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- "Mentor's Last Words"
-
- Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
- Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank
- Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-
- piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the
- eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces
- shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world...
- Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the
- other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever.
- They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to
- teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction.
- I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in
- my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
- I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
- cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
- screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by
- me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be
- here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then
- it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line
- like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out,
- a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
- "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even
- if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them
- again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again.
- They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been
- spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of
- meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless.
- We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few
- that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are
- like drops of water in the desert.
- This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
- beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without
- paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering
- gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us
- criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We
- exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias...
- and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you
- murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our
- own good, yet we're the criminals.
- Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
- that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
- My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never
- forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop
- this individual,but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
- +++The Mentor+++