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One thing that strikes me as sad about this is that he very obviously had some level of talent, drive and ability; and if we as a society had found a way to cha
by olefoo 14y ago
One thing that strikes me as sad about this is that he very obviously had some level of talent, drive and ability; and if we as a society had found a way to channel that productively we would all be better off.
And before you go all "lol, cracking password resets is not technical skill"; think about this for a bit. If you were raised in a context like his (parents separated early, bad schools, no mentors etc.) would you necessarily have turned out better?
Who knows; if he'd had a better math teacher in junior high school who'd gotten him interested in programming early, he might have wound up working at a startup in Silicon Valley.
- kordless 14y agoIt all comes down to choice.
- dyeje 14y agoUnfortunatly one's options are not always clear.
- forrestthewoods 14y agoMost people don't pick the option of stealing massive amounts of personal data in a manner that is obviously unethical and almost certainly illegal. Blaming society for his choice sounds like crazy talk to me. What happened to personal responsibility?
- olefoo 14y agoDon't get me wrong, I'm not excusing his moral choices, although I do think his education in that area was obviously lacking. But the guy was unemployed for two years and well; boredom plus opportunity for mischief equals trouble. Would he have been able to do something useful with his life if he'd learned better coping skills early on? I can't imagine the sad self-loathing low point you'd have to be at where reading strangers personal email for fun seems like a good way to spend your nights and days. But, I can see the forces at work on this guy and it does make me sad to see someone ruin his life like that.
- forrestthewoods 14y agoIf he he took half the time he spent on mischief and directed it at learning an employable skill he would have been successful. White middle-class Jacksonville isn't exactly the type of rough upbringing necessary to excuse self inflicted damage in my books.
- puredemo 14y agoYou don't choose the circumstances of your upbringing.
- daniel-cussen 14y ago> Who knows; if he'd had a better math teacher in junior high school who'd gotten him interested in programming early, he might have wound up working at a startup in Silicon Valley. Yeah, but then we'd be reading what his blog post instead of this more fabulous article, and it'd be yet another piece about Raspberry Pi.