Afloyd.187 net.misc utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!trb Mon May 3 10:48:09 1982 The times, they are a'changin' Yesterday afternoon I went to work for a few hours (on a beautiful spring Sunday) and then I went down to the studio of WFMU, my favorite radio station, to help out with their annual fundraising phone-in marathon. So there I was sitting behind a line of phones with a few other devotees to the radio station. As the night wore on, to my right sat a pretty young lady, the type who ordinarily, I thought, would have nothing to do with we "techie types." After a few hours of personning the phones, she turned out to be, at least, courteously friendly. She mentioned that she worked in a mall (I was not surprised) and that she had had a bit of wine before she came by the studio (again, I was not surprised, but I would never have guessed that she had done so; I assume she was well practiced at such activity). Anyway, to get to the point... After she told me that she had been out drinking earlier, I mentioned that I was messing around at work earlier in the day. She asked me what I did for a living. I told her I worked with computers. (Here comes the good part...) She then asked me, "Are you a hacker?" (!!!) I said, concealing my mild shock, that I was, and asked her where she came to hear about hackers. She told me that she read an article about hackers in Rolling Stone Magazine, and she said it sounded like fun, although she didn't think she had the math background for it. I told her that if you enjoy it and work hard at it, that that would probably get you farther than a math background. Anyway, it looks like that article in Rolling Stone (which I have not yet read) did something positive to the public image of the CS-type generally, and the hacker particularly. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491 ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.