Section K -- Miscellaneous

K-01. What does XXX stand for?

K-02. What's inside my PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)?

Most PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants) are built upon CPU technology licensed from ARM, including: Intel, Motorola, and others. Some PDA's have been built upon Intel x86 CPU technology.

PalmOS runs on the Palm Pilot and clones such as the Sony CLIE, Handspring, and HandEra.

The Symbian OS runs on the the Nokia Communicator, the Psion PDAs, and on Nokia and Ericsson mobile telephones.

Microsoft WinCE runs on PDA's from many manufactuers, including: HP, Dell Axim, Casio, Toshiba, Viewsonic and others.

The Sharp Zaurus runs Lineo’s Embedix version of Linux.

K-03. Can I hack my Palm Pilot?

Anything can be hacked. The Palm Pilot and it's clones are complex littled devices that can be tweaked almost endlessly. Most "hacks" for the Palm Pilot fall into the category of system extensions, i.e. they enable the Palm to do someting it could not do before or they improve the way that that Palm does something currently. For example, a Palm Pilot hack might enable the Palm to use it's screen in landscape mode instead of portrait mode.

To explore your Palm Pilot, try an application called Pilot Hack. You will most likely want to begin with the Pilot Hack Tutorial by Darrin Massena.

The default password protection provided with the Palm Pilot is not secure. Kingpin has written two security advisories on this topic: Palm OS Password Lockout Bypass and PalmOS Password Retrieval and Decoding.

Third-party applications which provide strong cryptography for the Palm Pilot are available from several vendors.

K-04. What are the ethics of hacking?

Access to computers -- and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works -- should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative.

All information should be free.

Mistrust Authority. Promote Decentralization.

Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.

You can create art and beauty on a computer.

Computers can change your life for the better.

K-05. Why did you write this FAQ?

Hacking is an interest of mine. Years ago, I would often communicate on IRC with other people who were also interested in hacking and we would discuss the topics covered in this FAQ.

Over time, I grew tired of having the same discussions again and again. I wrote down these questions and answers with the hope that I would never again have to explain the basics of hacking and that our conversation would move on to more advanced and interesting topics.

In the beginning, this was the #hack FAQ. Later, Tomes suggested that we adopt it as the alt.2600 FAQ also.

I have enjoyed writing this FAQ, and I hope you enjoy it also.

K-06. Where can I get a copy of the alt.2600/#hack FAQ?

Get it on the World Wide Web at http://www.hackfaq.org