Jason Scott's Weblog
What the heck, let’s go into the 3279 terminal a little more. As mentioned previously, this was a terminal that my dad would plunk me in front of to give me something to do when he had projects at work to finish. As I am quickly nearing the age that he was when this was […]
This is a product endorsement, but don’t worry, the product is free. I’m also endorsing it on my own initiative and have not even communicated with the creator of the product. One progression I have encountered many times in researching GET LAMP, is the following: See your first text adventure game (Adventure, Zork, or the […]
As of tonight, I now know I am speaking at three engagements in the coming months: The Vintage Computer Festival Midwest on July 14th, in Indiana. DEFCON 15, the weekend of August 3rd, Las Vegas, NV. The Black and White Ball, week of 18th-21st of September, London. I always enjoy speaking, and it’s nice to […]
People sometimes hit me up with simple questions that you’d think I could just dash off, but a lack-of-pithiness reaction stops me from doing so. Sure, I could whip up some off-the-cuff answer, but it wouldn’t be accurate, and that always stumps me. A classic one is “What’s your favorite arcade game?” There’s about five […]
Well, this is something. I stumbled upon someone’s attempt to do a “Grand Unifying” history of hacking, phreaking, and cracking. It jumps around everywhere from the dawn of the telephone system up through to mentioning my documentary (!) which is how I found it in the first place. It gets a few things wrong, like […]
Cancer, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a horrid potential byproduct of the natural process of cell division. Things go wrong, a process goes out of whack, and the next thing you know you’re doing all sorts of insane, crazy shit to fix it. And make no mistake; most cancer therapies are insane, […]
So, if you needed some sort of incentive to start going through your collection of old home computer crap and send it to me or someone else to digitize/curate it, here you go. It’s now 30 years since 1977. 30 years since the real send-off of the “home computer” era, where sales are measured in […]
I have a reputation among some people as being quite productive. I appreciate the reputation because my other reputations of being an intractable asshole and dominating ballyhoo can take a backseat anytime, thanks. Tonight, one of my buddies asked me for any rules or policies or whatever I follow to be productive (a la 43 […]
I spend way too much time telling you what’s wrong with the world. Let me mention an example that, for me, is exactly right. flickr. I have an account there, but big deal; that’s mostly reprints from digitize.textfiles.com, anyway. That’s not what I enjoy about it. Here’s what I like about it: Very simple to […]
So I saw this free documentary just now. It was fantastic. It’s called Good Copy Bad Copy and it’s one of a number of films discussing “piracy”, “copyright” and the typical intellectual property hoo-hah. Personally, if you tried to make me shoot a documentary on intellectual property law and trying to tell a balanced, interesting […]