Famous Hackers

Jonathan James (born 11 May 1981), full name Jonathan Nicholas William James, raised in the university-town of Uppsala. Jonathan is an IT security professional, but is also a recognized music producer in the pop and hiphop genre (signed to Bonnier Music Group). His music production credits include music for San Quinn, Ya Boy, Shade Sheist, Redrum, D.N.A., The Jacka, Ron G and more.
In 1999 James released a software-package which guarded computers against backdoors and trojans like NetBus and Back Orifice. Later that same year he released Cassandra Gold, which could detect and remove the top 25 backdoors and trojans. Cassandra Gold was well received with a user-base of some 25 000 including the US Air Force, NASA, the U.K. Patents office.
In 1999 he collaborated with the FBI and Richard M. Smith (as well as Fredrik Bj?rck) in the hunt for the author of the Melissa worm, contributing to the conviction of worm-author David L. Smith.
Later, in 2000 Mr. James contested the findings of Fredrik Bj?rck (at that time, a computer-science researcher at Stockholm University). Bj?rck claimed that the ILOVEYOU worm was written and spread by a German exchange-student by the name of Michael living in Australia. Bj?rck's accusation led to the confiscation of Michael's computers. James then began investigating the worm origins together with the FBI. The investigation concluded that the worm originated from the AMA Computer University and that Onel A. de Guzman was a contributing author of the worm. The findings later contributed to the arrests of Onel A. de Guzman and Michael Buen.
James founded an IT-security consultancy, which he later left due to dissent with the investors. He is currently finishing his degree in Education and political sciences as well as lecturing, developing strategies and tools for intelligence gathering purposes.

Adrian Lamo (born 1981) is an infamous former grey hat hacker and journalist, principally known for breaking into a series of high-security computer networks, and his subsequent arrest. Best known among these were his intrusions into The New York Times and Microsoft. He is also known for attempting to identify security flaws in computer networks of Fortune 500 companies and then notifying them of any found; while still illegal in many places without permission, this can be seen as a form of unsolicited penetration testing.

Personal
Lamo was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Mario Lamo and Mary Lamo-Atwood. He spent his early childhood in Arlington, VA, until moving to Bogot?, Colombia around the age of 10. When his family moved back to the United States two years later, they settled in San Francisco, where Adrian lived until he tested out of High School a year early. Dubbed the "homeless hacker" for his transient lifestyle, Lamo spent most of his travels couch-surfing, squatting in abandoned buildings and travelling to Internet cafes, libraries and universities to investigate networks, and sometimes exploit security holes. Despite performing authorized and unauthorized vulnerability assessment for several large, high-profile entities, Lamo refused to accept payment for his services. In the past, his lifestyle allowed him to travel up and down the coasts of the United States, often by bus, carrying all necessary possessions in a backpack.

Professional
Since Lamo's sentencing, he has entered the early stages of a career as an award-winning journalist, studying at American River College, with writing, photography, and editorial work / collaboration appearing in Network World, Mobile Magazine, 2600 Magazine, The American River Current, XY Magazine, and others. Lamo has interviewed personalities ranging from John Ashcroft, to Oliver Stone to alleged members of the Earth Liberation Front. Lamo also has a history of public speaking - he was a keynote speaker at a government security conference in 2005 alongside Bruce Schneier, and a panelist at the Information Security In the Age of Terrorism conference.
Lamo has shown signs of increased cooperation with media since his release from federal custody, including a podcast interview with Patrick Gray in Australia, and an April 2007 segment on 88.1 WMBR out of Cambridge.

Activities and techniques
Adrian Lamo is perhaps best known for breaking into The New York Times internal computer network in February 2002, adding his name to confidential databases of expert sources, and using the paper's LexisNexis account to conduct research on high-profile subjects, although his first published activities involved operating AOL watchdog site Inside-AOL.com. The Times filed a complaint and a warrant for Lamo's arrest was issued in August 2003 following a 15 month investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. At 10:15 AM on September 9, after spending a few days in hiding, he surrendered to the US Marshals in Sacramento, California. He re-surrendered to the FBI in New York City on September 11, and pleaded guilty to one count of computer crimes against Microsoft, Lexis-Nexis and The New York Times on January 8, 2004.
Later in 2004, Lamo was sentenced to six months' detention at his parents' home plus two years probation, and was ordered to pay roughly $65,000 in restitution. He was convicted of compromising security at The New York Times and Microsoft, and is alleged to have admitted to exploiting security weaknesses at Excite@Home, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MCI WorldCom, Ameritech, Cingular and has allegedly violated network security at AOL Time Warner, Bank of America, Citigroup, McDonald's and Sun Microsystems. Companies sometimes use proxies to allow their employees access to the internet, without giving the internet access to their internal network. However, when these proxies are improperly configured, they can allow access to the company's internal network. Lamo often exploited this, sometimes using a tool called ProxyHunter.
Critics have repeatedly labelled Lamo as a publicity seeker or common criminal, claims that he has refused to publicly refute. When challenged for a response to allegations that he was glamorizing crime for the sake of publicity, his response was "Anything I could say about my person or my actions would only cheapen what they have to say for themselves." When approached for comment during his criminal case, Lamo would frequently frustrate reporters with non sequiturs such as "Faith manages" and "It was a beautiful day."
At his sentencing, Lamo expressed remorse for harm he had caused through his intrusions, with the court record quoting him as adding "I want to answer for what I have done and do better with my life."
As of January 16, 2007, Lamo's probation was terminated, ending a three-year period during which the U.S. District Court's ruling prevented him from exercising certain freedoms, including the ability to employ any privacy protection software, travel outside certain established boundaries, or socialize with security researchers.

DNA controversy
On May 9, 2006, while 18 months into a two year probation sentence, Adrian Lamo refused to give the United States government a blood sample they demanded so as to record his DNA in their CODIS system. According to his attorney, Adrian Lamo has a religious objection to giving blood, but is willing to give his DNA in another form. "He went in there with fingernail clippings and hair, and they refused to accept it, because they will only accept blood," said federal public defender Mary French.
On June 15, 2007, lawyers for Lamo filed another motion citing the Book of Genesis as one basis for Lamo's religious opposition to the frivolous spilling of blood: "The Book of Genesis leaves unambiguous this matter. Therein, those who would spill the blood of man are rebuked as follows: 'Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.' Genesis 9:6 (New International Version)."
Lamo continued: "Under this admonition, not only would I be blinding myself to the direct instructions of scripture by shedding blood, but I would similarly be casting whomever facilitated this act into sin, multiplying my culpability," setting the basis for defense counsel Mary French to urge US District Court Judge Frank Damrell to exempt Lamo from the sampling entirely, or to order his probation officer to accept some other biological product in lieu of blood, as previously offered by Lamo.
On June 21, 2007, it was reported that Lamo's legal counsel had reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice granting Lamo's original request. According to Kevin Poulsen's blog, "On Wednesday, the Justice Department formally settled the case, filing a joint stipulation along with Lamo's federal public defender dropping the demand for blood, and accepting cheek swabs instead." Reached for comment, Lamo reportedly affirmed to Poulsen his intention to "comply vigorously" with the order.

Can You Hack It?
Can You Hack It?, a documentary covering Lamo's life and times, is slated for release under the care of Trigger Street Productions. Directed by Sam Bozzo, it features Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, TechTV personality Leo Laporte, and narration by actor Kevin Spacey. The film explores the practical and ethical themes of modern computer hacking, intertwining Lamo's story with those of controversial figures throughout history.

Miscellaneous
Lamo remains a senior staff writer at The American River Current, and has worked with 2600 Magazine and XY Magazine.
In his spare time, he donates his time and expertise to Voluntary Legal Services of Northern California, a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization providing assistance to indigent and low-income clients involved in civil litigation.
Lamo was appointed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth Task Force by San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano.
Lamo was removed from a segment of NBC Nightly News when, after being asked to demonstrate his skills for the camera, he gained access to NBC's internal network in under five minutes.

In popular culture
The Wholly Book of Clich?s & Cabbages, a Discordian RPG based on the RISUS system cites Lamo as an embodiment of the Discordian Hacker character class, an AD&D-style prestige class of Hacker, noting "A Discordian Hacker has the abilities of the pulp hacker, but utililizes them much differently." .
Adrian Lamo is mentioned in the web comic xkcd.

Kevin David Mitnick (born October 6, 1963) is a controversial computer hacker and convicted criminal in the United States.
Mitnick was convicted in the late 1990s of illegally gaining access to computer networks and stealing intellectual property. Though Mitnick has been convicted of computer related crimes and possession of several forged identification documents, his supporters argue that his punishment was excessive.
Mitnick served five years in prison, of which four and a half years were pre-trial, and eight months were in solitary confinement. He was released on January 21, 2000. During his supervised release, which ended on January 21, 2003, he was initially restricted from using any communications technology other than a landline telephone. Mitnick fought this decision in court, and the judge ruled in his favor, allowing him to access the Internet.
Mitnick now runs Mitnick Security Consulting, a computer security consultancy.

Early life
Kevin Mitnick began social engineering or perhaps discovered his first engineerable situation at the age of 12. He realized he could bypass the punchcard system used for the Los Angeles bus system: by buying his own punch, he could get free bus rides anywhere in the greater LA area. Social engineering became his primary method of obtaining information, whether it be user names and passwords, modem phone numbers or any number of other pieces of data.
In high school, he was introduced to phone phreaking, the activity of manipulating telephones which was often used to evade long distance charges for his benefit.

Computer hacking
Mitnick broke into his first computer network in 1979, when a friend gave him the phone number for the Ark, the computer system at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) used for developing their RSTS/E operating system software. He broke into DEC's computer network and copied DEC's software, for which he was later convicted. This was the first of a series of run-ins with the law.

Acts by Kevin Mitnick
Using the Los Angeles bus transfer system to get free rides
Evading the FBI
Hacking into DEC system(s) to view VMS source code (DEC reportedly spent $160,000 in cleanup costs)
Gaining full admin privileges to an IBM minicomputer at the Computer Learning Center in LA
Hacking Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu Siemens systems

Alleged
Stole computer manuals from a Pacific Bell telephone switching center in Los Angeles
Read the e-mail of computer security officials at MCI Communications and Digital
Wiretapped the California DMV
Made free cell phone calls
Hacked SCO, PacBell, FBI, Pentagon, Novell, CA DMV, USC and Los Angeles Unified School District systems

Kevin Mitnick myths
Hacked into NORAD
"Theft of... at least 20,000 credit card numbers from computer systems around the nation"
Ability to launch nuclear weapons by whistling into a payphone
Issued a false press release for Security Pacific Bank causing a $400 million loss in market capitilization
Changed a judge's TRW credit report
Wiretapped FBI agents
Turned off the utilities of an FBI agent
Vandalized many government, corporate and university computer systems.
Hacked into Tsutomu Shimomura's home computer
Harassed actress Kristy McNichol

Controversy
Kevin Mitnick's criminal activities, arrest, and trial were controversial, as was the journalism surrounding his conviction.
The controversy is highlighted by the differing views offered in two books: John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura's Takedown, and Bendelladj Hamza's The Fugitive Game. Littman made four notable allegations:
journalistic impropriety by Markoff, who had covered the case for the New York Times
overzealous prosecution of Mitnick by the government
mainstream media over-hyping Mitnick's actual crimes
Shimomura's involvement in the matter being unclear or of dubious legality
Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book without permission.
The case against Mitnick tested then-nascent laws that had been enacted for dealing with computer crime, and it raised public awareness of security issues involving networked computers. The controversy remains, however, as Mitnick is often used today as an example of the quintessential computer criminal although his exploits are less notable than his notoriety suggests.
Supporters of Mitnick have asserted that many of the charges against him were fraudulent and not based on actual losses.
Falsehoods have also surrounded Mitnick's exploits. For example, many mistakenly believe that Mitnick was once in the FBI's most wanted list. Federal prosecutor Kent Walker said in an interview with the New York Times that Mitnick " was arguably the most wanted computer hacker in the world, he allegedly had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars. He was a very big threat". The headline of the resultant article, "A Most-Wanted Cyberthief Is Caught in His Own Web," was later picked up by Associated Press, Time Magazine and Reuters, thus perpetuating the myth.
While Mitnick's actual actions may not have justified the level of official concern they received, the fact that his activities were criminal is not disputed. Mitnick's first adult criminal sentence was considerably shorter than is the norm today.
The film Freedom Downtime, a documentary that centers on the topics of Kevin Mitnick's incarceration in a maximum security prison, Miramax's film's screen adaptation of Takedown, and the "FREE KEVIN" movement, was made in 2001 by Emmanuel Goldstein and produced by 2600 Films.

Attacks on Mitnick's sites
On August 20, 2006, Kevin Mitnick's site was defaced by Palestine PHP Emperor with offensive messages against him. The domain names defensivethinking.com, mitsec.com, kevinmitnick.com and mitnicksecurity.com displayed the vandalism for hours before the affected files were replaced.
Mitnick commented:
The Web hosting provider that hosts my sites was hacked, fortunately, I don't keep any confidential data on my Web site, so it wasn't that serious. Of course it is embarrassing to be defaced-nobody likes it.
As a notorious figure, Mitnick has been targeted by hackers who wish to bolster their status and for people seeking to prove their abilities.
Zone-H reports that on one occasion, there was a struggle between different black hat and white hat hackers when some defacers put their nicks on Mitnick's site and fans replaced the vandalized copy with an original unmodified one. This went on for a full day.

Recent activity
Kevin Mitnick is now a professional computer consultant (doing business as Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC), and has co-authored two books on computer security: The Art of Deception (2002), which focuses on social engineering, and The Art of Intrusion (2005), focusing on real stories of security exploits.
He co-authored (with Alexis Kasperavicius) a social engineering prevention training course and certification: CSEPS.
On August 20, 2006, a Syrian editor, Nidal Maalouf, accused Mitnick of stealing his domain name (Syria-news.com). He falsely claimed that Mitnick is the FBI's No.1 wanted person for illegal acts against a number of internet sites. Maalouf was interviewed by the local newspaper "Bourses & Markets", and the interview was quoted by Al-Ayham Saleh on his personal website.
Mitnick occasionally appears on the late night radio show Coast to Coast AM. He has also hosted the show, interviewing Steve Wozniak (on April 30, 2006) and others.
Mitnick has spoken at events: IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) Privacy Academy in Las Vegas, October, 2005 (keynote speaker); National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology in San Jose, CA, in the summer of 2004; the Fifth H.O.P.E. in New York, NY, July, 2004 (keynote speaker); ITESM Monterrey Tec, in February 2003 (keynote speaker).
Kevin Mitnick was a "surprise guest" in the 40th TWiT podcast when he ran into Steve Wozniak by chance in Las Vegas. Wozniak was on the line with fellow TWiT hosts via Skype on his notebook computer, and Mitnick remained with Wozniak for much of the remainder of the show.
Kevin Mitnick appeared on "Thebroken", an online videozine marketing itself as 'borderline legal.' He appeared on the third episode of the show, but was given mention in the first.
Mitnick guest starred in a first season episode of Alias. The casting was an in-joke, since Mitnick played a CIA hacker. Due to the conditions of his parole, however, the computer he used in the scene was a prop.
Kevin Mitnick appeared on the South African actuality programme "Carte Blanche".
On 2 March 2007, the WELL declined his application for admission, refunding his membership fee.
Mitnick teamed up with John Walsh on the November 10, 2007 episode of America's Most Wanted on a segment on Edward Pena, another computer hacker.

Kevin Lee Poulsen (born 1965 in Pasadena, California, U.S.) is a former black hat hacker. He is currently a senior editor at Wired News.

Biography
Before segueing into journalism, he had a notorious career in the 1980s as a cracker whose handle was Dark Dante. He worked for SRI International by day, and hacked at night. During this time, Poulsen taught himself lock picking, and engaged in a brash spree of high-tech stunts that would ultimately make him one of America's best-known cyber-criminals. Among other things, Poulsen reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance that then ran a virtual escort agency.
His best-appreciated hack was a takeover of all of the telephone lines for Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM, guaranteeing that he would be the 102nd caller, and netting him a Porsche 944 S2.
When the FBI started pursuing Poulsen, he went underground as a fugitive. When he was featured on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, the show's 1-800 telephone lines mysteriously crashed. He was finally arrested in April 1991. In June 1994, Poulsen pleaded guilty to seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay $56,000 in restitution. At the time, it was the longest sentence ever given for cracking. He also pleaded guilty to breaking into computers and obtaining information on undercover businesses run by the FBI.
Poulsen enjoyed brief celebrity in the tech world upon his release from federal prison, and was the subject of the book Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen, a work which Poulsen himself has decried.
Poulsen has reinvented himself as a journalist since his release from prison, and sought to distance himself from his criminal past. Poulsen served in a number of journalistic capacities at California-based security research firm SecurityFocus, where he began writing security and hacking news in early 2000. Despite a late arrival to a market saturated with technology media, SecurityFocus News became a well-known name in the tech news world during Poulsen's tenure with the company and was acquired by Symantec. His original investigative reporting was frequently picked up by the mainstream press. Poulsen left SecurityFocus in 2005 to freelance and pursue independent writing projects. He became a senior editor for Wired News in June 2005, which hosts his recent (as of 2006) blog, 27BStroke6, which has since been renamed Threat Level.
In October 2006, Poulsen released information detailing his successful search for registered sex offenders using MySpace to solicit sex from children. His work identified 744 registered persons with MySpace profiles, and led to the arrest of one, Andrew Lubrano.

Robert Tappan Morris (also known as rtm, born 1965 (age 42-43)) is an associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Institute's department of Electical Engineering and Computer Science. He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet. He is the son of Robert Morris, the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA).

The worm
Morris created the worm while he was a graduate student at Cornell University. The original intent, according to him, was to gauge the size of the Internet. He released the worm from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to conceal the fact that it actually originated from Cornell. Unknown to Morris, the worm had a design flaw. The worm was programmed to check each computer it found to determine if the infection was already present. However, Morris believed that some administrators might try to defeat his worm by instructing the computer to report a false positive. To compensate for this possibility, Morris directed the worm to copy itself anyway, fourteen percent of the time, no matter the response to the infection-status interrogation. This level of replication proved excessive and the worm spread rapidly, infecting several thousand computers. It was estimated that the cost of repair for the damage caused by the worm at each system ranged from $200 to more than $53,000. The worm exploited several vulnerabilities to gain entry to targeted systems, including:
a hole in the debug mode of the Unix sendmail program,
a buffer overrun hole in the fingerd network service,
the transitive trust enabled by people setting up rexec/rsh network logins without password requirements.

Biography
1987 - Received his A.B. from Harvard
1988 - Released the Morris worm (when he was a graduate student at Cornell)
1989 - Indicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 on July 26, 1989 - the first person to be indicted under this Act.
1990 - Convicted and sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, a fine of $10,050 and the cost of his supervision.
1995 - Founded Viaweb, a start-up company that made software for building online stores - with Paul Graham
1998 - Viaweb sold to Yahoo, who renamed it software Yahoo! Store.
1999 - Received Ph.D. in Applied Sciences from Harvard
1999 - Appointed as a professor at MIT.
2005 - Founded Y Combinator, a venture capital firm - with Paul Graham
2006 - Awarded tenure
2006 - Technical advisor for Meraki Networks.
His principal research interest is computer network architectures which includes work on distributed hash tables such as Chord and wireless mesh networks such as Roofnet.
Morris is a longtime friend of Paul Graham (Graham dedicated his book ANSI Common Lisp to him) and Graham named the programming language that generates the online stores' web pages RTML in his honor.

Stephan Gary "Woz" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950 in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer and the co-founder of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), with Steve Jobs. His inventions and machines are credited with contributing greatly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970s. Wozniak created the Apple I and Apple II computers in the mid-1970s. The Apple II gained a sizable amount of popularity, eventually becoming one of the best selling personal computers of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Wozniak has several nicknames, including "The Woz", "Wonderful Wizard of Woz" and "iWoz" (a reference to the ubiquitous naming scheme for Apple products). "WoZ" (short for "Wheels of Zeus") is also the name of a company Wozniak founded. He is known for his introverted character, and he finds his level of celebrity somewhat annoying. He is also known as the "Other Steve" of Apple Computer, the better known Steve being co-founder and current CEO Steve Jobs.

Origins of Apple
By 1975, Wozniak withdrew from the University of California, Berkeley (he would later return to finish his B.S. degree in E.E.C.S., which he received in 1986 enrolled under the alias Rocky Clark) and came up with the computer that eventually made him famous. However, he was largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists. His project had no wider ambition.
In 1970 Wozniak had become friends with Steve Jobs, 4? years his junior, when Jobs had a summer job at the same business where Wozniak was working on a mainframe computer. Jobs had the idea to sell the computer as a fully assembled P.C. board. Wozniak, at first skeptical, was later convinced by Jobs that even if they were not successful they could at least say to their grandkids they had their own company. Together they sold some of their prized possessions (such as Wozniak's H.P. scientific calculator and Jobs' Volkswagen van), raised USD $1,300, and assembled the first prototypes in Jobs' bedroom and later (when there was no space left) in Jobs' garage. Their first computer was quite an engineering marvel within the context of 1975 computing. In simplicity of use it was years ahead of the Altair 8800, which was introduced earlier in 1975. The Altair had no display and no true storage. It received commands via a series of switches (a single program would require thousands of toggles without an error), and its output was presented in the form of flashing lights. The Altair was great for hobbyists, for whom its assembly-required nature was actually considered a feature, but it was not suitable for the wider public. Wozniak's computer, on the other hand, which he named Apple I, was a fully assembled and functional unit that contained a $20 microprocessor (M.O.S. 6502) on a single-circuit board with ROM. All that was needed was some RAM, a keyboard, and a monitor to make a fully functional microcomputer. (The Apple is not necessarily the first microcomputer to use monitors and cassette storage. There were several projects and experiments around the same time which could claim the first.)
On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer. Wozniak quit his job at H.P. and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. The Apple I was priced at $666.66. Jobs and Wozniak sold their first 100 computers to a local dealer.
Wozniak could now focus full-time on fixing the shortcomings of the Apple I and adding new functionality. His new design was to retain the most important characteristics: simplicity and usability. Wozniak introduced high-resolution graphics in the Apple II. His computer could now display pictures instead of just letters: "I threw in high-res. It was only two chips. I didn't know if people would use it". By 1978, he also designed an inexpensive floppy-disk drive controller. He and Randy Wigginton wrote a simple disk operating system and file system. Shepardson Microsystems was contracted to build a simple command line interface for the disk operating system.
In addition to designing the hardware, Wozniak wrote most of the software initially provided with the Apple. He wrote a programming language interpreter, a set of virtual 16-bit processor instructions known as SWEET 16, a Breakout game (which was also a reason to add sound to the computer), the code needed to control the disk drive, and more.
In 1980, Apple went public and made Jobs and Wozniak multimillionaires.

Beyond the Apple II
For years, the Apple II was the main source of profit at Apple, and it assured the company's survival when its management undertook much less profitable ventures like the ill-fated Apple III and the short-lived Lisa. It was because of the reliable profits from the Apple II that Apple was able to develop the Macintosh, bring it to market, and evolve it into Apple's primary technology, eventually replacing the machine that paid for it. In this sense, Wozniak can be considered the financial grandfather of the Mac.

Aircraft accident
In February 1981, Steve Wozniak crashed his Beech Bonanza while taking off from Santa Cruz Sky Park. The NTSB investigation revealed that Wozniak was not rated in the type of airplane, did not have a "high performance" endorsement on his pilot's license (making him unqualified to operate the airplane), and had a "lack of familiarity with [the] aircraft." The cause of the crash was determined to be a premature liftoff, followed by a stall and "mush" into a 12 foot embankment. As a result of the accident, he had retrograde amnesia and temporary anterograde amnesia. He had no recollection of the accident and, for a while, did not even know he had been involved in a crash. He also did not remember his hospital stays or the things he did after he was released: he followed his previous routine (except for flying), but could not recall what had happened. He would walk into rooms and forget why he was there and couldn't even remember the current day of the week. For example, he would go to work on Sunday, or stay home on a Wednesday, thinking it was the weekend. He began to piece together clues from what people told him. He asked his girlfriend, Candi Clark (an early Apple employee who worked in the accounting department) whether he had been involved in an accident of some kind. When she told him about the event, his short-term memory was restored.
Wozniak and Clark got engaged later that year, ordered their wedding rings from a San Diego jeweler, and flew to San Diego to pick them up. Wozniak also credits Apple II computer games for aiding him in restoring those "lost" memories.

Beyond Apple
Wozniak did not return to Apple after recovering from the plane crash. Instead, he married Clark (he called her "Superwoman", possibly because of her accomplishments as an Olympic kayaker in 1976) and returned to U.C. Berkeley under the name "Rocky Raccoon Clark" (Rocky was his dog's name and Clark his wife's maiden name), finally earning his undergraduate degree in 1986. In 1983 he decided to return to Apple product development, but he wanted no more of a role than that of an engineer and a motivational factor for the Apple workforce.
In 1982 and 1983, Wozniak also sponsored two US Festivals to celebrate evolving technologies; they ended up as a technology exposition and a rock festival as a combination music, computers, television and people. They differed from previous rock festivals, notably Woodstock, by shorter lines for the Portable toilets: Wozniak is an engineer, and simply computed the number of Port-a-Potties that would be needed, using less optimistic assumptions than previous concert organizers. (This experience would help him when the time came to build Shoreline Amphitheatre).
Wozniak and Candi divorced in 1987. They had three children together: two boys and a girl. At his high school reunion, he reconnected with Suzanne Mulkern, former head cheerleader and homecoming queen, and the two were married in 1990 and divorced in 2004.
Wozniak is currently dating comedian and actress Kathy Griffin.

Post-Apple career
Wozniak ended his full time employment with Apple for good on February 6, 1987, twelve years after setting up the company. However he still remains an employee (and receives a paycheck) and a shareholder. He also maintains connections with Steve Jobs.
Wozniak founded a new venture called C.L. 9, which developed and brought the first universal TV remote control to market in 1987.
About this time, Wozniak became a member of the Freemasons in order to spend more time with his first wife, Alice, who was a member of the equivalent women's group, the Order of the Eastern Star.
Wozniak went into teaching (he taught fifth grade students) and charitable activities in the field of education. Since leaving Apple Computer, Wozniak has provided all the money, as well as a good amount of on-site technical support, for the technology program for his local school district Un.U.Son. (Unite Us In Song), an organization Wozniak formed to organize the two U.S. Festivals, is now primarily tasked with supporting his educational and philanthropic projects.
Wozniak received the National Medal of Technology in 1985 from Ronald Reagan, then President of the U.S.
In December 1989, he received an honorary Doctor of Engineering from the University of Colorado.
In 1997, he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum. Wozniak was a key contributor and benefactor to the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose (the street in front of the museum has been renamed Woz Way in his honor).
In September 2000, Steve Wozniak was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
In 2001, Wozniak co-founded Wheels of Zeus (note the acronym, "WoZ"), to create wireless GPS technology to "help everyday people find everyday things". In 2002, he joined the Board of Directors of Ripcord Networks, Inc., joining Ellen Hancock, Gil Amelio, Mike Connor, and Wheels of Zeus co-founder Alex Fielding, all Apple alumni, in a new telecommunications venture. Later the same year he joined the Board of Directors of Danger, Inc., the maker of the Hip Top (a.k.a. Side Kick from T-Mobile). In May of 2004, upon nomination by Dr. Tom Miller, Wozniak received an honorary S.D. degree from North Carolina State University for his contribution to the field of personal computing.
In May 2004, Wozniak was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from Kettering University, in Flint, Michigan. He also received an honorary S.D. from Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology.
In 2006 Wheels of Zeus was closed, and Wozniak co-founded Acquicor Technology, a shell company for acquiring technology companies and developing them, with Apple alumni, Ellen Hancock and Gil Amelio.
In September 2006, Wozniak published his autobiography, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. It was co-authored by writer Gina Smith.

Popular culture
An aphorism attributed to Wozniak, "Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window", is quoted in the game, Civ. IV, when players discover the "Computers" technology during single player games.
In the movie Camp Nowhere, Christopher Lloyd's character scams parents into sending their kids to a computer camp under the fake name of Dennis Wozniak.
Wozniak stars as a parody of himself in the first episode of the TV series Code Monkeys when he is the owner of Gameavision before selling it to help fund Apple. He later appears again in the 12th episode when he is in Las Vegas at the annual Video Game Convention and sees Dave and Jerry.

Current activities
Wozniak is a member of a Segway Polo team, the Silicon Valley Aftershocks. They were challenged to a game by the newly formed New Zealand Pole Blacks; the match ended in a 2-2 tie, with the Woz Challenge Cup staying in Auckland. The Pole Blacks will visit the U.S. in 2007 to defend the cup.
Recently, he attended the FIRST National Competition in Atlanta to show off LEGO robots.
Wozniak, after hearing a podcast of an interview on the Larry King Show, began dating Emmy-winning comedienne Kathy Griffin. Together, they attended the 2007 Emmy Awards.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born June 8, 1955) is an English developer who invented the World Wide Web in March 1989. With the help of Mike Sendall, Robert Cailliau, and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented his invention in 1990, with the first successful communication between a client and server via the Internet on December 25, 1990. He is also the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (which oversees its continued development), and a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Biography

Background and early career
His parents, both mathematicians, were employed together on the team that built the Manchester Mark I, one of the earliest computers. They taught Berners-Lee to use mathematics everywhere, even at the dinner table. Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School (which has dedicated a new hall in his honour) before moving on to study his O-Levels and A-Levels at Emanuel School in Wandsworth.
He is an alumnus of The Queen's College, Oxford where he played table tennis for Oxford, against rival Cambridge. While at Queen's, Berners-Lee built a computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television. During his time at university, he was caught hacking with a friend and was subsequently banned from using the university computer. He graduated in 1976 with a degree in physics.
He met his first wife Jane while at Oxford and they married soon after they started work in Poole. After graduation, Berners-Lee was employed at Plessey Controls Limited in Poole as a programmer. Jane also worked at Plessey Telecommunications Limited in Poole. In 1978, he worked at D.G. Nash Limited (also in Poole) where he wrote typesetting software and an operating system.

Inventing the World Wide Web
While an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. While there, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE. After leaving CERN, in 1980, he went to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd., but he returned to CERN in 1984 as a fellow. In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and - ta-da! - the World Wide Web." He wrote his initial proposal in March of 1989, and in 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, produced a revision which was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NEXTSTEP) and the first Web server called httpd (short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon).
The first Web site built was at CERN and was first put online on 6 August 1991. It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser and how to set up a Web server. It was also the world's first Web directory, since Berners-Lee maintained a list of other Web sites apart from his own.
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that their standards must be based on royalty-free technology, so they can be easily adopted by anyone.

Current Life
In 2001, he became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust having previously lived in Colehill in Wimborne, East Dorset, England.
In December 2004 he accepted a chair in Computer Science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK, to work on his new project - the Semantic Web.
Sir Tim is very hopeful about the future of Semantic Web and believes that it holds immense potential for how machines will collaborate in the coming days. In an interview with an Indian publication, he shared his views as:
"It is evolving at the moment. The data Web is in small stages, but it is a reality, for instance there is a Web of data about all kinds of things, like there is a Web of data about proteins, it is in very early stages. When it comes to publicly accessible data, there is an explosion of data Web in the life sciences community. When you look about data for proteins and genes, and cell biology and biological pathways, lots of companies are very excited. We have a healthcare and life sciences interest group at the Consortium, which is coordinating lot of interest out there."
He has become one of the leading voices in favour of Net Neutrality.

On Domain Name Controversy
In the past, Sir Tim Berners -Lee has vehemently opposed the addition of new tier domain names like '.xxx' and '.mobi'. In fact, when the '.mobi' came into existence, he was the biggest dissenter. He argues that every one should be able to access the same web, irrespective of whether it is from a computer or a mobile.
"We have spoken about the mobile Web and how different people would be accessing the Web at different times and on different devices, a very great diversity. You have a screen with 3 million pixels one moment and would have a 3 inch screen the next moment. But is important that if I refer to something like train timetable for example and if I bookmark it using my phone, I can view it on my computer screen. Hence, it very important that the same URI works on different devices. The problem with .mobi, I didn't want to have a domain that limited accessibility from certain devices, small devices in this regard. Then this would mean that, there would be a different URI for the computer and mobile devices. I fail to understand the need for it. The important thing is that the same URI should work, I don't want to keep track of two URI for same thing, and I do not want to keep two bookmarks of same thing, depending on whether I am using my computer or my mobile device. It is very pragmatical engineering reason. The engineering of the Web depends on you have a general one URI for something and wherever you use it, it works, irrespective of the software or the hardware you are using. That is part of the universitality of the Web. I think the consortium behind .mobi have the best intention because they are trying to -- and we are working closely with them -- see a lot of content available from mobile devices. But architecturally I feel that .mobi is a gimmick, the same URI should work very well on different devices."
There has also been an ongoing tussle between different government bodies and ICANN on the ownership of the domain names, especially ".com". Sir Tim supports the contention that any body should not own the domain names, as it is a public resource.
"The roots of the domain named should not be owned, it is a public domain resource and it should be managed very carefully for the people of the world. There is a lot of management that has to be done for the domain names and it has to be done carefully. As you know I am not in favor of creating just top-level domain left, right and center. I think the Internet can happily survive for the next ten years without the need of a new top-level domain. I think most of the time people are doing this not because they think it will help the society but because they can own a whole lot of Internet real estate. For instance I don't think that the .info domain has really helped as very much, people still feel they should get a .com and it only adds to the confusion if different companies have the .com, .biz and so on. And there isn't very clear definition what each domain is for."
In an interview, he hinted that an international body like the UN could do the governance of the domain names.
"I think that the top level domains, it is very important, are run fairly internationally with a fair representation of businesses and consumers worldwide, not just the companies that run the Internet. I think that whenever you have something that represents the whole world, like the United Nations, it becomes bureaucratic and it becomes slow, because it takes a long time to take into account everybody's point of view. So we should be prepared to put up with some bureaucracy."
Sir Tim, also dismissed the whole controversy saying that the domain names are not as critical as the standard setting process is.
"We don't need a domain name system in which you could very very quickly get a new domain name. Domain names are not the most critical part for the functioning of the Web. The Web depends on the development of standards, I think we should put our energy into creating new standards, bringing new technologies, like open standards for video, encoding, open standards for data communication, putting scientific and clinical data out there on the Web, to spread that sort of information between countries. I think that sort of thing is very important, that's where our energy should be spent."

Personal life
Berners-Lee is living in Lexington, Massachusetts (USA) with his wife Nancy and two children, Alice and Ben.
He left the Church of England, a religion in which he had been brought up, as a teenager just after being "confirmed" because he could not "believe in all kinds of unbelievable things." He and his family eventually found a Unitarian Universalist church while they were living in Boston. He appreciates Unitarian Universalism and hence settled in it.

Recognition
A Conference Room at AOL's central campus is named after Berners-Lee.
The University of Southampton was the first to recognise Berners-Lee's contribution to developing the World Wide Web with an honorary degree in 1996 and he currently holds a Chair of Computer Science in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. He was the first holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at MIT, and is also now a Senior Research Scientist there. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1997 he was made an Officer in the Order of the British Empire, became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001, and received the Japan Prize in 2002. In 2002 he received the Principe de Asturias award in the category of Scientific and Technical Research. He shared the prize with Lawrence Roberts, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf. Also in 2002, the British public named him among the 100 Greatest Britons of all time, according to a BBC poll spanning the entire history of the nation and he was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado.
In May 2006 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
On 15 April 2004 he was named as the first recipient of Finland's Millennium Technology Prize for inventing the World Wide Web. The cash prize, worth one million euros (about ?663,000 or USD$1.2 million), was awarded on June 15, in Helsinki, Finland by President of the Republic of Finland, Tarja Halonen.
He was given the rank of Knight Commander (the second-highest rank in the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II as part of the 2004 New Year's Honours and was invested on 16 July 2004.
On July 21, 2004 he was presented with the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from Lancaster University.
On 27 January 2005 he was named Greatest Briton of 2004 for his achievements as well as displaying the key British characteristics of "diffidence, determination, a sharp sense of humour and adaptability" as put by David Hempleman-Adams, a panel member. Time Magazine included Berners-Lee in its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, published in 1999.
On 8 January 2007 it was announced that he had won the 2007 Charles Stark Draper Prize. The prize includes a $500,000 award and is founded in honour of Charles Stark Draper.
On 14 January 2007 he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering
On 13 June 2007 he received the Order of Merit, a personal gift from Queen Elizabeth II where ministerial advice is not required, becoming one of only 24 living members entitled to hold the award and use 'OM' after their name.

Works
Berners-Lee, Tim; Mark Fischetti (1999). Weaving the Web: Origins and Future of the World Wide Web. Britain: Orion Business. ISBN 0-7528-2090-7.

Linus Benedict Torvalds pronunciation (help/info) (born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for initiating the development of the Linux kernel. He now acts as the project's coordinator.

Biography

Early years
Linus Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (5.5%) of Finland's population. Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the American Nobel Prize-winning chemist, although he claims he was named after Linus in the Peanuts comic strip. In the book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the peanut-cartoon character," noting that this makes him half "Nobel-prize-winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character." Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s.
Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System. From 1997 to 1999 he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix.
His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20. After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. He programmed an assembler and a text editor for the QL, as well as a few games. He is known to have written a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. In 1990 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC and spent a few weeks playing the game Prince of Persia before receiving his MINIX copy which in turn enabled him to begin his work on Linux.

Later years
Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds (n?e Monni) - a six-time Finnish national Karate champion - whom he first met in the autumn of 1993. Torvalds was running introductory computer laboratory exercises for students and instructed the course attendants to send him an e-mail as a test, to which Tove responded with an e-mail asking for a date. Tove and Linus were later married and have three daughters, Patricia, Daniela, and Celeste.
After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996, he accepted a position at the company in California, where he would work from February 1997 through June 2003. He then moved to the Open Source Development Labs, which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation, under whose auspices he continues to work. In June of 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Portland, Oregon to be closer to the consortium's Beaverton, Oregon-based headquarters.
Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. In 1999, both companies went public and Torvalds' net worth shot up to roughly $20 million.
His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.
Unlike many open source icons, Torvalds maintains a low profile and generally refuses to comment on competing software products. Torvalds generally stays out of non-kernel-related debates. Although Torvalds believes that "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software. He has been criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. However, Torvalds has since written a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git. Torvalds has commented on official GNOME developmental mailing lists that, in terms of desktop environments, he encourages users to switch to KDE and he explained why.

The Linus/Linux connection
Linus Torvalds originally developed the Linux kernel as a hobby OS for the Intel 80386 CPU, incorporating elements from MINIX, although with entirely new code. Initially Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for downloading, named Torvalds' directory linux.

Authority on Linux
About 2% of the current Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself . Since Linux has had thousands of contributors, such a percentage represents a significant personal contribution to the overall amount of code. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the Linux kernel.

Linux trademark
Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark, and monitors use of it chiefly through the non-profit organization Linux International.

Recognition
In 1996 Asteroid 9793 Torvalds was named after Linus Torvalds.
In 1998 he received an EFF Pioneer Award.
In 1999 he received honorary doctor status at Stockholm University.
In 2000 he received honorary doctor status at University of Helsinki.
In 2000, he was awarded the Lovelace Medal.
In the Time magazine's Person of the Century Poll, Torvalds was voted at #17 at the poll's close in 2000.
In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Ken Sakamura.
The 2001 film Swordfish contains a Finnish character - the number one computer hacker in the world - named Axl Torvalds.
In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world by the Time magazine article "Linus Torvalds: The Free-Software Champion" by Lawrence Lessig, Time Magazine, posted Monday, Apr. 26, 2004, retrieved October 3, 2006.
In the search for the 100 Greatest Finns of all time, voted in the summer of 2004, Torvalds placed 16th.
In 2005 he appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek.
In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum Award from Reed College.
In 2006, Business 2.0 magazine named him one of "10 people who don't matter" because the growth of Linux has shrunk Torvalds' individual impact.
In 2006, Time Magazine named him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.

Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often abbreviated "rms", is an American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project's lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he started the free software movement, and, in October 1985, set up the Free Software Foundation.
Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft and is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license. Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against both software patents and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws. Stallman has also developed a number of pieces of widely used software, including the original Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger. He co-founded the League for Programming Freedom in 1989.

Early years
Stallman was born to Daniel Stallman and Alice Lippman in 1953 in New York City, New York. Hired by the IBM New York Scientific Center, Stallman spent the summer after his high-school graduation writing his first program, a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM 360.
During this time, Stallman was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the Biology Department at Rockefeller University. Although he was already moving toward a career in mathematics or physics, his teaching professor at Rockefeller thought he would have a future as a biologist.
In June 1971, as a first year student at Harvard University, Stallman became a programmer at the AI Laboratory of MIT. There he became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, "RMS" (which was the name of his computer accounts). In the first edition of the Hacker's Dictionary, he wrote, "'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'." Stallman graduated from Harvard magna cum laude earning a BA in Physics in 1974.
Stallman then enrolled as a graduate student in physics at MIT, but abandoned his graduate studies while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. At the end of his first year in the graduate program, Stallman suffered a knee injury that ended the main joy in his life - his participation in the folk dance troupe, and with it the opportunity it provided for socializing with the opposite sex. Stallman's ensuing despair culminated in social withdrawal from which he found solace in a heightened focus on the area in which his achievements made him most proud - programming. While his doctoral pursuits in physics became a casualty of this calling, however, Stallman has been awarded six honorary doctorates and two honorary professorships.(see list below)
While a graduate student at MIT, Stallman published a paper on an AI truth maintenance system called dependency-directed backtracking with Gerald Jay Sussman. This paper was an early work on the problem of intelligent backtracking in constraint satisfaction problems. As of 2003, the technique Stallman and Sussman introduced is still the most general and powerful form of intelligent backtracking. The technique of constraint recording, wherein partial results of a search are recorded for later reuse, was also introduced in this paper.
As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO, Emacs, and the Lisp Machine Operating System. He would become an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab. When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed a password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password (to demonstrate that they were not increasing security, but only hindering free access to each other's software and discouraging sharing it), with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to restore this free access. Around 20% of the users followed his advice. Although Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward, passwords ultimately prevailed.

MIT's hacker culture declines
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived in began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software can be regarded as a consequence triggered by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as stated by Stallman's MIT fellow Brewster Kahle.
When Brian Reid in 1979 placed "time bombs" in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed that "the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity."
In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused the software's source code for the Xerox 9700 laser printer (code-named "Dover"), the industry's first. Stallman had modified the software on an older printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users when a printer was jammed. Not being able to add this feature to the Dover printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This one experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be free to modify the software they use.
In 1980, Richard Greenblatt, a fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines, which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital-funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from the latter camp founded Symbolics, with the aid of Russ Noftsker, an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper, who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics forced Greenblatt to also resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting the lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman singlehandedly duplicated the efforts of the Symbolics programmers, in order to prevent them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers.
However, he was the last of his generation of hackers at the lab. He rejected a future where he would have to sign non-disclosure agreements not to share source code or technical information with other software developers and perform other actions he considered betrayals of his principles. He chose instead to share his work with others in what he regarded as a classical spirit of collaboration. While Stallman did not participate in the 1960s era counterculture, he was inspired by its rejection of the pursuit of wealth as the primary goal of living.
Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to "share with their neighbor" and to be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He has repeatedly said that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are "antisocial" and "unethical". The phrase "software wants to be free" is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy. He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value, and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software.
In January 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983.

GNU project
Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPAnet mailing lists and USENET.
In 1985, Stallman published the GNU Manifesto, which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix. The name GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix. Soon after, he started a non-profit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman is the nonsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in Massachusetts.
In 1985, Stallman invented and popularized the concept of copyleft, a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of the GNU system had been completed. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor, compiler, debugger, and a build automator. The notable exception was a kernel. In 1990, members of the GNU project began a kernel called GNU Hurd, which has yet to achieve the maturity level required for widespread usage.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, used the GNU development tools to produce the Linux kernel. This could be combined with the almost-complete GNU system to make a complete operating system. Most people use the name "Linux" to refer not only to the kernel, but also for the operating system formed by adding the Linux kernel to the GNU system. This has been a longstanding naming controversy in the free software community. Stallman argues that not using "GNU" in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project.
Stallman's influences on hacker culture include the name POSIX and the Emacs editor. On UNIX systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi, spawning an editor war. Stallman's take on this was to jokingly canonize himself as "St. IGNUcius" of the Church of Emacs and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast."
A number of developers view Stallman as being difficult to work with from a political, interpersonal, or technical standpoint. Around 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked the software. Their fork later became XEmacs. An email archive published by Jamie Zawinski documents their criticisms and Stallman's responses. Ulrich Drepper, whom Stallman had appointed to work on GNU libc for the GNU Project, published complaints against Stallman in the release notes for glibc 2.2.4. Drepper accuses Stallman of attempting a "hostile takeover" of the project, referring to him as a "control freak and raging maniac." Eric S. Raymond, who sometimes speaks for parts of the open source movement, has written many pieces laying out that movement's disagreement with Stallman and the free software movement, often in terms sharply critical of Stallman.

Activism
Richard Stallman giving a speech at WSIS-2005
Stallman has written many essays on software freedom and since the early 1990s has been an outspoken political campaigner for the free software movement. The speeches he has regularly given are titled "The GNU project and the Free Software movement", "The Dangers of Software Patents", and "Copyright and Community in the age of computer networks".
In 2006 and 2007, during the eighteen month public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining the proposed changes.
Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired "Virtual Richard M. Stallman" (vrms), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report those that are from the non-free tree. Stallman would disagree with parts of Debian's definition of free software.
In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free on-line encyclopedia through the means of inviting the public to contribute articles. See GNUPedia.
In Venezuela, Stallman has delivered public speeches and promoted the adoption of free software in the state's oil company (PDVSA), in municipal government, and in the nation's military. Although generally supportive of Hugo Ch?vez, Stallman has criticised some policies on television broadcasting, free speech rights, and privacy in meetings with Ch?vez and in public speeches in Venezuela. Stallman is on the Advisory Council of teleSUR, a Latin American television station.
In August 2006 at his meetings with the government of the Indian State of Kerala, he persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft's, at state-run schools. This has resulted in a landmark decision to switch all school computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system.
After personal meetings, Stallman has obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the then-President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, French 2007 presidential candidate S?gol?ne Royal, and the president of Ecuador Rafael Correa.
Stallman has participated in protests about software patents, DRM, and proprietary software.
Protesting against proprietary software in April 2006, Stallman held a "Don't buy from ATI, enemy of your freedom" placard at a speech by an ATI representative in the building where Stallman works, resulting in the police being called. ATI has since merged with AMD Corporation and has taken steps to make their hardware documentation available for use by the free software community.

Terminology
Stallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about the world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He untiringly asks people to say "free software", "GNU/Linux", and to avoid the term "intellectual property". His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of the importance of terminology, are a source of regular mis-understanding and friction with parts of the free and open source software community.
One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agree to use his terminology throughout their article. Sometimes he has even required journalists to read parts of the GNU philosophy before an interview, for "efficiency's sake". He has been known to turn down speaking requests over some terminology issues.
Stallman rejects a common alternative term "open-source software" because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom. Thus it will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom. Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are "libre software" and "unfettered software", however, "free software" is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term "proprietary software" rather than "closed source software", when referring to software that is not free software.
Stallman repeatedly asks that the term "GNU/Linux", which he pronounces "GNU Slash Linux", be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the Linux kernel. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer." He claims that the connection between the GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely "Linux." Starting around 2003, he began also using the term "GNU+Linux", which he pronounces "GNU plus Linux".
Stallman argues that the term "Intellectual Property" is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright, patent, and trademark laws, respectively, by lumping together areas of law that are more dissimilar than similar. He also argues that by referring to these laws as "property" laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues.
An example of cautioning others to avoid other terminology while also offering suggestions for possible alternatives, is this sentence of an email by Stallman to a public mailing list:

Personal life
Stallman has devoted the bulk of his life's energies to political and software activism. Professing to care little for material wealth, he explains that he has "always lived cheaply like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do."
For many years, Stallman maintained no permanent residence outside his office at MIT's CSAIL Lab, describing himself as a "squatter" on campus. His "research affiliate" position at MIT is unpaid.
In a footnote to an article he wrote in 1999, he says "As an atheist, I don't follow any religious leaders, but I sometimes find I admire something one of them has said." Stallman chooses not to celebrate Christmas, instead celebrating on December 25 a holiday of his own invention, "Grav-mass." The name and date are references to Isaac Newton, whose birthday falls on that day.
When asked about his influences, he replied that he admires Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ralph Nader, and Dennis Kucinich, and commented as well: "I admire Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, even though I criticize some of the things that they did." Stallman is a Green Party supporter.
Stallman recommends not owning a mobile phone, for privacy reasons, as he believes that they track users and report users' movements to the phone company.
Stallman enjoys a wide range of musical styles from Conlon Nancarrow to folk; the Free Software Song takes the form of alternative words for the Bulgarian folk dance Sadi Moma. More recently he wrote a take-off on the Cuban folk song Guantanamera, about a prisoner in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and recorded it in Cuba with Cuban musicians.
Stallman is a fan of science fiction, including works by the author Greg Egan. He occasionally goes to science fiction conventions and wrote the Free Software Song while awaiting his turn to sing at a convention. He has written two science fiction stories, The Right to Read and Jinnetic Engineering.
A native English speaker, Stallman is also sufficiently fluent in French and Spanish to deliver his two-hour speeches in those languages, and claims a "somewhat flawed" command of Indonesian.
Stallman has a listing in the personals section of Craigslist, a free classified advertisement site. The listing may also be found in the "Best Of" section.

Recognition
Stallman has received the following recognition for his work:
1986: Honorary lifetime membership of the Chalmers Computer Society
1990: Receives the exceptional merit award MacArthur Fellowship
1990: The Association for Computing Machinery's Grace Murray Hopper Award "For pioneering work in the development of the extensible editor EMACS (Editing Macros)."
1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology
1998: Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award
1999: Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award
2001: The Takeda Techno-Entrepreneurship Award for Social/Economic Well-Being
2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow
2002: United States National Academy of Engineering membership
2003: Honorary doctorate, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta.
2004: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Nacional de Ingenier?a del Per?.
2007: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote.
2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia

Output
Stallman has written and been the subject of several books:
Stallman, Richard M; Sussman, Gerald J (November 1975). Heuristic Techniques in Computer-Aided Circuit Analysis. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems.
Stallman, Richard M; Sussman, Gerald J (1977). Forward Reasoning and Dependency-Directed Backtracking In a System for Computer-Aided Circuit analysis. Artificial Intelligence 9, 135-196.
Stallman, Richard M (1981). EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable, Self-Documenting Display Editor. Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory publication. AIM-519A.
Stallman, Richard M (2002). GNU Emacs Manual: Fifteenth edition for GNU Emacs Version 21. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-85-X.
Gay, Joshua (2002). Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-98-1.
Williams, Sam (2002). Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. ISBN 0-596-00287-4.
Stallman, Richard M; McGrath, Roland; & Smith, Paul D (2004). GNU Make: A Program for Directed Compilation. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-83-3.
Stallman has four topics that he has spoken on often:
The GNU project and the free software movement, March 3rd 2006
The Dangers of Software Patents, May 24th 2004
Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks, April 19th 2001
The GNU GPL, and GPLv3, April 1st 2007

Tsutomu Shimomura is a Japanese-American scientist and computer security expert based in the United States, who gained fame when he, together with computer journalist John Markoff, tracked down and helped the FBI arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick.
Takedown, his 1996 book on the subject, was later adapted for the screen in Takedown in 2000.

Biography
Born in Japan, Shimomura grew up in Princeton, New Jersey and attended Princeton High School.
At Caltech he studied under Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. After Caltech, he went on to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he continued his hands-on education in the position of staff physicist with Brosl Hasslacher and others on subjects such as Lattice Gas Automata.
In 1989, he became a research scientist in the physics department at the University of California at San Diego, and senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
In 1992, he testified before Congress on issues regarding the privacy and security (or lack thereof) on cellular telephones.
He is best known for events in 1995, when he assisted with tracking down the "computer outlaw" Kevin Mitnick. Shimomura and journalist John Markoff wrote a book, Takedown, about the pursuit, and the book was later adapted into a movie of the same name.
Mr. Shimomura worked for Sun Microsystems during the late 1990s.
Shimomura presently lives in San Diego.

Criticism and controversy
Kevin Mitnick's criminal activities, arrest, and trial were controversial, and have caused some computer industry journalists to raise legal and ethical questions concerning the events surrounding him. California author Jonathan Littman wrote a 1997 book about the case called The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick, in which he presented Mitnick's side of the story-a very different version from the events written in Shimomura and Markoff's Takedown.
In his book, Littman made allegations of journalistic impropriety against Markoff and of the legality of Shimomura's involvement in the matter, as well as suggesting that many parts of Takedown were made up for self-serving purposes by its authors. Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book The Fugitive Game without permission.
Author Bruce Sterling described his first meeting with Shimomura in the documentary Freedom Downtime:

Writing credits
Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw-By the Man Who Did It (with John Markoff), 1996, Hyperion Books. ISBN 0-7868-6210-6
French title: Cybertraque, 1998, ISBN 2-259-18402-2
"Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security", January 1996 (co-authors: Shimomura, Bruce Schneier, Ronald L. Rivest, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, Eric Thompson, Michael Wiener) (pdf)