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Comment by p4bl0 | Hacker News Reader

In case you haven't read them yet. I very highly recommend those two books:

— The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling.

— The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking A Spy Through The Maze Of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll.

Both are excellent reads, and if you like old Usenet and BBS stories, you'll be served.

EDIT: By the way, the first one is freely available here: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html. I have it in paper myself, but surely it is possible to make a good ePub from these HTML pages.

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"The Cuckoo's Egg" is an amazing book. I read it some months back and very much regretted not having read it earlier... It does a fantastic job of bringing 80's computing to life while at the same time boasting a plot stronger and more exciting than many thrillers (though true!).

"The Hacker Crackdown" is worth reading for the historical aspect, but it only deals with crackers, so I personally did not find it particularly engaging. (BTW, an epub is available via Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101)

A third book that should be mentioned here is "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy, which I'm currently reading. It deals with "real hackers", starting in the 50s at MIT - a deserved classic.

Good idea to mention Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

It is indeed also on the list of books that I solidly recommend if anyone's interested: https://pablo.rauzy.name/miscellaneous.html#books ;).

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, by Bruce Sterling.

This, especially, since a new generation is facing the exact same battles that Sterling wrote about. We still have computer-illiterate prosecutors going berserk on a regular basis. And thanks to devoted public servants like James Comey, we're going to spend the next couple of Congressional terms rehashing the old arguments over what math equations should constitute a Federal offense.

The government doesn't learn from history, so it's important that the rest of us do.

cliff stoll made an ... interesting movie of this book. its fun to watch and would probably make a good drinking game. : https://youtu.be/EcKxaq1FTac

Thanks for sharing— I was hooked after that insane 30 second intro. Having people play themselves definitely gives the recreations a certain charm.

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