3 ms·

Is it to much to ask for a black bar? For reasons I can't articulate I've always considered him a hacker in spirit.

kragen 1y ago
He was a math professor, a secret government cryptographer, a comedian in technically challenging musical-theater forms, and reportedly the inventor of the Jell-O shot. Stallman says in https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html: > Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking. (...) It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value". However: > The concept of hacking excludes wit and art as such. The people who began to speak of their activities as "hacking" were familiar with wit and art, and with the names of the various fields of those; they were also doing something else, something different, for which they came up with the name "hacking". Thus, composing a funny joke or a beautiful piece of music may well involve playful cleverness, but a joke as such and a piece of music as such are not hacks, however funny or beautiful they may be. However, if the piece is a palindrome, we can say it is a hack as well as music; if the piece is vacuous, we can say it is a hack on music. (So I think The Elements qualifies, if barely.) And with respect to > Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. perhaps we should mention mention the origin story of the Jell-O shot from https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/that-was-the-wit-that-was/Content?oid=2138455&showFullText=true https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https://archives....: > A rumor has circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs. > "That's amazing how that got around! What happened was, I was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he says with a shrug. > "And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best. We tried gin and vodka and various flavors and stuff -- of course you can't sample too much. So we went over to her apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say, 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I recommend it. Orange Jell-O." So, yeah. Definitely a hacker.

He was a math professor, a secret government cryptographer, a comedian in technically challenging musical-theater forms, and reportedly the inventor of the Jell-O shot. Stallman says in https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html: > Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking. (...) It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value". However: > The concept of hacking excludes wit and art as such. The people who began to speak of their activities as "hacking" were familiar with wit and art, and with the names of the various fields of those; they were also doing something else, something different, for which they came up with the name "hacking". Thus, composing a funny joke or a beautiful piece of music may well involve playful cleverness, but a joke as such and a piece of music as such are not hacks, however funny or beautiful they may be. However, if the piece is a palindrome, we can say it is a hack as well as music; if the piece is vacuous, we can say it is a hack on music. (So I think The Elements qualifies, if barely.) And with respect to > Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. perhaps we should mention mention the origin story of the Jell-O shot from https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/that-was-the-wit-that-was/Content?oid=2138455&showFullText=true https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https://archives....: > A rumor has circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs. > "That's amazing how that got around! What happened was, I was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he says with a shrug. > "And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best. We tried gin and vodka and various flavors and stuff -- of course you can't sample too much. So we went over to her apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say, 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I recommend it. Orange Jell-O." So, yeah. Definitely a hacker.