Format

The 2006 covers once again told a continuing story throughout the year.

Starting with the Winter issue, we introduced a new method of binding that eliminated staples.

The contents had the following unique titles:

Little messages continued to be found on Page 3, hidden in tiny print within the contents.

The messages were as follows:

Letters titles continued to be unique with each issue:

Covers

The Cover credit for all four covers this year went to Frédéric Guimont and Dabu Ch'wald.

The 2006 covers all were part of a continuing story.  Each issue had an illustration that followed a spaceman orbiting and descending to Earth.

Inside

Four additional pages were added for the second year in a row beginning with the Winter issue, bringing the total to 68.

The page footers for the Autumn issue (but not the cover) were labeled as "Fall" this year.

The Staff section remained on Page 6 in all issues except Winter, when it moved to Page 4.

The Puzzle section continued to appear on Page 60 (64 for Winter), but not in the previous year's crossword-like format.  This year, the challenge was to tie certain things together in some way.

It was labeled "Enigma" for Spring, the Russian word for "Puzzle" for Summer, and simply "Puzzle" for Autumn and Winter.

The Staff section had credits for Editor-In-Chief, Layout and Design, Cover, Office Manager, Writers, Webmasters, Network Operations, Quality Degradation, Broadcast Coordinators, and IRC Admins.

The Statement of Ownership was printed on Page 5 in the Autumn edition.

We had our first price change on the newsstand in more than three years, increasing the cost by 75 cents for people in the States and reducing the price by a dollar for Canadian readers.  The subscription price remained the same as it was for over 15 years.

2006 saw more concern about the deteriorating state of privacy along with revelations of misbehavior towards the public on the part of intelligence agencies and phone companies.

The year was also an anagram of 2600, something that wouldn't happen again until 2060.

In addition, it was the year of HOPE Number Six, which we also tied into the numbering scheme: "For the numerologists out there, this is also a bit of fun because it's the only time the number of our conference has coincided with the number of the year."

We spent some time trying to convince people to come to the States to attend HOPE, despite all of the bad news that was coming out regarding privacy, searches, and the overall erosion of civil liberties.

Throughout it, we remained optimistic and let people know that "...not coming here because of the erosion of various liberties negates anything positive you may have gotten or contributed during your encounters with so many like-minded individuals."

We knew that whatever issues all of us were going through would be temporary.

"While things have admittedly gotten bad on a number of fronts, the tide will eventually turn."  And, the other compelling logic we used to get people to attend was that HOPE was a fraction of the cost of comparable conferences.  (We also managed to have our video archive of the conference finished in record time.)

We introduced three new columns: "Telecom Informer," "Techno-Exegesis," and "Hacker Perspective."  The latter was "a guest column which takes a in the community."  ("Telecom Informer" was also the name of a column from way back in our early days.)

We were deluged with articles on topics like "Hacking the Facebook" to exposés on Cingular Wireless and Jabber/XMPP.  We were hit with the usual requests to hack MySpace accounts and help people find out if their partners were being unfaithful.  Our determination?  "Couples need to make a solemn vow to never use Hotmail."  It was the year we began to use PayPal at long last and we printed various complaints from people who had bad experiences with them.

We tackled injustice on all fronts, whether it was the kind that affected us directly, such as publishers being penalized for issues that went missing in retail stores, or something that hurt others, such as the widespread practice of overcharging prisoners for phone calls.  As was our tradition, we focused on phone stories of all kinds involving new technologies and familiar companies, always applying a very critical eye.  "Decent telephone policy is only achieved through constant bitching."

We once again explained the story of our name, which "to us symbolized liberation, control of technology, and exploration - all without using a single letter."  And, at the same time, we were always reassuring people that having issues sent to them was perfectly safe: "Subscribers get their copies in envelopes that don't even have the name of the magazine printed on them for people such as yourself who live under occupation."  Throughout it all, we took time to celebrate the individual and all they stood for.  "Being an individual is still one of the hardest jobs on the planet."

The issue of piracy came up frequently, and we tried to explain our position in terms that people could understand.  "The goal is to get rid of any unfairness that is inherent in the system so that everyone has an opportunity to get what they need and that people who actually create the stuff aren't left out in the cold."  But for the really important stuff, it was vital to point out that the common good came first: "...if a company holds the vaccine to a deadly disease and refuses to release it to those who can't afford it, it's more or less the duty of every civilized person to take it from them one way or another, whether it's getting their secrets or breaking down their doors."

When things didn't change quickly enough, we turned the attention to all of us as part of the problem.  "We keep letting it happen, buying into all the jingoistic crap, and not reacting strongly as they do in so many other parts of the world."  It was frustrating at times, but we felt we needed to keep the pressure on, both externally and internally.  The tide is not going to turn on its own."

It was a time of great paranoia and suspicion in the mainstream, which we saw as extremely unhealthy.  "We don't mean to buy into the pervasive paranoia that insists on suspicion of all those around us and thinks of trust as a four letter word."  Indeed, we were witnessing the death of innocence all around us and the demonization of so many things we valued.  "A world where we no longer see the fun of getting onto the top of a building or exploring a tunnel system or seeing where a particular path goes is not the kind of world we should be building."  We didn't buy the argument that we needed to change who we were because of hostile forces in a dangerous world.  "If the goal of terrorism is to screw up our society, then the mission is accomplished."  Instead, we saw all of this as an opportunity to move further ahead.  "More often than not, perilous times also tend to be interesting times."  And in those times, the hacker spirit needed to endure and thrive because "we should never hold back on knowledge and education because of how some might misuse it."  We saw this whole period as an unfortunate phase that we would eventually triumph over.  While fear may be steering most of us at the moment, that simply can't last forever."

There was a strong reaction to some of our covers, along with various other hidden messages, such as the Lost numbers that appeared in an apple on the table of contents of Winter 2005-2006.  Some were convinced we were taking a swipe at the computer company, which we very well might have been.  Someone else discovered that an approaching helicopter on the cover of the Autumn 2005 issue had a shadow that resembled McDonald's arches, a theory which played nicely into the next issue's cover.  And another reader noticed the plane flying towards the World Trade Center from a cover way back in 1987.

The words printed in our issues were often a source of great inspiration to many of our readers.  "Knowing there are so many smart people out there who can protect us from Big Brother lifts my heart."  It was that relationship with them that helped ensure our very existence.  "As we don't have advertising, the only two factors in the equation are us and our readers."  Of course, there were those who took it all too seriously and made us way more important than we thought we were.  "We ought to drop the whole hacker angle and just set up a religion.  We already own hope.net so we're halfway there."  We tried to keep our heads in reality.  "Regardless of how many people read the magazine or listen to the radio shows or come to our conferences, we will always be a comparatively small group of people."  Even with that in mind, it still meant the world to us to get feedback saying things like: "I have only three 2600 magazines but let me tell you the first one I ever picked up changed my life.  I went from a kid who liked to dabble into a full fledged techno-lover."

While we all were addicted to technology in some form, we also tried to let people know that it was O.K. to break free of it every now and then.  "If we become enslaved to a technology, that's a human issue that we need to address, not a technological one."  Our tone was always coated in rebellion.  "Idiots in authority must be challenged at every opportunity."  Thanks to our readers, we were often able to achieve this through their influence.  One of them who worked for a web filtering company managed to change our website's description from "criminal skills," which was the reason it had been blocked all over the country.

Our IRC network really began to take off, bringing with it all of the trials and tribulations that we expected.  We had to clarify our actual involvement.  "While people from the magazine try to come onto the channel from time to time, it's mostly a wide open space where users from all levels of the human evolutionary scale congregate."  We started to look into designing collared shirts for the many readers requesting them, which would help bring 2600 shirts into environments that didn't allow t-shirts.

There were all sorts of scandals involving technology and privacy violations that we were on top of.  "Last year it was revealed that the National Security Agency had been spying on Americans within the United States through phone and Internet conversations that went on with people in other countries."  Not too surprisingly, this began to disappear from the public view after some initial attention.  "And then it all seemed to fade into the drone of inane media chatter."  We had no intention of letting it go.  "The desire for privacy is nothing to apologize for."  And we felt we shouldn't be afraid of meeting challenges to our positions with unflinching statements: "...it is an indisputable fact that Bush has ordered the NSA to spy on Americans without warrants."

We spent time discussing the impending downfall of net neutrality and how to get Facebook accounts without being part of a school, something that was unheard of back then.  We also published tricks on how to bypass their security: "...you can browse their profile regardless of what their privacy settings are."  We printed pieces on all kinds of companies and services, including T-Mobile, Flickr, MySpace, Pep Boys, Telecheck, and Sears.  We even printed an article on hacking 2600.com.  And we suggested using the fledgling Gmail to spy on significant others since it was proving to be so hard to log out of.

As suspicion over Google mounted, we devoted space to alternatives like Scroogle, which seemed to have a better policy regarding privacy concerns.  We tackled the issue of DRM, printing warnings about how that, along with the DMCA, would inevitably be abused.  The various outlets of the recording industry that came after people for sharing music were often viewed as a big part of the problem.

New technologies, like chip-and-PIN to combat credit card fraud, were being introduced in other parts of the world this year.  We devoted space to a service called SpoofCard that allowed callers to choose what phone number showed up on Caller ID.  On that note, we revealed a method of finding out Caller ID names without ever even completing a phone call.  We shared tips on how to get past the dreaded "SSSS" on boarding passes.  We talked about avoiding datamining and other negative elements.  "Blocking software works on nearly all platforms and the better they get the more frustrating it will become for those of us who just want to be left alone."

We discussed the ongoing issue of FBI informants attending 2600 meetings and how best to deal with it.  We confronted Amazon for selling copies of our magazine at highly inflated prices.  And we focused on the unfair practices of distributors, which made our very existence so much more of a challenge than it had to be.  "The alternative voices always seem to be the first ones affected while those immersed in the world of advertising and all things commercial seem to weather the storms and survive the challenges."  It was a unique position we found ourselves in - embracing new technology while trying to protect elements of a much older world.  "Ironically, the very people who understand technology and the Internet on a level far exceeding the norm are the same people who still value ink on a page and the power of the printed word, something that is mostly lost in the world of the net."

Some of our strongest response was to an article printed in Winter 2005-2006 entitled "Network Administrators: Why We Make Harsh Rules," which provoked another article published in Summer 2006 entitled "Network Administrators: Why We BREAK Harsh Rules" and a flurry of response to that.  And a reader whose ISP blocked his Internet access because of a pirated movie download generated all kinds of varying opinion and feedback.

It was a challenging year, but one where we repeatedly stood up for what we believed in, and in the style of true hackers.  "Individual visions have not died in our arena because people have grabbed the tools and started building without waiting for permission."  That was simply our way.

Spring:  The Spring cover showed the man in space looking down on Earth as Google-colored characters appear on the globe, except instead of letters they're the numbers "600613," which looks like "GOOGLE" spelled with numbers, or in "leetspeak."

The view is actually of China since there was a bit of controversy at the time over Google's presence there.

A long cable extends from the spaceman and throughout the cover with all kinds of letters and numbers printed on it.

A portion of it reads:

AFSK1200: fm KE2UK-0 to APS227-0 via RS0ISS-3,FN30FQ-0,RON-0 UIv pid=F0081020z[227]FIXED & Operational

which was AX.25 packet data output from the International Space Station.

The drawing of the man is in black and white while the photo of Earth is in color.
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