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Steal This Computer Book 3
The book is a travelog of many of the most interesting or inflammatory corners of the Internet. There are chapters on hacktivism, hate crime, con games, spam, phone phreaking and dozens of other topics. If someone's spent time flaming about it, banning it, subpoenaing it, or demonizing it, there's probably a section on it here. All of the sections come with screen shots and URLs for further digging.
I found reading the book to be an odd pleasure. There was no way to click on the sites or try any of the software without heading for a computer, but that didn't seem to matter. If anything, it was nice to skip over the links and put off heading down alternate paths until later. The more I experience books like this, the more I begin to wonder if there's much in the hyper-fragmented, postmodern view of a narrative built out of multiply forking paths. This book offers one fairly simple arc that carries us through the most talked about corners of the web and it does it fairly gracefully. That's a pleasure unto itself.
The book comes with a rebellious gloss and semiotic history. The title was stolen from Steal This Book a collection of anarchist schemes written by Abbie Hoffman in the 1960s. Despite the title, that book became a bestseller -- offering a glimpse of the longterm prospects for Hoffman's revolution. All of the prole sheep dutifully bought a book filled with bombmaking techniques that promises to show you where "exactly to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls."
Hoffman's book showed that people will buy something they value even when they're told to steal it. The prole sheep intuitively understand that books cost money to create. But maybe that was a different era, before the web existed. This website offers the text even though there are four editions for sale at Amazon. I wonder who holds the rights?
Wang's book is nowhere near as radical or as dangerous. Hoffman wrote sentences like "The purpose of part two is not to fuck the system, but destroy it." Wang generally avoids such antagonistic language and speaks generally about anti-social behavior in the third person: "When hackers use social engineering, they often masquerade as a consultant or temporary worker..."
Much of the book, in fact, is filled with techniques that are presented as tools for protecting your privacy and your personal information. The back cover asks, "Is your computer safe from computer viruses and malicious hackers?" It's only partially aimed at helping people do asocial things on the Net. Helping people protect themselves from the evil hordes is a large part of it. Given that identity theft is a booming business, this edition is practically an anti-crime book.
What does this mean for the this Internet revolution? Will the current file trading yippies overthrow the copyright system? Will file sharing actually become the norm? Or will all of the Napsterites follow the paths of Hoffman's proteges and grow up, have kids, move to the burbs, and start paying for their content? Well, they might if the content is as comfortable as this book in the hands while sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner. No popup windows. No flash graphics. No registration required. Just pure content. Hmmm.
Peter Wayner is the author of books like Policing Online Games, Translucent Databases and Java RAMBO Manifesto. Please don't steal them. You can purchase Steal This Computer Book 3 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Just rent "Steal this Movie." It has Vincent DiNafrio (the Bug from original MIB) as Abbie Hoffman.
you probably used fidonet or usenet using UUCP.
or gopher...
The book is hyped garbage.
I looked at it during one of my monthly bookstore visits and was repulsed by it.
It's like "The Idiots Guide to Being a Skript Kiddie".
It rants about going to "hackerish" websites for information etc.
The whole book reeks of beign targeted at naive teenages who watched Hackers one time too many and want to go haxxoring cause it's cool or something.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
Ref: Amazon has it for $2.50 cheaper than bn
Of course if you don't use images.google.com for those searches, they both return exactly that for which you were looking (the second had to be adjusted, too much porn in the world, so the searchs need to be more specific - I saw what you were after without changing the query, but it was not the first link).
MOAB Article with picture
Link to Heidi and Jenna, but you will have to $$$
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
My mom loves the STCB series, and that's the audience No Starch is going for with this book - those that don't really know much about the internet or computer security. It's a good read with interesting anecdotes. Nothing more, nothing less.
I can guarantee you that my mom would be much less enthralled with any of the books you listed.
-John Mark
Acquisitions Editor
No Starch Press
Hyperic Community Manager
Its as simple as a batch file. Open up notepad and create hello_world.cmd:Or if you want to get all fancy with a GUI:DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any damages this code does to your system. If you have important data in a file called "hello_world.txt" do not execute this code!
--Drunk as in Beer
He never said the internet was useless. He was merely citing an example to make the point that the Internet/Google does not contain at this moment the sum total of human knowledge.
Here's the definition of 'prole.'
I haven't read this book but I had the misfortune of purchasing the previous edition. It was a horrible book that provided such worthless information I was embarrassed to have purchased it. I usually sell my used books on Amazon so someone else can enjoy them but not this one. I tossed it into the fireplace. I couldn't subject someone else to this wretched book. It provided zero information that couldn't be found by searching Google.
Maybe the new version is better, but I doubt it.
LoRider