Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jasber | Hacker News Reader

"We can only guess what drove him to such a tragic end, but it is a fitting demise for a man whose professional reputation is based entirely on a lie."

What a terrible thing to say about someone who is dead, regardless of whether they stole anything.

View on HN

I read once a quote, I think by some senator in the 1800's, who responded to someone's attack on a man who had just died by saying : "Sir, when God puts his hands on another man, I take mine off."

That's a bad paraphrase, but the original quote was pretty good.

It seems to have been Thomas Hart Benton speaking about John C. Calhoun:

http://books.google.com/books?id=JLpYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA34...

And you actually got the quote pretty close to correct:

"No, sir. When God Almighty lays his hand upon a man, sir, I take mine off, sir."

"Brides are always beautiful, babies are always cute, and the dead were always kind."

Personally, if my professional reputation were based on some kind of lie, I hope nobody does me the favor of pretending I was noble.

Generally the done thing in those cases is to simply not say anything at all, unless the person in question was some kind of notable who belongs in a history book, which isn't really the case here.

Roll for Initiative: advance straight to Godwin's Law.

Let us never speak ill of Hitler ever again.

If we had known he was going to commit suicide, I don't think we would have pushed him so hard.

If I were thinking about embarking on some moderately sleazy career path, the thought of being remembered that way might put me off.

I don't understand why people care how they will be remembered.

In a purely selfish mindset, think of your heirs. I assume you care about them? It negatively impacts their happiness and wellbeing (acceptance by peers) if you happen to ben a truly-reviled human being.

Ok, rephrased, I don't know why people guide their lives according to any criteria that obtain after they are dead.

Life is a work of art. I want mine to be beautiful.

Life is a pizza. I want mine to be pepperoni.

Strictly speaking, I agree with you. I ultimately don't care how I'll be remembered since I'll be dead, but life itself is much more fun when you aren't hated while living it, at least not by too many people. Also, for those people with a conscience, just the personal knowledge that one's success is "based on a lie" might well be enough to sour the flavor of that success.

From what I've read, there's no evidence that Katz drank himself to death because he was overwrought with guilt caused by "stealing" ARC. I feel that if someone takes an existing program and re-writes it entirely in a more difficult language and creates very tangible improvements to it, it's not simple theft. Almost nothing is that black and white.

Katz was, apparently, a guy with no friends who spent most of his time with strippers. I would probably drink a lot, too.

You can't hurt the feelings of the dead. I would sooner speak ill of a dead person than (an equally deserving) living person, for multiple reasons, first among them being that people can and do change.

The dead can't defend themselves. We only here Thom Henderson's side here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com