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Product Description
Review
" … The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey is an important, amazing book that tells the story of these kids and adults as they explore a new frontier."
—John Baichtal (Wired Blog, August, 2008)
—John Baichtal (Wired Blog, August, 2008)
"...a testament to a culture which thrived before computers and the internet mattered to most of the world." (New statesman, September, 2008)
Product Description
Since 1984, the quarterly magazine 2600 has provided fascinating articles for readers who are curious about technology. Find the best of the magazine’s writing in Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, a collection of the strongest, most interesting, and often most controversial articles covering 24 years of changes in technology, all from a hacker’s perspective. Included are stories about the creation of the infamous tone dialer “red box” that allowed hackers to make free phone calls from payphones, the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the insecurity of modern locks.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
38 of 42 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
no surprises for readers of 2600, Nov 18 2008
By Neurasthenic "neurasthenic" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey (Hardcover)
I remember finding my first issue of 2600, in a bookshop attached to an enormous, secretive government laboratory. Those were in the days after ESS but before the Internet (well, we had NNTP and SMTP and telnet, but HTML hadn't been invented). It seemed so illicit and exciting, I bought every issue I could find for years, and even wrote one article for them.Over time, I read it less and less, both because the writing was generally bad, and because the revelations were often so weak. The Best Of book fairly reflects the content of the magazine -- it gives a good sense for the passions of a particular technological subculture, but much of what is here is dross.
So many articles were clearly written by people who did not know much, and who punt when they get to difficult work. "The encryption is done by a custom chip and, uh, you might want to decompile the EEPROM and see what's in there." Or they contain only trivial information, made to fill many pages through the inclusion of anecdotes about how the writer came to know the trivial information. (Four pages on how you discovered that ATMs run OS/2? The entire article could have been reduced to four words: "Many ATMs run OS/2.") And then there are the political articles, most of which are screeds about how the government and/or big companies are coming to take your freedom away, and their desire to be paid for your pirated movies proves it.
In some cases, it is hard to imagine how a given article was selected for inclusion in the magazine, let alone for reprinting in the book. An essay on the mathematics of lotteries is particularly weak, using high school level combinatorics to argue that nobody should ever play. The article contradicts a much more interesting essay earlier in the book in which the weaknesses in certain lotteries were revealed and methods for exploiting these weaknesses detailed.
The best material in the book is historical -- the stories of individual hacks, arrests, court battles, etc., by the people involved. Emmanuel Goldstein could have printed just those and had a better book while saving 550 pages.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important part of the history of computing, Aug 25 2008
By John C. Stepper - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey (Hardcover)
The hacker ethos is beautifully captured in this anthology. I've often skimmed 2600 at bookstores but it was only when I went through this hefty tome that I realized how deep and rich are the culture and accomplishments of the hacking community.More than just the cartoonish representation in popular media, the hacking movement is a testament to creativity and innovation. Rightly so, this book is a celebration of cleverness and ingenious engineering instead of the more malevolent applications.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book on the history of hacking by the people who wrote the magazine on hacking, Aug 24 2008
By Bushido Hacks "Mr. Hacks" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey (Hardcover)
Emmanuel Goldstien and his companions have written alot about hacking over the years, but now most of their writings have come together in tome form.If there was anything you ever wanted to know concerting what hacking was like before the explosion of the Internet, or how hackers have been portrayed with biased by the media and in some cases the government, this is a must read book.
If you subscribe to 2600: The Hacker Quarterly or if you patiently wait at the book store or mail box for a new issue every three months, you will definitely want to pick up this book.
It will be interesting to see in the future, online hacker zines to try their hand at publishing their writings such as TOTSE and Phrack.
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