Hemos & CmdrTaco @ O'Reilly P2P Conference 35
Well, we try to avoid posting stories about Slashdot, but I figured at least a couple of people would want to know that we'll be speaking at the O'Reilly P2P conferences. For those of you registered, we'll be speaking at the collaborative journalism panel along with Dan Gillmor (Hi Dan) and Dave Winer (Hi Dave) and moderated by Katie Hafner from the NYT (can you fix that required login thing?). Anyway, it's on Thursday, Feb. 15, 11:15-12:00, in San Francisco. Come on by if you are attending the conference.
Re:Two questions.. (Score:1)
Blackmail isn't a word that scares me, but I don't know if it applies in this case. "Punishment", however, very much does. If Hafner had said to Mitnick something along the lines of "How else is your side of the story going to appear in my book if you don't let me ask you a few questions?", then in some way that might be an unpleasant level of pressure, but nothing a reporter for Newsweek wouldn't be using in the daily course of business anyway. Many subjects don't want to be interviewed, especially when they know their cases are notorious and already overblown, and when the wife of the journalist who got your face on the front page of the New York Times as an FBI's Most Wanted Computer Hacker is there with a pen and a notebook, you already know the article/book being researched isn't going to laud your existence anyway. Mitnick, who was not exactly resplendent in monetary fortune, is not all that out of line to ask for compensation to tell his exclusive story to a couple of book authors who are going to rake in some bucks for splattering his name across the front of their primary-colored book on "Outlaws on the Computer Frontier". And Markoff/Hafner wouldn't be the first authors to not stay their hands in writing about their subject after they're turned down.
By the way, I'm not the first to delve into the intricacies of this debate [inet-one.com]. And I'm sure I won't be the last [latrobe.edu.au].
- Jason Scott
textfiles.com [textfiles.com]
Re:Hi, guys (Score:1)
Re:While you're there... (Score:1)
Josh
Re:Where R you? (Score:1)
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Please... (Score:1)
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
Re:Ok What is P2P? (Score:1)
That required login thing. (Score:2)
Well?
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
Re:The question is... (Score:1)
psxndc
Avoid posting it then... (Score:1)
No you don't! You just did and you've done t numerous times in the. That first lines shows that you know the slashdot community hates you for but your trying to cover your ass before you post it anyways. tsk tsk.
Re:Hi, guys (Score:1)
Re:Katie Hafner (Score:1)
I suppose it would be unwelcome to note how little Katie Hafner has done for the hacker community, and how unpleasantly she has portrayed people who share a love of computers in general?
After looking at your links, and having read the book, I can't think of any instances in which she even mentions "hackers" or "people who share a love of computers in general", at least in my vocabulary. I assume you're using those terms as euphemisms for malicious crackers and halfwit script kiddies.
You're right that she doesn't perceive them as lovable, brilliant scalawags -- but that's hardly a prerequisite for being a technology advocate.
Freenet will be there too... (Score:2)
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peer-to-peer in the real world (Score:3)
I've been fascinated by the peer-to-peer concept for a long time. Like the open source movement peer-to-peer offers every member of a community the chance to contribute to that community the best way they know how. I love to see sites like slashdot, kuro5hin, and metafilter all thrive, it's encouraging to know that people will contribute to a project for no other reason than for the sake of contributing. It's a shame I live on the wrong coast to attend this conference.
Hierarchical business models are clumsy beasts. To have an editor, five assistant editors, a handful of associate editors, a copy editor, a content editor, and a fleet of executive assistants to service them, all just to publish a small document or website is ridiculous. Perhaps some of you aren't yet too old to have forgotten your high school newspapers. Perhaps you were even a part of yours. Weren't they just terrible?
My school is very uptight about controversial opinions being expressed among its students. It offers us an opinion board and a newspaper but it censors both on a very regular basis. The student newspaper is essentially nothing more than a vehicle of propaganda. The opinion board has been partially reclaimed by a band of students who regularly point out the idiocy of the administration and the poor treatment of the students. But still, our administrative staff doesn't like it. They talk amongst themselves of "those unappreciative kids" in the halls.
Many of the frustrated voices in the school community, student and teacher alike, are reaching their breaking point. I've been working hard over the past several weeks to lay the groundwork for a new student newspaper. One developed by and for the so-called counter-culture of the community. I put together an initial team of people whom I believe will best be able to launch the project and since then we've been working on developing a publication and distribution model.
We have no official backing from the school, obviously, and our resources are limited to our home PCs and printers. There is no hierarchy, the entire publication is built on user submission. That means that we have gone out and asked certain individuals in the school community to contribute articles and media to the first edition. It is hoped that after the paper premieres there will be enough interest in the project to generate submissions without our having to beg for them. You see then, that the submission model is very similar to that of slashdot or kuro5hin. A team of moderators would then sort through the submissions and choose the best articles for the text publication. In addition to the text publication there will be an online supplement in which all submissions, even those not included in the text document, will be published.
To print over four hundred copies of a five to ten page document is no small task. We have adapted the idea of distributed processing to this problem. Rather than force one individual to spend the time and money to print four hundred copies we will instead have each contributor print twenty or so copies and then compile each set of twenty into the final group of hundreds.
We have no choice but to distribute the document peer-to-peer. Any other distribution would most likely be against the rules of the school and, of course, we want to obey the rules. This means that everyone, moderators and contributors, will handout copies to people in the school eventually reaching near complete distribution.
And so, after that long-winded and, I'm sure, entirely uninteresting preamble I actually want to pose a question to the slashdot community. What problems do you foresee a project like this facing? What hurdles have other projects based on user submission had to overcome? Is there a significant difference between user submission in real space as opposed to on the web? Is this project even feasible at all? We're really going at this by the seat of our pants, please tell me if you think we're also going ass backwards.
yay for ultra-mega-mega long posts,
-zak
P2P - the *real* definition (Score:2)
It's been around forever for use with people and boxes of cheap goods, I'm surprised to see people just finding out about it.
P2P and Fabbers (Score:1)
We're going to give a presentation on the implications of P2P file-sharing technologies for the manufacturing industry as "Fabbers" come online.
Fabbers are solid imagers or basically 3D printers capable of printing out CAD files.
If you thought that the record industry is getting pissed off - imagine what will happen when you can trade rolex.fab files!
Check it out [ennex.com] (Links to all sorts of Fabber stuff.)
Looking forward to the Collaborative Journalism forum for sure. Came from Australia to do this conference! Cheers James
ESP will be there too... (Score:1)
Re:Two questions.. (Score:2)
In the chat transcript that you link to Hafner says that she tried to interview Mitnick, but he only wanted to talk to her for money, which she declined.
Ok What is P2P? (Score:1)
While you're there... (Score:1)
Re:Ok What is P2P? (Score:1)
psxndc
The question is... (Score:2)
Just a joke. =)
psxndc
Re:The question is... (Score:2)
psxndc
Re:Ok What is P2P? (Score:1)
psxndc
Katie Hafner (Score:2)
Of course, everyone has to make a buck, even if it's off the backs of talented, driven people. But it would be good to know beforehand about their motives.
Hafner in a Chat from 1992 [replicant.net]
Mixed Reviews of Hafner's Book with John Markoff [amazon.com]
Kevin Mitnick's view of Katie Hafner and John Markoff [guardianunlimited.co.uk]
It would be really sad if Katie Hafner were allowed to shunt her past work and reinvent herself as a technology advocate. She is anything but.
Re:Two questions.. (Score:4)
1. Does she have to be a technology advocate to be on a panel?
No, she doesn't have to have any credentials at all to be on any panel, although one would hope the credentials one does have would lend themselves to whatever the subject is at hand. Her speaker bio [oreillynet.com] for this conference certainly leads one to the impression that she is not only a technology writer, but has been one for 17 years. One would hope, in that sort of starry-eyed mistiness I get whenever I think about journalism, that someone who writes about a subject for such a long time would have some small respect for the figures within that subject, and more importantly would be focused on bringing to light the story that a group or subculture might have to tell. It's not altogether earth-shattering to note that there's people who like computers or who are really driven to create things, but it is important that someone who calls themselves a journalist help these folks express their motivations and story in a way that people not intimately involved with them will understand or at least have a clear picture of what these folks are about. If you're not using your skills as a writer to bring your audience an improved awareness of your subject, then you're just another sideshow barker, gaining a quick buck for your publishing masters by redrawing perfectly normal/human people as scary, freakish monsters bent on the destruction of all.
I see very little evidence that Katie doesn't "use" her subjects, a technique possibly learned from Markoff. She certainly doesn't bring, in her writing, the thoughts of the people she's writing about in the hacking/hacker community; she DOES do an awful lot of finger-pointing and telling you what they're thinking. This is a subtle difference, but important. These figures that she and Markoff choose to cover are alive, and quite capable of communicating, but she chooses instead to speculate on what they're thinking (which she generally doesn't know) and guesses at motivations. She doesn't quote; she narrates. This is not a very flattering approach, and often not all that accurate.
Nowhere in her writing, I might add, does she ever profess an understanding of the draw of technology. She might as well be talking about serial killers, pharmacists, or alligator wrestlers for all she brings to the table in writing about her subject. I can make a pretty assured bet that she would write about all these subcultures with the same distant lack of fundamental characterization. She can string sentences together, but she does her subject (and audience) no favors.
2. You really think she's anti-hacker. I didn't get that from her book at all..plse explain.
There's many examples, and remember she's written several books and articles on hackers and hacker culture, so you can't just say "her book". One burning example of her approach is her hatchet job on Mitnick in Cyberpunk, which is captured wonderfully in Charles Platt [gatech.edu]'s review of Markoff's later book Takedown, where Hafner admits quite freely that she never talked to Mitnick before writing the book, and professes ignorance of her subject. Platt goes on to Focus on Markoff, worse than the two of you (Katz/Hafner) combined, but my insistence that she has not only a lack of understanding of the Hacker Subculture, but a fundamental distrust/dislike of this group of people, stays firm.
As for her upcoming book on The WELL, I'm one of those folks who has really cringed at the Canonization of The WELL by yourself and others, and another "Book of Revelations" onto the pile will no doubt add to that mythology, but I would say that I have very little faith that Hafner will capture anything but a surface glimmer of the motivations of the hacker psyche, assuming of course she actually touches on it at all in this book! There's actually a very good chance she could avoid that aspect entirely. But now we're running into a smorgasbord of conflicting dislikes I have about this whole rotten business that Hafner, Markoff, Yourself, and Littman have in what you've all done.
I apologize to any outside readers if my dislike of Katz has distorted the clarity of what I'm trying to get across. I'll probably cover it some time on my site, in better thought-out detail, starting from Richard Sandza [totse.com] and progressing forward.
- Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM [textfiles.com]
Re:Ok What is P2P? (Score:1)
Re:The question is... (Score:1)
I happen to be somewhat of a Cmdrtaco fan despite all the negative comments about him here. I'm assuming that there is a silent majority that is also, but there's no way to really know for sure.
Mojo Nation will be there. (Score:2)
I'll be there, giving a presentation [oreillynet.com] on a subject dear to the hearts of slashdotters: how to find the good stuff amidst the bad stuff, even when some of the moderators are malicious.
Of course, my real goal will be to find out how other p2p systems work in order to use the knowledge to improve Mojo Nation [mojonation.net]. Therefore one of the talks I'm most looking forward to is Wes Felter's overview of technical decisions in the deployed p2p networks [oreillynet.com].
Regards
Zooko
Re:Two questions.. (Score:4)
Regardless of what anyone's views of what Mitnick did or didn't do, there is much truth to him saying that the entire first section of her book (I assume you're speaking of Cyberpunk) was by and large potentially libelous material, speaking of incidents like they were the absolute truth when, in fact, they were, at best, third hand information. How would you feel if you were awaiting trial and someone labeled you as the "Dark Side Journalist"?
Two questions.. (Score:2)
l. Does she have to be a technology advocate to be on a panel?
2. You really think she's anti-hacker. I didn't get that from her book at all..plse explain.
Re:Katie Hafner (Score:2)
It's not that hard to "kind of" agree with Jon Katz. He writes in such a general fashion and generates such a goulash of cross-purposed ideas that he's bound to hit on some aspect of a subject that you agree with. This is the same approach that works with prime-time television and Boy Bands, and speaks more for the banality of not taking a firm stand on anything, than anything else.
After looking at your links, and having read the book, I can't think of any instances in which she even mentions "hackers" or "people who share a love of computers in general", at least in my vocabulary. I assume you're using those terms as euphemisms for malicious crackers and halfwit script kiddies.
I use the term "Hacker" as a general-purpose term for all aspects of deep technology lovers/users. I personally think the "Hacker/Cracker" language war was lost a long time ago; and I do think the whole "geek" idea has turned out to be a good approach. If you would prefer, switch "Hacker" with "Geek" or "Technophile", and I think it still works. This is a bit of a language issue and is partially the work of 1980's era journalists, who also pioneered the use of "-gate" as a suffix meaning "scandal".
As for Cyberpunk, if you feel like doing so, try this experiment: Reread the "Kevin" chapter, and count how many times it mentions Kevin's weight, face, and eating. And ask yourself how, if Katie professed that she'd never actually met Mitnick, how she garnered such details as describing how he held a wine glass on page 85. You don't have to use the word "Hacker" to be anti-hacker; in fact, it's better if you don't. At least re-read the introduction to Cyberpunk and ask yourself what the writers are trying to do.
- Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM> [textfiles.com]
Re:Two questions.. (Score:1)
Yes, that's definitely her side of the story at that time. But if you dig a bit deeper, looking at writings by Mitnick and other references to her and Markoff's work on the book, a much uglier picture starts to appear.
I suppose I could spend some time writing another massive message with all the different sides of this story, but the fact is I've not met Hafner OR Mitnick, and only the two of them know all the details. Mitnick wanted to be recompensated for his story, which, considering that there was a biography being written about him that would garner no small amount of money for its writers, may or may not have been a reasonable request. Hafner and Markoff, unable to get this keystone interview for the portion of their books about Mitnick, went ahead and wrote in the style as if they had. That's particularly henious. You can read Cyberpunk and really feel like they got that interview. You don't find out otherwise until the end of the book, long after you've been treated to quote after quote after quote.
It's a very, very ugly situation, and not one you can toss off with a single sentence as if this somehow vindicates Hafner.
- Jason Scott
textfiles.com [textfiles.com]
Hi, guys (Score:1)
I find myself wondering if P2P is being overdefined, whether too many things and ideas are being put under the P2P umbrella. But if anything qualifies as P2P, it's Slashdot and other user-fed sites.
Re:Two questions.. (Score:1)
yeah, but... (Score:1)
cuz i'm not missin valentines day
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