Progressive Era Hacker Griefed Marconi Demonstration 147
nbauman writes "In June 1903, Gugliemo Marconi and his partner Ambrose Flemming were about to give the first demonstration of long-range wireless communication at the Royal Institution in London, which, Marconi said, could be sent in complete confidentiality with no fear of the messages being hijacked. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a huge mysterious wireless pulse strong enough to take over the carbon-arc projector and make it sputter messages in Morse Code. First, it repeated the word 'Rats' over and over again (abusive at that time). Then it tapped out, 'There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.' Further rude epithets followed. It was Nevil Maskelyne, a stage musician and inventor who was annoyed because Marconi's patents prevented him from using wireless. It was the first hacking, to demonstrate an insecure system."
Re:Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toile (Score:3, Insightful)
That's probably why the homeless crap on the streets there.
A little mischief has always had its virtues. (Score:4, Insightful)
A-freakin'-MEN!
Not saying that resorting to mischief is ALWAYS the right solution. But in these days of rampant complacency, you sometimes need to resort to something spectacular to draw attention to very real problems. Otherwise, people are just too busy keeping their heads down and their asses covered to give a damn.
And before some shit-for-brains tries to draw a parallel with Anonymous or "Occupy". This was a person pointing out a flaw in a technology and doing it in such a way that it didn't break anything, do any damage (other than to someone's overblown arrogance) or violate any laws.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect you'd have seen much of the same cult leader tactics employed by Edison and Tesla in their fights with each other, ending in the pointless and stupid destruction of one protagonist and the adoption of a highly inefficient technology for the sole purpose of denouncing a rival's. When feuds are settled amicably, you tend to get best-of-breed hybrids and an incentive to move forwards. When feuds are settled at gunpoint (real or metaphorical), politics and Not Invented Here take over, leading to regression and an irrational desire to not move forwards lest the "other side" win.
Re:A little mischief has always had its virtues. (Score:4, Insightful)
" But in these days "
stop romanticizing the pasty. This is haw the vast majority of people have ALWAYS been.
If anything, there is less complacency.
It is the same thing in principle. The damage was minimal because it was one person hacking ONE thing.
Oh, they did break any laws in a time when the tech was too new to have any laws? I shocked, simply shocked.
BTW your statement implies that the laws are correct and should never be broken.
Think about that for a minute.
Re:Progressive Era (Score:1, Insightful)
Progressive have been behind every great decade in the US.
Ah, yes. Progressives. Characterized by their movement's early and passsionate embrace of things like eugenics ("Really, it's for their own good - we're the best ones to decide who should be reproducing, don't you think?"). Fond of creating entire chunks of civilization that are simultaneously dependent on and resentful of a trickle of dole (tended to, of course, by ranks of career Dole Overseers who aspire to that position mostly while in Progressive-heavy lefty schools). Fond of enslaving one group of people so that they can claim to be taking care of another group who the say - because of their skin color - can't possibly look out for themselves, ever. Ah, Progressives - those fine young men and women who so staunchly protect freedom of speech unless they happen to disagree with what's being said, and then it must be made illegal, newspapers must be stolen and destroyed, and people speaking must be shouted down in the name of freedom of speech.
Yeah, who's the mysoginistic, racist, moronic group, I wonder? The ones who insist on dividing everyone into race and grievance groups? The ones who proclaim prosperity to be evil, but who will grant a properous person a pass if they (publicly, anyway) say that the Progressives have it all right, after all? Ah, Progressives, ardent defenders of ugly mediocrity or worse in every school, lest a labor union give in an admit that there are such things as lousy teacher on the payroll. Progressives, who would rather see a bright student's intellect burn away than lose a member of their forced-to-contribute-to-specific-political-operations-if-they-want-to-teach plantation.
Every great decade in the US has happened despite them, not because of them. They made the Great Depression longer and more ruinous, and we have a fanastic history-repeating-itself example of that sort of lunacy going on again, right now.
*Sigh* The imperial system lets us down again~! (Score:4, Insightful)
Once again, the inability of Americans to let go of the imperial system has lead to a disaster, if only the bottle had been marked metric then Gerard Depardieu would have known how much it held!