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Dot-dash-diss: The gentleman hacker's 1903 lulz
- akdetrick 15y agoI recall reading about this event in Erik Larsons "Thunderstruck". The book includes a pretty interesting account of the fits and starts of wireless technology, if not overly embellished. The tuning issue is one of many snags that Marconi ran into, and with a government contract on the line, he made no small effort to keep the technological troubles under wraps until solutions could be found.
- redthrowaway 15y agoA mischievous hacker who justifies his hacking by claiming the exposed security holes would have endangered the public, and who was originally mad that he could not market his own innovations due to his victim's overly-broad patents? The more things change...
- RyanMcGreal 15y agoSingle page: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440.700-dotdashdiss-the-gentleman-hackers-1903-lulz.html?full=true http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440.700-dotdashdi...
- mml 15y ago109 years ago. Mind boggling.
- keithpeter 15y ago"Someone, Blok reasoned, was beaming powerful wireless pulses into the theatre and they were strong enough to interfere with the projector's electric arc discharge lamp." Serious power! Remember this was before tuned circuits became common (google 'syntony oliver lodge'). Even allowing for the sensitivity of a balanced carbon spark gap, you need to move a carbon rod or have a magnetic field strong enough to change the position of the discharge. He must have been in the same building...
- ropman76 15y agoand this is why I love reading history.
- orenmazor 15y agoI really want the word 'lulz' to go away.
- Cushman 15y agoIt's just the Internet English word for schadenfreude; what you really want is for the concept to go away.
- WalterGR 15y agoIt's also interesting that they chose the spelling "diss", which is incorrect. It's "dis", from "disrespect".
- mambodog 15y ago'Diss' is widely used in common vernacular. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/diss http://www.thefreedictionary.com/diss http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=diss http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=diss See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diss_track http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diss_track
- WalterGR 15y agohttp://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-of/diss http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-of/diss
- andrewflnr 15y agoThe only place I can think of seeing "dis" with one 's' is in reference to the Inferno virtual machine. By itself it always seems to be "diss".
- WalterGR 15y ago"Diss" is a new spelling of the original "dis".
- 15y ago
- andrewflnr 15y agoThis article paints Marconi in a really bad light. It seems like he was either not that bright or a liar to claim that people couldn't listen in to his specially tuned signals.
- wisty 15y agoSecurity is hard, and has a long history of clever schemes that just don't work.