Xref: utzoo alt.religion.computers:1167 gnu.misc.discuss:585 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!oliveb!orc!decwrl!granite.pa.dec.com!mellon From: mellon@nigiri.pa.dec.com (Ted Lemon) Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,gnu.misc.discuss Subject: The meaning of life, as it relates to hacking. Message-ID: Date: 20 Dec 89 05:58:00 GMT References: <4639@sugar.hackercorp.com> <4ZW1ijS00WBKE1qh5C@andrew.cmu.edu> <4774@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1989Dec18.052331.4514@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <4791@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1989Dec18.235119.8828@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <4793@sugar.hackercorp.com> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 92 In-reply-to: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com's message of 19 Dec 89 05:04:00 GMT Peter da Silva writes: >If you were willing to sit down and think about what I'm saying instead of >acting like a literal-minded idiot you'd see the point. Terminal programs are >computer-geek software because they're something that other computer-nerds >will look at and say "wow, you're a cool frood you" and give the guy who wrote >it an ego-boost. So he'll go back and do it again and make it better. Can't >you keep an argument straight for two messages in a row? Peter, this is an ad hominem argument. If you wish to be considered worth listening to, I strongly recommend that you reread whatever you have to say and delete *all* ad hominem arguments, no matter how annoyed you are at the other poster. My general reaction to arguments like yours (the non- ad hominem arguments, that is) is anger. Why? Because it's so pointless to be discussing this. This is a free country. Everybody is pretty much allowed to do what they want to until they start abridging the rights of others. In recent times, these rights have been more and more abridged for lesser and lesser reasons. Today, your right to own property is in jeopardy because of the government's "War on Drugs." So is your freedom of speech. Some people in the Bible Belt would like to see you forced to worship God their way. Fortunately, many others do not want this. The media is censoring itself because it's uneconomical to show unpalatable stories to the Amurkan People. In some states, you can be sentenced to ten years in jail, according to the Supreme Court of the United States of America, for giving your wife head. In this climate of increased government involvement in the most personal aspects of our day-to-day lives, you are arguing that we should ask the government to step in *yet again* and take away another basic freedom that's been present, de facto, since before the ratification of the Bill of Rights. I would like to ask you, Peter, just how much your freedom to make software is worth to the people of the United States. Will Bill "Stump" Watkins of Frozen Glen, North Dakota, a wheat farmer, have a better life because you wrote The Great Program? Will Winona Trumbley get over the horror of seeing her husband shot fifteen times in front of a burning cross because of the program you write? (The people mentioned in this paragraph are not intended to resemble any person, living or dead.) Peter, you and I are incredibly fortunate. In today's world, at least in developed countries, intelligence is valued much more highly than any other attribute. If you are smart, and you know how to make use of your smarts, you will never want for any of the basic necessities of life. Furthermore, you will be able to provide yourself with better therapy for any personal problems you may have than the best psychotherapist or NLP trainer in the world. If you make use of your intelligence, you will become a happy, fulfilled person. There are people in the world who do not have your advantages. A few weeks ago, I was at a friend's house, and a man knocked on the door. He walked into the house, and told us that somebody had been messing with my BMW motorcycle, which was parked out front. He then proceeded to hit us up for eight dollars to pay for a room in a transient hotel. He took off his jacket and essentially strip-searched himself to show us that he wasn't armed. He abased himself in front of us. How would you like to be in that poor man's position? How would you like it if the only thing you had of any value at all was your ability to work, and if you lived in a society where manual labour was considered low and meaningless, so that you never even had the chance to build up enough pride in yourself to be able to look someone in the eye and say, ``I'm worth something to you! Hire me!'' Let me tell you something, Peter. You are worth something. But you're not so important that you should be given a government-enforced grant to rake in money at the cost of the advancement of the state of the art. Good things can be done with software, and with computers. But the good things that get done with them aren't the amazing spreadsheets that let people count their money ten times faster than they used to. The recent stock market scares are evidence of that. The value of good software is in its ability to improve the human condition. It's in the ability to make somebody's work less frustrating. It's in the ability to simulate the total effect of a new drug on the human system. It's in the ability to examine the genetic code, and turn off the bit that says, ``this man shall be blind'', or ``this woman shall die of cancer''. It's in the ability to give that man who abased himself in my friend's living room a chance to be happy, and to feel good about himself. I don't know how to accomplish all these things, but frankly, I do know that making a few people obcenely wealthy just isn't the way. _MelloN_