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The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

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Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#81

Post by supersan »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #67
photogrammetry wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: >So now Phil Katz is dead. He drank himself to death, alone in a motel room, a bottle of booze in his hand and five empties in the room. One can only guess what drove him to such a tragic end, but it is a fitting demise for a man whose professional reputation is based entirely on a lie. What a heartless asshole.

I am old enough to have actually been involved with FidoNet when all of this was going down, and at the time Katz pretty much had the community believing that he was a little guy being unfairly squashed by the huge corporate behemoth of System Enhancement Associates for making a better version of their software. Pretty much every single bit of that turned out, indeed, to be a lie. Katz did steal SEA's work and claime…

This 8 year old comment on reddit[1] sheds more light on the controversy from a person who knew him I guess.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/74x5e/phil_kat...

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#83

Post by agumonkey »

maxander wrote: post #5

A tragic tale, and a reminder that intelligence and business success are no replacement for mental health. Even in the BBC's account, the tone of the writing seems to present a lot of warning signs and developing problems as just a genius' wacky eccentricities. If you require substances in order to function, can't maintain social relationships or struggle with harmful lifestyles, these aren't mere character traits, t…

Something like 10 years ago I heard about a book called emotional intelligence. That title shocked me. Few people told me everything that they found hard was easy for me, while everything that was easy for them was hard for me. There's a lot of knowledge about the emotional, or socio-affective, space that's worth not ignoring. Sadly society kinda put "wit" over "wise" and I, maybe others, fell in the brainiac race trap.

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#84

Post by jnbiche »

coldtea wrote: post #75
echlebek wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If said friend wasn't genetically predisposed to alcoholism, it would explain why they would be able to quit drinking to excess with relative ease.

This goes against Occam's razor, needing 2 different mechanisms, one for people that manage to quit drinking (even after 5 decades of alcoholism) and one (genetic) for others that died alcoholics.

Well, specialists have long hypothesized that there is a huge difference between "heavy drinkers" (usually in their teens/20s and who quit) and "alcoholics". Heavy drinkers usually overimbibe as part of their social circle (fraternities, etc.) whereas budding alcoholics are the ones drinking alone at home in their teens/20s.

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#85

Post by jnbiche »

photogrammetry wrote: post #63
rockdoe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the name it was actually the smaller company. The relevant articles and info are linked from Wikipedia and make for interesting reading. When Katz died people asked the ARC people what they thought about him: http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html

From your link: >So now Phil Katz is dead. He drank himself to death, alone in a motel room, a bottle of booze in his hand and five empties in the room. One can only guess what drove him to such a tragic end, but it is a fitting demise for a man whose professional reputation is based entirely on a lie. What a heartless asshole.

> What a heartless asshole.

Agreed. Most of us have either experienced ourselves or seen someone suffer from an illness or condition we wouldn't "wish on our worst enemy".

Most of us.

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#86

Post by SiVal »

jwdunne wrote: post #73
babbage12 wrote: post #7

I just lost my best mate from university to alcohol. Growing up in Britain, this is not my first friend I've lost because of alcohol. I'm in tears... I've struggled with drinking too much myself, this hits very close to home.

Brit here too. I feel your pain. I'm not a drinker but my parents are. It's getting more and more excessive. I'll find litres of whiskey hone in a sitting. The drink has ruined my relationship with them. When I was a teenager, me and my sister suffered from psychosis. They blamed their drinking on that. When we got better, they continued and found a different scapegoat. My sister is going through children's mental he…

I have no idea whether this will help at all, but after staring at it for a while, I decided I had to try. I think it's VERY likely that a craving for a chemical such as alcohol or various drugs is learned by the brain and shares a property with such things as language learning, which is that early learning plants it deeply and indelibly in a rapidly developing brain--making it essentially native to the brain's structure--while late learning is relatively superficial.

Based on what I've seen, those who wait to start drinking until well into adulthood have brains that are MUCH more resistant to alcoholism.

The implication for you, then, is that if you can't get your sister to just join you in being a non-drinker, then at least persuade her to procrastinate her drinking as many years as possible and use the language-learning analogy if it helps: the LAST thing you want to do is become a "native drinker". You want it to be something always a little foreign and unnatural to your brain so you can push it away entirely should you ever choose to do so.

Again, this might be of no use to you in your personal situation (and sorry I can't be more useful), but if there's any way you can get her to wait until after college/university age, she won't be completely safe (no drinker is), but she will have MUCH more power than she has now.

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#87

Post by DonHopkins »

photogrammetry wrote: post #63
rockdoe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the name it was actually the smaller company. The relevant articles and info are linked from Wikipedia and make for interesting reading. When Katz died people asked the ARC people what they thought about him: http://www.esva.net/~thom/philkatz.html

From your link: >So now Phil Katz is dead. He drank himself to death, alone in a motel room, a bottle of booze in his hand and five empties in the room. One can only guess what drove him to such a tragic end, but it is a fitting demise for a man whose professional reputation is based entirely on a lie. What a heartless asshole.

You forgot to quote the harshest part:

>I can think of no more fitting epitath than the final clause of the original ARC copyright statement:

>"If you fail to abide by the terms of this license, then your conscience will haunt you for the rest of your life."

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#88

Post by philjohn »

hyperpallium wrote: post #54
shortformblog wrote: post #30

One of the most heartbreaking stories of of the tech world, and one that comes with a lot of bad blood. Be sure to watch Jason Scott's documentary clip on the ARC vs PKARC battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiaM5MT1Ok8 I admit that I've always wondered what a dramatic film based on this story would look like. It has all of the highs and lows of a movie, and it would be worth retelling for both the lessons it has…

I feel most sorry for Tom Henderson, esp at 20:20 claiming he's over it. Low barriers to entry make software easy to get into... and easy for your replacement to get into. It seems software businesses aren't common any more for that reason (excepting MS).

They are, it's just rather than installing the software locally, you access it as a service.

And games, games developers are still software companies, albeit in the entertainment space.

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#89

Post by agumonkey »

supersan wrote: post #81
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am old enough to have actually been involved with FidoNet when all of this was going down, and at the time Katz pretty much had the community believing that he was a little guy being unfairly squashed by the huge corporate behemoth of System Enhancement Associates for making a better version of their software. Pretty much every single bit of that turned out, indeed, to be a lie. Katz did steal SEA's work and claime…

This 8 year old comment on reddit[1] sheds more light on the controversy from a person who knew him I guess. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/74x5e/phil_kat...

The whole thing hurts because things got twisted for no reasons. Both tiny business. Birth of networks. Katz did not only rename and sell, based on the reddit comment it had value. It's just that social perception and hubris turned into a sour sauce. If Katz and Henderson's companies managed to collaborate instead of going into battle .. I can easily see immensely better ending for both parties.

Re: The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000)

#90

Post by agumonkey »

WalterBright wrote: post #62
smarks wrote: post #46

Very sad story. The guy's initials are immortalized in the magic number of the zip file format, the bytes of which are 0x50 0x4b 0x03 0x04 The values 0x50 0x4b are 'P' 'K' in ASCII. Note also that every Java JAR file is also a ZIP file, so they all begin with the same magic number.

Windows executables start with "MZ", for Mark Zbikowski. Edit: fixed the name

More recently I found out that systemd binary format starts with LPKS and a few other initials. Those who know the dev team can easily find which is who.
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