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Comment by ziggy_star | Hacker News Reader

It would be kind of less interesting if they just figured it all for you and served it up on a silver platter don't you reckon? Where is your phreaking spirit at? :)

In the before computers times there was an ironically titled book called 'Steal This Book'.

Amongst a verity of other things it describes one of the funniest and most beautiful hacks I've ever heard of. I'm leaving this as a hint for others for fun or the rare cases that I know are on here that absolutely need to eat without money.

It requires one trusted accomplice and an all you can eat buffet. The rest is up to you to find out. It always works flawlessly and has for over half a century.

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That book strongly reminds me of this review of "On the Road":

> On The Road seems to be a picture of a high-trust society. Drivers assume hitchhikers are trustworthy and will take them anywhere. Women assume men are trustworthy and will accept any promise. Employers assume workers are trustworthy and don’t bother with background checks. It’s pretty neat.

> But On The Road is, most importantly, a picture of a high-trust society collapsing. And it’s collapsing precisely because the book’s protagonists are going around defecting against everyone they meet at a hundred ten miles an hour.

Well observed. The very ending of On The Road itself addresses this if you read carefully, Kerouac did not lack in self awareness.

But then again he was a yuppie not a hippie trying to levitate the pentagon so that all the evil spirits fall out. ;)

And here we are where we are eh?

Kerouac aside, wasn't it the yippies (not yuppies) that were doing the Pentagon performance?

ISTR yuppies were years after the Youth International Party (and quite different).

Anyone?

Sorry I really bungled it up. Blame autocorrect and lack of coffee.

Meant to say Kerouac was a beatnik, Abbie was a yippie who inspired a generation of dirty hippies.

And we've sunk further still but I don't know that there is a lasting term yet. Maybe it will be NPC? I favor Quaranteenie (which makes less sense but sounds more fun, I mean by it a teenager who was locked up during their formative years and ended up a politically active mentally ill ignoramus)?

> Where is your phreaking spirit at?

You gotta keep in mind that there is a sizeable portion of any hacker culture that doesn't want to (or can't) do any part of the actual hacking that gets things figured out, but instead just want to use what was figured out in ways not intended by the original purpose of whatever was hacked. One might say the script kiddies of the physical side of things.

There are way more cooks in the kitchen than chefs.

To put it a little nicer, there's many skills encompassed by the title "hacker". There is no such thing as a universal jack of all trades hacker. Some are better at software, some are more comfortable in hardware. The RF hackers have a whole bundle of sub specialties.

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