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Hackers Hall of Fame

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the did-they-pick-the-right-ones dept.

An anonymous reader writes "tlc.discovery.com has a nice feature called Hackers Hall of Fame. They have included 15 bios of modern and not so modern hackers and crackers. " Definitely a few names that probably don't deserve to be on the list, but for the most part this is a good list.

3 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. They forgot something! by Noryungi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I remember well, Robert Morris father (former NSA scientist if I remember well) also worked on Multics, the "ancestor" of UNIX.

    One day, programmers saw Rober Morris Sr go to a Multics console. He called everyone in the room to him. Then, once he had everyone complete attention, he hit three keys at the same time on the console... and crashed Multics completely.

    He then left the room without saying a word, leaving all the others scratching their heads...

    I don't know if the story is true, or what were the three keys he pressed, but with a father like that, it's no wonder young Robert Morris Jr ended up a hacker! ;-)

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    The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
  2. Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po by lemox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bill CO-wrote BASIC with Paul Allen. If the list is primarily for technical expertise, Paul belongs on there more than Bill.

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    "We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC

  3. Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po by iocat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Damn, I have mod points and I was really looking mod up anyone who bashed Tsutomu Shimomura, who is a grade A tool IMHO, but I gotta say this:

    Paul Allen may be more 'techie' but BASIC for the Altair, as well as their previous projects, like the Traf-O-Data stuff, were really, really, joint collaborations. It wasn't a Wozniak/Jobs relationship, where one guy did the tech stuff and the other guy did the marketing. They *both* did the tech stuff, but Bill was more comfortable doing the business stuff as well.

    Check out the Tandy Model 100 -- it's a super elegant piece of early portable computing with a great (for the time) BASIC-enabled OS. Creating that system was Bill Gate's last project that he personally pulled off alone, and it is really a fantastic system.

    You may be able to have issues with his later business practices, and I'd agree that he was never part of the hacker culture, as evidenced by his early concern for copyrights when others were sharing everything, but the guy could definitely pull his weight on the code side.

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    Dude, I think I can see my house from here.