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Jesus, that is intense. I wonder if the guy was personally out to get the Doc, or if he was just a smart kid with too much time and not enough superego?
by pmichaud 8y ago
Jesus, that is intense. I wonder if the guy was personally out to get the Doc, or if he was just a smart kid with too much time and not enough superego?
- kazinator 8y agoHe did make it super easy to find this by having the compiler modify source code. If you run "cc file.c" and file.c is overwritten, you should know that it's the "cc" doing it. It would have been more evil to do it the original way, as described in Thompson's paper: recognize the program sources and emit altered object code only; no mucking with the source.
- rexpop 8y agoInteresting that the first adjective you use was "smart" when, in any decent scope of consideration, he has actually wasted many hours of others' time, and caused only suffering. When I do that at my company, they do not call me "smart."
- hhmc 8y agoCleverness and morality can be orthogonal.
- jmmcd 8y agoBostrom's orthogonality thesis!
- rexpop 8y agoOf course they can, but when I see an act of ingenious evil, my first response is not circumscribed admiration.
- breakingcups 8y agoConcluding someone is smart doesn't always equal admiring them.
- webmaven 8y agoIf you do it to your company's competitor, you may qualify for a massive bonus (modulo your employer's moral compass and appetite for risk).