I want my TunePay!

I've been too lazy to write this review. I bought the book a couple weeks ago and read it in about 3 days. Even though I read BoingBoing every day, I didn't think to pick this book up until I saw it at the local bookstore and flipped through it a bit. The author, Cory Doctorow, is a regular contributor to BB and has written a few novels and short stories in the "speculative fiction" genre, but this is the first I've read.

In Stephenson's Snow Crash, nationality was based on franchising, where you could go to any large suburban area and find a local territory for the country you were a citizen of. The members of the Eastern Standard Tribe may be the tribal predecessor to the franchise nationality of Snow Crash. Instead of geography or ideology as the defining factor of a tribe or nation, its time zone. The main character lives in london, but as a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, his waking and working hours are aligned with those working 9-5 in New York City. This idea allows the author to explore the abuse of circadian rhythms along with a double-crossing plot worthy of a cold-war spy novel. All this surrounds a napster-like nextgen technology idea that should make mega bucks for whoever manages to swindle it out of the others in the story. It reminded me of Pattern Recognition but set in such a near future that I expect a VC to announce the funding of the technology any day now. Patent-hoarding lawsuit-happy companies looking for the next big thing should be scouring near-future sci-fi novels and stories on the lookout for viable technologies by authors that are too naive to hire a patent lawyer. Since it was a pretty quick read, and fun, I think I may check out some of the author's other work.

Eastern Standard Tribe

The Hacker Profits!

Notorious cyber "criminal" Kevin Mitnick releases a new book about, what else, hackers. Just goes to show: hacking DOES pay. Just get caught, go to jail, get written up in various magazines, get released, try to find a job that doesn't require the use of a computer or a phone, write a book...profit! It's so simple, anyone could do it.

Kidding aside, this could turn out to be a pretty interesting book. Although, since he was active in the early 90's, I wonder what light Mitnick can shine on the current state of "Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers". His first book was, predictably, a theif-goes-legit instruction manual on how social-engineering works and how to prevent against it. The new one peaks the interest of those who want to get info about the secret inner workings of the hacker elite. Me, I'll wait for paperback. He went to jail 10 years ago, I can wait 6 months.