Word: hackers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Jonathan Littman has a reputation as a friend of the hackers, one of the few journalists covering the computer underground whom its denizens can trust. Two years ago, for instance, when the capture of America's best-known computer criminal, Kevin Mitnick, was front-page news, it was Littman who got the uber-hacker's inside, as-told-to story and wrote a book, The Fugitive Game, that was sympathetic to Mitnick. Since then, the telephone at the Littman home has rung at all hours of the night with digital oddfellas calling--often collect, from prison--just to chat...
...some hacker wants to get him, in the worst possible way. "I promise you will be held accountable, and I will dedicate every fiber of my being towards retribution," an anonymous messenger vowed by E-mail. "My actions will be far beyond what you will expect and there will be nothing you can do about...
...kind of ruined my day," says Littman, who believes the source of the problem is his latest book, The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen (Little, Brown). Poulsen was one of the more adept hackers ever to work a keyboard, and the first to be charged with espionage (a charge that was later dropped). At one point he won two $50,000 Porsches by rigging radio contests in Los Angeles. (I'd explain, but you'll have more fun reading the book.) Suffice it to say that the terms of Poulsen's probation specify that...
...spring sports I like best at Harvard is men's golf. They are usually appreciative of any coverage The Crimson provides, and it's always fun to talk to a fellow hacker about his round...
Longtime competitors raise a more philosophical issue about Gates: his intensely competitive approach has poisoned the collaborative hacker ethos of the early days of personal computing. In his book Startup, Jerry Kaplan describes creating a handwriting-based system. Gates was initially friendly, he writes, and Kaplan trusted him with his plans, but he eventually felt betrayed when Gates announced a similar, competing product. Rob Glaser, a former Microsoft executive who now runs the company that makes RealAudio, an Internet sound system, is an admirer who compliments Gates on his vision. But, he adds, Gates is "pretty relentless. He's Darwinian...