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Which dates belong on the Hacker Calendar?

Cory Doctorow at 3:15 am Fri, Jun 3, 2011

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Emmanuel Goldstein sez, "2600 Magazine is compiling a hacker calendar with photos of hacker-oriented technology. Input from the community is being sought to help compile a comprehensive list of important and obscure dates of interest, such as when "War Games" was released, the founding of the EFF, or the most recent Sony security breach. The hacker world is full of milestones and this is an attempt to put together a thorough record of them."
March 3, 1885 - American Telephone & Telegraph founded
June 3, 1983 - "War Games" released
September 27, 1983 - The GNU Project announced by Richard Stallman
November 17, 1985 - The first issue of "Phrack" released
July 10, 1990 - Electronic Frontier Foundation started
January 21, 2000 - Kevin Mitnick released after five years in captivity
June 2, 2011 - Hacker group LulzSec reveals massive Sony security breach
HELP US COMPILE THE HACKER CALENDAR (Thanks, Emmanuel!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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  • edgore

    March 1st, 1990 – the day we learned exactly how stupid the U.S. government was

  • bsdnazz

    November 2 (1988) saw the Moriss Internet worm escape.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

  • SkipF

    9 September 1947 – First bug found
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H96566k.jpg

  • Gracklewolf

    General Beringer: “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!” –WarGames

    This movie, even more so than Tron, got me interested in computer science as a kid. It was the perfect representation of that era: living under the doom of nuclear brinkmanship and the hope of amazing new computer tech. Plus Michael Madsen’s first real movie role (++).

  • Vnend

    August, 1986: Clifford Stoll starts investigating the intrusion of computers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, eventually leading to http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Hackers/stalking_the_wily_hacker.article and his book, The Cuckoo’s Egg.

  • Anonymous

    November 22, 1987: someone hijacks the WTTW TV broadcast of ‘Doctor Who’ and shows a guy with a Max Headroom mask doing some weird antics, including getting his ass spanked.

  • Anonymous

    1940. Bletchly Park. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Batey
    Directly disobeying orders and ‘rodding’, reverse engineering and ultimately cracking an Italian enigma machine. If not hacking then hackesque.

  • tbo

    September 18, 1981 – Founding date of the German Chaos Computer Club.

  • wrybread

    Is this one of those “which one of these don’t belong with the others” tests? Because I really don’t think a couple of script kiddies using off the shelf software qualifies as one of the top 10 landmarks of hacking…

    (When LulzSec posted the passwords you could clearly see that the list was compiled by the program “Havij v1.14 Advanced SQL Injection”).

  • JoshP

    Flippant, but what was the last day AOL stopped mailing everyone coasters?

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Weren’t those nipple shields?

  • Anonymous

    12 January… the fictional HAL became operational… sure it’s science fiction, but it’s epic fiction.

  • skabob

    I think they should use the Discordian calendar instead:

    => ddate
    Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 8th day of Confusion in the YOLD 3177

  • bazzargh

    Jan 1 1970 and January 19, 2038 surely?

    • Gulliver

      I wouldn’t worry about that. If October 21st doesn’t get us I hear tell a cometary planet or singularity or some such is due to smack us upside the biosphere on Dec 21, 2012.

  • melusine

    Wouldn’t this be more of a “chronology” than a “calendar”?

  • JustOk

    You could never be sure if the official list has been hacked.

  • Gulliver

    If War Games qualifies, then surely there’s room for the June 13, 1986 film The Manhattan Project? Not a cyberpunk-oriented hacker film and not as famous, but a hacker film nonetheless.

  • Anonymous

    May 25 is Towel Day and Geek Pride Day.

  • Garst

    June 26, 1968 – the Federal Communications Commission allowed the Carterfone and other devices to be connected directly to the AT&T network, as long as they did not cause harm to the system (13 F.C.C.2d 420)

  • johan,karlskrona

    the introduction of the www should have a place there, as should the internets, arpanet…
    the first commercially available microcomputer and the commodore64.
    the mocktrial of piratebay and piratebay and wikileaks goin up for the first time.
    the first known hack, when was that?
    and the media: 2600, mondo2000, wired, boingboing….

    and maybe bells first call(sometime 1876), electricity, the first computer, the microchip (1971 intel&t.i), basic, computergraphics (1979 håkan lans), p2p, wifi, tor..

  • Anonymous

    the whole of 2011 as the year everybody picked on Sony

  • teknocholer

    1970 or ’71 (precise date unknown) – First toy whistles are packaged in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal.

  • Malic

    May 23, 2005 – Limor Fried registers the domain adafruit.com

  • Gulliver

    Stephen Cole Kleene formalizes the Church-Turing thesis in his 1952 book Introduction to Mathematics:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=HZAjPwAACAAJ&source=gbs_ViewAPI

    I don’t know if the publication records go to the day that far back, but it may be recorded somewhere.

    In October, 1970 Martin Gardner introduces the world to John Conway’s Game of Life in that month’s issue of Scientific American.

    http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/october1970.html