Good Old Mel ...the penultimate hacker

["Attila T. Hun" <attila@hun.org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

    reference to Peter Trei's posting of Mel's super blackjack game.
    
    Mel was living in a Warner Center condo off Topanga Canyon Blvd in 
    Woodland Hills CA the last time I had contact with him which is at 
    least 10 years, before the earthquake which did significant damage 
    to that area. I checked my old databases for his number, but it
    did not pop out, but I can not scan all...

    I can only presume Mel is still among the living as he must be
    about 10 years older than I which makes him 67+, and he had put 
    some hard milage on by the time I first met him in '77:  I took
    over, as a corporate hatchet, in a recently purchased division
    (nee: small company), a deeply troubled bleeding edge DC to daylight
    bandwidth test instrument program -- and inherited Mel.

    at the time, when the weather was good, Mel would arrive in a bright
    red Mercedes 450SL; and, Mel is not small. it seems Mel had traded
    his wife in on the car --said it was "...cheaper." Mel's regular
    mode was a 20 year old collection of baling wire.
    
    the project had DGs so the drums were gone -just 5Mb removable 
    packs. personally, I never saw a Royal-McBee, but I remember IBM 
    drums: 250K bytes on the 31 gal barrel size!

    I thought I was a pretty mean assembly hack --until I met Mel. I 
    hired him in on other projects I was salvaging for other companies 
    later. his coding style had not changed over the ensuing years: it 
    worked, but it was virtually incomprehensible to the new generation 
    of hot shots --only to us old farts who had survived by our wits and 
    the "cheating" --sort of like turning assembly language into Forth.

    most of us lived in a different world of hacker "social" ethics:

     "Go not unto Usenet for advice, for the inhabitants will say 
        yes, and no, and maybe, and I don't know, and fuck off, and...."
            --attila

    well, I *am* old enough to be father to most of you, and for the 
    really wet behind the ears crowd, probably even your grandfather.
    and I have the nicks and cuts to go with it. 

    ...when unix was a pdp11/45 with three stack registers, bocu 
    bucks/month maintenance to DEC for only 64K instruction and 64K data
    space, and RP4 (if you were lucky) washing machine drives...

    there was a time when "hacker" was a BADGE OF HONOUR, until some
    asshole sensationalist from Time Magazine or the NY Times had to
    apply "hacker" to Morris and his runaway worm, which started Morris
    down the road to crucifixion for the public good. 

    so, despite the behaviour of a few bad apples:

        a hacker is a professional in his own world 
        a hacker's only language is AFL 
        a cracker is a criminal.

    *****at least fifteen years ago, this was making the rounds:

    1>  What do 'hackers' and 'real programmers' look like?
    
        No-one knows, they're like graffitists.

    2>  What do hackers eat?

        ... Diet Pepsi, Corndogs, etc.

    3>  What kind of things do hackers do with computers?

        Hackers patch and tweak, Programmers code and debug.

    4>  What kind of computers do hackers use?

        Anything that's available. (they don't always like them)

    5>  Where do hackers live, and what kind of place is it in which 
        they reside?

        In or near 'The Valley' (pick one) Usually in a rented house, 
        and in a mess of misc. hardware, listings, Mass media, and food
        wrappings.

    6>  Where do hackers come from?  (High schools, colleges, etc.)

        Most are self taught while going to school for some other 
        vocation.

    7>  What languages do hackers use?

        Hackers: whatever's available, including HEX and OCTAL,
        occasionally BINARY. 

        Programmers: C, assemblers, Forth, Lisp, Apl

    7a> What languages do they hackers use?

        Hackers: none   
        Programmers: Basic, Cobol, Fortran, RPG, Algol, Logo

    8>  In what environment do they function best?

        Late at night with low light levels. (except for the CRTs)

    9>  what kind of computer is for *real* men?

        Real men don't waste valuable time on Intel 86 family assembly 
        code.

    a>  What makes you respond in such a way?

        The philosophy: 'Less is More', or if I might quote Albert 
        Einstein: "Everything should be made as simple as possible,
        but not simpler" 

    and that my friends, is the difference a code of honour makes....
____________________________________________________________________________
 "In nature, stupidity gets you killed.
   In the workplace, it gets you promoted.
    In politics, it gets you re-elected."
        --attila

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3i
Charset: latin1
Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be

iQCVAwUBNDp3Yr04kQrCC2kFAQH6/QQAr9mWc9upwAcmcg+iMwVOjTbMvO9rgtxv
dLOCaHiWkeXWhc+goFHGc87vsjCfb7W0TcRGE3cG6F5DnMRR8/nUwT4iVyIshjWC
bv5Puf49zbfdL11Gu/0jKvl81Z2rna31P5o6AOEkEzLTxJsLKMnDyXHQtPsobfKj
9BNUDXAEoUI=
=WoYN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----