Comment by rayiner

12 years ago

You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property.

Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other peoples' property.

The stuff Bill and Steve did--they did it because they were smart kids and could get away with it. But saying it was a necessary component of their future success is just romanticization.

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rayiner

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mindslight  12 years ago

Perhaps these "other people" who don't want their property "interfered with" should not wantonly hook it up to a global communications network full of anonymous actors. In an ideal world the law would quickly change to match the reality of an unaccountable network, hacking itself would be legal, and only specific intended harm caused by it would be a crime.

The problem here stems from young being people more in touch with actual reality, as they haven't been beaten down by society to respect arbitrary social mores. So they take risks doing things that seemingly should have no consequence - like smoking marijuana or sending nonstandard signals over communication networks. And so a few unlucky ones get caught, and the best they can currently hope for is to have an institution that will go to bat and isolate them from the "real world" of public persecutors' scoreboards.

  • munin  12 years ago

    cool! would you be okay if someone hacked your computer and posted all of your e-mail to the public?

    • mindslight  12 years ago

      I'd clearly be upset, but that doesn't mean I'd pursue legal recourse. Not that I'd even have that available to me today, unless the perpetrator is unlucky and I'm a celebrity.

      And none of what I said keeps vindictively publishing someone's semi-private information from being the specific crime in your example. My point is that the serious of the situation should depend on the intent and damage caused, as well as the actual victims (email account holder) feeling of wrongedness, rather than an immediate felony because witchcraft. For example if you get into a bar fight, there is a whole spectrum from getting temporarily kicked out, to assault charges, to second-degree murder, depending on what actually occurs. While getting into a scuffle is wrong, it doesn't and shouldn't lead to life-altering penalties.

angersock  12 years ago

"Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering."

Tinkering is exactly what got us Linux, what got us Unix, and what got us radio communication and x-rays.

So, no, I do believe you are mistaken.

  • rayiner  12 years ago

    Linux isn't a great example of scientific advancement, being a clone of UNIX. UNIX was the product of a commercial research lab. BSD was the product of an academic research lab. I'm not sure who you're referring to with radios and Xrays, but those were discovered in a very different time. A lot of those folks were professors and today would be doing funded work at universities.

    • sillysaurus3  12 years ago

      The important advancements in the recent modern world haven't really been scientific in the traditional sense of "scientific advancement." The advancements of the last decade are more like engineering than pure scientific discovery. Under that definition, Linux certainly qualifies, because it's a major feat of engineering regardless of its roots in Unix.

      Would you mind giving your thoughts on http://paulgraham.com/america.html ? Specifically, point #7:

      If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can assume larval startups will break most of them, because they don't know what the laws are and don't have time to find out.

      For example, many startups in America begin in places where it's not really legal to run a business. Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Google were all run out of garages. Many more startups, including ours, were initially run out of apartments. If the laws against such things were actually enforced, most startups wouldn't happen.

      That could be a problem in fussier countries. If Hewlett and Packard tried running an electronics company out of their garage in Switzerland, the old lady next door would report them to the municipal authorities.

      The reason I responded the way I did is because you seem to be arguing for a docile population, which to anyone who has studied history is a recipe for disaster.

      7 replies →

wolfgke  12 years ago

> Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other peoples' property.

It's hacker culture that created GNU/Linux (and lots of other free software), not DARPA's funding.