Taming the Hacking Storm

Chapter 14 Common Questions

“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Propose to a man any principle, or an instrument, however admirable, and you will observe the whole effort is directed to find a difficultly, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: If you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.”

– Charles Babbage (considered the father of modern computers)

“One experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions.”

– Unknown, similar, but not identical attributions, to Albert Einstein, Wernher Von Braun, and Adm. Grace Murray Hopper

Those are some of my favorite quotations regarding critics. I’ve been presenting my Internet security solution for almost two decades now. I have gotten a lot of criticism. Fortunately, I can take it. I actually want critics. Over the years, critics have made my earlier ideas better. Some of my best friends and mentors are among my strongest critics. A good idea should stand up to criticism, invite it, and become stronger ...