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To: Mephisto who wrote (27270)	2/5/2000 1:58:00 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

I understand that a "hacker" is not necessarily bad unless he or she breaks the law. Very OT: Interesting how word usage changes. Thirty years ago when it was still quite early in my software development life, I had the pleasure of working with a really super programmer by the name of Neil on the design of an on-line database system. He contended that there were two types of programmers -- "real" programmers and "hacks" or "hackers". Real programmers looked at each new programming task as a fresh puzzle to solve, figured out what was needed to solve it, and created a solution. Hacks or hackers, he used both words, would simply copy prior solutions as much as possible and edit them until they worked, more or less. I would guess he was 20 years into his career at that point and said he had only ever met 6 real programmers ... I made 7. Now, with or without the legality issue, hacker has a much more positive connotation, at least in terms of presumed programming talent, but I confess that I still carry some of Neil's prejudice on the matter since the modern hacker tends to be the sort of person that is very talented at tearing something apart, but often couldn't build much of anything.

To: Mephisto who wrote (27270)	2/6/2000 2:54:00 PM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

The problem is that you must find a way to detect the good hackers from the bad hackers. A good hacker is employed and given equity in the network. A bad hacker is only 14 and needs to stay in school. I very much like the idea of gene selection!!! No you don't! It was probably an engineer WITH the autistic geek gene that mapped the autistic geek gene in the first place! You're talking about re-engineering engineers to have a 'better' social conscience. How are you and Sugar? And how are the kids and your animal farm? Now that you mention it, everything has an eerie calm about it. :) -JCJ