Mentors last words: The hacker manifesto

By Josh Highland in internet, Josh's Rambling, linux, software

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Lurking around online this morning I ran across the hackers manifest, written by Mentor. I haven’t read this in a solid 10 years. Going over it again brought back found memories of 1993 and my x468 66mhz (my phone is faster then that now!), with a 14.4 kbps modem.

If you have never read Mentors famous last words, hackers manifesto, here it is for you.

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms.
Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me…
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I’m a smart ass…
Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.

And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is
found.
“This is it… this is where I belong…”
I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…

You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.

ah to be young and think you knew it all.

do you pownce?

By Josh Highland in internet, Josh's Rambling, web 2.0

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I really like pownce.com

If you dont know what pownce is, maybe you know what mySpace bulletins are…

If not, they are notes that you blast out to all of your friends, and they can look at them or not look at them if they feel like it. Also, if they feel like it they can reply to them.

Pownce is a website that functions sort of like that but has a major twist to it… they have a desktop application like AIM that you can install also. You can see the bulletins in real time, or you can look at the website.

All I know is that I love using pownce, it makes my day at the office go by a lot faster. Right now pownce is invite only, so if you would like to join, please send me an email (joshhighland at gmail dot com) and I will hook you up.

If you already have a pownce account, I’m here http://pownce.com/JoshHighland

iPhone, after the honeymoon

By Josh Highland in hardware, iPhone, Josh's Rambling

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I’ve owned the famed apple iPhone for about 3 weeks now. In that time I have grown to both love and hate aspects of the iPhone.

I understand that this is a first generation phone with the 1.0 software running on it. Despite knowing this, I dove right in and bought it.

I’ve had enough time with the phone to fully explore it.

below are the biggest problems with the iPone that I have

  • ring tone is too quiet even when on full volume
  • vibrate mode is too discrete, i want to to shake longer
  • text message notifications are to quite
  • no notification of missed text messages without turning the phone on
  • text messages can only be sent to one person at a time
  • horizontal keyboard mode is only avaliable in safari

I guess that isn’t a very large list of things that I want changed in the iPhone. Actually those are all software problems that could be fixed through a software updates. Apple hasn’t released any updates to the iPhone as of yet, so we will see if the problems I am seeing, are ones that Apples feels like they should fix.

decrease the lazy, increase the code

By Josh Highland in internet, Josh's Rambling, web 2.0

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I realized last night that I need to stop being a lazy web developer, and get off my ass and make something happen.

I’ve sat back and watched all of these awesome website applications come online, like digg.com, pownce.com, facebook.com and more, and I say “thats awesome, I wish I would have come up with that”.

The truth of the matter is I CAN do something like that, and I have the potential right at my finger tips for it to be big. For the last, almost 6 years I have developed a small but fun social network, notPopular.com, with over 25,000 members.

I’ve been admittedly lazy with the site and have let it go stagnant over the last few years. Its dated and worn. A number of time I have started building the 2.0 version of the site, just to trash it and start again. Last night I fixed a javascript bug that I had known about for 2 years… talk about lazy.

I work in burst of development, an idea will hit me and I will code like mad for a week, and then not touch it for 2 months. This is laziness. I need to stop this. I need to be steady with my development.

I love to code, I love new ideas for sites. Social networks are very interesting to me.

Many times I have felt left out of the online cool club, and I would think to myself, “If I lived in the bay area, things would be different, I could collaborate with people and make the next digg, pownce, or twitter”. or “I program all day for ‘the man’, I don’t feel like coding when I get home”. I’ve realized that those are just an excuses for my laziness. I need to get off my ass and do something about it. I need to develop web applications, if thats what I want to really do with my life.

This is my promise to myself, to complete the web projects I start, and to become consistent with their development.

If someone is reading this and has some awesome ideas for notPopular.com, speak now…. I’m on a roll

Firefox: spell check any field

By Josh Highland in hacks, internet, software, web 2.0

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I can’t spell. That no joke. If you have read my blog for any length of time, you will know this. One of my saving graces has been the built in spell checker in Firefox (I’ve already used it 5 times in this post!)

By default Firefox will only spell check large text areas. This is great for the bodies of forum and blog posts, but it doesn’t help when I am filling out a single line text box, like the subject of this blog, or a forum topic title.

There is a solution to this, so you can have Firefox’s spell check available to all fields in a browser:

In Firefox, do the following (ignore all quotes)

  1. type this in the browser address bar “about:config”
  2. look for “layout.spellcheckDefault”
  3. change the value to “2”
  4. restart firefox