4 ms·

Dot-dash-diss: The gentleman hacker's 1903 lulz (2011)

57 points by bentaber 11y ago

forgottenpass 11y ago
"I will not demonstrate to any man who throws doubt upon the system," he said at the time. Fleming, however, fired off a fuming letter to The Times of London. He dubbed the hack "scientific hooliganism", and "an outrage against the traditions of the Royal Institution". He asked the newspaper's readers to help him find the culprit. This kind of hubris looks so quaint from 100 years on, but powerful institutions and people get treated as "serious" for the even higher levels of nonsense today.
- smhenderson 11y ago
  Yes, I imagine if Maskelyne did that today it would not have resulted in a spirited debate amongst scientists, it would have ended in jail time.
couchand 11y ago
"I can tune my instruments so that no other instrument that is not similarly tuned can tap my messages," Marconi boasted to London's St James Gazette in February 1903. Yet another reminder that it's no challenge to create a cryptosystem that the inventor themselves cannot break.
- dec0dedab0de 11y ago
  I was just about to post the same quote, and say that making bold claims that something can't be done will always been seen as a challenge. Reminded me of when my computer teacher in high school said there was a game on the computers, but it was impossible for us to play because he had it 'locked down'... I had to sit at a special desk in the front of the class for a week.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    Haha, that's awesome. Our teacher told us each school had a different game, and ours was some lame math puzzle. I found out how to get on the district-wide network (back in DOS days) and access the moonbase sim game at a neighboring school. Eventually he instituted a policy of "no games unless you write them yourselves", which likewise prompted me to code up pong, light cycles, and breakout, all in turbo pascal. Good memories! I don't know if he was intentionally trying to inspire me to a career in programming, but that's what happened.

57 points by bentaber 11y ago

"I will not demonstrate to any man who throws doubt upon the system," he said at the time. Fleming, however, fired off a fuming letter to The Times of London. He dubbed the hack "scientific hooliganism", and "an outrage against the traditions of the Royal Institution". He asked the newspaper's readers to help him find the culprit. This kind of hubris looks so quaint from 100 years on, but powerful institutions and people get treated as "serious" for the even higher levels of nonsense today.

smhenderson 11y ago
Yes, I imagine if Maskelyne did that today it would not have resulted in a spirited debate amongst scientists, it would have ended in jail time.

couchand 11y ago

"I can tune my instruments so that no other instrument that is not similarly tuned can tap my messages," Marconi boasted to London's St James Gazette in February 1903. Yet another reminder that it's no challenge to create a cryptosystem that the inventor themselves cannot break.

dec0dedab0de 11y ago
I was just about to post the same quote, and say that making bold claims that something can't be done will always been seen as a challenge. Reminded me of when my computer teacher in high school said there was a game on the computers, but it was impossible for us to play because he had it 'locked down'... I had to sit at a special desk in the front of the class for a week.
- knodi123 11y ago
  Haha, that's awesome. Our teacher told us each school had a different game, and ours was some lame math puzzle. I found out how to get on the district-wide network (back in DOS days) and access the moonbase sim game at a neighboring school. Eventually he instituted a policy of "no games unless you write them yourselves", which likewise prompted me to code up pong, light cycles, and breakout, all in turbo pascal. Good memories! I don't know if he was intentionally trying to inspire me to a career in programming, but that's what happened.