[TAG] Recent Graduate - Embedded Software Developmenet

[Ben Okopnik]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 08:00:12PM +0200, Paul Sephton wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 12:54 -0400, Ben Okopnik wrote:
>  
> > If my "services" consist of potentially steering a clueless idiot into
> > doing the right thing, he's more than welcome to them.
> 
> That's a very gracious attitude you have there.  I am afraid I can't lay
> claim to the same.  I get very irritated when technologists come up with
> a good idea such as e-mail which some unscrupulous business people
> immediately interpret as a free ride.

This is something that happens with every single human invention; it's
just a simple fact, known (or should be) to every inventor and
discoverer - their inventions are going to be used for every purpose,
including evil ones. It couldn't have been more than a second between
the original discovery that a rock could be used to crack a coconut and
the thought that it could also be used to crush an enemy's skull.
Rutherford split the atom in 1919 and dreamed of free power for the
entire world... and barely two decades later, millions of dollars were
spent on focusing this new amazing discovery into the world's most
powerful weapon. My only hope is that the idiots don't manage to kill us
all off before we, as a race, grow up... I suppose you could call it the
ultimate test of fitness. We *may* well go the way of the mammoths. As a
humanist, I believe that we will survive; I have to, no other attitude
makes sense. As a rational man, I see powerful weapons placed in the
hands of the megalomaniacs and the idiots... and I have to hold on,
hard, to my best hopes.


-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *