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Quality? Fanfiction is more or less like any other fiction, 90 percent crap. But there there are good fics out there.

The best one I've ever read is Lilac City, by nwhepcat http://www.echonyc.com/~stax/Buffy/nwhepcat/lilac1 .html. It's a Xander-centric BtVS story (spoilers of all seasons of both BtVS and AtS). Read it!

I won't attribute to malice, because that type of bad game design was ubiquitous in 1980s (save for a few developers as progressive as the aforementioned Infocom). But as the rest of the world moved on, Sierra refused to improve. It's sad that they were always the most successful adventure game developer, because arguably, it was their persistently unintuitive and ridiculous puzzle design that killed adventure games.

What I haven't seen is why I should use linux. That's why I don't switch.

Fair enough, I'll throw a few reasons out why I like it.

I love the programs that it comes with. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice, but with KDE there's several programs and applications that come packages with KDE that would no doubt cost thousands in the commercial world. If you're at all interested in educational software or know someone who's taking mathematics class or just likes to play around with equations, fractions, and graphing....again it's there all free. Do you like Photoshop? A "legal" copy would cost you literally hundreds of dollars...or again you could use something like Gimp which is free. Do you like playing with encryption at all? Something that's (not sure the case now) heavy regulated by the NSA (what I've read from the book "Crypto" by Stephen Levy) in Windows systems going to 3rd world countries and domestic so the NSA can still read your stuff...well you can use, again free programs like KPGP to encrypt files and e-mail messages.

Besides the free, yes again overkill the word so I can jam it in your head, programs...I've found my system is actually very stable. It can go days with rebooting, unlike the daily need for when I had XP. Although I did discover I had a bad RAM module...so that's still for the jury.

Less viruses and vunerabilities. The one thing experts have been very out spoken about lately and lost their corporate jobs over, it that Linux systems in comparison to Windows systems have far lesser virus et al. Some will argue that's b/c Windows is far more popular with the sheep and so that's where the scum suckers will always attack. However b/c Linux is not closed source everything can be looked at again and again and ironed out. It will actually have the reverse effect of what's assumed than a closed system...one that tries to hold on to the little holes and vernabilities as secrets before the script kiddies find them out. Must be a burden for one company to keep a system closed and secret rather than allowing a far more educated community aid them in polishing up the entire system.

I could rant on and on why Linux is better, why Windows is limited, will always be limited and that you've been condition by an empire that'll eventually fall upon itself by its own paradigm and greed - but you're still convinced you have a winning horse, so what why waste my time?

Actually I read and posted AC for a few years before I registered -- I was just too lazy to do it. Anyway, I said "computers", not "Slashdot". And it was a joke (albeit lame). But you really should know about the Apple I. Along with other early micros... I lived much of it (the Apple I was before my time), but you can at least read about it. You might start here.

I wrote a long comment, but I accidentally deleted it (goddamn windows explorer!) Anyways, the essence is read Steven Levy's "Hackers" which provides a historical background of the first couple of generations of computer geeks. It's toward the end of the book (predating the internet or linux) that RMS appears, fighting to maintain a culture that is under assault by commercial interests that are raiding labs for talent, locking up code under nondisclosure, and promoting incompatibilities to try and get a lock on the market.

In this context, RMS isn't being extremist, he's being reactionary - trying to maintain the hacker credo (free exchange of information) in the face of people who are interested only in money. Some of RMS' own comments regarding this period of history are available online. I think his POV is compromise could lead to corruption of the core principles of hacker thought, just as the original free-for-all homebrew computer culture was subsumed by the likes of Microsoft (another storyline which is covered in "Hackers.) I really do recommend reading Levy's book, BTW, along with his historical novel on the development of modern crypto ("Crypto".)

In light of the history, I think that RMS is perfectly justified in his opinions - just witness SCO vs. the GPL. Some asshole with money trying to steal something the community has created, and then even worse, trying to charge money for what formerly could be gotten for free!

The pre-Raymond version of the Jargon File - the Hacker's Dictionary - is available here:

The Original Hacker's Dictionary.

This is more a historical work than anything else, as it documents the language of what Levy calls the "first generation hackers", the ones who worked in the AI labs at Stanford and MIT. Those communities died during in the 80s (which was, of course, the event that provided the impetus for the GNU project.) The Hacker's Dictionary has a genuine and honest flavor that the modern Jargon File lacks, which is probably inevitable, since the Jargon File covers the modern internet-based "hacker" community - a vaguely-defined entity that has even become confused over the meaning of the word "hacker". It's therefore not surprising that ESR feels he can get away with sprinkling the Jargon File with Raymondisms.

A picture within a news publication is news. Within the context of fact-reporting journalism, we should be able to expect that all representations are factual and undoctored. Outside of that realm (in artistic / and other subjective contexts), we know we can't have that expectation.

There are already some very subjective elements in news reporting and it doesn't build our diminishing trust in the media when we can no longer expect images to be accurate and undoctored.

It wouldn't upset my news gathering experience in the least if "MS"NBC, CNN, ABC, Fox, Al Jazeera, and the rest of their ilk would just cut all the adjectives from their stories completely and leave me with facts; objective reporting. It would take less time to get caught up on current events, and let me come to my own conclusions about how I feel about what's being reported.

I agree that in this case, the changes are pretty trivial and that firing the reporter is pretty extreme, but anything not altered from it's original visual depiction is still not fact. People are probably overreacting because there's so damn much spin in our world these days...

A 2-page article is hardly going to make you a know-it-all on this man. It's a good overview, but please don't go away from it thinking you're an expert on his life. (That's just a pet peeve of mine, like people who saw a Ken Burns series and now think they're Civil War experts).

What the article barely touches on, for example, is that (like Russell) he turned from science and philosophy to political activism later in life, complete with a heaping FBI file. Read his own words if you want to. There's also an interesting story about Einstein's brain!

Or just read Hackers , which is original and best account of the Hacker culture. All others are just imitations.

I don't have any real background in this area - but I go through a cyclic obsession with CA's every few years.

I think this all started when I read Steven Levy's 'Artificial Life' book at university.

Looks like this is something else to go on my wishlist...

The review mentions that this book assumes too much background. If you're looking for a book that gives you or others that background, I heartily recommend Hackers by Steven Levy It's a wonderful tour throught what it meant to be a hacker right up to the mid 80s.

I imagine the Stallman book would make a lot more sense after reading it. Also, if you can get ahold of "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" by Neil Stephenson, its a wonderful guide to the history of OSes on personal computers, which plays into this as well.

>If someone cracks into a big ass server and steals credit cards

Well, I think the point lies in the little word "and".
Discovering ways to bypassing security measurements is usually called hacking. The stealing of credit cards is called theft and has always been a crime.

Maybe take a look at Hackers by Stephen Levy.

We don't know if they're responsible, but they still are one screwed up group...

a little about the taliban here

Sure, Joe Bob might pirate some radio for a while, but when he gets bored, he goes back to work like the rest of us.

Perhaps you are unaware of the countless efforts pirate radio broadcasters have gone through to keep our society from becoming a bunch of wage slaves living to buy gap clothing to wear while we listen to what someone driven by corporate interest (money) thinks we should. There have been incredible volunteer efforts foiled by the FCC. In one case (I don't recall), the FCC busted a station and had to use a jackhammer to remove their transmitter from the foundation of the premise and confiscate it. People don't mind running good radio without monetary profit, but the FCC sure does get pissed off when they don't pay a tremendous license fee, forcing them to make money off of advertising and thus keeping our apple pie institution running the way it should^tm.

Here's some Joe Bob's you should check out:
http://www.echonyc.com/~gargoyle/str/
Linky version:
Steal This Radio 88.7 FM

pi using photos through eve through ars digita.
Go there now...

(Do it. Do it now. It is what Einstein's Brain would want you to do!)

WebWord.com -- Industrial Strength Usability

Levy is still around, of course. As someone else noted, he writes technology columns for Newsweek. He has also written several books besides Hackers, including one that is in progress now. This information and more is available on his website.

Yes, he is still around. See http://www.echonyc.com/~steven

Sounds a little like Echo, the East Coast Hang Out started in 1989 by Stacy Horn in NYC, (http://www.echonyc.com) though Echo is really probably more like the Well in being geared toward non-techie social interaction. Still, the flamewars, the RL meeting, the elitism of the old-timers, etc., all sounds familiar. As does the fact that it's really only limping along now, not necessarily growing, due to its difficult interface in these times of Internet startups for the masses.

Wow, I'm surprised that there isn't more of a discussion going on about this book. Steve Litt's artice seems to be a very brief synopsis of Steven Levy's 430+ page book. Those of you looking for Kernigan and Ritchie to be included will still be disappointed, but the people/machines this book does cover, it covers well.

From Levy's page, linked to above:

The book is in three parts, exploring the canonical AI hackers of MIT, the hardware hackers who invented the personal computer industry in Silicon Valley, and the third-generation game hackers in the early 1980s.

Having been written in 1984, the more recent heros aren't included. However if you want to know what life was like at MIT, from what they ate, to where they slept, to their ethics (winners and loosers), to the TMRC. Or, if you want to know about the Homebrew Computer Club, or what life was like at Sierra-Online and the sinful history of it's founders. If you want info on Richard Garriott (Lord British), Steven "Woz" Wozniak, Steve Russell (creator of the first arcade game, written on the PDP-1), David Silver (not from 90210), Richard Greenblatt and Tom Knight, Lee Felsenstein, John Draper (Captain Crunch), and a slew of others. Or if you're interested in a bit of history on the early machines such as the IBM 704, Altair 8800, Apple II, PDP-x, TX-0, Atari 800, plus some more.

This isn't a text book, but rather a non-fiction story about "a unique new breed of American hero."

Barnes and Noble have the book for online ordering for $10.36.

Don't forget that Steven Levy wrote one of the definitive works on the subject, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution . An excellent book, even fifteen years later.

Schwab

Don't forget that Steven Levy wrote one of the definitive works on the subject, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution . An excellent book, even fifteen years later.

Schwab