I have met a great number of people whom I admire for their accomplishments, but nevertheless dislike their habits and actions at the same time.

If I met the man, and he put his hand on my ass while breathing fetid, rotten words into my ear, I would absolutely knock him on his ass. But I would still admire his hacking.

You may choose to roll everything up into a ball and believe that people are binary: Good or Bad. That being unbelievably creepy in person somehow invalidates whatever else someone does that would otherwise be admirable. Your call. I suspect that argument will find a lot of favour with the kind of people who won't hire an athiest, or who cut up their Amex cards when they discovered that Tiger Woods was a philanderer.

But I'm not that guy, and that isn't my argument. I'm not saying he's a great man on account of being in the right place at the right time, having a smidgen of the right talent and right motivation to do something that was a crime a the time.

I'm saying he was a Hacker's Hacker, and that the definition of the word "Hacker" doesn't have the word "beloved" in it. Wozniak is beloved. Draper isn't.

But more importantly, what does it say about us that we consider being likeable more important that what you do or don't do with the technology? It tells me that we haven't really changed anything. Once upon a time we were the geeks in high school that the cool kids ostracized. Due to an accident in history, we're living in a time when a few of us gained fame and fortune, and now we're the cool kids.

So what are we doing now that we're in control of the social apparatus? Kicking John Draper for being a creepy old man, that's what we're doing.

I stand by my words, which describe my feelings. I say that it's sad that we're more interested in his social behaviour as an old man than we are in whatever he did or didn't do to gain his noteriety as a hacker.

We laud hackers for their curiosity. What does this thread say we're curious about. Systems? Or people's nose hair?

p.s. It's ridiculous to ask me to have sex with him. It shows that your argument is rhetorical, a kind of populist trick spoken to the audience and not to me. I don't admire his accomplishments because I think he's attractive, and I don't say that his social behaviour is excusable because he's a great hacker.

Linking admiration of his accomplishments with disgust for his behaviour is exactly what I'm arguing against, so implying that I'd lose admiration for his accomplishments if I had what you expect would be an unpleasant sexual experience with him underscores the kind of thinking that I'm arguing against.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am absolutely not saying that you or anybody else is wrong to discuss his behaviour. He behaves this way in public, it's fair game to be discussed, and you're entitled to find interest wherever you like.

My sadness has to do with the proportion, which is really a group behaviour, or perhaps it's something to do with the dynamics of a forum discussion. Maybe if we each had to pick a topic to discuss blindly, we'd end up in a different place than given the current threaded comment and reply UI. I find that question interesting: Does the character of the threaded discussion really correspond to the priority or importance we place on various sub-subjects?