PHRACK Final

lbolla writes ""...a glorious era comes to an end. #63 will be _our_ last PHRACK RELEASE -- ever... Phrackstaff is pleased to bring you _our_ last ever call for papers for the final release of phrack. We are preparing for a hardcover and ezine release at a major hacker convention near you! We ask everyone to submit a paper. Great care will be taken to ensure that only the best articles make it into PHRACK FINAL.""

Comments

Check the cover of #62

[gowen]

Looking at the cover of their previous issue... is it any surprise that hackers have a reputation as being hairy palmed, sex-starved, sad sack porno hounds?

Re:Check the cover of #62

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

Man, people who like Budweiser much be hairy palmed, sex-starved, sad sack porno hounds because every commercial I see has young women all over the place.

Ah man! I realized there are tons of sex-sells ads. Everyone except me must be hairy palmed, sex-starved, sad sack porno hounds.

Good thing I think women suck. I never want to see one nekkid again. Yuck.

Pfffft, moron.

Re:Check the cover of #62

[gowen]

There's a difference between using sexual imagery to promote your product and shamelessly putting a badly-drawn, scantily clad woman on the cover of your computing magazine.

People still read phrak?

[jleq]

I thought that the entire community of real hackers moved on to more intelligent, less "omfg 1337 lol" material, like 2600. For every interesting article in Phrak, there are 2 uninformative or just-plain-dumb articles.

Re:People still read phrak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? Have you even looked at a phrack issue in the last 10 years? 2600 is far from technical (considered a joke by so called "real hackers"), and anything published in phrack semi-recently is at a level far beyond 98% of the slashdot crowd's comprehension.

why? phracking is considered terrorism nowadays

[t35t0r]

With a list of possible submissions including:

- hacking
- phreaking
- spying
- carding
- reverse engineering
- anarchy
- conspiracy

could all get you labeled as a terrorist, charged by the DMCA, and in general land you in GITMO. The homeland security bill and other draconian laws are the reason why this will be the last Phreak ezine. This is because all the good hackers have gone underground (any of these themes remind you of Farenheit 451?).

It's sad when the free exchange of information, ideas, and determining security exploits outside of anonymity could get you into lots of trouble.

Acetylene Balloon Bomb

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I've always gotten a kick out of this article in the first issue of PHRACK:

http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=1&a=7

In it, the poster spells out a recipe for an acetylene balloon bomb. Fill up a plastic bag with acetylene, put some rocks in it, put some of those little fun-spans in it, then throw it out the window... Always cracks me up when I think about some fucktard throwing fun-snaps into a bag filled with rocks and acetylene/oxygen...

Maybe it's because of articles like this that PHRACK is dead.

Re:"Rumored" return? I don't know about that.

[Cougem]

It probably means it's not decided yet. If they go and say 'we might make one, we might not, depends how we feel', they will be swamped with emails. If they call it a rumour then it keeps up interest, and people assume it's a done deal and shutup, and they can decide later.

Another Era Death

[pngwen]

It seems that all the fun stuff in the technology world is going away. The whole mentality of the industry has changed. I remember when computers were neat and fun, now they are just about as amusing as a toaster.

Remember all the innovative games? Remember when new things came out? Remember when you spent hours in the basement trying to trick it all into doing things it wasn't supposed to?

I do.

But those days are long gone. I think it's because you can do too much with cheap hardware now. There is no challenge. Getting that last few compute cycles out of a program saves you a millionth of a microsecond. Who cares? The machines are too capable, so there is no challenge, hence no fun.

Now to go write some code for my hp48. At least it's still sufficiently slow!

Re:Another Era Death

[mogwai7]

Use microcontrolers! You can do a lot of stuff with them and are ultra cheap. Think of them as one of those old computers on a chip. :) Coding them in assembly and building circuits for them to interface to is a good challange. Microchip gives free samples of their stuff and has excelent docs.

Re:Who?

[grazzy]

Phrack lost it's glamour when they put them on the net. Lost are the days when you had to struggle to find the latest issue on your local underground bulletin board system.

Put PHRACK in the schools

[zbik]

It's easy to laugh at maladjusted PHRACK kiddies now, but it was partly thanks to its technical articles that I discovered my career path in the early 90's. I was at an age when many young males feel trapped by society and develop an undeniable desire to effect their will on the universe, often through such crude means as vandalism, setting fires, or blowing things up. Through a bundle of floppy disks full of PHRACK text files I became engrossed in learning the inner workings of the telephone infrastructure: trunks, LEC's and other mysteries behind the mundane.

It was in this way that I came to an understaning that technology is not read-only; not simply a malevolent behemoth controlled by presidents and CEO's to manipulate a passive citizenry; but is in fact waiting to be created and tinkered with by such inquiring minds as my (former) self. Although my initial motives may have been anti-social I have since been able to contribute to society in a way that is, on balance, positive. I hope PHRACK continues to inspire others in the same way.

That and Steven Levy's Hackers probably saved me from a destiny as an ineffectual philosophy professor or some other brand of malcontent fat-assed intellectual.

Being nostalgic

[interstellar_donkey]

I honestly didn't know Phrack was still around. I'd like to say it's sad to see them going, but then again I haven't seen or heard anything relating to Phrack in 15 years.

Phrack conjures up memories--now viewed through rose colored glasses--of a time when computing, as well as the culture surrounding computers, seemed far more interesting then it is today. Late at night watching text files stream across a black and green 80 column monitor, being pumped to my beloved Apple //e at 300 baud (When I finish school and get a job, someday I'll be able to afford a 1200 baud modem...I can't wait!!).

I remember sitting at my desk spitting Dr. Pepper through my nose reading text files on BBS systems from the likes of "The Cult of the Dead Cow", or the seminal "How to Have Fun in K-Mart", or viewing works of the Phrack variety on hacking, cracking, and security with immense curiosity. It was great, because this computer I had was giving me a window into a world populated with people who, in many respects, were just like me.

Then as the 80s turn to the 90s, I got my first shell account on the Internet, and traded love of BBS systems for IRC, Usenet and gopher. A few years later, hypertext markup hit, and com programs like Telemate, Procomm, or Qmodem quietly were replaced by Trumpet winsock.

It didn't take long for the Internet to catch on, and a few years later IRC and discussion boards turned from being meeting points for curious, likeminded nerds to massive bland playgrounds seemingly populated by the same kind of people I initially used computers for to help get away from.

Then again, maybe the olden days weren't really as great as I remember them.