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I've stumbled upon Terry's work a long time ago...and suffice to say he's been a major inspiration. It's a shame the majority of netizens (Yes, HN and Reddit in
by _exec 12y ago
I've stumbled upon Terry's work a long time ago...and suffice to say he's been a major inspiration. It's a shame the majority of netizens (Yes, HN and Reddit included) can't look beyond his eccentricity and mental health issues (then again, it takes some digging and google-fu to find out the full story / context behind the man...his posts don't exactly come with a disclaimer).
Going down the rabbit hole of Googling, Redditing, finding out more about him and his story ("a one-man novel, modern x64 almost-but-not-quite-entirely-unlike-retro OS?" type of thing is catnip to my synapses), I've also come to understand a friend's schizophrenic relative a bit better. I've read accounts of schizophrenia and art intersecting, but did not understand what it is, what it's like, *, until I witnessed schizophrenia intersecting with IT, at which point the gates of empathy, admiration and fascination were flung wide open.
[/r/programming's 637 comments thread from 2010] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/e5d8e/demo_video_of_new_operating_system/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/e5d8e/demo_vide...
[another /r/programming thread]
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_64bit_operating_system_v707_released/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_...
His username on HN is / has been some variation on "TempleOS", "LoseThos", "SparrowOS", "TempleOSv2", etc. AFAIK all hellbanned due to un-PC comments posted in his, for lack of better phrasing, "Moments of Un-Clarity".
The irony (perhaps using the wrong word) of being hellbanned when the story of of your life's work..your magnum opus (especially in this case, an objective article that places it in context and with some background) is featured on HN's front page, makes me sad.
I consider his work to be a prime example of ["Outsider Art"] {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art} in our field.
I wish to collaborate with him one day.
Edit: Formatting, more caffeine.
- nyolfen 12y agothe dude is straight up racist and just because he's eccentric and mentally ill doesn't mean it should be tolerated
- jack9 12y ago> just because he's eccentric and mentally ill doesn't mean it should be tolerated So let's all be intolerant of the mentally ill? There's no celebration of his social contributions here, this is recognition of his technical achievement. Social behavior is orthogonal to the discussion.
- _exec 12y agoIs he actually racist, or are his moments of unclarity racist?
- drivingmenuts 12y agoTo determine that might require face-to-face contact and since he is a diagnosed schizophrenic, it might still be unclear. Even if the racism only comes out during manic periods, it would be difficult to parse that in an online medium. Since very few of us are trained to deal with that sort of episode, it is probably best to avoid the issue entirely.
- fallat 12y agoWhy not just ask?
- anigbrowl 12y agoTerry's God is only as coherent as Terry's offerings of executable code on any given day, and He mediates all of Terry's social communication. The best way to satisfy your vuriosity is to read his internal monologue stuff, which he documents religiously: http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/TADRants.html http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/TADRants.h...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- nyolfen 12y agothere's no material difference for the purposes of fostering social spaces devoid of racism
- emodendroket 12y agoJust about all Americans exhibit some racism, although most of it manifests itself in the form of less-obvious, but still insidious, biases and so on, rather than calling people the n-word on Hacker News.
- MrBra 12y agoIf you're referring to him saying "nigger" multiple times, then I think that that to him is more like a a kind of a generic bad-word to go with, and that he's not actually using it in a true "racist" sense. Of course I agree that just using that word to insult someone classifies as racist, but so far I've never seen anywhere in his comments or rants that he actually argumented something against black people.
- jmduke 12y agoQuoting from the first page of @TempleOS's comments (censorship mine, of course): I spend my days clubbing retard-ns. CLUB! CLUB! DIE N! CLUB! RETARD! N! DIE!! CLUB! N! Regardless of his mental state, this is not content that I want in any of my online communities.
- MrBra 12y agoRight, and the sense of my comment is that this does not necessarily imply that he would not actually work and then fit nice in team with a black guy, for example. That's just how I perceive that..
- jmduke 12y agoI don't think he would work and fit in with any person who objects to the casual use of that term, which is hopefully the overwhelming majority of the industry.
- MrBra 12y agoMaybe there would be no reason to discuss about that once started working and that habit would probably sink in front of more interesting/important stuff.
- pluma 12y agoSo that's what the "r---d" censor meant. I've never seen that word bleeped out before.
- 12y ago
- qwerta 12y ago99% americans are racists.
- gegtik 12y agodown with the 1%
- alexbecker 12y agoWhile regrettable, his hellban is entirely necessary. Almost every comment he makes refers to "f------- n------" (censorship mine). To quote one from his page of most recent comments: "I spend my days clubbing r----d-n------. CLUB! CLUB! DIE N-----! CLUB! R----D! N------! DIE!! CLUB! N-----!" That's not really something we can have on HN. (edit: right, asterisks are formatting here)
- kenrikm 12y agoWhen I was a kid I used to have a councilor that had Tourette's Syndrome, he was one of the nicest people and really helpful and good at his job. However every now and then he would have an attack a spitoff nearly the same vitriol F$%# N%^$#er, C$%k S%#$er etc.. after a few seconds he would recover and apologize. There really are mental illnesses out there that will make you say and do things that you don't actually believe when you're not under it's influence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome
- krapp 12y ago>That's not really something we can have on HN. Arguably, we do have it on HN, by design. The effect of his ban, and his reputation as a programmer have turned him into a weird sort of mascot. It's possible that simply banning him outright would have driven him off the site by now. It certainly wouldn't have been more effort than hellbanning his accounts. But the system as it is encourages him to stay.
- thisGuysAccount 12y agoEveryone's talking about Terry like he's not able to see this... Not aiming this message at you, krapp, or anyone, I just realized this while reading your message that Terry's probably read through this thread a few times. Wonder what his thoughts are on the article.
- krapp 12y agoHe could post his thoughts on whatever he likes, but of course, we're not meant to know what they are, or to care. Terry is the price this community pays for its pretense at intellectual purity.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- frik 12y agoYes, there was a guy named TempleOS here on HN, his comments are frequently down-voted, maybe he is even hell-banned. He had some weird views and his comments were a bit off-topic.