"Bruce Sterling - CyberView '91" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

gotta admit they are heavy. MoD's "Phiber Optik" has almost
completed his public-service sentence, too... "Phoenix" and his
crowd down in Australia used to be heavy, but nobody's heard
much out of "Nom" and "Electron" since the Australian heat came
down on them.

The people in Holland are very active, but somehow the Dutch
hackers don't quite qualify as "heavy." Probably because
computer-hacking is legal in Holland, and therefore nobody ever
gets busted for it. The Dutch lack the proper bad attitude,
somehow.

America's answer to the Dutch menace began arriving in a steady
confusion of airport shuttle buses and college-kid decaying
junkers. A software pirate, one of the more prosperous
attendees, flaunted a radar-detecting black muscle-car. In some
dim era before the jet age, this section of St Louis had been a
mellow, fertile Samuel Clemens landscape. Waist-high summer
weeds still flourished beside the four-lane highway and the
airport feeder roads.

The graceless CyberView hotel had been slammed down onto this
landscape as if dropped from a B-52. A small office-tower loomed
in one corner beside a large parking garage. The rest was a
rambling mess of long, narrow, dimly lit corridors, with a small
swimming pool, a glass-fronted souvenir shop and a cheerless
dining room. The hotel was clean enough, and the staff, despite
provocation, proved adept at minding their own business. For
their part, the hackers seemed quite fond of the place.

The term "hacker" has had a spotted history. Real "hackers,"
traditional "hackers," like to write software programs. They
like to "grind code," plunging into its densest abstractions
until the world outside the computer terminal bleaches away.
Hackers tend to be portly white techies with thick fuzzy beards
who talk entirely in jargon, stare into space a lot, and laugh
briefly for no apparent reason. The CyberView crowd, though they
call themselves "hackers," are better identified as computer
intruders. They don't look, talk or act like 60s M.I.T.-style
hackers.

Computer intruders of the 90s aren't stone pocket-protector
techies. They're young white suburban males, and look harmless
enough, but sneaky. They're much the kind of kid you might find
skinny-dipping at 2AM in a backyard suburban swimming pool. The
kind of kid who would freeze in the glare of the homeowner's
flashlight, then frantically grab his pants and leap over the
fence, leaving behind a half-empty bottle of tequila, a
Metallica T-shirt, and, probably, his wallet.