Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

opportunity and he should take it. And it appealed to Warren, this idea of going offand making money programming games and living in the woods. So he decided todo it. But there was one part of the package that did not appeal to him. TheSummer Camp fun and rowdi-ness and drinking and dope-smoking that werecommon practices at On-Line Systems. Warren was a Jehovah's Witness.Around the time Warren was working on Cribbage, his mother had died. Warrengot to thinking about where he was headed, and what his purpose was in life. Hefound that computers were the main thing he was living for. He felt there had to bemore, and turned to his late mother's religion. He began intense study of the Bible.And he vowed that his new life in California would be characterized by adherenceto the precepts of Jehovah.At first this did not interfere much with his life at On-Line. Warren Schwader didnot criticize la doice vita at On-Line Systems. But because of the godless habits ofhis colleagues, he generally limited his transactions with them to business ortechnical discussions. He preferred to stick with people of his faith so he would beprotected from temptation.He was living alone, free of charge, in one of Ken's houses, a small two-bedroom.His social life was confined to a hall of the Kingdom of Jehovah's Witnesses inAhwahnee, five miles west of Oakhurst. The very first time he went to a servicethere, he felt he had made more friends than he ever had before. They approved ofcomputers, telling him that they could do much good for man, though one mustbeware that much can be done through computers to do harm. Warren becameaware that the love he had for hacking was a threat to his devotion to God, andthough he still loved programming he tried to moderate his hacking sessions so thathe was not diverted from his true purpose. So while he kept programming at night,he would also maintain his Bible studies, and during afternoons and weekends hewould travel through the area, knocking on doors and going into people's houses,bearing copies of Awake! and The Watchtower, and preaching the faith of Jehovah.Meanwhile, he was working on a game based on some of Ken's fastest, mostspectacular assembly-language subroutines yet. It was a game like Space Invaders,where you had a rocketship and had to fight off waves of invaders. But the waveswere full of weird shapes, and moved in all kinds of directions, and if the playertried to send a constant stream of bullets off to fight them, his "laser gun" wouldoverheat and he would face almost certain death. It was the kind of game designedto spur cardiac arrest in the feeble-hearted, so fierce were the attackers and soviolent were the explosions. It was not exactly a landmark in Apple gaming, sinceit was so derivative of the Space Invaders school ofshoot-'em-ups, but it didrepresent an escalation in graphic pyrotechnics and game-playing intensity. Thename of this computer program was "Threshold," and it made Warren Schwader