Book Description
While most Americans remain politically moderate, American politics has careened to the right over the last two decades. Why? What can be done? This book helps make sense of recent political changes and explains how popular will is deliberately being subverted. The authors propose important reforms to strengthen our democracy and return American politics to the center.

"The most illuminating book on contemporary American politics to be published in over a decade. Every political journalist in America needs to read and heed this brilliant book."—Eric Alterman, author of When Presidents Lie and What Liberal Media?

"Closely argued and very readable. . . . This book should become required reading for anyone interested in the triumph of the neocons or worried about where they are leading America."—Publishers Weekly

“Hacker and Pierson shrewdly assess the new structures of political power in our country and the success of conservative Republicans in mobilizing resources and framing political choices. This book is innovative, it’s important, and it will open many eyes. It is the book Karl Rove would wish he had written–if he were on the other side.”—E. J. Dionne, Jr., author of Stand Up, Fight Back and Why Americans Hate Politics

... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Really an overrated book.

As if Democrats, when in power, did/do/will not try to secure their majorities with gerrymanders, etc.Pulease.

Interesting but I can't unreservedly recommend...
...purchase...if you're unfamiliar with the mechanics of politics this book will enlighten you as to how it all works...but basically this book does little more than describe how Republicans have managed their political activities more adroitly than Democrats in recent years...good writing but nothing particularly exciting or enlightening.

The True Science of Extremism
You can ignore some of the more vitriolic reviews of this political science treatise, ranting either for or against, just because it criticizes the Republicans. Such reviews are from pundits who read a lot of popular commentary, and think they understand real politics. There is a very large difference between political commentary, which is the sloganeering of popular observers ranging from Michael Moore to Ann Coulter, and political science, which is backed up by solid academic theory and scientific evidence. Those of us familiar with academic dissertations in this field will be pleasantly surprised by the readability of this one. If you're also exasperated by the continually lowest-common-denominator jingoism of today's political discourse, then you'll also be surprised by the strength of this book's positions.

Hacker and Pierson explain, from a true political science perspective, the inordinate power of the ultraconservatives in today's political environment, and how this is possible when they espouse policies that are so far from the ideological "center." The authors provide convincing evidence that the Republicans' true success has arisen not from connecting with voters on real issues, but by consolidating power from within the party, and by manipulating governmental rules and procedures. The far-Right Republicans have also bullied their more moderate colleagues into taking more extreme stances, thus leaving ultra-Rightists as the only choice for more moderate voters who lean naturally toward the Republicans or don't wish to vote for the Democrats. Therefore, the far-Right has succeeded in advancing an extreme economic and military ideology that is far from the Centrist view of the vast majority of Americans. The political science evidence is solid, and goes very far in realistically explaining what's wrong with modern American politics, without stooping to slogans and epithets. Another advantage of this book is its very plausible ideas for solutions (except for a rosy request for the re-empowerment of labor unions), which deal in real political tactics and making change from within the existing political structure, and these are far beyond the utopian idealism of the popular commentators. Those with a real understanding of real politics will appreciate the scientific strength of this book.

However, there are a few rather large gaps in Hacker and Pierson's methodology, especially with their neglect of American voter behavior. They dabble occasionally in issues of low voter turnout and lack of effective media information. However, they avoid the severe modern problem of American voters choosing candidates based on thin and hyperbolic moral issues, and actually believing that such candidates will deliver comparable economic and sociopolitical policies. When a citizen votes for a politician who is likely to export his job overseas and wreck his local economy, just because that candidate is against gay marriage, this is a destructive trend that Hacker and Pierson overlook (they also miss the related issue of the complete aimlessness of the Democrats in recent years). Also, Hacker and Pierson base their fundamental arguments on the sanctity of "the center" in American political history, and how prior trends of extremism have been reined in by natural moderation in the electorate and the constitutional political structure. Unfortunately, the authors pretty much take this concept as a given, and this beloved "center" may actually be an overly wishful view of the past. [~doomsdayer520~]

We Have to "Go For Broke" in 2008
This is a tremendous book.It joins The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World; The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics and Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders (by Tom Coburn, about how the "Party" turns elected representatives into slaves to the party line and against their constituencies).When combined with the latter books and Ralph Nader's long-standing complaints about "thesystem," these authors can take credit for adding useful new insights as to how extremist Republicans (who can indeed be likened to Hitler's movement in the efficacy of their take-over of a Nation with limited numbers--and I say this as a moderate Republican furious over the loss of MY party's reason) have pulled off the theft of a Nation and the looting of the middle class through the working poor.

I am especially taken with the authors' examination of how the extremist Republicans have been able to systematically lie to the public and get away with it.Their discussion of "backlash insurance" and how they have managed to coerce the moderate Republicans (such as my favorite moderate Republican, Congressman Rob Simmons, R-CT-02) into going along is a very helpful contribution to public understanding of how we got so far off center.

The authors conclude with a fine review of the four major obstacles to political reform.

Where they fall short is in failing to develop a solution.A number of us in the Greater Democracy movement have in fact developed a solution, and in the next three lines I hope you will see our solution as a fitting epilogue to this five-star book:

1)Accept that the Democrats cannot beat the Republicans base on base, issue on issue, or even on leadership, nor do we want them to.Instead, we need to create a Citizens Party that is a non-rival (this is important--NON-RIVAL) "second home" or "dual membership" party with wings for each of the existing parties--Democratic, Republican, Green, Reform, Libertarian, etcetera.This coalition of moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats, and all others can indeed beat the extremist Republican base if it aligns with the left of center but at least not lunatic Democratic base.

2)Accept that there is one issue and one issue ONLY where we can all agree: that the government is out of control and we need to restore representative democracy through a National Electoral Reform Act of 2007.

3)Finally, focus in 2008 on getting every incumbent and every challenger to join the Citzens Party and testify in writing that they will support the National Election Act of 2007 or face recall.Agree, or retire.

This is not rocket science.With the Internet where it is now, and the ground-breaking work of Joe Trippi (see also my review of his book, of Bill Moyer's Doing Democracy, and of Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics), we can do this.

The authors help make the case for WHY we have to go for broke this time around--it's all for one and one for all time.We stick together on this one, this time, or we surely will go nuclear, fascist, and broke.

the new party in power
Very informative.i don't necessarily agree with every point made, but it certainly makes you think about the whole picture and how are government is really being run, as opposed to what we are allowed to see.

Hacker and Pierson argue that Politics has become seriously `off center' and more so in the direction of the Republican Party."The transformations of the Republican Party...the increasingly conservative (and increasingly Southern) leadership of the GOP has reflected and refracted the growing power of the base in its successful quest to reshape the party it heads." (H&P, 2005, p.111).The Republican Party have reorganized their whole organization, starting from the Base, going back to grass roots, and focusing on a whole new type of game plan included with insurance policies if all else should fail (backlash insurance).The new Republican Party, to this point, has been successful because of its strong alliance to the Base, the enforcement and commitment of all of its members, and especially the discipline and coordination that is constantly displayed among them.The Republican Party has come to thrive on the "...increased inequality of resources and organization between the rich, the radical, and the rest." (H&P, 2005, p.111). ... Read more

Book Description
This popular resource continues to offer step-by-step guidance on how to evaluate, diagnose, and manage a wide range of obstetric and gynecologic disorders. The 4th Edition of this bestseller has been completely revised and reorganized to present a more up-to-date approach to the field, with less emphasis on traditional hospital-based practice. It uses the APGO/CREOG curriculum objectives as a framework, with a special emphasis on women's health issues. A new, full-color design with many illustrations and photographs complements the text. Plus, a free downloadable PDA software program provides a complete guide to the most common disorders.

The smart way to study!
Elsevier titles STUDENT CONSULT will help you master difficult concepts and study more efficiently in print and online! Perform rapid searches. Integrate bonus content from other disciplines. Download text to your handheld device. And a lot more. Each STUDENT CONSULT title comes with full text online, a unique image library, case studies, USMLE style questions, and online note-taking to enhance your learning experience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

OB/GYN
This is a great book for those entering into OB/GYN residencies.It's not as expensive as the Gabbe & William's Obstetrics, and key fundemental topics are covered.I think the ob sections are slightly better than the gyn.However, it does have CROEG guidelines in it!

PDA software tough love
The book is wonderful.It supplemented by 3rd year med school ob/gyn rotation well.However, I have yet to get the PDA supplement to work.Very frustrating and complicated - must download multiple files, create accounts...

An excellet book
This is a very good book of Obs and Gyn which provided a lot of information on simple way. Everything what is important is bolded on each lesson. It doesn't contain many pictures and schemes and this is the only disadvantage, but that is quiet enough for good understanding. It is suitable for medical students (everything important is signed) and for physicians who work or intend to work on Obs and Gyn Department (to have some concise book for him when they can find everything they want). I highly recommend this title.

An insightful reference book
This book contains a wealth of knowledge for any caretaker of the Obstetric or Gynecology Patient. I found this book extremely easy to use asa cross reference book and it largely aided me in my research. It coversthe basics, such as general female anatomy, as well as more complex issueslike AIDS in pregnancy. Important information appeared in bolder print anddrew my eye, making it easy to skim over in a hurry. I highly recommendthis book. ... Read more

Book Description

A double is haunting the world--the double of abstraction, the virtual reality of information, programming or poetry, math or music, curves or colorings upon which the fortunes of states and armies, companies and communities now depend. The bold aim of this book is to make manifest the origins, purpose, and interests of the emerging class responsible for making this new world--for producing the new concepts, new perceptions, and new sensations out of the stuff of raw data.

A Hacker Manifesto deftly defines the fraught territory between the ever more strident demands by drug and media companies for protection of their patents and copyrights and the pervasive popular culture of file sharing and pirating. This vexed ground, the realm of so-called "intellectual property," gives rise to a whole new kind of class conflict, one that pits the creators of information--the hacker class of researchers and authors, artists and biologists, chemists and musicians, philosophers and programmers--against a possessing class who would monopolize what the hacker produces.

Drawing in equal measure on Guy Debord and Gilles Deleuze, A Hacker Manifesto offers a systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and globalization. In the widespread revolt against commodified information, McKenzie Wark sees a utopian promise, beyond the property form, and a new progressive class, the hacker class, who voice a shared interest in a new information commons.

Customer Reviews (10)

It Might Be Good, I can't Understand Most of It!
Reading this book is a difficult hack. To be honest, I often have no idea what he means even after reading a sentence several times, and looking every word up in the dictionary.

I've never been able to understand Karl Marx either, and the book has a lot of Marxist rhetoric.

The apologists for the vectoral interest want to limit the semantic productivity of the term "hacker" to a mere criminality, precisely because they fear its more abstract and multiple potential--its class potential.

A Hacker Manifesto ?
Let me start of by saying up front that I am apparently a political opposite to the points of view raised in this book.. I really tried to read this with an open mind, but the writing is so dry and stilted that I simply couldn't get in to the philosophies being presented.. It felt like reading Decline and Fall.. Only without the love and craftsmanship.. At least when you finish reading Decline and Fall you feel a sense of accomplishment.. After reading A Hacker Manifesto I felt robbed of my time..

Mackenzie Wark's A Hacker Manifesto tries to present the hacker as the driving force, and real power of civilization.. He declares the hacker, whether he is a scientist, artist, or programmer, as the only true creator.. Everyone else is either a user or used.. With the hacker falling somewhere in the middle bridging the gap between classes..

The whole time I was reading this book I kept waiting for a revelation.. Something new.. But it just doesn't happen.. A Hacker Manifesto reads like Marxism 2.0.. It's the same old idea wrapped in modern trends and job classes.. It subtly paints the capitalist class as the oppressive users of the labor classes and portrays the hacker class as the salvation for everyone.. It's too black and white, too obvious, of a philosophy to be of any real use for anyone that has even a basic understanding of Marxism and Communism.. And the whole time I was reading it I got this subtle feeling that the author was really writing a "look at me, I'm smart" book.. I'm sure that others will disagree, but I just see nothing groundbreaking in this book.. If you want to good book on Communism, go to some original sources and read Trotsky or Lenin.. If nothing else they are a better read..

amazing!
Warks book is one of the most refreshing books I have read from this year. His argument about the change in capitalism and the role of intellectual "property" will become increasingly important. His use of Debord, Marx and Deleuze to deal with the rise of the vectorial class is great!Anyone interested in internet theory, postmodern theory or anarchist theory should really read this book.

Challenging
McKensie Wark calls the state "an envelope" whose primary function is to "police representations." I think this way of construing nations has a such a forceful brevity that it disallows simple rebuttal. An envelope loosely unifies, contains, closes, enfolds multiplicities into a unit, a projectile. And what does "policing representaitons" mean?Determing the extent to which an identity (political, social, religious, etc) can be commodified and incorporated into the state in order to perpetuate itself and yet give the specific identity the illusion of freedom and self-determination. This can be seen in the way cops determine routes and surrond the perimeter at protests (J20 for instance) and give us some limited form of freedom, 'allowing us free speech' while at the same time, if we concede to this limited freedom, we give up the possibility of confronting the form of freedom they allow, i.e., freedom surrounded by police with weapons telling you when you can move, and hence, we are neutralized without even knowing it. This is how incredibly dispossessed peoples can identify with the state, since the state gives them a possibility, a "dream" of a moment of limited freedom. The minute a real threat is formulated, ie, a threat to the economy or to the collective hallucination of the state itself, you better bet that you don't pass go or collect $200 but go straight to jail. This is why, perhaps, the state makes it incredibly clear that hackers are NOT political prisoners. Those
who hijack the information vectors that regulate finance, statistics, communicatiom, and images must be stopped before they can form a political class. They are criminals. copyright infringement, filesharing, (and soon, indymedia) are crimes, not acts of culture. Not until the state can find a way to represent those acts, commodify them, and sell them back to us for
a price will they be seen as cultural/political acts. That is already happening, I believe.

This book challenges our previously held critiques of the state, identity, production, and class in a synthetic crptomarxist style that is both difficult and attractive. It incorporates the rise of the information class into its analysis, as well as the relations between the overdeveloped and underdeveloped world.

My only critique is that it's radical potential was limited by its allegiance to a (form of) Marxist critique. I think that a conversation with anarchism and anarchist organizing could have produced/unified some different trajectories of thought about representation and the state.

Either way, its a great read. If the language and poetry turns you off, then just skip around until you find the parts you like. Its a playground of meaning.

Hear my interview with Mckensie here: http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/3719.php

McKenzie Wark's 'A Hacker Manifesto'
Intellectual property may become the defining question of our times for those who work in and between the media and the academy. McKenzie Wark's'A Hacker Manifesto' is a major intervention in this arena, one that suggests new ways of asking (and answering) 'the property question.' Wark's manifesto is beautifully written in spare, elegant prose of rare economy. The book is structured in short numbered theses, borrowing from Guy Debord's 'Society of the Spectacle', and these are often built around irresistible aphorisms - 'education is slavery', 'invention is the mother of necessity', 'information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains.' Other versions of this text exist online, but this is the one to get: the notes alone (exclusive to this version) are stimulating reading, and the book is handsomely designed. It is a work which deserves to be widely read, used, discussed, taught, argued with - and hacked. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Bruce Sterling's classic work highlights the 1990 assault on hackers, when law-enforcement officials successfully arrested scores of suspected illicit hackers and other computer-based law-breakers. These raids became symbolic of the debate between fighting serious computer crime and protecting civil liberties. However, The Hacker Crackdown is about far more than a series of police sting operations. It's a lively tour of three cyberspace subcultures--the hacker underworld, the realm of the cybercops, and the idealistic culture of the cybercivil libertarians.

Sterling begins his story at the birth of cyberspace: the invention of the telephone. We meet the first hackers--teenage boys hired as telephone operators--who used their technical mastery, low threshold for boredom, and love of pranks to wreak havoc across the phone lines. From phone-related hi-jinks, Sterling takes us into the broader world of hacking and introduces many of the culprits--some who are fighting for a cause, some who are in it for kicks, and some who are traditional criminals after a fast buck. Sterling then details the triumphs and frustrations of the people forced to deal with the illicit hackers and tells how they developed their own subculture as cybercops. Sterling raises the ethical and legal issues of online law enforcement by questioning what rights are given to suspects and to those who have private e-mail stored on suspects' computers. Additionally, Sterling shows how the online civil liberties movement rose from seemingly unlikely places, such as the counterculture surrounding the Grateful Dead. The Hacker Crackdown informs you of the issues surrounding computer crime and the people on all sides of those issues. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (42)

Essential reading on computers, freedom and privacy.
Bruce Sterling of Cyberpunk fame takes a journalistic approach to researching law and disorder on the electronic frontier by examining two specific events in depth : the 1990 Operation Sundevil, a concerted nationwide effortby district attorneys, the Secret Service, the FBI, local authorities and various Telco security to bust and publicize a hacker crackdown; and the resulting trials and creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and rise of the civil libertarians.

The book is divided into four parts: crashing the system, the digital underground, law and order, and the Civil Libertarians. Mr. Sterling does a credible job explaining the telco systems and motivations and actions of the people on both sides of the issue - phone phreaks/hackers and law enforcement/district attorneys without succumbing to a lot of jargon or taking sides.

The book is replete with interesting accounts of Alexander Graham Bell and history of telephony, the origins of the Secret Service and its' early battles with "Boodlers", and the dissemination of the E911 document that came to cause grief to many people.

Reading this in 2006 and beyond will cause a few chuckles at his penchant for describing and drooling over advance systems (I have a real urge to drive down to the storage unit for my Commodore 64 and IBM clone), yet the events of the early hacker sub-culture remain relevant to anyone interested in computers, freedom and privacy.

Very worthwile...
A very lively, interesting, and well-written (by Bruce Sterling no less) summer read for those interested in the history of phone phreaking and computer exploration and mischief.Highly recommended.

EXCELENT BOOK UNTIL THE ''UNDERGROUND'' PART
this is an excellent book until the ''underground'' part. But it forgot to talk about the cybergang ''Master Of Deception'' the opponent of Legion Of Doom.

Learned more about the phone in 12 hours than in 12 years
I learned more about the telephone in 12 hours than 12 years of school life.The dates and times depicted in this book happened during a time when I'd been 'off-line' with the computer world.I began with AOL (unfortunately) and due to my own reasons gave up computers for a while.It's like going back home and finding out what's happened to everyone after you'd left years back.Historically, this is the place to begin reading about phones and phone systems.To understand at least the fundimentals of the technology we wrap ourselves into.
Most definitely a must-read book.If you liked this, try At-Large, the Strange case of the world's Biggest Internet Invasion by David H. Freedman and Charles C. Mann.

A near-complete retrospective history of cyberculture...
Sterling's book is a must-read for anyone genuinely interested in the roots of Cyberculture.It documents everything from old-school phone phreaks to the 1990 crash of AT&T.It goes into great detail as to how "cybercops" were established, their training, and the mass-reluctancy a decade ago to utilize their services.While this may sound like a history textbook, it is not.It is a fair and unbiased look at the past from the eyes of one of the greatest cyberpunk authors ever, which is probably why the book is so often quoted in academic research papers and in other works on the subject.The book does not lack charecter nor does it lack accuracy.Those who are looking to find an entertaining yet accurate, if not dated, historical account of hacking need not look any further. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

learning essentials
thank you for sending my book in a timely manner. i really needed it for class.

iris ... Read more

Book Description
Hacker extraordinaire Kevin Mitnick delivers the explosive encore to his bestselling The Art of Deception
Kevin Mitnick, the world's most celebrated hacker, now devotes his life to helping businesses and governments combat data thieves, cybervandals, and other malicious computer intruders. In his bestselling The Art of Deception, Mitnick presented fictionalized case studies that illustrated how savvy computer crackers use "social engineering" to compromise even the most technically secure computer systems. Now, in his new book, Mitnick goes one step further, offering hair-raising stories of real-life computer break-ins-and showing how the victims could have prevented them. Mitnick's reputation within the hacker community gave him unique credibility with the perpetrators of these crimes, who freely shared their stories with him-and whose exploits Mitnick now reveals in detail for the first time, including:

• A group of friends who won nearly a million dollars in Las Vegas by reverse-engineering slot machines
• Two teenagers who were persuaded by terrorists to hack into the Lockheed Martin computer systems
• Two convicts who joined forces to become hackers inside a Texas prison
• A "Robin Hood" hacker who penetrated the computer systems of many prominent companies-andthen told them how he gained access

Customer Reviews (32)

Riveting, Informative, Challenging.A must for any Network Administrator
Kevin Mitnick is a legend among computer hackers - and his unique position as a former world class computer hacker turned security consultant lends him credibility to the hacker community.Because of this, he has the trust of the most skilled computer hackers in the world (many who have not yet been caught) - giving him access to these stories.

I am a network administrator and I have learned much from this book.It is basically a compilation of stories of different particularly elaborate hacks. Each chapter includes a story of how a particular individual beat the system.At the end, he analyzes the failures and includes suggestions on how to prevent a similar exploit in your company.I particularly liked the Casino hack, in which a group of techies crack the code to particular slot machine and use it to predict when the next winning hand would come.

I never knew what was possible til after I read this book!
The stories in this book are amazing. It's unbelievable to think of the way these geniouses accomplished their goals. Whenever they hit a wall, they always keep searching until they find a way around it, and in the end it could mean millions for them.

Great book, if your into hacking and security intrusion, this will be heaven.

A great hacking book!
I picked up this book on a whim, I wanted to learn more about hacking and Kevin Mitnick. It wasn't all about him, but it was still quite good. The stories in this book are very good, I enjoyed reading, and I've passed it on to other people.

mitnick
I could not manage to get through the whole of this book, and in fact gave it away, because Mitnick is so pompous as to make a subject that is so thoroughly interesting so painful to get through.Seriously, he must have none of his over-inflated personality left because I think it all dripped out of my book.

Interesting if you can get past the horrible writing....
This guy is definitely a geek and NOT an English major.The stories are interesting and frightening if you can get past the constant run on sentences and poor grammar.Good luck. ... Read more

Book Description
You may be a hacker and not even know it. Being a hacker has nothing to do with cyberterrorism, and it doesn’t even necessarily relate to the open-source movement. Being a hacker has more to do with your underlying assumptions about stress, time management, work, and play. It’s about harmonizing the rhythms of your creative work with the rhythms of the rest of your life so that they amplify each other. It is a fundamentally new work ethic that is revolutionizing the way business is being done around the world.

Without hackers there would be no universal access to e-mail, no Internet, no World Wide Web, but the hacker ethic has spread far beyond the world of computers. It is a mind-set, a philosophy, based on the values of play, passion, sharing, and creativity, that has the potential to enhance every individual’s and company’s productivity and competitiveness. Now there is a greater need than ever for entrepreneurial versatility of the sort that has made hackers the most important innovators of our day. Pekka Himanen shows how we all can make use of this ongoing transformation in the way we approach our working lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Long on sociology. Short on philosophy.
Briefly, as to general flow of the book some reviewers here have already mentioned that the marrow of this book is to be found in the early portions with chapters 5,6, and especially 7 very nearly if not completely skipable. Castells' futurist epilogue while a bit far reaching at times is a welcome respite after the preceeding chapters. Torvalds introduction piece while intended to provide some hacker credentials and tone-setting for the book, I imagine, though fun came across as a bit glib and was essentially unnecessary.

I believe Himanen's main points can be summarized as follows:

1. People are working longer and harder based on an out of date paradigm and findthe work they are doing is less rewarding especially in regards to true personal satisfaction.

2. On the other hand hackers can be described as those people who, regardless of the field in which they work, do what they do for personal satisfaction and the inherent rewards of furthering their area of interest and peer recognition.

In other words hackers are much like those who traditionally work in academia, the sciences, and the arts. In fact Himanen acknowledges as much during the course of the book.

None of this is in itself problematic, however given the famaliar ground covered here I kept hoping Himanen would do more than simply conjure (almost arbitrarily) a generic value system and just slap it on a group of people he generally terms hackers.

My real displeasure with this book was its failure to offer any suggestions, in light of the obvious and underlying ethical considerations inherent within his argument, as to how one might create a society of hackers. If his intent was to keep to interesting historical and sociological observations then he could have, possibly, gotten through this without touching on deeper ethical currents. All along though Himanen challenges the presumptions of our current views on work, money, fun, creativity, etc... Nothing wrong with any of that, however such musings, and indeed the title of the book, suggests that at some point he might be inclined to address some deeper questions. Questions such as how does someone with few resources and limited access attain the position that allows him/her to engage in more self fulfilling activies? Whose responsibility is it to ensure the essentials of survival are provided for so that people can pursue their passions? None of this is really given much attention and I suspect it isn't even seriously considered by Himanen. While some might argue that it was not his intent to raise and answer such questions, I believe his book suffers for his failure to delve more deeply into the basics of how to get beyond where we currently are to achieve his lofty but admirable goals.

Another minor source of irritation was his heavy reliance on Weber. Obviously the title acts as a clear indicator of his intent to explore Weber's ideas. Again nothing wrong with going to the well as it were, however at times it felt too much like a retreading of Weber's own work.

I find it interesting, and philosophically useful, when an author provides a dissenting viewpoint to her/his own proposal. Or at least attempts to provide a fair assessment of a viewpoint they wish to discredit. Such attempts also work to lend an air of credibility to the authors stance and help the reader understand the framework of the argument better. Unfortunately Himanen does not do this here.

On the positive side this is a very easy read and can be a nice introduction to more challenging works on the themes mentioned or alluded to througout the text. The author is engaging and playful and doesn't run the risk of scaring off readers who don't typically enjoy trudging through heavy academic works. This ease of read is probably why a major publisher such as Random House picked this up and chose to release it. On the other hand, and for the very same reasons, this is most likely why a more scholarly publisher like the Oxford University Press or the like did not.

In short alot more exploration of his own proposals and presumptions (e.g. the 7 values of the Hacker Ethic, etc...), as well as trimming some of the unnecessary portions (e.g. 10 pages on an imagined Protestant Genesis, etc...), as well as providing some illumination on the other side of the issue, would have made for a much better read.

Excellent through ch 4, then loses focus
I bought and read this book because I enjoy reading about hacker history and culture.When I started, I simply read and flipped pages, thinking I wouldn't find much of deep importance.After about 20 pages I was extremely interested in the book and started underlining the author's main points.By chapter 5, and especially in chapter 6, the author lost my attention and I ended up giving this book a three star review.

The valuable core of 'The Hacker Ethic' lies in its comparison with the Protestant work ethic.The author explains that philosophy's roots in monastic life, and contrasts it with the 'hacker ethic' and its roots in academic/scientific practices.As a history major I thought this comparison was fascinating and it made me examine my own work habits more closely.The author's illumination of time-centric vs. task-centric work was especially interesting.

Linux kernel inventor Linus Torvalds wrote the prologue, so the entire book approaches the free/open software world from an overtly Linux perspective.One mention of BSD appears in a citation of Eric S. Raymond's 'Cathedral and the Bazaar.'ESR criticizes the BSD development model ('carefully coordinated... by a relatively small, tightly knit group of people') in comparison with Linux, where 'quality was maintained not by rigid standards or autocracy but by the naively simple strategy of releasing every week and getting feedback.'I think 'naive' is the operative word here.Linux has certainly prospered, but companies like IBM, Novell, and others are playing increasingly bigger roles.

If you can read Linus' prologue and the first four chapters in a book store, I recommend doing so.I believe the author does a nice job making comparisons with the Protestant work ethic, but doesn't quite know where to go next.Reading four chapters should take a couple of hours, and you'll walk away appreciating the keen insights author Pekka Himanen has to offer on 'The Hacker Ethic.'

Very bad and very simplistic
A very simplistic work by a minor philosopher (I use this word lightly). Wow, so bad, so dumb, such a waste of time. Those other books you are considering reading first? Go again.

Written by a sociologist for sociologists
I originally picked up this book more for amusement than anything else, considering it another one of those books about kids who stay up all night writing radical programs and their nocturnal habits. I was wrong. This book is best decribed in the prologue written by Linus Torvolds himself. He states that when he first met the author it was at a convention of 'sociologists talking about technology'. Well this book is written by just such a person... a sociologist. And one by my observation who decided to write a book about technology without any real knowledge of the spectrum of subcultures in the technology arena. In a way it seems like a sociological report one would make to his peers, who without any real background in the subject would deem well written,as previous reviews above have shown, but for the rest of us, there is much more interesting literature out there. And hopefully sometime in the very near future he will cease his contributing his, at best, amateur opinions on this subject to himself, and allow those with a true insight to document the culture. While I greatly respect Linus Torvalds and his contributions to the world, he only lends credibility to a book that no one else wouldeven consider without his name being mentioned.

Intriguing Viewpoints
This book compares the so-called "hacker work ethic" as compared to the old "Protestant work ethic," examining so-called hacker culture and their motivations for working and completing projects, as opposed to the world view of working "because you are supposed to." It makes a number of interesting observations, and points out that in our world, the pressure to "work, work, work" never seems to escape us, in spite of all the technological advances of our world designed to "make life easier."

It also points out that "true hackers" are willing to work at something in order to improve it and are not always motivated to do so by the almighty dollar. I long have worked with engineers who come in to work at 10 or 11 am but stay until almost midnight every day and never quite understood why until now. It's the desire to continue to tinker with and ultimately complete a project.

I will never be a "true hacker," since I lack the aptitude and ultimately patience to sit at a computer screen all hours of the day and night trying to solve programming problems, but books like these give me a much better understanding of the ones who are. ... Read more

Book Description
Do you have what it takes to keep the bad guys out of your network? Find out with the latest edition of this best-selling book featuring 20+ all new hacking challenges for you to solve. Plus, you'll get in-depth solutions for each, all written by experienced security consultants. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

No challenge
As a security specialist and Ethical hacker I've been extremely disapointed by this book. It is too simple and obsolete. History around each challenge are way to detailed compare to the actual incident and technical detail. I just dont quite understand other reviewer rating this book with 5 stars.

Test Your Skills With These Hacker Puzzles
Hacker's Challenge 2 is a sort of practical exam for the Hacking Exposed series. Hacker's Challenge was a terrific book for putting some incident response and forensic skills to use and practicing for the real thing. Hacker's Challenge 2 continues the tradition and should be a must read for anyone who works with network security and incident response. The style of the challenges is fairly entertaining and the plots are so engaging you may not want to put the book down. Its like a best-selling mystery novel for network security techies. It may not affect the quality of the book overall, but I preferred having the authors of the individual challenges identified as they were in Hacker's Challenge. However, you should definitely buy this book!

(...)

Excellent Book!
Besides being very entertaining this book offers a great deal of knowledge. If you are able to recognize all the concepts inside, it will serve as a perfect reference and starting point book.

Very, very nice book.

Better than the 1st...
Mike Schiffman has always been a really funny guy (see what he's written in phrack loopback for examples) so I was really dissappointed with the lack of humour in the first volume of the Hackers Challenge series. That has gotten better in the second volume. There is a lot more humor in this one.

Aside from that it reads just like the first volume and is just as good in almost every way. But for the fact that in this volume the editors decided not to tell you which author wrote which chapter which I would have like to have known.

PURE FUN - IT'S A GEM
Amazon auto-recommended this book to me when I was buying another book. I bought it allthough I was shure that this will be anotherone of the books you buy, leaf through for 30 minutes and then burry in your bookshelf forever ...
The book arrived on friday - helloween. I decided to "leaf it quickly through" before diving into the helloween chaos in my city ... Now it is sunday ... I have skipped helloween completely and sucked up the book completely, played a bit with the new knowledge in my LAN and definitely had a lot of fun.
I'm nor a hacker nor a sysadmin, just a programmer. But the challenges are easy enough for me (As a programmer I'm not so experienced in networking ...). Not too easy to be boring, not to hard to be "work". You can compare it better to a funny short-story-book than to a laborious brain-teaser-book. I learned a lot and had much fun. It is the first IT-book I ever read completely from the beginning to the end. Have you ever been laughing loudly when reading an IT-book ? I did often during this wheekend :) And additionaly I _did_ learn a lot. It's magic ... ... Read more

Amazon.com
Mike Schiffman has hit upon a great formula for Hacker's Challenge. Rather than try to research, fully understand, and adequately explain attacks that have taken place on other people's networks--the approach taken by too many writers of books about computer security--Schiffman lets network administrators and security experts tell their stories first-hand. This is good. What's better is that Schiffman has edited each of their war stories into two sections: one that presents the observations the sysadmin or security consultant made at the time of the attack, and another (in a separate part of the book) that ties the clues together and explains exactly what was going on. The challenge in the title is for you to figure out what the bad guys were doing--and how best to stop them--before looking at the printed solution. Let's call this book what it is: an Encyclopedia Brown book for people with an interest in network security.

It doesn't really matter, from a value-for-money standpoint, whether your skills are up to the challenge or not. The accounts of intrusions--these are no-kidding, real-life attacks that you can probably learn from, by the way--are written like chapters from a novel (though log file listings, network diagrams, and performance graphs appear alongside the narrative text). Recall every time you've seen a movie or read a book with computer scenes so technically inaccurate they made you wish for a writer with a clue. Schiffman and Hacker's Challenge is what you wished for. --David Wall

Topics covered: The sorts of attacks that black-hat hackers (everyone from script kiddies to accomplished baddies) launch against Internet-linked computers and networks. Everything is presented from the perspective of the defenders--i.e., the network administrators--who have to look at log files and process activity to figure out what's going on.Book Description
Find out if you have what it takes to keep the bad guys out of your network. This real-world resource contains 20+ hacking challenges for you to solve.Plus, you'll get in-depth solutions for each, all written by experienced security consultants. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Hacker's Challenge
Complicated. Misleading. Not at all what I expected! Over-priced and very rudimentary. Not worth the hard earned dollars that I shelled out for the book.

Challenging!
Hacker's Challenge is a must have for every computer forensics. The scenarious given are indeed technically challenging and I like the fact that the complexity of attack, prevention, and mitigation are already specified.It is also very helpful as it make references to external resources that contain more info about a particular specified vulnerabilities. The log files, network maps, etch are very helpful in making a forensic analysis.I look forward to getting the new version.Cold Eyes

Good, but scenarios getting out of date
The Challenge/Solution style of these books are great for security beginners as well as seasoned professionals.If you read carefully you can pick up many hints/tools which you can use in real life security scenarios.

My only -ve comment about this book is its getting out of date now.Many of the incidents described are not relevant now, as security practices at most firms would thrawt these incidents.Having said that, the scenarios are still good for security beginners.For advanced readers I would suggest the Second edition or the soon to be released third edition.

uhm..
this book sucks.plain and simple. i have some respect for the author, i've used his libnet and he's a funny guy.. but this book is garbage.the last good thing mike schiffman wrote was libnet, and after that he figured why not just take it easy and write dumb books like this for the rest of his life, be a manager @stake and get paid way more than the researchers who are doing the actual work. he goes into stupid crap like backdoors in inetd.conf, how outdated can you get..what is this?incident response to that crappy phrack article he wrote years and years ago about simple unix backdoors?hah.the real challenge here is for a real hacker to read the whole book and maintain his sanity.

GOOD Book
I have read many books about network security, but none had put it so easy to actually test the knowledge gain from my reading.
I would recommend this book to any tech guy entrusted with the security of any network of any site. This is the complement book for hacker exposed ... Read more

Book Description
America's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family.In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back. Behind this shift, he contends, is the Personal Responsibility Crusade, eagerly embraced by corporate leaders and Republican politicians who speak of a nirvana of economic empowerment, an "ownership society" in which Americans are free to choose. But as Hacker reveals, the result has been quite different: a harsh new world of economic insecurity, in which far too many Americans are free to lose.The book documents how two great pillars of economic security--the family and the workplace--guarantee far less financial stability than they once did. The final leg of economic support--the public and private benefits that workers and families get when economic disaster strikes--has dangerously eroded as political leaders and corporations increasingly cut back protections of our health care, our income security, and our retirement pensions. Blending powerful human stories, big-picture analysis, and compelling ideas for reform, this remarkable volume will hit a nerve, serving as a rallying point in the vital struggle for economic security in an increasingly uncertain world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

A cautious analysis of the present and a red flag warning of what needs to be done
Now in a newly revised and expanded edition, The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the American Dream is a no-nonsense deconstruction of how current American policy has been systematically shifting economic risk from government and businesses onto the backs of individual people. Health coverage has become increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain; social security is relentlessly under attack; job security is a thing of the past; and some of the greatest risks and investments - such as years of expensive college training to prepare for a specific career - can be thoroughly upended with a shift in the labor market. The overused mantra of 'personal responsibility' is all too easily twisted into 'tough cookies for you if your child gets sick and needs expensive hospitalization.' Personal anecdotes are sprinkled throughout, yet the core of The Great Risk Shift is a big-picture analysis supported by the latest statistical trends. From the need to return insurance to its original purpose - protecting the individuals who most need it against catastrophic loss - to the pitfalls of a so-called 'ownership society', The Great Risk Shift is both a cautious analysis of the present and a red flag warning of what needs to be done in the immediate future to fight back against specific policies that are demonstrably harmful to society as a whole. Highly recommended.

Solid argument, short on rhetorical power
I give this book credit for advancing ideas that maybe a lot of people wouldn't have thought of before, and for tying together a lot of strands that people might have seen as elements of different problems. In a word, Hacker brings together much of post-1960 American life under the heading of "risk": increasingly, our economic fates are being thrown back on the cruelties of the market. Getting sick can cost us tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars; losing our jobs can mean economic devastation. The market thrives on Schumpeter's "creative destruction", and it is by common understanding the very hallmark of a dynamic capitalist economy. What it means, though, is that none of us can expect our jobs to be around in 10 years: they may be creatively destroyed just as easily as the next guy's.

Of course most middle- and upper-income readers will immediately try to defend their own sense of self, by supposing that their own level of education insulates them from the shocks of the new global economy: surely creative destruction is creatively destroying manual laborers' lives, not ours. Hacker says no, and submits a mountain of data to prove his point: over time, we're all becoming more subject to economic crises. The standard economic statistics don't point this out; they focus on economic growth or inequality, but not risk. If Hacker's book is valuable for nothing else, it is valuable for focusing attention on risk where previously few people did.

To deal with this risk, we need to return to an insurance society. Like a lot of people, Hacker advocates health insurance similar to Medicare. He advocates not only unemployment insurance, but unemployment insurance that helps people transition from a creatively-destroyed career to a new one. Hacker doesn't have time to build out the argument -- actual policy prescriptions are confined to the final 10% or 15% of the book -- but he says that the economic profession is broadly agreed on the necessity for this kind of insurance.

The broader social impact of American insecurity often goes unremarked. One of my coworkers made an excellent point about it recently: in Europe, he says, you'll find far more little shops run by sole proprietors than you will here. He believes this is because there's a social welfare net that lets you take some risks that you just couldn't take in this country. Most important among the strands of the safety net, of course, is health insurance: insurance for a small business is frightfully expensive, so presumably a lot of small businessmen go without. It would be interesting to test the connection between bad-sense risk (the chance of economic collapse) and good-sense (entrepreneurial) risk.

The move from pensions to 401(k)s is another big thread in The Great Risk Shift. A large body of research suggests that people are terrible at judging their own long-term prospects. We systematically undersave (for that matter, I systematically undersave), we systematically underestimate the likelihood of a major life catastrophe, and we invest too much money in the company we work for. Pensions used to protect against this, by shifting the burden of risk-estimation onto the employer. Workers didn't have to figure out where the money went, they had no choice about whether to invest, and their nest egg was more stable as a result. Even making 401(k)s opt-out rather than opt-in makes a huge difference in how much we use them. Forced savings are good for us. Here's where everyone is obliged to mention Ulysses tying himself to the mast to ward off the allure of the Sirens. He foresaw his own weakness and protected against it. So should we. Government can help.

I think The Great Risk Shift will be mostly valuable in two directions:

1.Helping to guide conversations with non-believers during the health-insurance debate: we're not just talking about poor people getting sick here. We're talking about a much broader economic problem that can only be solved by joining forces with our countrymen.
2.The deeper research in the ample footnotes. I've found a lot of good stuff in there.

It's not a very good piece of rhetoric, though. When Hacker talks to Real People, he sounds like an academic rather than a beat reporter. Indeed, if you read the footnotes, it turns out that most of the Real People conversations are from other people's books. I don't think Hacker has much power as a polemicist: he's not going to talk with real people, or appeal to them very much either.

What I'd like is something like Jon Cohn's Sick: scholarly and yet passionate. (For a taste of Cohn's style, see his essay "Creative Destruction"). Hacker's not quite there, but I'm willing to give his earlier Off Center a shot.

A book to avoid out of respect to fellow taxpayers
My book came, and I flipped through it to the last chapter--the REAL reason why I got this book.

While I knew this was a whiny tome about how people are being expected to shoulder more and more of their own social burdens, the title did contain a "how you can fight back" clause.

Well, the so-called "fighting back" involves exchanging one set of social programs for another, for example:

Medicare--of course, this would become Universal Health Care.

Retirement--instead of the accounts we have now, there'd be a Universal Savings account invented to take it's place. This account would cover any kind of savings you can imagine--retirement, college, etc., and would take the place of the ailing Social Security program.

Welfare--another magical account would be created to cover "insecurity": periods of unemployment, downshifting or pay cuts, high inflation, death of a working spouse, etc. to take the place of the existing food stamp, AFDC, unemployment, and/or disability. This would become Universal Insurance.

In short, the author proposes turning America into a highly-taxed, highly-coddled state like Denmark, where all is provided at taxpayer expense (up to 80% of people's pay), and only enough is left for housing, food, gas, and fun (like there'd be any fun on THAT plan!). Where would low-income earners come up with the money for THIS plan?

A quick calculation reveals that we couldn't even afford to pay rent on the 20% of our remaining income, let alone eat and commute, on our middle-class income with this plan.

Taxpayers would contribute to the new accounts, and the government would administer them just like it does now, except that your dollars would have your name on them. Personally, my dollars have my name on them now with my own private accounts, and I'm not paying for something I don't want or need.

There are solutions to these problems in existence now, but few are able to (or choose to) take advantage of them. This plan would take the choice out of the equation, and as far as I can see, doesn't account for the entrepreneurial spirit or self-employment.

If you prefer being self-sufficient, self-reliant, personally responsible, and to live below your means, then stay away from this book. There's nothing here for you except anger. This plan is clearly geared for the mindless sheep out there who want something for nothing, only this plan shows how dear the cost of that something would be--we're already paying up to 40% of our incomes in various taxes just to support people and government now!

What got us into trouble as a country is the fact that government borrows against assets--what's to say the government won't borrow against THESE assets as well? I don't want my accounts to be used as collateral by Uncle Sam.

Where oh where is the INCENTIVE to improve one's self, dear author?This is what got the "have-nots" into the position they're in now!!We've been leading horses to water for so long, they now expect us to bring it to them--and we STILL can't make them drink.

Rising Inequality and Anxiety in America
This past fall I heard Jacob Hacker speak about his work in The Great Risk Shift, and I just finally got around to reading the book. What I like about Hacker is that he not only critically examines complex political and societal issues, but he beautifully transforms his conceptions into practical solutions.He doesn't just ask, "What can we do?"He shows us how it can be done.

There are points I agree with in his book and other points I still have some reservations about, but his explanations and reasoning is thoroughly engaging nonetheless.For instance, he proposes a health coverage plan that reemphasizes national concerns about health care security.His proposal places more obligations on employers, which in my opinion, is a plausible expectation if the United States is not willing to adopt a universal health coverage plan.Hacker points out that a large contributor to the rise in bankruptcies is a result of healthcare costs.It's clear that health care insecurity poses great risks to countless Americans from all different placements of the socioeconomic spectrum.

I did face some apprehension and concern regarding his "universal insurance" proposal.This insurance would be designed to protect families in the event of a threatening change in finances and security - for instance a drastic pay decrease.Although I can agree that current job market conditions are very unstable (I myself have faced a drastic pay decrease formerly working in the business sector), I also feel as though we generally have a highly exaggerated sense of materialism and pretentious consumption patterns in America.How will these factors be accounted for when claiming instability and who is entitled to what?Is this where federal money should go when much larger issues regarding our nation's schools, health and extreme poverty are being neglected?

In the Great Risk Shift, Hacker identifies significant points of concern for Americans and the anxieties and rising inequality pressing citizens.With higher and higher concerns, these are questions we will be continually readdressing for years to come.This book proves Hacker always has amazing ideas and great things to say.We can contiunally look forward to his new approaches at examining significant social and political issues.

An attempt to ameliorate economic volatility
Although Jacob Hacker exaggerates the level of risk shift in the "Great Risk Shift", he makes some public policy proposals that deserve at least debate if not adoption.

Much of the book is a critique of what he calls "The Personal Responsibility Crusade", which he views as the vehicle for the shift. He tends to overreach at times.Much of the talk I have heard regarding "personal responsibility" was directed about teenage pregnancy or fathers who abandon those they impregnate and/or their children. He is right that "personal responsibility" is sometimes invoked as an argument against certain government social programs but those programs also have very real budgetary concerns that feed most of the efforts to constrain them.

Some of his arguments also seem peculiar.On page 66 Hacker quotes some corporate statements to outline what he calls the "new contract" for workers. "The only job security is a successful business" and "if loyalty means that this company will ignore poor performance, the loyalty is off the table". It is strange he would cite these as somehow new, when were they not true? Even under the "old contract", an unsuccessful business could not offer job security, nor was poor performance ignored.

Hacker makes a compelling case that there is more volatility in incomes (although incomes are generally higher) than in the past. His argument that this was essentially by design is a little less compelling. The three decades after World War II is his (and that of many others) reference point for security.That era can't be recreated. Fortunately, he doesn't resort to the easy (but unwise) option of endorsing trade protectionism, rather he recognizes the globalized economy is a fact of life and suggests a series of measures to mitigate the greater risk born by workers.

For health care coverage, he proposes something called "Medicare Plus", which is a variation on "pay or play" coverage proposals, which require employers to cover their employees or pay into the government plan that covered their employees and everyone outside of the employer market. It isn't really clear why this proposal is better than a universal government run system, other than Hacker seems to think the latter can't be enacted.

He also wants to enhance unemployment insurance and introduce "wage insurance" (for those who are displaced and take a new job that pays less than their previous job).

He also makes a proposal that appears to be novel, what he calls "universal insurance" that would cover families from an array of potential vicissitudes. Both this idea and wage insurance do not have a track record (at least not in the United States) and may not work as well in practice as they might in theory, but they at least deserve discussion.
... Read more

Amazon.com
This third edition of the tremendously popular Hacker's Dictionary adds 100 new entries and updates 200 entries. In case you aren't familiar with it, this is no snoozer dictionary of technical terms, although you'll certainly find accurate definitions for most techie jargon. It's the slang and secret language among computer jocks that offers the most fun. Don't know what the Infinite-Monkey Theorem is? Or the meaning of "rat dance?" It's all here. Most people don't sit down to read dictionaries for entertainment, but this is surely an exception.Book Description
This new edition of the hacker's own phenomenally successful lexicon includes more than 100 new entries and updates or revises 200 more. Historically and etymologically richer than its predecessor, it supplies additional background on existing entries and clarifies the murky origins of several important jargon terms (overturning a few long-standing folk etymologies) while still retaining its high giggle value.

. . . .


SAMPLE DEFINITION:


:hacker: n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with anaxe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmablesystems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to mostusers, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One whoprograms enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoysprogramming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. Aperson capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who isgood at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program,or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a UNIXhacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people whofit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. Onemight be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys theintellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventinglimitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries todiscover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `passwordhacker', `network hacker'. The correct term is {cracker}.


The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the globalcommunity defined by the net (see {network, the} and{Internet address}). It also implies that the person describedis seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see{hacker ethic, the}).


It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describeoneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of anelite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which newmembers are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain egosatisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but ifyou claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled{bogus}). See also {wannabee}. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Elegant, Canonical Good Thing
I originally bought this book in its first edition, and only stopped reading it when I looked up and saw it was 3:00 AM.(I'd gotten to the T's, I think.)

This book, and the jargon file from whence it originated, is a slice of software history and sociology.If you don't have a background in software development, or Unix/VAX experience, much of the book will be uninteresting.And I think it's definitely a Bad Thing to evaluate this book as a dictionary - That's not a bug, it's a feature!

But if you did live through those thrilling days of yesteryear...or have slogged through the Dragon book in a compiler course as a computer science major...or are a serious software developer...this book is NP-complete with Good Things.

I am disappointed to see the removal of some older terms like IBM discount, branch to Fishkill, and Great Gray Wall, but I guess that's the price of what passes for progress.At least the online versions have a change log, so one can look up older entries, and the should-be-immortal scratch monkey is still present.

For the right people...I highly recommend this book.For others, it may just be a pleasant diversion, but buy it anyway.

Understand Your Fellow Hackers
"The New Hacker's Dictionary" is not an ordinary dictionary.Instead of a regular English dictionary, you get one that is the hacker's dream: a dictionary full of terms used by hackers all over the globe. Then you can really talk with your fellow geeks.

The dictionary is compiled by Eric S. Raymond, a well-known hacker, who is author of the popular book about open source, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". He knows the hacker culture well, and that makes him a good compiler. The third edition of the dictionary adds more than 100 new entries to the already rich list. Among my favourite entries are "larval stage", "scrozzle", and "wave a dead chicken".

Other than the dictionary itself, this book contains two essays, "Confessions of a Happy Hacker" by Guy Steele and "Hacker in a Strange Land" by Eric Raymond, as well as a not-so-short introduction to hacker speech, hacker jargon, and the hacker file in particular. There are three appendices. The first contains some funny stories about hacking in various situations. The second tries to portrait "J. Random Hacker", the most typical hacker. And the last is a short article of how one can help the hacker culture grow.

If you have interacted with other hackers (in Usenet, RL (Real Life), or in other hacker-populated places in the universe), you may have found yourself unable to understand some terms. With "The New Hacker's Dictionary" you can learn all these useful, strange, or simply funny words and thereby become a full-fledged hacker.

A Slice Of Hacker History Hidden Inside A Dictionary
This isn't a dictionary, it's a thousand slices of hacker history, folklore, and culture aranged in alphabetical order.I've kept this book by my desk for the past decade and I still turn to it for a refreshing mind-spritz when the code is starting to look blurry...

A must-have for wanabees and the curious alike
This is one of my favorites: both informative and highly entertaining (perhaps more the latter).

Although the jargon file (from which the bulk of this book's content is taken) is freely available online, the forewords by GLS and ESR are interesting to read, and the Crunchly cartoons are real gems. Besides, it's nice to have the File in book form, especially when not at a computer.

Worth having
I would normally not consider buying something named "The New Hacker's Dictionary", as the first thing that comes to mind is "drivel for the stupid masses". However, I must say that I was wrong. The "dictionary" is actually by an author who is obviously familiar with the computing days of old - the definitions aren't idiotic new-age garbage, but rather words that most "hackers"/"computer nerds" will recognize - while the regular folk will not. The book doesn't discuss words like "click", "webpage" and any other "popular" computing terms - instead it's words like "foobar", "warez d00dz", "flipflop", etc...

If you're at all interested in classic computing culture, this book is something I feel every computer nerd should have (you fit the description if, among other things, you like monty python and your idea of the perfect evening is spending it at home programming, with occasional breaks to watch the X-Files).

If you're a soccermom, or a script/warez kiddie, this book is not for you. You probably won't understand it, and will certainly not appreciate it. ... Read more

Book Description
This is a new edition of the first volume of G.P.Baker and P.M.S. Hacker’s definitive reference work on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.