Kevin Mitnick: Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · biography, computing, hacking, internet, networks
“Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies–and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable. But for Kevin, hacking wasn’t just about technological feats-it was an old fashioned confidence game that required guile and deception to trick the unwitting out of valuable information.
Driven by a powerful urge to accomplish the impossible, Mitnick bypassed security systems and blazed into major organizations including Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Pacific Bell. But as the FBI’s net began to tighten, Kevin went on the run, engaging in an increasingly sophisticated cat and mouse game that led through false identities, a host of cities, plenty of close shaves, and an ultimate showdown with the Feds, who would stop at nothing to bring him down.
Ghost in the Wires is a thrilling true story of intrigue, suspense, and unbelievable escape, and a portrait of a visionary whose creativity, skills, and persistence forced the authorities to rethink the way they pursued him, inspiring ripples that brought permanent changes in the way people and companies protect their most sensitive information.”
Written with William L. Simon
Foreword by Steve Wozniak
Publisher Little, Brown and Company, 2011
ISBN 0316134473, 9780316134477
review (J.D. Biersdorfer, The New York Times)
PDF (updated on 2016-12-23)
Comments (2)Edwin Black: IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation, 2nd ed. (2001/2002)
Filed under book | Tags: · census, computing, history of computing, history of technology, holocaust, technology, war
Published to extraordinary praise, this provocative international bestseller details the story of IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany. IBM and the Holocaust provides a chilling investigation into corporate complicity, and the atrocities witnessed raise startling questions that throw IBM’s wartime ethics into serious doubt. Edwin Black’s monumental research exposes how IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enablling technologies for the Nazis, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Publisher Dialog Press, 2001
Second edition published in 2002
ISBN 0914153102, 9780914153108
551 pages
review (Michael Hirsh, Newsweek)
review (Christopher Simpson, Washington Post)
review (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times)
review (Jack Beatty, The Atlantic)
PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)
PDF (EPUB; added on 2012-7-25)
Ernst Martin: The Calculating Machines (Die Rechenmaschinen): Their History and Development (1925/1992)
Filed under book | Tags: · computing, history of computing, history of technology, machine, technology
This final volume in the Charles Babbage Institute Reprint series brings to light an extremely rare German account of the calculating machine industry in the first quarter of this century when the use of office machines became common in American and European business, government, and science.
Ernst Martin wrote Die Rechenmaschinen to address the issues and questions that the public had raised about the many calculating devices that were appearing on the market in the early 1920s. His little book is, in fact, a developmental history of calculating machines in catalog form – invaluable for collectors of old machines. The introduction describes the seven major types of machines that had been produced by 1925. The corpus of the book consists of a running list of specific calculating machines, arranged by the date the device was first patented or produced.
Stephan Weiss maintains a list of comments and corrections of the book.
Originally published in German as Die Rechenmaschinen und ihre Entwicklungsgeschichte by Johannes Meyer, Pappenheim, 1925.
Translated and edited by Peggy Aldrich Kidwell and Michael R. Williams
Publisher MIT Press, 1992
Volume 16 of The Charles Babbage Institute reprint series for the history of computing
ISBN 0262132788, 9780262132787
367 pages
publisher
google books
via rechenmaschinen-illustrated.com
PDF
View online (web version; includes machines made after 1925; maintained by Herbert Schneemann and Walter Szrek)