Month: February 2011

Quote: The Hacker Ethic

Great excerpt from the book The Hacker Ethic: And the Spirit of the Information Age by Pekka Himanen on NYTimes. Here is an excerpt from the excerpt:

“The spirit behind other hackers’ creations is very similar to this. Torvalds is not alone in describing his work with statements like “Linux hackers do something because they find it to be very interesting.” For example, Vinton Cerf, who is sometimes called “the father of the Internet,” comments on the fascination programming exerts: “There was something amazingly enticing about programming.” Steve Wozniak, the person who built the first real personal computer, says forthrightly about his discovery of the wonders of programming: “It was just the most intriguing world.” This is a general spirit: hackers program because programming challenges are of intrinsic interest to them. Problems related to programming arouse genuine curiosity in the hacker and make him eager to learn more.“

source: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/himanen-hacker.html

Sintered Armorgel is here!

  The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's
got  esprit up to here. Right now,  he is preparing to carry  out  his third
mission of the night. His uniform  is black as activated charcoal, filtering
the very light out of the air. A bullet will  bounce  off  its  arachnofiber
weave  like  a  wren hitting  a  patio  door, but excess perspiration  wafts
through it  like a breeze through a freshly napalmed  forest. Where his body
has  bony extremities,  the suit  has sintered armorgel:  feels like  gritty
jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.