A Look Back (Summer, 2002)
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By dufu

As I read 2600, I realize just how old I am, or maybe just how young all the
new experts and pseudo-experts are. After all, my first computers were a TRS-80
Model I and a Commodore 64. Boy... programming was never so easy as back then.

Every time I get a hold of the newest 2600, I swear that I m going to write in
and comment on how everyone seems to have gotten so much smarter than me. After
all, browsing MCIMail with someone else's account was a big thing back when I
was a kid. Getting others' credit card numbers has actually become easier
although back then, you could find a list of a hundred or more on any given
BBS. 64k? Wow. That would have taken a few months of programming-even in Basic-
to fill up. Who would ever need more than that?!? Real time chatting? Some
folks did it. But it was more like IRC and I could read at 300 baud so it was
easier. Networking? Hmm. Isn't that what they used mainframes for? After all,
the 286's weren't even out yet. Color monitors came only in amber or green for
the most part unless you had a lot of money.

I remember picking up two, 12-meg hard drives at a local computer flea market
for free. The largest hard drives on the market at the time were five megs and
I thought we had hit the jackpot. Until I found out I couldn't get them to work
on my C64.... Boy. Tossing those 40-pound monsters into the trash must have
made the garbage men happy....

Then came my first IBM a real IBM. Weight was twice as much as any clone. So
was the electric bill for using it if I remember correctly. Man. It had
multiple megabytes of drive space, semi-color output - although not as good as
the sprite driven C64! It could go to the same BBS systems I used to visit and
fit more on the screen! Wow. Too bad I couldn't read at 1200 baud. Hacking
SuperWilbr - some school's remote word processing system or something. Any
old-timers actually know what it was?

Someone came out with 2400 baud. Next computer flea market netted me a few
4800/9600 modems. Too bad they were nowhere near compatible with anything I
used or owned. Their big blue boxes looked just like the magnetic bone healers
the guy was selling in the booth next to mine. Oh, did I mention I started
getting a seller's booth at the shows to make dropping off my find easier?
Yeah, I started selling junk from the last year's shows too. Helped finance my
life.

Doom, Doom II, Quake, and Heretic were all played on a 386 with no sound card.
And beat. I either got lucky a lot, saved a lot, or used the cheat codes a lot.
Regardless, I won.

Then came phone phreaking. I never really took part, but I played enough to
build my own advanced Rock Box without the aid of others. Loved to blast the
random telemarketer who called. Seems they call much more now. I remember that
1-800-424-9096 and 9098 were the White House Press Line and the Department of
Defense hotline. One still works. You play to figure out which. I memorized the
touch tones so that I could tell you what number or numbers you dialed. That
always seemed to freak people out.

I'm drifting from the real purpose of this article. Let me jump back to the
present time. I now work for a large accounting firm that has recently been
taken down by the DOJ because of the actions of a few dozen people. Their
leader has pled guilty to the charges pressed against the firm that fired him
for the exact transgressions that got both of them into trouble. We've lost
more people and more money than Enron even though they get most of the press. I
work with technology all day, every day: Lucent digital phone systems that can
be crashed by playing too much, networks that are full of great information- all
of which is now useless, drones-aka employees running around with either W95 or
W2K but nothing in-between. I even remember my first week when I performed a
basic defrag on a PC and almost got fired for "hacking" because they "caught"
me doing it. They have since become some of my best friends and beloved
coworkers. They come to me for technical advice and guidance in many cases. I
push the limits of our in-house technical support folks  knowledge base
regularly enough that they have given me the direct number to their dedicated
MicroScoff advanced support center, along with the access code. It's even more
fun to stump those guys....

I could go on and on about how Lotus Notes and eFax don't mix, W2K and our
network keep me from accessing sites, etc. However, it was simply therapeutic
to write this. What is the bottom line, you ask? In a few years, you'll be just
like me, wondering where all the newbies learned their tricks and how they can
possibly have enough free time to use them all.

Keep hacking. Keep it moral. Teach others. Become a leader of the ignorant, not
their enemy.