“Mentor’s Last Words” courtesy of the Jolly Roger
The following file is being reprinted in honor and sympathy for the many
phreaks and hackers
that have been busted recently by the Secret Service.
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\
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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 willing 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.
+++The Mentor+++
[May the members of the phreak community never forget his words
-JR]
———–RFLAGG———–
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