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Slate Reprints Blue-Box Article That Inspired Jobs
Slate has reprinted the piece that Ron Rosenbaum wrote for Esquire in 1971, explaining to the world that there was an underground movement of people hacking the phone system. (Rosenbaum is now a columnist for Slate.) According to the article's new introduction and followup piece by Rosenbaum reflecting on its impact — and to the New York Times obituary for Steve Jobs — this article inspired Jobs and Wozniak to start building blue boxes themselves, an effort that made them several thousand dollars.
They would now be considered a homeland security threat or some such shit and locked up, put on a no fly list and given a free colonoscopy. The several thou would be proceeds of crime and fined in the brazillions or dollars....
Hate is a nasty thing to waste time on. Try to concentrate on things you like and love.
Like telling people how to live their lives.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
What if you love to hate?
Like telling people how to live their lives.
Most people are actually in dire need of that from time to time.
You *hate* him? Did he come and personally torture you or a family member or steal all your money and frame you for a rape?
If not, rather than expecting the world to turn on a dime to suit your irrationality, would it not be easier to either grow up or just not read such things? (Or learn to drop the hyperbole and stop wasting everyone else's time...)
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Money won't buy you happiness.
news that matters
titled 'Phreaking for Real' tells the story from Steve Wozniak's perspective. It starts "In 1971, the day before I headed off to my third year of college at Berkeley, I was sitting at my mother's kitchen table and there happened to be a copy of Esquire sitting there." After giving an account of the article and the excitement it gave him, Woz first mentions Jobs four pages later: "One of the first things I did after reading the article was to call up my friend Steve Jobs. He was just about to start twelfth grade at Homestead High School, the same high school I'd gone to. I started telling him about this amazing article, [...]".
Be a criminal first. Then start a business so you can rip people off bigtime. Legally.
Don't much care for apple of the last 10+ years. Apple could have advanced computing greatly. Instead they advanced lockin, lawsuits, form over function, and trendy fad expensive disposable products.
We're not a pc! No.. you're the same hardware with one extra thing to make it a pain to interoperate with the rest of the computing world easily and cheaply. Once apple started using intel as their base it should have become obvious to everyone what they were doing and what they actually cared about. Money.
And that does not make you great. That's actually pretty common.
Damm shame... Apple forcing microsoft and other companies to compete on a level open playfield could have done so much more to advance technology.
Instead you now get your choice of iproduct in a range of primary colors!
You *hate* Hitler? Did he come and personally torture you or a family member or steal all your money and frame you for a rape?
Hitler did none of those things either.
Hate is best directed at ideas and, if you want to personify it, the leaders who promulgate them.
Rape's awful for one person and perhaps those close to him. Jobs's less awful for any individual but his negative impact touches much of the world.
What's that? Is that a symlink for cp?
You *hate* Hitler? Did he come and personally torture you or a family member or steal all your money and frame you for a rape?
Yes he did.
HTH, HAND.
> this article inspired Jobs and Wozniak to start building blue boxes themselves, an effort that made them several thousand dollars.
this [visit] inspired Jobs and Wozniak to start building [a GUI] themselves, an effort that made them several [millions] dollars.
Now that is a pattern of real innovation.
lucm, indeed.
It's amazing how fucked up humanity is.
Day after day, "media" spends time talking about someone who managed to run some businesses that basically produced some eye-candy that naive people can drool over. A hero.
But chance that you will hear about someone who actually saves peoples' eyes (like this, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanduk_Ruit) are almost zero.
Edward Bernays would be proud.
. . . greetings, John Draper! This article made you my hero. Hope you've had a great life since the 1970s.
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Money won't buy you happiness.
It'll just buy everything else, which is already something, don't you think?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
But what is this negative impact you speak of? Having democratized graphical interfaces and the mouse? The smartphones? mp3 players?
Let me know.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Wait, did you just answer the question?
If I had enough money to not worry about not having enough money, I could concentrate on being happy instead of making sure I have enough money.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it certainly makes being happy a lot easier.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I wonder what inspired him to deny paternity of his kid for years and steal steve wozniaks atari profits.
true atheists leave it be
Indeed. Actually, even the believers should leave it be.
Just for the record: Jobs is still dead, and it's been more than 3 days...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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Nowadays Apple is very protective of anything they consider their own property.
Ave! duci novo, similis duci seneci
So, you're saying you think they should stop telling people how to live their lives?
I think you should stop telling people to stop telling people how to live their lives.
Or maybe I don't. It would perhaps be easier if we could agree that we can tell people how we think they should live their lives if we want to, but agree that they don't necessarily have to listen to us or follow our advice. So, I'm not sure anymore what I think or don't think I or you should do or not do.
Have a nice day (if you like).
Exactly. Money indirectly does buy happiness to the poor person, because the poor person has money troubles which cause unhappiness. Take away that unhappiness and relative happiness goes up. More money than is required for getting out of money troubles doesn't buy happiness, or buys a lot less of it.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
>Hate is best directed at ideas and, if you want to personify it, the leaders who promulgate them.
Agreed. And one could even consider that the leaders are the way they are because of their nature and nurture, neither of which they are to blame for. I mean, take for example GWB. Talk about a bad upbringing. He was practically helpless before his fate of becoming president of the US and bombing Iraqis.
As that guy with the long hair and the blue car said: "Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing", or something.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Once the effort is tainted with illegality, it is forever doomed.
A great example for our children, Steve-O.
We can't have current owners of Apple products find out that Jobs was once at least tagging along with someone who liked to hack. It would tarnish his image.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
People rule their iphones and ipods and ipads?
Right.
Sure, they get to push the button they're granted and get to install the apps they're granted, but as democratic hardware goes, the iStuff is far off on the fascism side of that scale.
Am I the only person on here who, despite making a living in IT, has has never owned a single Apple product in my entire life, doesn't want to own one, and probably will never own one (not out of some deep political motive but just because they don't sell things I want to buy)?
I'm much more interested in some tech news, which the "Steve Jobs dying" thing was FOR ONE DAY, and could be summarised in a single brief article. I don't need it front-page of a London paper, slapped across BBC News and then people dredging up any-old-article (not even a particularly interesting one) in order to use the "news" (now "olds") to seem relevant.
I hope we get the same amount of fuss when the creator of the Mario characters dies, or someone similar. Actually, I hope we get the amount of fuss *suitable* for when anyone like that dies, instead - i.e. one-day, one-article, done.
People rule their iphones and ipods and ipads?
Right.
Sure, they get to push the button they're granted and get to install the apps they're granted, but as democratic hardware goes, the iStuff is far off on the fascism side of that scale.
democratic hardware? ruling one's phone? iStuff being fascist???? Looks like the extremist just posted as AC. You know, "democratic", "free" and such adjectives best apply to sentient beings, not to inanimate objects.
Should toaster vendors provide the schematics of their toasters to make them not fascist? Or should they print Mussolini's picture on the side if they don't provide said schematics?
You're insane. Just plain insane. Real life is just out there, please get out of your mom's basement and take a peek.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Need any more be said. Apple has become the epitome of everything that is founders once opposed - a greedy parasitic, controlling, corporate monstrosity, run by lawyers and accountants (and even more lawyers). Its founders were corrupted by power and greed, which brought out the worst in them.
Jobs is dead.
-- Nietzche
If there is indeed something like a religious believe in Newton, then at should stop.
By now we know Newton wasn't entirely right anyway, if we believed in his "teachings" religiously, there might not be a relativity or quantum theory.
As for Jesus. Unless it's the name of some brazilian soccer star, we should stop worshipping him.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Jobs is dead.
-- Nietzche
Ding dong, the wicked Jobs is dead - The Munchkins
You can use money to get some pussy and pussy makes us happy.
people prefer "olds".
I own just one Apple product, a first gen Mac Mini. A real heap of crap. I can't even be bothered getting some puttyknives to crack open the case to install more RAM and a bigger hard disk. Its just sitting at the back of a cupboard, mocking me every time I open the door for some more printer paper.
Mind you, I've sti;ll got the box and all the bits of associated paper. It may become a collectors item and I'll get my money back!
It was spread all over the BBC because BBC News is infested with the cult of Jobs. As well as the solid reporting on the death, this weeks "Click!" has an extended hagiographical appreciation of Steve Jobs, a man I have always regarded as cross between a typical salesman and an intellectual magpie, always on the look out for Ohh! Shiny!
Have yu seen the BBC Breakfast team all drag out iPads whenever they can?
I think the BBC is taking product placement cash...
The irony here is rich and creamy. Jobs and iTunes made the bluebox-like act of downloading music for 'free' an act of unspeakable violence, at least if you ask the lawyers of the RIAA or Apple. So, where will the next Jobs get the thrills needed to motivate them to greatness? Probably where we expect it the least.
Organization? You must be joking..
Sigh. I thought the daily Jobs bowel movement post wold go away, but it is still around and multiplying. Where can I buy a cheap and functional netbook to soothe me?
It's obvious that without Ron Rosenbaum there would have been no Steve Jobs.
It's just too bad Ron Rosenbaum had been an anonymous nobody for forty years. Who knows how many more Steve Jobs we would have had if his inspirational masterpiece had been in wide circulation.
How this country treats its inspirational journalists is nothing short of scandalous.
People who have tried to research this say that money does, in fact, buy happiness, but only up to an upper-middle-class income of about $65,000/year (in recent dollars).
Seriously, that reprinted Esquire article is an amazing document. I can't believe it's 40 years old!
To the person complaining about relevence, if you don't care about it, ignore it! Maybe consider investing the time you spent typing negative comments in reading something you are interested in instead? Much more rewarding I promise :-) besides, Know Your History! I'd seriously be amazed at anyone I know that's a committed hacker (old defn) not to be fascinated by that article.
Anyway, my actual reason for posting - Given the age of hte article, does anyone know of a recent follow up to it? I'd love to know what the main characters have been spending the rest of their working lives doing and what the "blind kids" found to pique their interest in the modern world!
GP is not insane, just confused because he thinks the iDoody is being sold as a general-purpose computing device, when it in fact is not. Just as if you bought a toaster expecting it to toast all manner of bread products, but due to an unfortunate lack of research on your part, turns out merely to lightly scorch muffins.
Lack of schematics notwithstanding, there exists an expectation that computery-looking things such as the iPoopy ARE in fact general-purpose computing devices, because that is all computery-looking things have been up until now, just as toasters have been general-bread toasting devices, and only the latest generation restricts them to muffins.
Qualifying an inanimate object of being fascist is kind of crazy in my book though.
People should know really. It's not that complex. If you want a computer, buy a computer. If you want an iCrap, buy one. If you don't get why people want an iCrap, shut up and listen to them. That's if you want to know of course :-)
Write boring code, not shiny code!
He practiced alchemy, as well as other things. There was a Nova a few years ago about it:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2042275819
Still, I would say I "worship" Newton far more than a nonexistent invisible man in the sky.
The thing you have to remember is that Wozniak loved technology, and loved to learn how things worked. It's no surprise that he would want to build a blue box and explore the telephone system.
Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was an opportunist. He didn't care about how it worked. He cared that people wanted to make illegal phone calls. So he convinced Wozniak that they should sell the things, something which Woz would have never decided to do on his own. That's a move which almost got them both arrested on one occasion, and nearly shot by a criminal wanting their boxes on another. And I certainly remember how Woz phrased the arrest scenario, where when the cop showed up while they were using the box on a pay phone, Jobs shoved it on Woz so that he wouldn't be caught with it. What a real weasel.
Inspiration is a funny thing. It might take two people in a similar direction, but that doesn't mean they have the same motives.
Jobs are dead.
-- The economy
Exactly. Money indirectly does buy happiness to the poor person, because the poor person has money troubles which cause unhappiness. Take away that unhappiness and relative happiness goes up. More money than is required for getting out of money troubles doesn't buy happiness, or buys a lot less of it.
But happiness is not simply the absence of unhappiness, unless you beg the question by defining happiness as the acquisition of wealth.
Having enough money not to starve or freeze to death is a lower stage on man's hierarchy of needs, which you have to get over before you can move up tofinding such things as love and finally self-actualisation.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I actually own a copy of the article, the esquire has a naked woman on a sing on te cover, couldn't help but jump at the chance t own a bit of phreakng history.
I wonder if it's worth more now, I know I paid a premium for it last year.
Would it be legal for me to scan and post it somewhere for interested parties to read?