A Site To See

The verb "hack" did not start out as a pejorative. In its original sense, it simply meant pushing a piece of hardware or software beyond its intended capabilities, to make it do something it was not designed to do.

An unceasing sense of curiosity has, however, frequently pitted techno-enthusiasts against the owners of the products being altered, and that has increasingly meant a collision of technology and the law. A personal blog by Ed Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor, called Freedom to Tinker, explores this controversial intersection in regular missives ranging from the use of P2P to what he terms "the weird Orwellian language" of digital-rights-management vendors.

@ Felten's blog is this month's A Site to See. Visit it through SM Online.