Slashdot Mirror
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....
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!
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.