up–or the basis for making them was set up–when the programs were brought into the part of the stytem [sic.] that I was using. I did not borrow any data, but that was only because I was working on experimental data of my own. If I had been trying to test some kind of a theory, I would have wanted to borrow data as well as programs.
When the computer operated the programs for me, I suppose that the activity took place in the computer at SDC, which is where we have been assuming I was. However, I would just as soon leave that on the level of inference. With a sophisticated network-control system, I would not decide whether to send the data and have them worked on by programs somewhere else, or bring in programs and have them work on my data. I have no great objection to making that decision, for a while at any rate, but, in principle, it seems better for the computer, or the network, somehow, to do that. At the end of my work, I filed some things away, and tried to do it in such a way that they would be useful to others. That called into play, presumably, some kind of a convention-monitoring system that, in its early stages, must almost surely involve a human criterian as well as maching [sic.] processing.

The foregoing (unfortunately long) example is intended to be a kind of example of example. I would like to collect, or see someone collect, a considerable number of such examples, and to see what kind of software and hardware facilities they imply. I have it well in mind that one of the implications of a considerable number of such examples would be a very large random-access memory.

Now, to take still another approach to this whole matter, let me string-together a series of thoughts that are coming to mind. (I was interrupted at this point, and the discussion almost has to take a turn.) First, there is the question of “pure procedure.” I understand that the new verion of JOVIAL is going to compile programs in “pure-procedure” style.

Will the other compilers at the other centers do likewise? Second, there is the question of the interpretation, at one center, of requests directed to it from another center. I visualize vaguely some kind of an interpretive system that would serve to translate the incoming language into commands or questions of the form in terms of which the interrogated center operates. Alternatively, of course, the translation could be done at the sending end. Still alternatively, the coordination could be so good that everybody spoke a common language and used a common set of formates. Third, there is the problem of protecting and updating public files. I do not want to use material from a file that is in the process of being changed by someone else. There may be, in our mutual activities, something approximately analogous to military security classification. If so, how will we handle it?
Next, there is the problem of incremental compiling. Am I correct in thinking that Perlis, with his “threaded lists,” has that problem, and the related problem of com- pile-test-recompile, essentially solved?
Over on the hardware side, I am worried that the boundry- registered problem, or more generally the memory-protection problem, may be expensive to solve on the Q-32 and both difficult and expensive to solve on other machines, and I am worried that the problem of swapping or transferring information between core and secondary memory will be difficult and expensive on 7090s and 7094s–and I worry that time-sharing will not be much good without fast swaps or transfers. What are the best thoughts on these questions? In what state are our several or collective plans?

Implicit in the long example was the question of linking subroutines at run time. It is easy to do the calling, itself, through a simple directory, but it seems not to be so simple to handle system variables. Maybe it is simple in principle and perhaps I should say that it seems possibly infeasible to handle the linking of the system variables at run time through tables or simple addressing schemes.

It is necessary to bring this opus to a close because I have to go catch an airplane. I had intended to review ARPA’s Command-and-Control interests in improved man-computer interaction, in time-sharing and in computer networks. I think, however, that you all understnad [sic.] the reasons for ARPA’s basic interest in these matters, and I can, if need be, review them briefly at the meeting. The fact is, as I see it, that the military greatly needs solutions to many or most of the problems that will arise if we tried to make good use of the facilities that are coming into existence.

I am hoping that there will be, in our individual efforts, enought evident advantage in cooperative programming and operation to lead us to solve th problems and, thus, to bring into being the technology that the military needs. When problems arise clearly in the military context and seem not to appear in the research context, then ARPA can take steps to handle them on an ad hoc basis. As I say, however, hopefully, many of the problems will be essentially as important, in the research context as in the military context.
In conclusion, then, let me say again that I have the feeling we should discuss together at some length questions and problems in the set to which I have tried to point in the foregoing discussion. Perhaps I have not pointed to all the problems. Hopefully, the discussion may be a little less rambling than this effort that I am now completing.

March 26, 1984

2011-03-26T12:00:00.002-04:00

Promising Macintosh Review

Considering all of the hoopla that has preceded the Mac's introduction, we are still greatly impressed with Apple's new product. The Macintosh is a well-designed personal computer that, dollar for dollar, represents the most advanced personal computer to date. The MC68000 processor, the 3.5-inch variable-speed disk drive, the high-resolution display, the advanced operating system and user interface as well as the rich use of graphics make this machine superior to the rest of the pack. In our opinion, the success of the Macintosh will be determined by Apple's ability to provide or to encourage others to supply hardware expansions and exciting and usable software. We think Apple has at least one thing right—the Macintosh is the one machine with the potential to challenge IBM's hold on the market.

- Thomas Neudecker
InfoWorld, March 26, 1984

March 25, 1932

2011-03-25T12:00:00.002-04:00

One of the Most Mis-Quoted Movies in History is Released

MGM releases the black and white adventure film Tarzan the Ape Man,based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' popular novel Tarzan of the Apes on March 25, 1932. The film will give rise to a wildly popular franchise and the oft-quipped catch phrase "Me Tarzan, you Jane."

The phrase is never actually spoken in the film, though. Nor is it ever used in the books. The quote is taken from an interview with the movie's lead star, Johnny Weissmuller, printed in the June 1932 issue of Photoplay Magazine.

In the interview, he jokingly tells a reporter I didn’t have to act in Tarzan, the Ape Man — just said, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’” Shortly after the article hit newstands, the catchphrase entered the vernacular, often as part of comedy routines. The phrase quickly became associated with Weissmuller, and Weissmuller was intractably associated with the Tarzan films. Thus, the misquote.

The association would later be reinforced when Mexican dancer Lupe Velez, Weissmuller’s second wife, divorces him and tells the press that she speaks English so poorly because, “I was married to a guy who can only say, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’”

Of course, the phrase does have a basis in the Tarzan dialog. In one scene, Tarzan saves Jane, played by Maureen O’Sullivan, from a jungle cat, and she, in return, attempts to thank him.

JANE: “Thank you for protecting me.”

TARZAN: “Me?” JANE: “I said, thank you for protecting me.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her.) “Me?”

JANE: “No. I’m only ‘Me’ for me.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at Jane again.) “Me.”

JANE: “No. To you, I’m ‘You.’”

TARZAN: (Pointing at himself.) “You.”

JANE: “No. I’m Jane Parker. Understand? Jane. Jane.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her.) “Jane. Jane. Jane.”

JANE: “Yes, Jane! (She points at him.) And, you? (She points at herself again.) Jane.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her) “Jane.”

JANE: “And you? (Pointing at him.) You?”

TARZAN: (Jabbing himself in the chest.) “Tarzan! Tarzan!”

JANE: “Tarzan!”

TARZAN: (Pointing in turn) “Jane. Tarzan. Jane. Tarzan.”

March 7, 2002

2011-03-07T12:00:00.010-05:00

“Everybody should be in a business once in their lives that competes with Microsoft, just for the experience.”

- Marc Andreessen (Netscape founder) in an interview with The Economist,
"The poster-child who grew up," March 7, 2002.

February 22, 2000

2011-02-22T08:00:00.003-05:00

Memorable Interview: Kevin Mitnick

"Hacker" is a term of honour and respect. It is a term that describes a skill, not an activity, in the same way that "doctor" describes a skill. It was used for decades to describe talented computer enthusiasts, people whose skill at using computers to solve technical problems and puzzles was - and is - respected and admired by others possessing similar technical skills.

- Kevin Mitnick in "They call me a criminal"
Published in The Guardian on February 22, 2000

They call me a criminal

By: Kevin Mitnick

I am uniquely qualified to comment on the "hacker hysteria" we now see in the global media. A reformed hacker myself, I spent nearly four-and-a-half years in federal detention in US prisons awaiting trial. For 49 months I was denied a bail hearing (unprecedented in US history according to my defence team's research) and denied release on bail.

After learning of the prosecutors' "promise" to keep me in prison without bail and to retry me repeatedly in different jurisdictions until they obtained a conviction, I realised that pleading guilty to nine of the original 27 charges, eight of which I did not commit, was my only realistic choice.

The whole world's attention has been focused on the internet in general, and on "hackers" in particular, by the recent distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), which disrupted big US internet operations such as Yahoo and Amazon.com. Whenever large multi-national corporations see their operations disrupted, they pressure American officials to "do something" about it.

And whenever the media sense a good story, they sensationalise it; to put it crudely, they want to attract more eyeballs that they can sell to their advertisers. Thus we witness the current media feeding frenzy on the term "hacker".

"Hacker" is a term of honour and respect. It is a term that describes a skill, not an activity, in the same way that "doctor" describes a skill. It was used for decades to describe talented computer enthusiasts, people whose skill at using computers to solve technical problems and puzzles was - and is - respected and admired by others possessing similar technical skills.

In the late 1980s the media began to use the term as a pejorative. The Los Angeles Times reported on my arrest in 1988 for computer fraud with dramatic bias, and repeated uncritically the remark of the magistrate in my case, Venetta Tassopolous, who displayed her own extraordinary bias when she labelled me - at my pre-indictment arraignment hearing as "dangerous when armed with a keyboard".

Bruce Sterling documented the early history of the vilification of hackers in his book Hacker Crackdown in 1990. Katie Hafner and her then husband and current New York Times technology writer John Markoff contributed to the demonisation of hackers as a group, and hacking as an activity, when they libelled me in their 1991 fictionalised narrative Cyberpunk with the label "darkside hacker" without reason, justification, or proof.

Read the entire article at The Guardian ...

February 2, 2001

2011-02-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

"Welcome to the red light district of the new millennium."

- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Secrets," February 2, 2001. In the episode, a school teacher is murdered after a student discovers a classified ad in which she is seeking sexual partners. In presenting the classified ad to the detectives investigating the case, a police computer tech in the episode characterizes the internet as "the red light district of the new millennium."

January 16, 1787

2011-01-16T08:00:00.004-05:00

Founding father Thomas Jefferson writes a letter to Edward Carrington, expressing his feeling about the power of the press.

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of those tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here. I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did any where. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Source:

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

January 4, 1996

2011-01-04T12:00:00.001-05:00

A Serious Miscalculation

“…an Internet browser is a trivial piece of software. There are at least 30 companies that have written very credible Internet browsers, so that’s nothing… ”

- Bill Gates as quoted in
"The world according to Gates" by Don Tennant
InfoWorld Electric, January 4, 1996

January 3, 1954

2011-01-03T12:00:00.004-05:00

A Shocking Letter

January 3, 1954 - Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind on this date describing belief in God as "childish superstition" and saying Jews were not the chosen people.

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These [...] interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

The letter is of particular note, as Einstein's exact religious beliefs have been in contention since he first came into the public eye. As a child, Einstein attended a Catholic school while receiving private tutelage in Judaism, but neither of his parents were particularly religious. He later wrote that, "The consequence was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression."

And yet, throughout his career, Einstein was a force for spiritualism in science, often championing faith and speaking about the mysteries of God.

In 2008, the letter was auctioned for US$404,000.