4

The "Ethical" TV Jammer

电视干扰发射机

A guy named Rich Zenkere was selected class clown of Homestead High Class of 1968. He was a funny guy who sat next to me in a lot of classes because in most of our classes we had to sit in alphabetical order. And Wozniak is pretty close to Zenkere in the alphabet. So Rich, some other guy who sat near us, Scott Sampson, and I agreed that the three of us should look for col- leges together.

1968年,一名叫RichZenkere的男孩当选为家园高中的班级小丑。他很有趣,许多课上都坐我身边,因为大多课上,我们都以字母表的顺序就坐,而Wozniak与Zenkere在字母表上很近。因此,Rich和坐在我附近的ScottSampson,我们三人想一起选择一所大学就读。

We planned to visit Caltech. We planned to fly down to Pomona, California, where Scripps, Pomona College, and California Polytechnic are located.

我们计划去加利福尼亚理工学院,准备乘飞机到加州波莫纳(Pomona)市,那里有斯克雷伯斯(Scripps)学院、波莫纳学院和加州州立技术大学。

And then we got this great idea to visit the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was where Rich's dad had gone.

后来,我们改去州立科罗拉多大学波德分校,Rich的父亲正好住在这里。

What an exciting time this was for me. I had never been out of California in my life. I remember we got on the plane in San Jose Airport, back when it had only two gates, and took a 707 to Denver. We drove from Denver to Boulder by taxi and arrived when it was too dark to see anything. We passed out from exhaustion in the hotel room. And then, in the morning, we turned on the TV to find that it had snowed something like a foot and a half the night before. So we pulled the drapes, and sure enough there were inches and inches of snow outside. We were all excited.

对我来说那是多么激动人心的一次旅行。在此之前我从未离开过加州。我们从圣·荷塞机场乘飞机,那时还只有两个登机口。到了丹佛,再乘出租车到波德。到波德时,早已是深夜。抵达宾馆我们已筋疲力尽。第二天早晨打开电视,我们得知当地下雪,可覆盖地面1.5英尺之深;然后,拉开窗帘,发现窗外果真鹅毛大雪。我们都很兴奋。

I had never been around real snow in my life. Where I lived, it might, snow a little some years, but never enough to stick on the ground and definitely never enough to make a snowball with. So this was amazing! All of a sudden we were outside throwing snowballs at each other. This was a whole new adventure for me.

之前我从未感受过真正的大雪。我所住的地方,有时可能会下点小雪,但从不可能在地上积留,当然更不可能玩雪球了。所以,这是多么让我欣喜若狂!我们立即就到户外打雪仗了。对我而言,这都是新奇的冒险。

For some weird reason, we had shown up over Thanksgiving weekend. I guess we thought they'd have tours on a holiday, but of course they didn't. So we just kind of walked around the empty campus for a couple of days. At one point we actually found an engineering building and there was a student inside. He walked us around the halls and showed us where the different departments were. He showed us all the engineering stuff and talked to us about the kinds of engineering projects going on at Colorado.

忘了什么原因,我们在此度过了感恩节。我们大概都认为学生们在假期会有旅游计划,事实上他们没有。所以我们不过在空荡荡的校园里闲逛了几天。一天,我们发现了一座工程大楼,一名巧遇的学生带我们游览了整个大厅,还告诉我们不同部门的位置。他带我们参观了所有工程设备,并向我们讲述州立科罗拉多大学正在进行的工程项目。

Walking through the snow those two days, I was just so enamored of the place. The brick buildings were beautiful. Their reddish color looked so impressive up against the backdrop of the Flatiron Mountains. It was a college out in the middle of nowhere -it was about a mile walk to the city.

雪中漫步的两天里,我已深深被这个地方吸引。砖楼很是美丽,它们微微的红色在墨泼似的山脉映衬下更显动人。此处只这一家学院,与自然相伴,距城市有一英里的路程。

I thought, Tliis is just so beautiful. It's so wonderful to walk around this campus in the snow. And it was that snow that made me decide this was the college I was going to be attending. Its entrance requirements were low compared to my grades and SAT scores - I had perfect 800 scores on all my science and math entrance tests except for chemistry, where I only got a 770. But this was the college I was going to go to. The snow made me decide. I made the final decision right then and there.

真是太美了,在雪中漫步大学校园是多么怡然自得啊。这场雪让我决定选择这所大学。以我的水平和成绩,进入这家学院易如反掌——除了化学的770分,其他所有学科和数学考试我均拿到满分800分。只因为这场雪,这家学院就成了我的选择。

- o -

The only problem was, my dad said Colorado would be too expensive. Next to some state university in New England, it charged the second-highest tuition in the country for out-of- state students.

唯一的问题是父亲觉得州立科罗拉多大学收费太贵,几乎接近新英格兰某些州立大学,对外州生源的收费数目高居全国第二。

But we finally worked out a deal. He said I could go to Colorado for my freshman year and then to De Anza CommunityCollege, which was close to home, for my sophomore year. After that, I would transfer to the University of California at Berkeley for my junior year, where tuition would be much, much cheaper. I also applied to Berkeley -my parents forced me to - and I sent in my application on the very last day you could.

但最后我们达成共识。父亲提议一年级我去州立科罗拉多大学,二年级则去离家近的DeAnza社区学院,三年级再转至更加便宜的加州大学伯克利分校。因为父母所迫,我也申请了去伯克利,但我尽可能拖延申请。

I was accepted at Colorado and my parents paid everything in advance that summer, including the dorm fees and the tuition fees. But then my dad kept imploring me to go to De Anza, it was so much closer to home and cheaper. And he could afford, then, to give me a car.

那个夏天,我被州立科罗拉多大学录取,父母为我预付了所有费用,包括住宿费和学费。但后来父亲总是不停催促我到DeAnza,因为它既便宜,离家也近。这样他就能够负担,而且还可送我辆车。

So I went down to register at De Anza and saw that the classes for chemistry, physics, and calculus were all full. What I couldn't believe it. Here I was - the star science and math student at my high school and all set to be an engineer - and the three most important courses I needed were locked out.

于是,我入读DeAnza,但发现那里的化学班、物理班和微积分班通通人满为患。天啊,简直难以置信。我——高中时的科学和数学天才——立志成为一名工程师,而最需要的三门课却让我吃了闭门羹。

It was horrible. I called the chemistry teacher on the phone, who said if I showed up I could probably get in, but I couldn't shake this terrible feeling that my future was shutting down. I could see it shutting down right in front of me. I felt my whole academic life was going to be messed up right from the start. And it was right then that I changed my mind, and decided to see if it was still possible to go to Colorado.

真是可怕至极。我打电话给化学老师,他说如果我要去,还是有机会上课的。但我实在没法让这种糟糕的感觉烟消云散,也无法让自己的未来就这样毁于一旦。我几乎感觉到工程学的大门对我就此关闭了,感觉自己的学院生涯刚一开始就触礁。那时我做出了一个正确的决定,看看州立科罗拉多大学是否仍会接收我。

School had already started there, but after a couple of calls I found out I could still go. I had everything set up, airplane flight schedule and everything. I bought the tickets, went down to San Jose Airport, and flew into Colorado the next day. Just in time for the third day of classes.

那时学校已经开学,但拨通电话后我发现自己仍能去那儿。我打点好一切,从圣·荷塞机场直飞科罗拉多,次日抵达,刚好赶上第三天的课程。

I remember arriving on campus that fall and thinking it was so beautiful, early September in Colorado. The leaves were yellow and orange and gold, and I felt like I was just so lucky.

我至今对那个秋天留有印象。九月的科罗拉多婀娜多姿,黄色、橙色和金色的叶子四处飞舞,我感觉到自己是那么的幸运。

My roommate was Mike. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the dorm room with my bags was that he'd posted up about twenty foldout Playboy centerfolds on the walls.Wow, that was different! But I thought Mike was a neat guy, and I used to like listening to his stories of life as a military brat, about his high school in Germany and all the experiences he had. He was very sexually advanced, I thought. Sometimes he'd tell me he wanted the room alone on certain nights, and I knew why. I'd say, Well, okay. I'd take this tape recorder I had and a bunch of reel-to-reel tapes鈥擲imon & Garfunkel was my big group then - and I'd go over to Rich Zenkere's room and come back much later. I remember one time I was sleeping and he brought in this Mormon girl in the middle of the night. He was really something.

迈克是我的室友。进入宿舍,首先映入我眼帘的便是他在墙上粘贴的20多张《花花公子》(Playboy)的插页。噢,真是让我大开眼界!但我觉得迈克是位儒雅的男生,我曾经很喜欢倾听他的故事:军营小子生活、德国的高中生活以及他所有的生活经历。我想在两性问题上他更是老手。有时他会说晚上想独用房间,我心照不宣,满口答应。带着自己的录音机和一盒盒的磁带(SimonGarfunkel那时是我的最爱)到RichZenkere的宿舍,直到很晚才回去。还记得有一次,他半夜带回一个姑娘,那时我还在熟睡。他可真是有种!

Meanwhile, I'd hang around with other friends I'd made in the dorm. I went to football games. Our mascot was a buffalo named Ralphie (a humiliating name for anyone!), and a bunch of students dressed like cowboys would race him around on the field before the game. Ralphie was a real buffalo. I remember how my friend Rich Zenkere told us that, twenty years earlier, Colorado's main rival back then, the Air Force Academy, managed to kidnap him. And when the Air Force Academy players showed up for the big game they cooked and ate poor Ralphie.

同时,我与公寓里的其他朋友泡在一起,参加橄榄球比赛。我们有个吉祥物,它是只名叫拉尔夫的水牛。在比赛之前,一群牛仔打扮的学生会带它绕场一周。拉尔夫是只真正的水牛。我的朋友RichZenkere曾告诉我:20多年前,科罗拉多那时主要的对手空军学院牵走了它。当空军学院队在大赛中现身时,拉夫尔已成为他们的腹中之物。

I believed the story at the time, but you never knew about Rich. He took things so lightly and easily, always smiling and joking about the most serious things. He was a little bit dishonest, though. We worked together washing dishes at a girls' dorm, and he ended up getting fired for faking time cards and stuff.

那时我对这个故事深信不疑,但你永远别想了解Rich。他总能不动声色地嘲弄最严肃的事情,尽管他有点不诚实。我们曾一起为女生公寓清洗盘子,他最终却因伪造记时卡而遭到解雇。

I spent a lot of time in Rich's room with him and his two roommates, Randy and Bud, playing hearts, poker, and bridge. Randy was interesting to me because he was a serious Christian - a born-again Christian - and the other two guys would denigrate him for it. Like he was dumb because of it. But I used to spend a lot of time talking to him about his beliefs. I had never had any kind of religious training whatsoever, so I was impressed when he told me about Christian tilings like "turning the other cheek" andforgiveness. I definitely became his friend. So anyway, we'd usually play cards late into the night, and I remember thinking, This is just the best year of my life. It was the first time in my life I could decide what to do with my time -what to eat, what to wear, what to say, what classes to take and how many.

我经常去Rich的宿舍,还和他的两个室友兰迪和巴德,一起玩纸牌和桥牌。我觉得兰迪很有趣,因为他是虔诚的基督徒,但另外两人总借此发挥,比如他是因为信仰才默不作声。我没有过任何的宗教教育经历,因此,当他告诉我一些基督教知识时,我总是印象深刻,比如他曾给我解释“宽大为怀”和宽恕。我们当然就成了朋友,4人常常打牌至深夜。记忆中,这是我生命里最惬意的一年。有生以来,我第一次可以自己决定如何度日的问题——吃什么、穿什么、说什么、上什么课和上多少课。

And I was meeting all kinds of interesting people. The bridge thing ended up getting huge for me. We started playing it right around finals week, and then it stuck. The four of us played bridge right off the seat of our pants. We didn't have any books or tables in front of us, or anything that normal bridge players use. We just sort of figured out for ourselves what bridge bids worked and which ones didn't. I mean, in my mind, bridge is more sophisticated than other games.

我还遇到了各种各样的新奇人物。桥牌最后成为我的主要活动项目,甚至在期末考试期间,我们也不能罢手。我们4个坐在那里玩,面前没有书,也没有桌子,不像普通桥牌玩家那样。我们以自己的方式规定是否出价。我认为桥牌是最复杂的游戏。

A lot of card games are based on "tricks" where one person puts a card down and the other players follow with their own cards, and the highest-ranking card of the suit of the first card down wins. That's a trick. Now, in hearts, you try to avoid taking certain cards: for example, eveiy heart you win in a trick counts against you. In spades, you have a round of bidding first, betting how many tricks you and your partner - the person across the table from you in a game of four players -will take. If you bet five tricks and get that many, you get fifty points. But if you overbid and don't get as many tricks as you thought you would, you lose that many points. In spades, all of the spades have the special ability to trump the other cards.

大多纸牌游戏不过是小把戏,打一张牌,别人跟上,一轮牌谁最大谁就赢。这不过是一种伎俩。在升级(Hearts)中,你则希望缺一种花色的牌:例如,第一轮你所赢得的红心都是你的分数。打锄大地(Spades),首先一轮就要出价,赌就赌在你和搭挡能玩多少把戏——如果是4个人玩,那么坐你对面的就是你的搭档。如果你赌的是5,若达到那么多,你就可得到50分。这一游戏中,黑桃最大。

But bridge is at the top end. You not only bet how many tricks you can take with your partner, whose hand you cannot see, but you also have to bet which suit will be the trump suit that beats all other suits.

但桥牌则最为绝妙。你不仅要猜出你与搭档有多少分,还要猜出哪一轮出牌对获胜至关重要。

Bridge is such a good balance of strategy and offense and defense. And at the same time, you're looking at your hand and trying to guess what others might have and passing signals for the bidding. You have to play on so many levels at once. We reallystarted out, like I said, knowing nothing. So we all had fun, since we were all playing at the same level.

桥牌需要将攻守战略运用于一体。同时,根据自己手上的牌来推测他人的牌,这样才能更好地出牌,你必须八面玲珑。刚开始时,我们都不太懂,但都很开心,因为大家同一水平。

But it's funny, we thought we were real bridge players, but we never could've gotten around and competed with real bridge players. A few years later when I was working at Hewlett- Packard, I tried to join a bridge club in my apartment building and I couldn't even begin to play with those women. You see, I'd never really memorized all those rules of how much you bid when you have which hands. So all I'd end up doing is messing up my partner.

桥牌的确有趣,我们自以为是桥牌玩家,但却不是专业选手的对手。几年后,我进入惠普,曾想加入部门的桥牌俱乐部,但我甚至不是女同事的对手。我从来都没有清楚地记过规则,最后只能让我的搭档一头雾水。

These days, I can play bridge pretty well, but it's only because I read the bridge column in the newspaper every single day for years until I could figure out the formulas in my head.

如今,我已是桥牌高手,但这是得益于多年来学习报纸的桥牌专栏,并把所有规则铭记于心。

- o -

During college, I worked on one of my favorite projects ever. I called it the TV Jammer.

大学时,我遇到了自己有始以来最为喜爱的项目。我把它命名为电视干扰发射机(TVJammer)。

The TV Jammer came out of this thing I'd seen my old friend Allen Baum's father, Elmer, do over the summer. Mr. Baum was an engineer, and he'd worked out this little circuit on a piece of paper. It included a transistor, a couple of resistors, a capacitor, and a coil that could put out a signal in the TV frequency range. I looked at it, thinking how cool it would be if you could tune it, the same way you could tune your transistor radio, just by turning a dial. So I built a few of these -d evices that let you jam a TV if you just dialed into the right frequency. They were cool.

我的一位老朋友亚伦·波美的父亲爱默尔在那个夏天做了一些研究,电视干扰发射机的灵感就来源于此。爱默尔先生是位工程师,他的工作是设计微型电路,包括一个晶体管、一对电阻和一个电容器,以及一卷线圈,它能在电视频率范围输出信号。我边看边想:如果可以接收到信息那多酷啊,就像晶体管收音机可收听一样,只需扭一下调揩钮。所以我做了一些设备,将其对准电视机就可调到相应频段。真棒!

Well, at some point during my freshman year at Colorado, I thought it was time to have fun with the TV Jammer. I walked over to Radio Shack and looked at all their transistors. I saw they had only one transistor rated for 50 MHz up toward the TV frequencies. I brought that one home. I also bought a little transistor radio so I could use parts of it, like resistors of certain values and the tuning capacitor, the part the tuning knob connects to. That would give me a big wide tuning range.

在科罗拉多的新生生活中,我觉察到自己该从电视干扰发射机上找到乐趣。我到无线电小屋(RadioShack)去观察他们所有的晶体管。我发现,他们只有一种50MHz的晶体管可接收电视频段。我买了一个,还买了些小晶体管收音机,这样我就可以运用它们其中的零件,比如一些相当有用的电阻、调谐电容以及用于连接调谐钮的零件。这些让我能在更大范围内调频。

I hand-wrapped a coil out of some thick wire I had - about three turns - and I soldered on a little tap halfway down one of the turns and put a capacitor there. The whole thing was as small as my little finger, just tiny. I built it on top of the case of a 9-volt battery in a neat way. You know that little clip on top of the 9-volt I stripped it out, hand-soldered it to the connectors on my little TV Jammer circuit, and then I could plug another 9- volt battery in as my power source. So I was able to carry this 9-volt battery case with the TV Jammer on it totally concealed. Except for a little six-inch wire that acted as an antenna, which I had to hang out the side to transmit. I put it up my sleeve to hide it.

我用一些粗电线做出线圈,约有三转,某一转上我还连入了一个电容。整个线圈和我手指差不多大小。我利落地将其连于一节9伏特电池的上方。你知道电池上的小金属片吗?我把它拆了下来,焊接在与电视干扰发射机相连的电路上,然后再连入一个9伏电池。即使9伏电池箱外加电视干扰发射机,我也可携带于无形之中。只有6英寸的电线露了出来,因为它作为天线必须在外传输信息。我将其藏于自己的袖子之中。

I went over to a friend's to try it out on his TV - he had a little black-and-white TV in his dorm room - and sure enough, I was able to jam his TV black.

朋友宿舍有一台小型黑白电视机,我在那里试了试自己的杰作。虽是小型电视机,但足以让我试验。

I walked into the main lounge of our dorm where everybody was watching a big black-and-white TV. I tuned the TV Jammer and, whack, it blacks out. Wow, I thought, that's a funny joke.

我们宿舍的主要休息室里,人人都在看着大屏幕黑白电视机。但我一打开电视干扰发射机,它就啪的一下漆黑一片了。我想:哇,这玩笑可真是有趣。

I showed it one day to Randy Adair, my Christian friend, and he said, "You should try it on the color TV that's in the basement of Libby Hall," the girls' dorm.

一次我展示给朋友RandyAdair看,他说:“你该去试试解放大厅的彩色电视机。”那属于女生宿舍。

I walked in there and saw a lot of guys and girls. They were in there watching that TV all the time, it turned out. I walked in back where I was in the dark enough, and I turned the TV Jammer on, expecting it would kill the picture. All it did was fuzz it up, though.

在那里,我发现许多男孩女孩一起看电视。我躲在暗处,打开电视干扰发射机,希望图像关闭,但最后却只是变得模糊而已。

Well, without any planning whatsoever, my friend Randy, sat in the front row of chairs, leaned over the TV, and whacked it really hard. I caught on quickly. I instantly made the TV picture go clear, which of course made everyone think that the whacking worked on the TV. I waited for a couple of minutes and jammed it again. It fuzzed up the picture again and Randy hit it again. And I made it go clear again. A couple of minutes later I jammed itagain, but this time I let Randy hit it three or four times before his whacking "worked."

起初并无任何计划。我的朋友Randy坐在前排,猛击电视。我很快配合默契,立即让图像清晰。这当然让所有人都认为重击电视起了作用。几分钟后,我故伎重演,图像再次模糊,Randy又开始击打,于是我又让它清晰起来。再过几分钟后,我又重复一次,然后等Randy击打好几次才卓有成效。

So anyone watching would think that, okay, hitting harder works better. They all thought something was loose inside the TV and that by hitting it hard with your hand you could fix it. It was almost like a psychology experiment -except, I noticed, humans learn better than rats. Only the rats learn it quicker.

因此所有旁观者都认为:打得越重,效果越好。他们都觉得电视里必有什么东西松动了,只有敲打一下才可恢复。这仿佛是一个心理试验,除此之外,我发现,人类比老鼠学得更好。但老鼠学得更快。

Then, later that night, Randy didn't get up to whack the TV. So someone else did. I was hoping that would happen! Someone else whacked it, and I made it so the TV worked. Ha! A whole audience of guinea pigs. I couldn't have wished for more. Over a period of about two weeks, I went there every night to watch people whack the TV. When that didn't work, they'd start to fine- tune it -in those days, TVs came with tuning controls - and I would quietly work the TV Jammer so that if they tuned it just right, the TV worked again.

那晚之后,Randy再未起身敲打电视,但其他人会这样做。这正是我所希望的结果。有人敲打电视,然后我让它恢复。哈,一群供我实验的“猪头”。我最希望的莫过于此。两周时间里,我每晚都去那儿看人们敲打电视。当不能起效时,他们就开始调来调去。那时候,电视还是调频的,我在一旁暗暗使用电视干扰发射机,他们一旦调对,电视就可正常工作。

After a while, I made it so that if someone touched the tuner and adjusted it to fix the picture, it would work. But then when they pulled their hand away, the screen would go bad again. Until they put their hand back on the tuning control, that is. I was like an entertainer. A puppeteer -with live puppets under my control.

然后,如果有人想调到图像慢慢清晰,我也让这生效。但只要他们手一离开,我让图像又变得模糊。直到他们再次接触调频盘。我宛如一位表演者,操纵着活生生的木偶。

Then the people got this superstition about how it mattered where your body was. I remember one time there were three people trying to fix the TV. By this time I would wait for some interesting thing they would do to fix the picture so I could trick them into thinking they had done it. One of the three guys had his hand in the middle of the TV screen. He was standing with one foot up on a chair. Seeing his hand accidentally rest in the middle of the TV screen, I took my cue and fixed the picture. One of the three guys announced, Hey, the picture's good. They relaxed. When the guy in front pulled his hand back, I made the picture go bad again.

之后,他们竟怀疑自己所处的位置会影响电视。一次,有3个人试图要修好电视。我就等着好戏上演,看他们如何让图像清晰起来,我还可以玩点鬼把戏,让他们以为自己成功了。其中一人将手放于电视屏幕中央,一只脚踏在椅子上。当他的手偶然停于电视中央时,我打开机关让图像恢复。只听他宣布到:“嗨,图像清楚了。”他们慢慢放松。当前面男生的手离开电视,我让图像又乱了起来。

The guy in back of the TV turning the dials on the back of theTV said, "Let's all try to get our bodies where they were and maybe it will work again!"

在电视后调节仪器盘的男生说:“让我们返回原地不动,也许就会好了。”

A few seconds later, the guy in front rested his hand back on the middle of the screen and I did it again, fixed the picture. He tested it by pulling his hand away - I made the picture go bad - and then putting it back on the screen - and I made it go good again.

前面的男生立即将手放回屏幕中间,我让图像清晰。他试着移开手,我便让图像模糊,再放回去,又变好了。

Then I noticed Mm take his foot off the chair and put it down on the floor. Again, I ruined the picture. When he put his foot back on the chair, he looked so startled when the picture went clear again. God, was I good to pull this off without ever getting caught.

然后,我注意到他的脚离开椅子,站于地面,就让图像模糊;再回到椅子,图像又清晰起来。这让他瞠目结舌。好在我未被逮个正着。

He turned to the other students in the room and loudly announced, "Grounding effect." He had to have been an engineering student to have known a word like that back then.The dozen or so students stayed for the second half hour of Mission Impossible with the guy's hand over the middle of the TV! And TVs were pretty small back then.

他大声对屋内其他学生宣布:“是地面效应。”作为那时的工程系学生,这是必须懂得的术语。即使那个男生的手在屏幕的中间,还是有十几个学生就这样看完了《谍中谍》(MissionImpossible,这里指1966年9月24日首播的英国电视剧,编者注),而且那时的电视屏幕还非常小。

The only trouble is, I'd gone too far. For the next few weeks, virtually no one showed up in that TV room. They had had enough.

唯一的问题是我的确有些过分。接下来的几周,几乎没有人在这里娱乐,他们已经忍无可忍。

- o -

Later in the year, they all came back again. So again I would play with this game, and just have so much fun. Sometimes people would have to pound the TV as hard as they could on top. Other times, there had to be three people on the TV at once - one pounding, one tuning, and one turning the color dial on the back that adjusted how much red, green, and blue the picture had. After that, they needed more than me to get the picture back! So a repairman had to be called.

年底,他们又回到这里。所以我又玩这个游戏,自娱自乐。有时他们重重地敲打电视,有时他们让三个人同时站在电视旁——一人敲打,一人调频,最后一人在电视背部调节彩色调盘,调节红色、绿色和蓝色。之后,我也不能调回图像了!因此,修理工应邀而至。

After the repairman came, I heard someone at the TV mention that he'd said it was an antenna problem. I jammed the TV again, so what did they do Of course, someone picked up the twin-leadantenna wire and lifted it up over his head. I made the screen go good. He put it down and I made the screen go bad again. Up, good ... down, bad. And after a while, I made it so he had to hold up the antenna higher and higher. This guy's trying to watch the last five minutes of some show, and he's stretched out to the ceiling, it was hilarious.

修理工来后,我听到电视旁有人提到修理工认为是天线问题。我再启动了电视干扰发射机,他们怎么做呢?当然,有人取下了折叠式双天线,然后举在头上。那时我就让图像恢复。他一放下,我就让图像模糊。举起,好了。放下,坏了。此后,我又让他不得不举得越来越高。这个男生想要观看某个节目的最后5分钟,就不得不将手伸到天花板上去,真让我捧腹大笑。

Except for Randy, I never told anyone else about it the whole year. I found it just amazing that at no time did anyone suspect that a human was toying with them. They never caught on! It was so funny. I couldn't make up a story this good. The only time I regretted using the TV Jammer in the TV room was during a daytime watching of the Kentucky Derby. Of course, I timed it down, to the last stretch, and then I jammed the TV. Those kids erupted like animals, throwing chairs at the TV and everything. If it had been a human being, they would have beaten him to a pulp, they were that upset. And I felt horrible because I knew that if they had found me out on that day, it would've been hospital time.

除了Randy,在整整一年里我从未告诉其他人。我惊讶的是,居然没有人怀疑过这可能是有人在捣乱。真是有趣,几近奇闻。只有一次我曾后悔使用了电视发射干扰机,就是在日间看《肯塔基大赛马》时,我在最后的关键时刻启动了电视干扰发射机,那些孩子们忍无可忍,怨气爆发,将椅子等等砸向电视。如果对象是人,早就沦为肉酱了。他们是如此狂躁不安,我若是那天被发现,可就是众矢之的了。

There's a point where a joke crosses to a point where it is beyond funny -not funny anymore but scary - and this was it.

如果玩笑太过分,就不再有趣而令人惶恐不安,就像这次一样。

- o -

I had a computer class at Colorado where I took the TV jamming concept a little further.

之后不久,我在科罗拉多参加了一个电脑班。

Just the fact that I was able to take a computer class was amazing. Back then, there were only a few colleges that had computer courses. Undergraduate computer classes were virtually unheard of, so this was a graduate class. Being enrolled in engineering at Colorado, even as a freshman, meant I could take any engineering class, even graduate classes, as long as I met the prerequisites. And luckily there weren't any for this course. This class was just amazing -in it, they taught everything about computers, their architecture, their programming languages, their operating systems, everything. It was such a thorough course.

在那时,能上电脑课让人觉得受宠若惊。只有少数大学才开设电脑课程,而且只有毕业班才有。但是一旦进入科罗拉多的工程班,即使只是新生,也可以去听任何课程,甚至包括毕业班的课程。电脑课给人以惊喜,在课上,老师教给我们所有的电脑知识:它们的知识体系、程序语言以及操作系统等等一切。这是一次完完整整的电脑学习。

The only problem was, it was held in the engineering building,where the classrooms were really small. So only a third of our class got to see the professor in person in one room. The other two-thirds had to watch on TV, on closed circuit, in a room that had four TV sets on the wall.

唯一的遗憾是,我们在工程大楼上课,而那里的教室都很小,所以仅有三分之一的人可与教授面对面交流,而其余三分之二就只能在教室,通过墙上的4台闭路电视学习。

So I thought, Okay. What a great opportunity for the TV Jammer. But first I had to make an even smaller TV Jammer, a version that would be even harder to detect. So I built one inside of a Magic Marker, including the battery and everything. (I'd taken the pen apart and put in a AA battery. At the very end of the pen I put in this little thumbscrew for tuning.)

那时我想:太好了,又一个玩玩电视干扰发射机的好机会。但首先我要再做一个更小的,更难以发现的。所以我这次在魔笔里做了一个,我把笔拆开,放进一节电池,在笔的上端放入小螺钉作为开关。

I took it to computer class one day. I went to my usual seat over to the left rear of the class, and I took my little TV Jammer pen, turned it on, and tried to jam the TVs. I didn't know if I was going to be able to do this - I wasn't sure if it was even possible to jam TVs where the antennas came in on a coax. After all, coaxial cable was unusual in those days. The normal thing was to have twin-feed antennas.

有一天上电脑课时我带上了新设备,坐在教室的左后排。我打开电视干扰发射机,企图破坏电视的播放。因为天线藏于笔轴内,我不知道能否破坏电视的播放,也不确定是否可能。毕竟同轴电缆在那时并不寻常,通常都是折叠式双天线。

But, sure enough, all the TV sets jammed. The one real near me didn't jam up that bad, but the other ones did. Well, almost instantly these three teaching assistants started looking at us. One of them said, uOkay. Whoever's got the transmitter, turn it off."

然而,所有电视都出问题了,只是离我最近的电视不是太严重。但那三位助教立即望向我们,其中一人问:“谁有传输器?请关掉它。”

Wow. I didn't even know there were TAs in the class. So while they're looking right at us, saying "turn it off," do you think I'm going to reach my hand down and turn it off in plain sight No way.

哇,我甚至不知道班上还有助教,所以当他们面朝我们说关掉它,你认为我就会就此罢手吗?绝不。

My plan had been to just jam it for a few seconds, but now I couldn't turn it off without getting caught.

我最初的计划只是玩一小会儿,但之后我却不想关掉又不被抓住。

So I'm sitting there kind of scared, afraid to move because they're watching us so closely. I couldn't even put my hand near it for fear that it might make the images on-screen wobble. I didn't even want to reach over to my Magic Marker and click the Jammer off because the guy next to me would hear me click something. He'd know I did it.

所以我小心翼翼地坐在那里,不轻易移动,因为他们如此之近地凝视着我们。我的手甚至不敢靠近它,害怕让图像摇晃不定。我甚至不敢触碰魔笔上端关上它,因为我附近的人可能会听到我按下什么的声音,他会知道我所作所为。

Eventually the TAs sat down, but they kept watching us. There was nothing they could do. And you know, the TVs weren't jammed so bad that we couldn't watch the professor or take notes. So our class just went on, with all of us watching the jammed TVs.

最后,助教们坐了下来,只能一直看着我们,别无他事。电视还没有花得我们看不清教授或是记笔记。因此,即使图像是花的,我们的课程仍可继续。

So I've got my Magic Marker TV Jammer sitting there between the two rings of my binder when suddenly the guy who's sitting the closest to the TV jammed the worst, in the right rear of the classroom, decides to gather his books and leave early. I decided to make the TVs waver as he was walking out. I felt like I could get away with it. I couldn't resist.

我坐在那里一动不动,突然有个坐在右后排的男生,因为他附近电视是最花的,准备起身收拾离开。我决定在他走出时调整好电视。我情不自禁地这样做,无法反抗。

As he was leaving, the picture back there on the right rear TV went perfect. One of the TAs pointed at him. The TA said, "There he goes."

当他离开时,右后排电视图像清晰无比。助教之一指着他说:“嗨,就是他。”

Pranks are entertainment, comedy. Not only did I manage to pull off this prank, but I managed to make it look as if someone else had done it. That's a step beyond the old rule "Don't get caught." I learned how to use that technique many times throughout my prank career. And if you're shocked that I can trick people with my pranks and not feel dishonest about it, remember that the basic form of entertainment is to make up stories. That's comedy.

恶作剧不过是娱乐和幽默。我不仅搞恶作剧,还将其嫁祸他人,因为老规则是“千万不要被抓住”,我丰富的恶作剧经验也让我学会如何使用这一伎俩。如果你惊讶于我以恶作剧哄骗人们,却还理直气壮,请记住娱乐的基本形式是编造故事,这不过是一场喜剧。

I don't know if they ever did anything to that guy, but I doubt it. I hope not. It's not like they could catch him with a TV Jam- mer. As far as I knew, I had the only one.

我怀疑他们是否处罚了那个男生,但我希望没有。他们不可能人赃并获,因为据我所知,仅我一人拥有电视干扰发射机。

- o -

But I did end up getting in some trouble that year.

那一年,我终于还是麻烦上身。

You see, I started writing programs that could kick paper out of the computer over at the computer printers everyone had to use at the Computer Center of the University of Colorado. That wasn't a big deal. But then I thought, Okay, what are computers for They're for calculating numbers. Calculation has always been central to my association with computers, you know. So I tried to think up something really clever.

那时我开始编写一些程序,能让计算机自动印纸,以供科罗拉多大学电脑中心所有人使用。这并不算什么。但后来我想:电脑是用来做什么的?它们用于数字计算。计算也一直是我与电脑之间最重要的联系。因此我尽力提炼出自己的想法。

I wrote seven programs - they were all real simple but extremely interesting in a math sense. One of them dealt with what I called "magic computer numbers." That would be the powers of two. So 21 equals 2, 22 is 4, 23 is 8, 24 is 16. These are the binary numbers all computers work with, so they are the most special of all the computer numbers.

我编写了7个程序,它们很简单但赋有极其有趣的数学意义。其中之一是解决我所谓的“神奇计算机数字”问题。主要进行2的运算。也就是21等于2,22等于4,23等于8,24等于16。这些都是所有计算机所运用的二进制,所以它们也是计算机数字中最为特别的一组。

I made it so the printer would print out the results formatted in a way that was readable. For instance, one line might say: 1,2. That meant 2 to the first power is 2. The next would say 2, 4: 2 to the second power is 4. You will see that the numbers get really big really fast. For example, 2 to the eighth power is 256; 2 to the sixteenth power is 65,536. So pretty soon I am filling up pages with these really long numbers! After enough pages, the powers of 2 would be almost a line long. Then they would expand to two or three lines. Eventually it got to where each number might be a whole page or more!

我编写好后,打印机就可打印出结果,读起来趣味横生。例如,其中一行:1,2。这表示2的1次方是2。如果是2,4,则表示2的2次方是4。你会发现数字变得越来越大。比如,2的8次方是256。2的16次方就是65536。很快,整张纸就被印满了数字。只要纸张足够,你就能看到位数达到一整行的数字,其后,还可多达2行、3行。最后一个数字可能占满整张纸,甚至更多。

Another program worked with Fibonacci numbers. These are numbers that go in a sequence like 1,2, 3, 5, 8,13,21,34 ... Each Fibonacci number is the sum of the two numbers preceding it. So it's a never-ending sequence. All of my seven programs did this - calculated numbers in these long, ridiculously long, sequences.

另一程序是有关斐波那契数列。这一数列的特点是:每一数字都为前两个数字之和,就像1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34……所以这是一个永无终止的数列。我的7个程序都可做此运算——计算出超长数列。

Some programs have loops and don't stop running because there is a bug, or a problem, with a program. That is called an infinite loop, which I told you about in connection with the chess game I did back in high school. Anyway, the Computer Center automatically kicked off any program that ran more than 64 seconds. So I figured out that all my computers could print out 60 pages in under 64 seconds, and that's why I wrote each program to print out only 60 pages all numbered page 1, page 2, etc. The next time I ran the program, it would print the next 60 pages (beginning at 61), and so on. I wrote all my programs so they would punch some cards I could use the next time so the programs could pick up where they left off.

有些程序进入循环,不再停止,那是因为程序里有问题,这就叫做死循环,我描述高中的棋子游戏时曾经提及。无论如何,电脑中心都会自动解除运行超过64秒的程序。所以,当我发现自己的计算机能在64秒内打印出60页时,我就将仅打印60页的指令写入程序,而且所有纸张都标有页码。等到下一次我再运行程序,它会从61开始,以此类推。我还让程序留有记录,这样当下次再运行时,就可从上次的结束点开始。

I would walk over to the Computer Center every morning and drop my seven programs off. Then, around noon, I would pick up my outputs and resubmit the programs. Then I would come back in the evening and resubmit them. I would get three runs a day times 60 pages times seven programs piling up in my dorm room. Mike, my roommate, started getting a little upset at all the space it was taking up. It was really piling up: reams and reams, feet and feet of computer paper, all stacking up in my dorm room.

每天早晨,我步行至电脑中心,运行我的7个程序。然后中午时,整理好所有输出的数据,并再次运行程序。到晚上,我还会再让它们运行一次。每天我去中心三次,打印的数据堆满了我的宿舍。我的室友迈克开始对此感到不安,害怕所有空间都被这些纸张占据。大量的打印纸张堆积在我的宿舍,看起来像座小山。

Then, one afternoon, I got to the Computer Center for an afternoon run and they didn't have my programs there. There was a note there saying I should see my professor right away.

此后,一天下午,我去电脑中心时,没找到我的程序,却发现一张纸条,上面写道:教授要立即见你。

I went to see him in his office. He said, "Okay, sit down." He started a tape recorder - he punched a button and started recording us. I remember I got a bit scared.

到达教授的办公室后,他说:“坐下吧。”同时,他打开一台录音机——按下按钮,开始记录我们的对话。那时我有点害怕了。

You've been running these programs on your own, he said.

“你一直在运行这些自己编写的程序。”他说。

And I said, "Yes. We were in a programming class. I was learn- ing programming. I ran them under my own student number. I didn't try to hide the fact I was running them."

我回答:“是的。我们曾是编程班的,我曾学习编程。运行时我也输入了自己的学号,我并未试图要隐藏自己的所作所为。”

This had nothing to do with our class, he said.

“这与你们班无关。”他又说。

It was FORTRAN, I told him.

“这就是FORTRAN语言。”我告诉他。

This is not the FORTRAN we teach, he said. And he was right. Because I had gone way into the manuals to find little tricks of mathematical symbols. I had gone way beyond simple programming, and we both knew it.

“这不是我们教授的FORTRAN语言,”他说。他是对的,因为我运用了一些手册上的数学小把戏,远远不止编程。

What Is FORTRAN

什么是FORTRAN语言?

FORTRAN is a computer language developed in the 1950s and still heavily used for scientific computing and numerical computation half a century later. The name comes from the words "Formula Translation." As a compiled language, it is typically faster and more powerful than an interpreted language such as BASIC.

FORTRAN是一种20世纪50年代发展起来的计算机语言,它运用于科学计算和数字运算长达半世纪之久。名字来源于“FormulaTranslation”(公式转换)。FORTRAN是一种编译型语言,与BASIC这样的解释型语言相比,它更为迅速和有力。

He said it took him a long time studying my programs to figure out what they did, but he finally figured them out. He said: "Are you trying to get me"

他告诉我他用了很长时间研究我的程序用于什么,最后终于找到答案。他问:“你想和我对着干吗?”

Get him I didn't know what he meant by that. I guess he felt threatened by the unrest happening in relation to the Vietnam War. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was big on that campus. But I was totally apolitical except for registering once to be in the University Republicans Club! I mean, I was just a mild, meek engineering student and would never be involved in anything politically subversive.

对着干?我不知他是什么意思。我猜想,也许是越战经历让他极度地不安。“争取民主社会学生会”当时成员众多,但我对政治漠不关心,只加入过大学共和社。其实,我不过是一名温顺的工程系学生,永不可能成为政治极端分子。

"Out to get you?" I said. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“和你对着干?”我说,我不知道他所言何物。

Well, he picked up the phone and called someone at the Computer Center. "These programs . . . Mr. Wozniak should be billed for this computer time."

然后他打电话叫来电脑中心的人:“这些程序……沃兹先生将为这些开支付账。”

Then I found out what I'd done. I'd run my class five times over its annual budget for computer time. I didn't even realize there were budgets. I thought if you're in a computer class, you get computer time. That was logical to assume. But now I realized I ran up a whole lot of money on his account, and my best guess is he was using me to get out of it. I didn't think they would actually charge me, a student. A freshman. But I was scared because the amount he was talking about was in the thousands of dollars -many times the out-of-state tuition money.

随后,我意识到自己的行为带来的后果。我将为上机开支而付费,相当于班级年预算的5倍。我曾以为电脑班学生使用电脑是免费的,但我意识到自己所花费的远远超过了学校预算的经费,我猜他是在借我脱身。我想他们不会真的让我付费,我不过是一名学生,而且是名新生。但我仍然很担心,因为他所谈及的帐目约有数千美元——高过我的学费好几倍。

So that's how it became very clear to me, at the end of that school year, that I was not going to make it an issue with my parents and try to go back to Colorado. I was on probation for computer abuse. I wouldn't let my parents find out. I didn't want them to get billed this huge amount of money. So that's how I decided to go to De Anza Community College the next year, instead of going back to Colorado like all my friends.

事已至此,我不想父母为此而劳烦,也决定不再试图回到科罗拉多大学。那个学年末,我被指定为滥用电脑,却不想父母得知此事,也不希望他们负担巨款。因此我决定次年回到DeAnza社区大学,而我的朋友们仍回到了科罗拉多大学。

What really bothers me when I think of this now is, they shouldn't have charged me. They should've praised me for doing these brilliant programs all on my own.

现在回想,真正让我烦恼的是,他们本不应该对我罚款,而应该对我独立完成的精明程序大加赞赏。

And I did get an A-plus in that class.

而我那门功课也的确得了A。

- o -

Now I was back home and attending De Anza Community College. I spent a lot of time designing and redesigning computers on paper, which is what I'd been doing in high school. Like when I took the manuals of popular minicomputers at the time (the pizza-box-sized, rack-mounted computers from Varian, Hewlett- Packard, Digital Equipment, and other companies in 1969 and 1970) and redesigned them, over and over, on paper so they would take fewer chips and run more efficiently.

后来我转学到DeAnza社区大学。我花上大量时间在纸上重复设计电脑,就如我在高中所做的那样。比如,那时我有很多大众的小型电脑手册,我一遍又一遍地重新设计书中的电脑,用更少的零件,却能更有效地工作。

By the time I finished at De Anza, I had literally designed and redesigned some of the best-known computers in the world. I'd become an expert on designing them, no question, because I'd redesigned their prototypes so many dozens of times. I'd done everything but build them. There was no doubt in my mind that if I ever did build them, I could get them to work. I was this virtual expert - and yes, I mean that in the software sense of the word "virtual." I never built those computers, but I was so entranced by and familiar with their innards that I easily could have taken any one of them apart and rebuilt it so that the computer would be cheaper, better, and more efficient.

直至从DeAnza大学毕业,在纸上,我反复设计了几乎全部当时世界上最有名的电脑。我无疑成了专家,因为我对它们的原型进行了无数次重新设计,只是没有真正建造出它们。但我心里从不怀疑它们可以正常工作。我的确可称之为专家——是的,专家,我是指以软件层次而言。我从未真正做出这些电脑,但我迷恋它们,而且对部件轻车熟路,分开任何零件,我都能轻松重组,并做出更加价廉物美的电脑。

I never had the courage to ask chip companies for free samples of what were then expensive chips. A year later I would meet Steve Jobs, who showed me how brave he was by scoring free chips just by calling sales reps. I could never do that. Our intro- verted and extroverted personalities (guess who's which) really helped us in those days. What one of us found difficult, the other often accomplished pretty handily. Examples of that teamwork are all over this story.

我没有勇气向器材公司免费索取价值不菲的样品。一年后,我与斯蒂夫·乔布斯相遇,他能与销售商通通电话就得到免费器材,这让我见识到他是多么的勇敢。对我而言,则永远无法做到。我们一个内向,一个外向,刚好互补。其中一人感觉困难,另一人常常可以轻松解决,完全就是黄金搭档。

- o -

Once, at De Anza, my quantum physics teacher said, "Wozniak. That's an unusual name. I knew a Wozniak once. There was a Wozniak who went to Caltech."

在DeAnza时,我的量子物理老师有次说道:“沃兹真是与众不同的名字。我还认识一位叫沃兹的人,他去了凯泰公司(Caltech)。”

My father, I said, "he went to Caltech."

“那是我父亲。”我回答,“他去了凯泰。”

Well, this one was a great football player.

“他可是个很棒的橄榄球运动员。”

That was my father, I told him. He was the team's quarterback.

我告诉他,那就是我父亲,因为他曾是球队的四分卫。

Yes, the teacher said. "We would never go to football games, but at Caltech, you had to go just to watch Jerry Wozniak. He was famous."

“是的,”他说,“我们从不去看橄榄球比赛,但在凯泰公司,我们会去看杰瑞·沃兹踢球。他声名远播。”

You know, I think my dad was the one good quarterback Caltech ever had. He even got scouted by the Los Angeles Rams, though I don't think he was good enough to play pro. Still, it was neat to hear from a physics teacher that he remembered my dad for his football. It made me feel like I shared a history with him. The teacher once even brought me a Caltech paper from back in those days with a picture of my dad in his uniform.

我认为老爸是凯泰公司有史以来最好的四分卫。洛杉矶公羊队甚至想将他纳入旗下,但我不知道他是否优秀到可以成为职业运动员。但我清楚地听到物理老师因父亲的球技而对他印象深刻。我感觉自己正在分享父亲过去的经历。老师甚至给我看了一份那时凯泰的报纸,上面有父亲穿着制服的照片。

I didn't get along with all the teachers, though. I was taking an advanced-level math class, and the teacher caught me not paying attention. (I was trying to figure out how to write a FORTRAN compiler in machine language for the Data General Nova.)

并非每一门课我都专心致志。在高等数学课上,我就总是心不在焉。我总在思考如何用机器语言为通用数据公司的NOVA小型机编写一种FORTRAN语言编辑器。

I was just at the first line where you have to enter something and store it in memory when he said: "You've got so much potential, Wozniak. If only you'd just put yourself into this material."

我在脑中编写好第一行,正试图记住,只听老师说:“沃兹,只要你专心听课,在数学上定有无限潜能。”

It stung me the way he said that in front of the whole class. That wasn't necessary. I just wanted to sit in class and do whatever it was I felt like doing. Maybe I was bored, I don't know. I was the sort of person who read the book, took the test, and got good grades in subjects like math.

他当众言之,让我如芒刺在背,这不是一个好办法,我不过在课堂上做些自己想做的事,也可能是我感到无聊,因为我是那种看看书就能拿到好成绩的学生,在数学上也是如此。

- o -

It was also at De Anza that I got this mental turnaround on politics. I started seriously thinking about whether the Vietnam War was right or wrong. Who was it helping, and did we have any place there

Back in high school, I was for the war. My father told me our country was the greatest in the world, and my thinking was like his: that we had to stand up for democracy versus communism; and the reasons why, stemming from our Constitution. I had never thought deeply about political issues aside from that, and I was really for my country, right or wrong. I mean, I was for my country the same way you root for your school's team, right or wrong. At the University of Colorado, the University Republicans Club was one of the only two clubs I joined (the other was the Amateur Radio Club).

But 1 started to wonder why so many people were protesting the war so visibly. A lot of academics and journalists were talking about the history of the Vietnamese people and had explanations for why the U.S. position was wrong. It was a civil war, involving treaties, agreements, and a history that didn't affect the United States one whit. The trouble is, I could find no intelligent academic reasoning coming from the pro-war side, just the constant refrain that we were doing good. They could only say that we were there protecting democracy.

One of my biggest problems was that South Vietnam, which we were supposedly protecting, wasn't even close to a democracy. It was more like a corrupt dictatorship. How could we ever stand up for a dictatorship I started seeing that there was a lot more truth on the side of the people against the war.

The people against the war were also talking about how good peace was compared to war. Sure, the world can't live in perfect peace and harmony, but it's a good ideal. I had come to learn of Jesus, from my friend Randy Adair in college, that he always tried to find ways toward peace. Although I'm not a Christian person, and don't belong to any religion, what Jesus the historical figure stood for were things I stood for, and those stories Randy told me about him struck a chord with me emotionally. I didn't believe in violence or hurting people.

At De Anza, I thought deeply about the war. I considered myself to be athletic and brave. But would I shoot a bullet at another human being I remember sitting alone at the white Formica table in my bedroom, coming to the conclusion that I could let someone shoot at me, but I couldn't shoot back.

I thought, What if I'm in Vietnam and I'm shooting at some guy He's just like me, that guy. He sits down just like I do. He plays cards and he eats pizza, or the equivalent of it, just like normal people I know. He has a family. Why would I want to hurt this person He might have his reasons for being where he is in the world - and Vietnam had its reason - but none of these reasons ever touched me in California.

From that standpoint, I could see how this war could be a pretty dangerous one for me. Because I was morally and truthfully a conscientious objector in every sense. But the military only counted you as one if you were in a church (which made you exempt from conflict duties), and I had no church. I had no religion. I just had my own logic.

So I wasn't a conscientious objector, I just objected to my personally having to kill or hurt anyone.