No, Please Don't Read That!

"A friend from Microsoft completely floored me today when he pointed me to a note from Dave Winer that pointed to a comment by Jenny Levine referencing a paper I wrote for a Stanford course on the history of computer games.

When I received the link to the paper, I wondered if the 'Eric Albert' who authored it was me. I didn't recall writing it. Now that I've skimmed it, I remember writing it, and I can't believe it's online. Even more than that, though, I can't believe that someone not only found the paper, but read it. Wow. I don't know how I think about having random people (and especially friends) reading a paper that I probably wrote at the last minute and which certainly shouldn't be held up as a shining example of historical writing.

For what it's worth, the only thing I really recall from that paper is my work to get the DOS version of SimCity to run on any computer I had access to. I think I finally did it by installing DOS in Virtual PC, but I couldn't get it to run under Windows." [Eric's Weblog]

Live on the Web: Kevin Mitnick

"After an absence of eight years, hacker Kevin Mitnick rediscovered the Web on Tuesday afternoon. He did exactly what everyone does when they first log on: He vanity surfed, wrestled with browser plug-ins and was assailed by pop-up porn ads.

Mitnick, once labeled 'the most wanted computer criminal in U.S. history,' hadn't surfed the Web since 1995, when he was arrested for breaking into the networks of software and phone companies....

When Mitnick was locked up, the Web was mostly text. Pop-up ads and multimedia were nonexistent. The last browser he used was an early version of Mosaic....

'The Internet is like the phone,' Mitnick said on-air. 'To be without it is ridiculous. I could not use an electronic toilet without permission from the U.S. government.'

Ironically, The New York Times on Tuesday reported that two federal appellate courts ruled Internet prohibition was too broad a punishment for computer criminals. The Internet is as essential as a phone, the courts said.

'The day I get off,' Mitnick said with a shrug." [Wired]