Back in 1994, I was kicked off from AOL when I was accused of running unauthorized programs. That essentially killed my budding hacker career as I didn’t gain access to the internet until my college days. Back then, I was living in Firebaugh, using AOL (they only way to access the internet out there) on my 14.4k modem all while making long distance phone calls to Fresno for access. What was I doing? Everything and nothing. I mean, pROn never came to mind (which now kinda scares me that it didn’t) as I was focused on this blank world that nobody I knew had access to. The internet was a vast, underground, uncharted world and I felt like Christopher-Fucken-Columbus as I went out every night talking to these faceless voices from across the country and world. In 1995, the world was blessed with the awesomeness that is “Hackers” and at the same time, Angelina Jolie was introduced to my heart (BTW, that image up there is from the original promotional web site for the film after it was hacked shortly after it went up. Check out the archived site here). Honestly….I enjoy watching movie. Yeah, it was, from a technical stand point, all wrong. Yes, the story was horrible. But on the plus side, it had an electronica soundtrack (that is still unrivaled) and it also had Jolie boobies for a half second. I watch it now and love to see the outdated technology jargon they use and reminds me of how underpowered my system was back then (It also scares me to think about the damage a tech savvy kid these days with too much time on his hands could do today) but I always wondered what true hackers thought of the film. Enter PhreakNIC. They have produced an MP3 commentary for the film and it’s…..entertaining. Yeah, for the most part, it’s a bunch of drunk guys talking over each other talking shit on everything but they do offer a little insight into the hacker world as they blast what’s right and wrong with the film. If you have time and can put up with the kinda annoying voices, it’s definately worth a listen. Just load it onto your iPod, throw the DVD on and SYNC! You can check out the MP3 here, or go visit the site here. If your at all interested in diving into this world you should visit www.2600.com. There you will find a gateway into a whole other world. Maybe they’ll base “Hackers 2” on your story!
Man I can relate to that, but I think I had the opposite experience… I went with my teacher to a geeky tech conference in Fresno in 1994 and my name was drawn for a FREE 2000 HOURS of Internet through OptiGate! It was awesome, I went on their online system and they totally had a text only version of chess you could play with other people! They had this weird, quasi text-adventure chat room thing where you adventure through rooms chatting with people at some party. One of the first things I did was get the lyrics to Beastie Boys records. Printed it out on that old style printer paper, ripped off the hole-punched edges and took that z-folded ream to school! So that sucks you got kicked off.