I would like to dedicate my first blog post to the all time classic Hackers, who brought in a revolution to the computing world. The people who were curious to learn new things. Who didn’t knew any boundaries, who are in true sense “Heroes” to me.
Hacking is not a new term. Despite of all the media hype created these days, and making some of the fake Indian “script kiddies”, look like genius hackers, my faith in Indian media is dead.
For me, Hacking started in the early 1960’s when a telephone call was switched using a computer, followed by the creation of ASCII in 1963. Then came the announcement from IBM to create a much larger RAM chip, boasting of 1 KB (1 KB was really large that time, you know).
In the following years, (1969 to be precise) The first computer hackers emerge at MIT . They borrow their name from a term to describe members of a model train group at the school who “hack” the electric trains, tracks, and switches to make them perform faster and differently.A few of the members transfer their curiosity and rigging skills to the new mainframe computing systems being studied and developed on campus.
Some of my heroes include, Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny (the guys who created the BASIC language), Joe Engressia
(a blind guy but the father of phreaking) , John Draper ( Captain Crunch ), Steve Wozniak and Steve Job ( founders of Apple computer), plus lots more mentioning whom will take a lot of time.
That was for all good. To better up the things. What has hacking led us to now. There are no hats. Just individuals with their specific aims. Some really good ones, may still be unknown to us while some of the fake ones, are all over the news.
I am again mentioning the Hacker’s Manifesto. I don’t think the “true” meaning of hacker has changed since ever. Use it for good or bad, we are hackers. We are not like you all. We are different from the crowd. We look at things from a different point of view, and if we want, we could do anything, we think out of the box, we make the things which script-kiddies use to make money and sell in their workshops. Yes, it is not for the fake hackers whose initials of the surnames are “V” and “F”.
The Hackers Manifesto
by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986
Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They’re all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I’m a smart ass.. Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.
************************************************************
Some of the blog post by some awesome bloggers are worth mentioning at this point of time :
The Fake Ethical Hackers of India
Fake vs Real
Signing off,
Acutev6
Hackers Ahead 