Part 3 (2/2)

If you don't have access to the infors, how can you fix thee of information particularly when the inforreater overall creativity When you orking on a machine like the TX-0, which came with alra easier--Tools to Make Tools, kept in the drawer by the console for easy access by anyone using theritual of reinventing the wheel: instead of everybody writing his own version of the saram, the best version would be available to everyone, and everyone would be free to delve into the code and iraed to perfection

The belief, sometimes taken unconditionally, that information should be free was a direct tribute to the way a splendid co in the ical path necessary to do their co which benefited from a free flow of inforet information from the input/output (i/o) devices like the tape reader or the switches, the whole system would collapse In the hacker viewpoint, any system could benefit from that easy flow of information

MISTRUST AUTHORITY--PROMOTE DECENTRALIZATION

The best way to proe of infor which presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an itee, i you need is a bureaucracy

Bureaucracies, whether corporate, governerous in that they cannot accommodate the exploratory impulse of true hackers Bureaucrats hide behind arbitrary rules (as opposed to the logical algorithrams operate): they invoke those rules to consolidate power, and perceive the constructive impulse of hackers as a threat

The epitoe company called International Business Machines--IBM The reason its co Giants was only partially because of vacuuy, The real reason was that IBM was a clu iht), the world would be batch-processed, laid out on those annoying little punch cards, and only the ed of priests would be permitted to actually interact with the computer

All you had to do was look at someone in the IBM world, and note the button-dohite shi+rt, the neatly pinned black tie, the hair carefully held in place, and the tray of punch cards in hand You could wander into the Computation Center, where the 704, the 709, and later the 7090 were stored--the best IBM had to offer--and see the stifling orderliness, down to the roped-off areas beyond which non-authorized people could not venture And you could compare that to the extrey clothes were the norm and almost anyone could wander in

Now, IBM had done and would continue to do hty influence, it had made computers a permanent part of life in America To many people, the words IBM and computer were virtually synonymous IBM's machines were reliable workhorses, worthy of the trust that businessmen and scientists invested in them This was due in part to IBM's conservative approach: it would not ically advanced ressiveAs IBM's dominance of the computer field was established, the co

What really drove the hackers crazy was the attitude of the IBM priests and sub-priests, who seemed to think that IBM had the only ”real” computers, and the rest were all trash You couldn't talk to those people--they were beyond convincing They were batch-processed people, and it showed not only in their preference of machines, but in their idea about the way a computation center, and a world, should be run Those people could never understand the obvious superiority of a decentralized syste orders: a syste the way they discovered a flaw in the systeet a requisition for done

This antibureaucratic bent coincided neatly with the personalities of rown accusto science projects while the rest of their class social skills on the field of sport These young adults ere once outcasts found the co, according to Peter Sarand new universe ”

Once they passed through that door and sat behind the console of a million-dollar computer, hackers had power So it was natural to distrust any force which ht try to limit the extent of that power

HACKERS SHOULD BE JUDGED BY THEIR HACKING, NOT BOGUS CRITERIA SUCH AS DEGREES, AGE, RACE, OR POSITION

The ready acceptance of twelve-year-old Peter Deutsch in the TX-0 coood exaly impressive credentials were not taken seriously until they proved themselves at the console of a computer This meritocratic trait was not necessarily rooted in the inherent goodness of hacker hearts--it was mainly that hackers cared less about someone's superficial characteristics than they did about his potential to advance the general state of hacking, to create new programs to admire, to talk about that new feature in the system

YOU CAN CREATE ART AND BEAUTY ON A COMPUTER

Sarara frorah, was particularly obscure in refusing to add coiven tirae instructions, with only one comment beside an instruction which contained the number 1750 The comment was RIPJSB, and people racked their brains about its ured out that 1750 was the year Bach died, and that Samson had written an abbreviation for Rest In Peace Johann Sebastian Bach)

A certain esthetic of prograed Because of the limited memory space of the TX-0 (a handicap that extended to all computers of that era), hackers came to deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allowed programs to do corararam ran Sometimes when you didn't need speed or spaceabout art and beauty, you'd hack together an ugly progra the proble twenty nuht say to himself, ”and it's quicker to write instructions to do that than to think out a loop in the beginning and the end to do the saht instructions”

But the latter prograrams were bummed to the fewest lines so artfully that the author's peers would look at it and al became competitive, a macho contest to prove oneself so ant shortcuts to shave off an instruction or two, or, better yet, rethink the whole probleorithorithm is a specific procedure which one can apply to solve a complex computer problem; it is sort of a mathematical skeleton key) This couldthe probleht of before but that in retrospect made total sense There was definitely an artistic ienius-froic, visionary quality which enabled them to discard the stale outlook of the best orithrararaave you into regular decimal numbers

In Saunders' words, this proble--if you could write a decih about the corammer of sorts” And if you wrote a GREAT deciht be able to call yourself a hacker More than a co of the decimal print routine became a sort of hacker Holy Grail

Various versions of decimal print routines had been around for so deliberately stupid about it, or if you were a genuine ht take you a hundred instructions to get the coe to decimal But any hacker worth his salt could do it in less, and finally, by taking the best of the progra an instruction here and there, the routine was diminished to about fifty instructions