Thanks for posting that! I just had a flashback to my BBS/FidoNet days of childhood.
The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
51–60 of 155 posts
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#52To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. It's a poor "manifesto" too. What exactly are the aims of The Hacker? "Exploring", "Outsmarting you", and "judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like". Platitudes, really, if you set aside the emotional outbursts surrounding them. The Jargon File offer…
> To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. Well sure, but let's not discount the historical value of its angsty naïveté. This is an important part of our cultural history -- it helps explain the peculiar contradiction that many of us still feel a sense of persecution even as working in technology has become both luc…
Computing in general started with such an idealistic, academic mindset. It's important to remember that the "hacker mindset" was really a call to return to that original approach where people would literally hack together on a computer, explore its limits and do it simply for the thrill. By the 80s, there was a business/professionalism that was eating away at that early approach and the "manifesto" is almost a straight lament. Same thing happened to startups, the Web, etc.
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#53Excellent advice. ESR's ideology is vile, he tries to inject it into everything, and he has no shame. He regularly judges and bullies people on the color of their skin, gender, nationality and religion, and he's certainly not qualified as a "hacker". https://twitter.com/iaincollins/status/719687723590762496 @iaincollins Iain Collins Retweeted $30,000 Logout CSRF TIL ESR is a racist white supremacist and his neo-paga…
You cite a bunch of people echochambering how much of a big, bad racist ESR is and call him names. The two direct quotes from him make policy points about drama from employees belonging to a group known for same and about anti-racism being used as a motivation for handwaving what he claims is a valid demographic observation. Even if you don't agree with his (nutzo!) politics you should refrain from repeating sloppy a…
I would actually agree on that.
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. He said Mozilla didn't deserve to exist because they removed Eich as head after that debacle. And yeah, he's an awful person. But he does, to some extent, deserve the title "Hacker," because he genuinely is a talented programmer. We don't have to stoop to his level, and discrininate based on ideology: even if we hate him, we can admit he's got talent.
His software work is unremarkable (fetchmail is trivial and buggy, and CML2 was rejected by the Linux kernel developers), and he's made his career not by writing software but by attacking real hackers like Richard Stallman and trying to bring down their work, not by actually constructively developing any useful software himself. Attacking real hackers and trying to discourage people from using "free software" isn't "…
Fair enough, but how about GPSD?
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#55This is found at the very end of the Vice article, still on the front page of HN: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/72-hours-of-pwnage-a-paran...
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
His software work is unremarkable (fetchmail is trivial and buggy, and CML2 was rejected by the Linux kernel developers), and he's made his career not by writing software but by attacking real hackers like Richard Stallman and trying to bring down their work, not by actually constructively developing any useful software himself. Attacking real hackers and trying to discourage people from using "free software" isn't "…
> When I knew him during the 80's, he would go on and on ad nauseum about his beloved "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle NetNews Reader" and how so much better than every other netnews reader. But he never collaborated with anyone, and he never released it under any license. Much more Bizarre than Cathedral. The world is full of such things, and was much more so back in the 90s and early 2000s. People brag about how great…
I think you missed the dripping irony that the person whose sole topic of conversation during the 1980's was the newsreader software he was developing, but he never shared it or collaborated with anyone or ever even published it under any license, also wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazar".
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#57To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. It's a poor "manifesto" too. What exactly are the aims of The Hacker? "Exploring", "Outsmarting you", and "judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like". Platitudes, really, if you set aside the emotional outbursts surrounding them. The Jargon File offer…
> It's a poor "manifesto" too. What exactly are the aims of The Hacker? "Exploring", "Outsmarting you", and "judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like". Platitudes, really, if you set aside the emotional outbursts surrounding them.
Platitudes, yes, but they're platitudes because everyone assumes that those are goods that everyone values. The thing is, while most people would say they value those things, very few people actually follow through on it. But hacker culture is all about what you actually follow through and do, so they actually follow through.
Take, for example, a social justice movement that pulls women out of STEM and into women's studies and related fields, and then complains that women don't get into STEM fields. Meanwhile, women are actually much better represented in hacker culture than in most of STEM, because hackers, unlike the rest of the conversation around women in STEM, don't give a fuck about women. They only care what people do, and it turns out women do about the same amount of stuff as men.
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
His software work is unremarkable (fetchmail is trivial and buggy, and CML2 was rejected by the Linux kernel developers), and he's made his career not by writing software but by attacking real hackers like Richard Stallman and trying to bring down their work, not by actually constructively developing any useful software himself. Attacking real hackers and trying to discourage people from using "free software" isn't "…
Fair enough, but how about GPSD?
The fact that GPSD is the best thing you can come up with that he wrote pretty much proves my point, doesn't it?
If that's all it takes to brand yourself a "hacker", in spite of executing a vicious multi-decade jihad against Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, then being a "hacker" doesn't mean anything.
I'd like to think that vitriolically disagreeing with the part of the Hacker Manifesto that says "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religous bias," and other violent acts like sending a death threat to Bruce Perins then trying to excuse it by explaining he was only trying to "defame" him, would disqualify him from branding himself as a hacker. But I'm an idealist.
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you feel about it showing up in the critically acclaimed film, Hackers? That was my first exposure to it.
Pleased, because I think I'm the answer to the trivia question "What was the first email address to ever appear in a major movie credit roll". Sad, because, damn, is that a bad movie.
I quite enjoyed Hacker, albeit to laugh at. But I've seen far worse "Hacker" themed movies. Though it party helps that Hackers has aged pretty well compared to many of the others.
Going back to your point about being angst: if it's any consolation, that's how I felt as a teenager as well. I didn't come across your manifesto until quite some years after it was written but it definitely resonates with how I felt at the time as well.
Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)
#60Excellent advice. ESR's ideology is vile, he tries to inject it into everything, and he has no shame. He regularly judges and bullies people on the color of their skin, gender, nationality and religion, and he's certainly not qualified as a "hacker". https://twitter.com/iaincollins/status/719687723590762496 @iaincollins Iain Collins Retweeted $30,000 Logout CSRF TIL ESR is a racist white supremacist and his neo-paga…
You cite a bunch of people echochambering how much of a big, bad racist ESR is and call him names. The two direct quotes from him make policy points about drama from employees belonging to a group known for same and about anti-racism being used as a motivation for handwaving what he claims is a valid demographic observation. Even if you don't agree with his (nutzo!) politics you should refrain from repeating sloppy a…
Maybe I've been observing him for longer and more closely than you have. Using the word "thug" in a conversation about street fighters is one thing. But using it to viciously attack people in the open source community who take offense at an idiotic click-bait essay entitled "Blacks are Lazy" that you happen to agree with is something else entirely. With dog whistles, context matters.
You have read the essay, haven't you? Do you agree with Russ's premise, and do you think he should have resigned or not? And do you think everyone who called on Russ to resign is a "fool" and a "thug"? If not, then what do you think he really mean by that term? And who exactly was being "anti-intellectual", and using "violence" to "suppress his opposing viewpoints" and force him to resign, as you claim?
Remember: Eric S Raymond is the gun nut who who made death threats against Bruce Perens, which he excused it as merely trying to "defame" him. Nobody ever threatened Russ Nelson's life for claiming that "Blacks are Lazy" or Eric Raymond's life for agreeing with him and defending him.
I've already had this discussion about dog whistles with him in the comments section of his blog, and he and his followers deny that there is even such a thing as a "dog whistle". According to them, the entire concept of "dog whistles" is just part of a made-up conspiracy to paint the far right wing as racist, because they don't hear any dog whistles, and anyway: if you admit to hearing the whistle, that makes you racist yourself [1]. As if their own words and actions weren't enough.
Do you really agree with ESR and his followers that there's no such thing as "dog whistle politics"?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dog-whistle_politics#Is_t...