Underground Surfaces

Julian Assange writes: "I'm very pleased to announce that thanks to Random House, Suelette Dreyfus and myself the complete and unabridged electronic text to our well-known book "Underground: tales of hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier" (approx 500 pp.) has been publicly and freely released... hacked to support Palm Doc!" Good reading.

Comments

We need more writers like Julian Assange

[Chuck Flynn]

Having prominent female writers like Julian sends a strong message to aspiring young girls who feel neglected by our school systems which channel them into clerical work or other low-paying fields saturated by women. The old-boys network is a tough one to crack, so thank you Julian for doing your part.

Re:We need more writers like Julian Assange

[American AC in Paris]

Have you considered the possibility that there are some fields of work and study that just aren't cut out for women? I realize that if you want to toe the liberal line, you have to claim that women are ready and able for anything from construction work to professional football, but if you're brave enough to accept the "unpopular" truth, you realize that there are certain things that men are genetically talented at and there are certain things that women are genetically talented at.

Yes, there are certain things that men and women are inclined to be better at, or that are exclusive to one gender. Men tend to be physically stronger than women; women tend to be more dextrous than men. Only women can bear children, and only men can produce sperm.

The catch is, society is often bent on enforcing inclinations as fact. Yes, AC, men do tend to make better football players than women. But there's a sizeable and vocal population that tries to insist that women can't or shouldn't play football. Nevermind that the woman in question may be able to hit her receivers 19 times out of 20 with perfect spirals, or can call plays like nobody's business. These same types mock men for doing things like ballet. Clearly, women are better equipped as a whole for the required dexterity and fluidity of motion; why should a man even be trying to do ballet, when he'll never be as good as a woman can be?

When was the last time that you heard a man complain when somebody said that he should not stay at home with the children and cook and clean? Do men whine and say "I can if I want?" No. They accept it.

Oh, bullshit. Men whine like nobody's business, just like women. I know plenty of pampered little mama's boys who tremble at the mention of "manual labor" (or "changing a diaper",) and I know plenty of women who silently put up with hell on a daily basis.

A little less whining and a little bit more productive output would do this world a hell of a lot of good.

I assure you that there is far more energy wasted in trying to deliniate acceptable men's and women's activities than is wasted in just letting people do what they set their hearts, minds, and bodies to. Women have a large number of purely artificial barriers they must overcome to do so today; being told that they're better designed for some things instead of other, more manly things is one of them.

Of course, society generally recognizes this fact when the men folk all get sent overseas to fight in wars and somebody has to do all the little things like build battleships and repair tanks.

Of course, that's just the exception. Women don't really belong in manufacturing and construction jobs, do they?

information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.

Mirrors

[Booker]

I guess I was lucky enough to see the download page before the teeming hoards of /.

As a result, I was able to see that there is a mirror of the plain text here and of the palm doc version here

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Re:Mirrors

[Phexro]

mee too. here's a mirror of the bzip2'd text version.
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This Sentiment is One that I Enjoy Seeing

[Lostman]

From the book: "There are other reasons for releasing `Underground' in this format. The electronic version is being donated to the Visionary Project Gutenburg, a collection of free electronic books run with missionary zeal by Michael Hart."

I am happy that writers are contributing their works to the Gutenburg Project, and I am wondering if there is something that we could do to help it also. Many a night I have stayed up reading the Gutenburg files, and this author is helping out a great deal--what can we do in order to help out also?

interesting...

[Phexro]

according to the introduction, the text of the book was also donated to project gutenberg. this is extremely cool. i hope it opens the doors for more authors to do the same thing.

there is a conflict, though. the free version i downloaded has quite a few restrictions, and is basically only for personal use; it even forbids using it as teaching material. and the author retains the copyright.

this is a change from the standard texts PG distributes. and their boilerplate says: "...this means that no one owns a United States copyright on or for this work..". interesting.

i still hope that the frequency of this type of donation increases.

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E-Books

[kosipov]

In light of this book, it annoys me to see Barnes and Noble and Amazon charging ridiculous amounts of money for Glassreader and MSReader books. If the book is $20 in hardcover and I am supposed to pay around $300 for the device, I better see some serious discounting on the ebook. Marketing and author's royalties aside, the cost of making the hardcover version of book has to be significant, otherwise why would they run paperback versions at $7.

Re:E-Books

[NMerriam]

Paperbacks sell FAAAAR more copies, so even though the production cost isn't much different, you can charge a lot less for paperback.

Publishers make a bit more profit per hardcover book sold, but honestly any author knows that the only way to make a living is to get books into paperback...

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Help...

[Booker]

http://promo.net/pg/helpex.html#Help

http://promo.net/pg/volunteer.html

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500 pp read on 160x160... yikes!

[Speare]

I just cannot imagine reading the equivalent of five hundred paper pages on a 160x160 pixel screen. PalmDoc is useful for reference works, but I think it's got a long way to go before I load a novel on it.

(To understand what I mean, this little slashdot posting would fill a PalmOS screen.)

MY Critique of Chapter 1

[Daemosthenes]

I read through the first chapter of the book online, and so far it's excellent. The writing takes the chaotic, sometimes confusing occurence of a computer worm and turns it into a gripping race against the clock by a desperate group of sys admins and computer managers. I would really recommend that everyone take the time to read at least the first chapter, as it provides insight into the origins of worms and viruses, both what it was like then, as well as how far we have come.


47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)

a review

[danny]

Can be found here.

Danny.

would you be aware if they were dissuaded?

[Technodummy]

this is not intended as a dig, merely a reason why you would NOT hear of it going on, it's hardly what schools brag about.

I went to an above-average high school. Which was quite proud of it's co-ed policies regarding sewing and metalwork etc.

However, after getting straight A's for a single compulsory metalwork class, I asked to join the next metalwork class (which had never been done before), only to be told I couldn't "because you're a girl". No joke. I thought perhaps it was just one or two old-fashioned folks who were blocking me, but that wasn't the case.

The school was deadset against it, but after threatening them with legal action, I was able to join the class, but was given special "girl" projects. Rather than continue welding and learning other regular skills, I was instructed to make a pretty brass spoon, which was the ONLY thing I was expected to complete.

I didn't make their crappy spoon, as my male teacher was violently opposed to their silliness, and he let me weld to my hearts content, I outproduced every male in the class, in quality and quantity for every project (straight A's, top of the class).

When robotics was added to our classwork, I helped our teacher learn (they don't bother to train teachers for new subjects anymore, just buy them a couple of books) to use an Apple2E (he'd never used a computer before), which interfaced with lego technic robots. I debugged BASIC everyday, wrote demonstration programs to impress parents of new students.

And all of that I would have been deprived of... because I was a girl!

And aside from my metalwork class, no one in the school had any idea of the crap going on behind the scenes, because I was told to keep quiet until it was all sorted out.

Sexism is alive and well in many places. I'm lucky I have a brilliant teacher to thank for my continued education.

And for the record, I don't consider myself a feminist. There are some things that certain people do better than others. But I think sex has little to do with it. A tall and strong woman would easily outwork a short a weak man in a physical environment. Just as a tall and strong man would easily outwork a short and weak woman.

People are individuals, assuming things based on sex, race, appearance or whatever may well prove you to be an idiot.

Something I get quite sick of, is it being assumed I want to have children. Not all women want children, not all men do either, but people don't seem to expect them to.

Long way to go with free books and the law

[marko123]

Unless you got express written permission to mirror this, you are in breach of the copyright. But then again, so is everyone who downloads it without express written permission and intends to retrieve it from their retrieval system. I wish people who slapped copyright messages on their works actually read them. It'd save a lot of hassle.

This is an important book ...

[matthew_gream]

This is an important book, because it helps to illustrate the psychological and sociological background to people "in the underground" - and help understand that computers, the internet and so on are not inherently evil or a media more suseptible to criminality, but the problems are the ever present problems of children, families, society and the swathe of humanity. Congratulations to Suelette and Julian for putting this important work into the public domain.