Goldstein's 2,000-plus readership are
telco security personnel and police, who are forced to subscribe to
2600 to stay abreast of new developments in hacking. They thus find
themselves PAYING THIS GUY'S RENT while grinding their teeth in
anguish, a situation that would have delighted Abbie Hoffman (one of
Goldstein's few idols).

Goldstein is probably the best-known public representative of the
hacker underground today, and certainly the best-hated. Police regard
him as a Fagin, a corrupter of youth, and speak of him with untempered
loathing. He is quite an accomplished gadfly. After the Martin Luther
King Day Crash of 1990, Goldstein, for instance, adeptly rubbed salt
into the wound in the pages of 2600. "Yeah, it was fun for the phone
phreaks as we watched the network crumble," he admitted cheerfully.
"But it was also an ominous sign of what's to come.... Some AT&T
people, aided by well-meaning but ignorant media, were spreading the
notion that many companies had the same software and therefore could
face the same problem someday. Wrong. This was entirely an AT&T
software deficiency. Of course, other companies could face entirely
DIFFERENT software problems. But then, so too could AT&T."

After a technical discussion of the system's failings, the Long Island
techno-rat went on to offer thoughtful criticism to the gigantic
multinational's hundreds of professionally qualified engineers. "What
we don't know is how a major force in communications like AT&T could be
so sloppy. What happened to backups? Sure, computer systems go down
all the time, but people making phone calls are not the same as people
logging on to computers. We must make that distinction. It's not
acceptable for the phone system or any other essential service to 'go
down.' If we continue to trust technology without understanding it, we
can look forward to many variations on this theme.

"AT&T owes it to its customers to be prepared to INSTANTLY switch to
another network if something strange and unpredictable starts
occurring. The news here isn't so much the failure of a computer
program, but the failure of AT&T's entire structure."

The very idea of this.... this PERSON.... offering "advice" about
"AT&T's entire structure" is more than some people can easily bear.
How dare this near-criminal dictate what is or isn't "acceptable"
behavior from AT&T? Especially when he's publishing, in the very same
issue, detailed schematic diagra