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don't forget that some of the biggest innovative breakthroughs that we use to this day came from hackers being bored and doing things they shouldn't. Such as?
by hugh 18y ago
don't forget that some of the biggest innovative breakthroughs that we use to this day came from hackers being bored and doing things they shouldn't.
Such as?
We need to be careful to distinguish between two types of "shouldn't". There's the "shouldn't" that's merely against some kind of arbitrary rules, and there's the "shouldn't" that's actually immoral because it hurts people.
Plenty of useful things were invented by breaking stupid rules, but few were invented by actually being a malicious jerk.
- froo 18y agoSuch as? I dunno about you, but I would call penicillin a pretty significant hack.
- silentbicycle 18y agoCould you explain the connection? It sounds like you're implying penicillin was discovered by being a malicious jerk. (And re: the gremlin thing, I was thinking of people doing things that would generally be considered stupid vandalism, but I don't want to split hairs.)
- iamdave 18y agoYou seem to be stuck on the notion all of 4chan is full of jerks who want to destroy the Internet when it's quite the contrary. By the admission of the person quoted in the article, it's one message board out of the entire site that causes the most trouble. But I think his point is that great things have come about completely by accident, and that's the same point I was trying to make. Great things have happened to take technology where it is today; sometimes by sheer chance and tomfoolery with what a hacker had in front of him. In no way is he calling Alexander Flemming a 'jerk'
- silentbicycle 18y agoNo, I don't really care about 4chan. I just think penicillin was an odd example.
- froo 18y agoI want to satisfy 2 points, firstly no, I don't particularly care for 4chan either - but I think to discount all of it's members based on what seems to be a few bad eggs is stereotyping at its worst. Secondly, the Penicillin example, it was a run on example from this. don't forget that some of the biggest innovative breakthroughs that we use to this day came from hackers being bored and doing things they shouldn't. Such as? I dunno about you, but I would call penicillin a pretty significant hack. As you might know, Fleming noted a contaminant in one of his cultures. Instead of throwing it out as a failed experiment, he played with it or essentially 'hacked' it. It resulted in one of the most significant medical discoveries of last century. If he instead was doing what he was meant to be doing (studying Staphylococci) instead of 'playing' around (or 'hacking'); millions of lives may not have been saved. So in truth, it was a fair comment.
- silentbicycle 18y agoI never said it was an unfair comment, just that I wanted clarification. I figured that was probably what you meant, but it was ambiguous how closely it related to the latter comments. (Perhaps there was something major about penicillin's discovery I hadn't heard of.) I was saying that "gremlin" seems like a good new term for people who do destructive mischief for fun (particularly of a cracking nature), but never actually related it to 4chan in any way; it just came out of that quote. Where you're reading it as being about 4chan users, it was intended to be about script kiddies (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddies). Hence, "I don't care about 4chan", not "I don't care for 4chan".
- yters 18y agoThis is like harrassing innocent people? IMO, it's cleverer if clever hacks are in good taste, since that's an added constraint. It's pretty easy in general to just break things and violate people's trust.