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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....
What if you love to hate?
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!
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.
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/
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.
They were invited to Xerox and bought the tech off them. Afterwards, Apple hired some of the staff. Read history (or ask Woz) and don't be a douche.
Jonathanjk.com
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!
Scoff all you want, but it would do all the youngins here good to read the whole Blue Box article from front to back. Not only does it provide a great historical context to modern hacking - and proof that the motivations haven't changed even though the technology has - but it's also an example of an extremely well written article, something the modern blogosphere is incapable of creating. Even if it takes the death of Steve Jobs, it's exactly the kind of article that should be posted on Slashdot.
Jobs is dead.
-- Nietzche
Ding dong, the wicked Jobs is dead - The Munchkins
Am I the only person here that has grown sick and tired of people who don't wish to read Apple content that post about how sick and tired they are of the Apple content that they can't stop reading?
I'm much more interested in reading comments that include humor, insight, and interesting anacdotes that are in some way related to the topic than reading another Goddamn complaint about how some egotistical elitist doesn't understand why they're not interested in the same things as others and forgot how to shut their own fucking eyes and get on with their life.
I hope we get the same amount of fuss when someone complains about the complaints directed towards my complaint!
The Admin and the Engineer
Never watched a Pixar movie? Never owned a device with a firewire port?
What about MS Windows? Windows up until at least 3.1 licensed some Mac OS technology.
Downloaded any music using a paid service? Maybe you haven't use an Apple product to do so, but Steve Jobs and company turned the music industry upside down and forever changed the way we buy music.
First web server? Written on NeXT computer. First spreadsheet? Written for an Apple computer.
Maybe you have never owned Apple product but my guess is that many of the products you do use have been profoundly influenced by Apple's designs in one way or another.
What if there was never was a Steve Jobs? What would the computer industry look like today? Would the computer as a personal device be as prevalent as it is? Would there be as many IT jobs as there are today?
I'm not saying that he was a great humanitarian or anything. But his impact on our lives is undeniable.
If nothing else, the lesson I wish the world would take from Apple and Steve Jobs is how to weather an economic downturn. Layoff staff? Hunker down? F*&k no. Make stuff people want, - not just cheaper versions of and minor improvements to what's already available. Innovate.
He had an ability to make stuff that was complicated into things mortals could do on their own. I agree that it is a shame he couldn't have applied this talent to the world's more profound problems.
Seriously, that reprinted Esquire article is an amazing document. I can't believe it's 40 years old!
The problem with your argument and many others like it is that you place too small a value on the ability to bring something to market. Sure, you need the people to write the code and design the hardware, but getting it to work in a lab someplace in only part of what needs to be done. Certainly Steve Jobs wouldn't have gotten to where he did without somebody like Woz to make the visions a reality. What I think is funny is that a lot of people point out how evil Jobs is because he didn't share $5,000 in bonus money with Woz on Breakout. Sure, it was horribly selfish but Woz ended up making a fortune because of Steve Jobs. He's long since forgiven him.
I'd argue that a lot of things would have come a lot later and perhaps we'd still be waiting for if not for Steve Jobs. It was his understanding of, and connections to the entertainment business along with his understanding of the computer user that lead to the iTunes store. Could Gates have done or anyone else done that? It wasn't only salesmanship. It was attention to detail and refusal to let products out the door that didn't meet his standards.
Why do you suppose Tim Berners-Lee was using a NeXT computer? It certainly wasn't the industry standard, and I'm sorry, something like creation of the Web goes beyond the creation of Doom or graphics drivers.
They were invited to Xerox and bought the tech off them. Afterwards, Apple hired some of the staff. Read history (or ask Woz) and don't be a douche.
Actually the real history is that Raskin arranged the visit so that Steve Jobs would see why the technology that was in the Macintosh was important and hopefully convince Jobs to quit trying to kill the Mac.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/mac/parc.html