A Hacker 'Hero' Has Been Banned From Cyber Conferences After Decades Of Inappropriate Behavior (buzzfeed.com) 346
Several readers share a report: John Draper, a prankster hero to an early generation of hackers, used his status at cybersecurity conferences to arrange private meetings with teenage fans and a reporter where he touched them inappropriately, multiple men have told BuzzFeed News. The allegations are the latest in what has become in recent weeks an explosion of sexual misconduct reports that have roiled a seemingly endless list of industries, from Hollywood to the news media to the Alabama Senate race. As in many of those other cases, Draper's actions were well known to at least a core of people who had regular contact with him. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak told BuzzFeed News that Steve Jobs once told him that Draper, an early associate, once asked Jobs to sit on Draper's back in the 1970s, an offer Wozniak said Jobs declined as being "out of the ordinary." But in the hacking world, where unusual behavior is accepted and often celebrated, there were few official steps taken to prevent Draper's overtures to unsuspecting fans. Volunteers who worked the annual DEF CON hacking conventions in Las Vegas recalled that one of their responsibilities was to separate Draper from his teenage followers. Draper's behavior drew attention at other conventions as well, where he was a frequent presence. Brandon Creighton, a long-standing volunteer at hacker conferences who was familiar with rumors about Draper, recalled escorting him from a private party after ToorCon in San Diego in 2007, though exactly why was not clear.
Hacker 'hero' searches for backdoors in people (Score:5, Funny)
News at 11.
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Phreaky.
Can personally confirm that this has been known (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, not all the teenagers were above 18. That's the part not being mentioned. He wasn't exclusively hitting on dudes under 18, but he just wasn't remotely cautious about the age of the folks he was hitting on. Usually people were NOT interested.
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Hide out in the Ecuadorian embassy (Score:5, Funny)
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You mean Assange, the guy who has now been shown to be playing friendly games with Russia against the USA?
Hero my ass.
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Those who idolized him before mostly idolize him even more now. Those that see that as a problem already hated him.
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Whoever released the emails IS a hero!
Brandon Creighton, a long-standing volunteer (Score:2)
With a name like that he should be a frequent contributor.
This is nothing new about Draper (Score:5, Informative)
I used to hang out in the #2600 IRC, Drapers panache for young boys was being discussed as far back as 1998 according to my recollection.
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panache: mass noun Flamboyant confidence of style or manner.
penchant: (usually in singular) A strong or habitual liking for something or tendency to do something.
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Agreed. I remember it being pretty common knowledge that "Captain Crunch likes little boys" as far back LA 2600 meets in the early to mid-1990s.
That does not make it okay. But this whole "surprise" is not exactly a surprise to anybody who has been around the guy, or involved in the computer underground for any length of time.
Rather ironic... (Score:3)
Captain Crunch is how I knew him (Score:2)
With a whistle out of a Captain Crunch cereal box he owned the phone system at the time.
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Trying to be clever with a little subliminal messaging, eh? I'm on to you, John.
John Draper (Score:2, Informative)
The issue with Draper is there are documented cases of his Yoga exercises with boys under the age of consent, 15 years old. This has been well known for many years and even though some of us tried to get the word out, too much hero worship surrounds the guy.
The problem is that when you idolize someone as much as we did (Draper was a member of my group back in the day.) when they ask something weird, you aren't as likely as a kid to say no to your hero. We quickly learned what he was really like...
The guy
Re:John Draper (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can't? That is news to me. I didn't know there was some rule like that. But you have documented proof that it happened! Did you even try to go to the police?
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In fact, in some circumstances, when minors are involved, one can be required to go to the police with nothing but that claim, and face jail time if they don't. Teachers, for example, face brutal punishment if they ignore signs that student is being molested. Doctors, too. Even if the student themselves doesn't actually say something.
john draper is infamous for his perverted ways (Score:3)
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Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people still don't get it...
The problem is - when the person "asking" is in a position of authority, the person being asked doesn't always "feel free to say 'no'". And often the person "asking" uses their position to imply there will be negative repercussions if the other person does say no, or (as appears to be the case with Roy Moore) to use their position to bully the other person into silence.
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What position of authority was Draper in?
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He had a great deal of influence in the community, due to his living legend status.
The same as other celebrities who do this kind of thing. They use their fame and the offer of access to the circles they move on, as well as the perception that their fame makes them untouchable.
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He abused pity and shame to keep people quiet, not authority ... he has none. He's a manipulator.
I have to say the reporter was really dedicated to his craft though, getting on their hands and knees with a naked Draper in the room just for an interview. What did he think was going to happen at that point?
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of authority is he supposedly having? He's no teacher, he's no scout troop leader, he has no way of handing out any kind of repercussions whatsoever, what the hell are you talking about?
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you really trying to suggest that Lewis CK, a successful guy in an industry where who you know is everything, had no power over women at the start of their careers trying to break in?
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It's such a ridiculous, outlandish claim, I just wanted to check.
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Then you are incorrect.
Please tell me how anyone starting in comedy would ever succeed if a currently successful comedian--who is respected - told everyone : "not only is that person not funny, they're kinda bitchy".
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Real testable metrics. Is the crowd laughing?
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I'm still not sure what exactly Louis C.K. did that was so wrong. He asked and they said yes, there was no coercion involved. A lot of people are trying to make him out to be some kind of sick sex freak, but the fact is that some women do like to watch. I have had girls tell me it's a fantasy of theirs.
Claiming later that you felt pressured to say yes is a cop-out and an attempt to avoid personal responsibility. If you didn't like it, fine, but you did say yes. We used to be told, "no means no", now w
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in other words, a person should not be able to try to hook up or date anyone below their "strata"?
That sound suspiciously like the caste system and we see how well that works out in place like India, eh?
Look...real aggression is one thing, rape is rape, etc....but geez, the definition of this is going down to ridiculously low levels.
As a guy, we all (mostly) know that hooking up with a lady is a numbers game. You flirt with and make passes, whatever you want to call it, with as many attractive women as you can, and out of that, you'll get hits.
You get rejections too....but hell, is it now that any girl you hit on and get rejected, means this was an "unwanted sexual assault" on her???
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You are absolutely right about hooking up being a numbers game and the number of tries increases the number of successes. However, you have to treat your hook ups as people. Would you want feel forced to have sex? Even if they were very attractive? In your first statement, you went from a very specific type of power imbalance to a spread-out generalization. If a person needs your good will for a reason, it is wrong to express a sexual interest in them. Two examples, if you are their boss or you are being in
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So, in other words, a person should not be able to try to hook up or date anyone below their "strata"?
No, but when they have influence over the prospects of the person want to hook up with they need to be extremely careful to say the least. Imagine if your boss started flirting with you, would you really not expect there to be any negative repercussions to turning them down?
There are other issues here. It's a security conference, an odd one perhaps but still, it's not exactly a venue people go to in order to hook up. And it seems that some of the people he propositioned may have been under 18. What is the a
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No, what it means is that you're not supposed to be trying to "hook up" at work if you have a position of power.
Hook with people you don't work with. Easy!
Reminds me of a friend... in her 20s she kept feeling guilty because she'd have flings with guys at work, who usually held higher positions than her, and then they all kept quitting their jobs and moving to different companies. Why? Because she only wanted to fuck the nice, decent guys! And it was only managers who had enough time to be doing it at work.
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As a guy, we all (mostly) know that hooking up with a lady is a numbers game.
Actually, I would argue that a lot of people, particularly the Slashdot crowed, don't know that's how it works. The human interaction protocol isn't well documented. One can't simply RTFM. Even if you could, the rules are constantly changing. Most people are left to figure it out on their own. This leads to a lot of syntax errors, some of which are "awkward", and some of which are considered "misconduct".
Of course, there are individuals who have mastered the rules, and exploit them to their advantage
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You get rejections too....but hell, is it now that any girl you hit on and get rejected, means this was an "unwanted sexual assault" on her???
A straw man and slippery slope at the same time?! And they said it couldn't be done.
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So, in other words, a person should not be able to try to hook up or date anyone below their "strata"?
Depending on your definition of "'hook up" and "strata" the answer can be yes. For example, if by "hook up" you mean engage in consensual sex, and the strata occupied are "legal juvenile" and "legal adult", the answer is yes. If by "hook up" you mean "engage in some non-consensual sex act" then the answer is "yes" regardless of strata. If by "hook up" you mean "surprise a woman by showing her your dick" the answer is "yes".
People act as if this stuff is incomprehensible. It's not. For the most part i
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Fire them both. She's a whore, he's a whore bagger who tries to pay with company funds.
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Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people still don't get it...
lots of people want to please folks in power or folks who are wealthy because they want access to that power and wealth. Sometimes its about sex sometimes its about something else, really irrelevant. What it comes down to is are you willing to sell yourself out or not when an offer is placed on the table. Such is the nature of people and power YOU can't change that with any amount of legislation, awareness, moralizing, etc.
There are lines and we need to be careful about where we draw them. Consent is a matter of degree, there are huge gaps between. "Seems interesting", "I want this person to like me for whatever reasons so I am going to go along with this even though I am uninterested", "I don't want to but it might have negative consequences for me if I don't roll with it", "I don't feel like I have a choice", "I don't actually have a choice", and "oh God oh God deliver me from this".
Personally I think the issue needs to focus on the last two. The rest of those people need to learn to spine up or accept living as sheep.
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Maybe they should not be but the level of hysteria around this issue. combined with "the internet never forgets" now has got to the point where arrested might be the least of your worries.
One minor transgression is enough to get you hounded from your place of employment and essentially blackballed.
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lots of people want to please folks in power or folks who are wealthy because they want access to that power and wealth. Sometimes its about sex sometimes its about something else, really irrelevant. What it comes down to is are you willing to sell yourself out or not when an offer is placed on the table.
There are definitely people who want to cozy up to people with power or wealth by being a yes-man or tolerating distasteful things. There are even special words for these people - sycophant, lickspittle, bootlicker, lackey, brown-noser, suck-up - take your pick. Are you suggesting that the people bringing allegations of harassment are mostly sycophants who decided to back out of the implied deal? I honestly can't figure out what else you could mean by that paragraph.
Such is the nature of people and power YOU can't change that with any amount of legislation, awareness, moralizing, etc.
Murder and thievery will also always e
You can change it (Score:2)
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What they say and what they do are two very different things.
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Oh c'mon, I can't get that all done before dinner, can't we at least have a quickie?
Don't hit on people out of context? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the rest of Utopia thing the Democratic Socialists figured that part out ages ago. The Danes are doing just fine thank you very much.
Re:Don't hit on people out of context? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're at a hacker convention that is not the appropriate time to hit on a women (or a man). That's why the good Lord made singles bars. You're professional environment is not a dating site. How hard is that to understand?
There is literally no right or wrong time to meet a significant other. In fact, a convention where people of similar interest gather, is probably a time when you'll meet people, exchange with them, and form bonds. Some of the those bonds could lead to friendships and more. Dating and meeting people is not an activity in and of itself. It happens organically during social activities of all sorts, of which your job, schooling, shopping are all a part of. To try and paint any non-professional bonds that happen in professional settings as wrong is simply to ignore human nature.
That being said, harassment and assault should not be tolerated. But you're saying that flirting, or simply having a nice chat with someone you feel you're connecting with should be banned, which is downright ludicrous.
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You're [sic!] professional environment is not a dating site.
Yes, that must be why 40% of people have a workplace romance and a third of them end up married. [businessnewsdaily.com] :-p
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If said teenage admirers were under age then it really doesn't matter if he had any formal authority over him or not.
Re: Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here (Score:2, Insightful)
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Children are always the victim, it doesn't matter if you claim the child "consented." They didn't.
Victims are not guaranteed to be conspirators. And the accusations in this case, if true, involve victims who were absolutely not "conspirators."
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What about the famous actresses the Weinstein 'gave' all those parts to?
They 'earned' those parts the old fashioned way.
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Somehow you have a mistaken perception of what Weinstein did. He didn't say, "would you engage in this sexual act in return for a part in this movie," he used deception, surprise, and in some cases force. Technically what he did wasn't solicitation, it ran from assault to rape.
Now as for "whores not being victims", that may be true in Amsterdam where it takes place under the watchful eye of the police and many of the prostitutes are unionized, but if you're frequenting prostitutes here in the US there's
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You should never take what a liar says at face value. He wasn't talking about friendship; he was talking about using his enormous power to ruin careers, which in fact he did.
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That's not what he said, that's what she said.
Not being a whore, she ruined her friendship with him, but others didn't.
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Wait, so because *some* women may have engaged in consensual relations, all of the women he assaulted and raped are "whores"?
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Jesus Christ you dumb fuck, are you so embittered about your tiny penis and lack of social skills that everything has to be about feminists?
This is a man in his 70s, who made a routine habit of making inappropriate advances to underage teenage boys and the like.
This has nothing to do with feminism, and it has everything to do with an old man who was using his waning piece of celebrity to make inappropriate advances and generally be a creepy old man.
But go ahead, demonstrate how m
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Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Feminism infantilize women."
A movement to give women power over their own lives, such as the ability to decide who they want to screw, is "infantilizing". Slashdot: come for the tech stories, stay for the brain-dead comments. Thanks for coming through.
What the whoring commenters are not factoring in is Weinstein's willingness to destroy the careers of those who wouldn't sleep with him, or especially those who talked about it. It's not just about sleeping with him for the career boost.
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The Spacey thing seems to prove otherwise.
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What stories are you reading?
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For about a week there were multiple stories about him on the front page of every paper and every general news site. Most of them were very negative. He lost his career, even edited out of an up coming movie.
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As opposed to Weinstein? Cosby?
Your perception is broken.
Did Weinstein or Cosby get media support, trying to make it a reveal about their 'heterosexuallity'? Granted that didn't fly, but they tried it.
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That's a semantic issue. I don't call slaves and people tortured into a mental state where they can't consent whores.
Weinstein's "victims" had agency and gave consent. That's why prostitution should be illegal, so men and women don't get forced into making such choices.
Re: Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here (Score:3)
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:4, Insightful)
You sir, are a fucking asshole, and obviously part of the problem. You can politicize anything. You can make robbing an old woman a political talking point -- the old bag shouldn't have been there in the first place, right? She should have been home baking cookies, right?
This type of constant and complete divisiveness will be the downfall of the US.
"...these people." Go fuck yourself.
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Draper as far as we know didn't rape anyone and the described behavior while extreme is more on the level of indecent exposure than sexual assault.
Did he cross the line, if we are to believe the stories I'd say so ... but even so I'm also going to blame any adult who goes into his room for a fucking private massage for leading him on. Sometimes victims really do carry some of the blame, consent is not some binary fucking signal.
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Nonsense nobody should assume they can penetrate me just because we took our clothes off and touched all over each other. Why can't you just act like a normal human being and get explicit consent for each new touch and sexual act. "Hi can i touch your boobs". "ok one finger" "ok two fingers"
I mean doesn't everyone have sex like this?
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Damnit, you had me going for a moment :)
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Punchline:
LouAnn: Gomer, that wasn't my belly button.
Gomer: Surprise, surprise, surprise! That wasn't my finger either.
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What "all"? There are none in the story.
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The really shocking part is that they had to assign staff to keep him away from teenagers, but didn't actually ban him or anything.
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The really shocking part is that they had to assign staff to keep him away from teenagers, but didn't actually ban him or anything.
Yeah, the... fact that it was widely known and they would try to mitigate this stuff is really disturbing. I don't know if it was just being non-confrontational or they thought there was some benefit to having him around that was worth the risk.
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The really shocking part is that they had to assign staff to keep him away from teenagers, but didn't actually ban him or anything.
Yeah, the... fact that it was widely known and they would try to mitigate this stuff is really disturbing. I don't know if it was just being non-confrontational or they thought there was some benefit to having him around that was worth the risk.
Society didn't care, and they would have been fired if they tried to stop it.
Times are changing; people are starting to enforce the rules I was raised to believe were already the rules! It is going to take a long, long time to straighten it all out as a society.
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I think they didn't want some old homo aggressively cruising for teenage dates because it's bad PR even when it's not in and of itself illegal.
"These included him massaging men in public and urging them to come to his or their hotel room for private sessions. In multiple cases in which the men agreed"
It's safe to say most of the men who went along with it and agreed to meet him in his room did it with their eyes wide open, you can assume some level of intelligence and worldliness at a hacker conference. The
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Considering the admission fees, I highly doubt that anyone under can go. I mean, can you see "Dad? Can you gimme 3k bucks, I wanna go to a hacker conference".
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Adults are not allowed in the kids section, without a kid sponsoring them.
In other words, adults are not allowed in those sections.
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flirting, making passes, and asking permission - when the askee is free to say 'no' - isn't criminal. Even if it's kinky.
The summary and TFA make it clear these actions were directed toward teenagers and that he would offer to take them somewhere private for "'energy' exercises or stretches."
It's not a witch hunt if event organizers for years have been trying to prevent unsuspecting people from falling into his traps.
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So how would you characterise the actions of the US gymnastics team doctor who told young female team members that he was performing a normal and necessary medical treatment on them?
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Let's see:
1) "teenage fans" - I didn't see a specific age range, but since they didn't specify "young adults", it sounds likely that some of these teens were underage, in which case inappropriate touching would definitely be criminal (unless you're an elected official or running for office in the US).
2) "touched them inappropriately" - Likely if someone reported that, it means he didn't ask first. You could argue that touching equates to "making a pass", but I don't think that argument would hold up in cour
Re:Are we crossing into Witch Hunt territory here? (Score:5, Informative)
I've personally seen what Draper did. This was 20 years ago at XMas Con. Draper was a friend of a friend, and staying in our room. The guy frankly creeped me out and I wasn't very happy with it, but it was only one night, so whatever.
Later that night I went back to the room for something, and found Draper lying on the back of a local hacker I knew. The hacker later described the weird "energy exercise" thing described in the article. The hacker was also tripping on Robitussin at the time, and not in his right mind. He thanked me later for waking him up to what was happening, and was convinced Draper was going to rape him.
Now, I didn't see any rape happen. And nobody in the article exactly described rape. But I sure wouldn't call this particular series of incidents part of a witch hunt either. What Draper did is seriously seriously creepy. I don't know if it is/was illegal, but what he did wasn't right and shouldn't be tolerated.
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Flirting, making passes, and asking permission - when the askee is free to say 'no' - isn't criminal. Even if it's kinky.
Flirting, making passes, a stolen kiss - these are criminal activities if the man making these moves is an unattractive nerd with no social standing.
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It's not like there's only "rape" and "innocent flirting" and nothing in between. There's a lot of ground in between those, and many lines to be crossed. While there certainly is the potential for a witch hunt, I think it's good to talk about those lines and where they should be drawn.
Unfortunately there's no way of doing that without inviting at least some public hysteria.
One thing I think it's absolutely vital to talk about isn't just the behavior of people like Harvey Weinstein; it's all the people arou
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Tech still isn't a social matter. Posing and pretending is. And that's what Facebook is about.
Tech is still what it used to be, we just shed the posers when Facebook and the like surfaced. And I guess both sides were happy about it, don't ruin that!
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Odd. It's not really what I observe. From my position it's still MBAs ripping off everyone else and playing people against each other to keep them occupied.
If you have people skills, what the hell are you doing in tech? There's way more money to be made in management.
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Do you know anything about John Draper? He is practically a nerd archetype.
Re: Turning worm (Score:5, Informative)
The "whistle" was not created by "Captain Crunch" the hacker, it was a toy prize included in boxes of Captain Crunch the cereal, from which the hacker took his nym.
The tone was used to disconnect an existing long distance call. Your local end of the trunk knew it was still in use because your local loop was still active. The remote end thought the trunk had gone idle and disconnected the call from that point onward.
When the tone was stopped, the distant end believed it was being asked to initiate a new call and started listening for the DTMF in-band signalling that would route the new call. This was not the same set of tones as a touch-tone phone produced, so a device called a "blue box" was used by the hacker to generate the correct tones.
There were codes used to route the call via specific paths, so one game was to see how many trunks could get involved before the call was completed. Or you could force specific undersea cables to be used.
This was all described in a paper published in the Bell System Journal, intending to inform other Bell technical employees of the internals of the system. Hackers discovered this information and designed a simple tone generator system (the "blue box") to take advantage of it. Bell attempted to scour all the libraries where this journal was shelved to remove that article, and it is hard to find a bound copy from that time period that still has the article in it.
Because it was the local end of the call that maintained the record of called number and time spent on the call, it was usually a toll-free number that the hacker used. The only evidence of the hack would be extremely long calls to toll-free numbers.
If you practiced, you could actually whistle the disconnect tone yourself. It was somewhat fun to walk past someone who was on a long distance call and then whistle 2600 Hz for a few seconds or even less. If they were engrossed in the conversation they wouldn't notice the whistle, but the phone system did. Their next words were usually "hello? Hello? Are you there?"
That is ancient history to most folks these days.
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Do we leave the security conference in alphabetical order or by beard length? Or do we have to wait for Stallman to go first?
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So, is he any good in bed? I planned to go next year.
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My attorney is glad to hear it. He's an expert in ADA compliance, and he has a boat payment to make.