bridgetroll

I'm being nitpicky here, but in the about page, get rid of the "developed the definitive..." Its too alliterative. Also, what is " the definitive platform?" wirewize? another CEI product?

And we know nothing about you. Maybe some more depth and please avoid marketslick nonspeak, it tends to turn people off.

I for one, will welcome our robot overlords. Did I say overlords? I mean protectors.

Joking aside, I have no idea of most of the ideas as I'm no expert in them.

I DID find it striking that not one mentioned climate change or global warming and its impact on us and the information technology needs we will face to meet the challenges of an environmentally changing world.

As a troll (bridge troll, see?) I agree with rms.

As a newbie to this site, I know I stand on little HN history and don't really expect the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sorry I missed your suggestion. Hilarious.

I think we can all agree that "all work and no play makes John a dull boy." but that "there is a place and a time for everything." so I personally like a little humor interjected in to otherwise serious conversation, but too much joking is boorish, at least at HN. If I want abuse or to abuse someone, I'll go to slashdot (yeah, that was a trollish statement).

Now what about the difference between being a troll or a devil's advocate, or someone who is just plain crude, but well meaning? Sometimes easy to tell, sometimes tough.

If you really get stressed out with the crying and sleeplessness, just take some video or pictures being "cranky". That's what I did. It became a significant stress reliever.

Here is my take:

First, I observe two broad primary meanings of "hacker" in computer culture today. One is an individual whose interest is in computer security. The other is an individual whose interest is in creative programming. The person has a drive to create, invent, to make computers do things that they have not done before.

The former is what the article is about. The latter is what I understand PG means when he says "hacker".

Second, I don't buy in the least the phrack author's take on the future demise of the security industry do to drying up at the well of capability. This is bollocks. I read a lot of sour grapes coming from the author that the old style hacker as cracker culture may be dying or dead. That I don't know, I'm not nor have been part of that community. But if one looks at Common Criteria (http://www.commoncriteriaportal.org ), or DoD Instruction 8500.2 (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/850002.htm) one will see that security quality is far from dead. One doesn't have to be part of an underground culture to "get security." Instead it has become very formalized and institutionalized, emerging from an "Art form" into an engineering discipline.

And for kicks check out the US Air Force Cyber Command ( http://www.afcyber.af.mil )

EDIT: I have to add: Yes I have experience working with DoD software security contractors. Some of whom are very capable even though they did not come from the underground.

I figure about as far off as Bermuda shorts are from Speedos.

And dang it, where's my flying car?

The cold water is harsh, but not necessarily a "bad thing" as it weeds out the weaker ones.

The point is, "Do we want to spoon feed sciences?" Looking at what we, western society, boil into pablum to get people to pretend to comprehend, in my opinion, causes more problems than helps. It gives a false sense of understanding, like the solar system model of the atom.

Having said that I concede that there is no reason to purposefully obfuscate sciences and higher level math.

Actually, I am a parent and both of us, while we love our children and love to see them grow, are still tickled to be done with diapers. And when I hear a kid whine or a baby cry (out in public), it is music to my ears; That is not my kid crying, I don't have to do anything about it. A bit selfish yes, but an honest and natural feeling.

The author is obviously under the delusion that an introduction to calculus should be gentle and soothing, like slipping into a warm bubble bath. It should not. It should be swift and shocking, like jumping into a river in early Spring.

Mathematics requires an exact and expert hand. They are EMTs. This of your Calc 1 mid-term: "Quick, you have two minutes, resuscitate this equation!"

when, because of diminishing returns, one reaches the margin where wasting time is no longer providing significant benefits (such as feeling better).

Even if you don't get paid, look at the grandparent/aunt/uncles' position: have some fun with the baby, change some yucky diapers (ok not so fun), but in a short time you will be handing responsibility back to the parents, who will have to wake up in the middle of the night, night after night...

Shh...Wouldn't want the word to get out.

"Irresponsibility isn't a sickness - it's an art."

- Remington Steele

Maybe naive and pointless, but it is "sound byte quality."

Like the myriad self-help/improvement programs that tout, "Do this and your life will be better. Your truck will start, your girl will come back and you'll find your dog..."

Oh wait, that's what happens when you play a country song backwards. That's IT. The answer to being happy is to play country songs backwards. To which it has been said that to every problem there is a solution that is correct, easily understood and wrong.

Do you know any adults who buy happy meals... for themselves?

A useful link is to this transcript of an interview with Tim Berners-Lee:

http://talis-podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.htm...

And particularly this passage:

Paul [the interviewer]: 06:05 OK, sounds good. Going a little bit broader than those questions then, back in 2001 in that Scientific American article, you and the other authors painted a very broad grand vision of where the Semantic Web could take us. Did you think we'd be closer to that seven years on?

Tim: Well, for one thing that article was, I think, too sci-fi. I think, that really what we have... the message has been... it was looking too far into the future. It imagined the Semantic Web was deployed, and then people had made all kinds of fairly AI-like systems which run on top of that.

Vizzini: BRK.A at $133,000 a share, Inconceivable!

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.