Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

Inevitably, that frame of mind spilled over to what random shards of existence thehackers had outside of computing. The knife-and-paintbrush contingent at TMRCwere not pleased at all by the infiltration of Tixo-mania into the club: they saw it asa sort of Trojan horse for a switch in the club focus, from railroading to computing.And if you attended one of the club meetings held every Tuesday at five-fifteen,you could see the concern: the hackers would exploit every possible thread ofparliamentary procedure to create a meeting as convoluted as the programs theywere hacking on the TX-0. Motions were made to make motions to make motions,and objections ruled out of order as if they were so many computer errors. A notein the minutes of the meeting on November 24, 1959, suggests that "we frown oncertain members who would do the club a lot more good by doing more S&P-ingand less reading Robert's Rules of Order." Samson was one of the worst offenders,and at one point an exasperated TMRC member made a motion "to purchase a corkfor Samson's oral diarrhea."Hacking parliamentary procedure was one thing, but the logical mind-framerequired for programming spilled over into more commonplace activities. Youcould ask a hacker a question and sense his mental accumulator processing bitsuntil he came up with a precise answer to the question you asked. Marge Saunderswould drive to the Safeway every Saturday morning in the Volkswagen and uponher return ask her husband, "Would you like to help me bring in the groceries?"Bob Saunders would reply, "No." Stunned, Marge would drag in the groceriesherself. After the same thing occurred a few times, she exploded, hurling curses athim and demanding to know why he said no to her question."That's a stupid question to ask," he said. "Of course I won't like to help you bringin the groceries. If you ask me if I'll help you bring them in, that's another matter."It was as if Marge had submitted a program into the TX-0, and the program, asprograms do when the syntax is improper, had crashed. It was not until shedebugged her question that Bob Saunders would allow it to run successfully on hisown mental computer.