Comments on: Hacker

By: Stacia

Stacia — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:41:23 +0000

Huh. I saw that post before you deleted it, and I thought it was a good one. While I understand why you deleted it I wish you’d kept it up with added caveats and corrections; I don’t think the problem was that you came off looking “Gonzo”. But that’s just me.

Good luck with the weight loss. I’ve lost about 29 pounds in the last 8 months, which is slow, but it’s staying off this time. After a lifetime of never keeping anything off, this has been a refreshing change of pace.

By: PJ

PJ — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:23:22 +0000

Amusingly, your faithful bOINGbOING just happened to mention today that John Draper discovered that stupid whistle with the magical 2600 hertz sound.

By: fuzz

fuzz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:47:27 +0000

I’ve always been under the impression that John Draper discovered the whole whistle thingumy, and I’ve told quite a few people the story too, because lets face it it’s kinda a cool story. So If I’ve been wrong/lied to/misinformed all these years what is the truth?

By: Flack

Flack — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 08:33:49 +0000

I thought Knightmare’s “Secrets of a Super Hacker” was considered the lowest of the low; I have it on my bookshelf, next to “Cyberpunk”. What can I say, I like pain.

By: Chris Barts

Chris Barts — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 06:43:15 +0000

The Jargon File is part of the culture. It was created on PDP-10s running ITS in the MIT AI Lab and added to by people on the original computer networks long before anyone but hackers used those networks for fun. The original JARGON.TXT is, therefore, fairly above “debunking”. The problem with it is that it’s purely a historical document at this point, as the culture that produced it is dead.

The updated Jargon File is perhaps in a more tenuous position, but it is controlled by a hacker and it is given credence by hackers. In fact, esr has explicitly answered this very question in the file itself:

http://catb.org/jargon/jargtxt.html

By: Lemi4

Lemi4 — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 10:43:25 +0000

Are you gonna do The Jargon File? Or should it be considered canon?

By: Ryan Russell

Ryan Russell — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 10:24:10 +0000

Stylistic errors, huh? Sounds like I need to send you a pile of my books for you to pick apart.