not even a newbie

[Alexander Henry]

Alan Dayley wrote:

>(Craig is a good guy.  Gave me my first set of Red Hat disks.  He really believes in the Open philosophy of learning and doing things on your own if you can.  Most of the rest of us are a little softer on that point.)
>  
>
Another note on the wrathfullness of hackers...

I remember myself in 1994, a UNIX newbie in the just-cresting-Internet 
explosion, when HTML mail and newsgroup browsers started popping up.  
I'd frequently see people put their entire usenet message in <bang-- 
-->, then at the bottom, "if you can't read my message, you deserve to 
loose".

hehe.

In ESR's Hacker HOWTO, specifically here: 
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2 , the chapter 
is on the hacker attitude, and includes the section titles, "No problem 
should ever have to be solved twice", "boredom and drudgery are evil", 
and "attitude is no substitute for competence".  The idea of using HTML 
for e-mail breaks these rules in several ways: the problem of making 
e-mail has already been solved.  Making HTML e-mail re-solves it; it was 
never broken in the first place, why did you fix it?  Oh I see, you 
re-solved it so that stupid people can now use e-mail, and you re-solved 
it in a way that is sure to keep stupid people stupid or make them 
stupider.  And you dare burden me with the drudgerous task of changing 
my and well-established ways to help you do this.  Who are "you" 
anyway?  *green muscular skin rips through hacker's clothes*

Hope that helps.

--Alexander