At 12:09 PM 11/29/2000, you wrote:
>There seems to be this subtle war going on in the computer industry, to
>try and modify the terms. Slashdot and ESR especially are trying to
>distance the term "hacker" from computer intrusion. they present people
>who use the term "hacker" as clueless sheep of the media, and that is just
>ridiculous.
When mainstream media presents ANY issue to the public, you can rest
assured the ones presenting
are "clueless sheep". Take a look at PC-WORLD, MSNBC, PBS and yes, even the
articles by "Doc" Searles in our own LinuxJournal. Full of fluff and
misinformation and downright lies.
The point of the hacker/cracker debate is to delineate good from bad.
Growing up around Stanford, Xerox's PARC, SRI, HP, etc in the late 70's
there were always good and bad computer folks, never was there a term for
them however until the media shone the light of attention on their
exploits. And it was usually in a negative light. The first time I heard
the term hacker was probably only 10 years ago and then it was a badge of
honour, not a brand of guilt. "I hacked that new hardware and built a
driver for so-and-so" or "I hacked so-and-so's code and fixed his unruly
bugs" were always good hacks. Building/using a blue box, stealing credit
card #'s and snooping around the DOA's sites were always taboo issues, but
never referred to as hacks. There were a lot of terms for them, most slip
my mind, but never hacks.
Interestingly, a "hack engineer", to the electronics industry, is one who
prefers duct tape and bailing wire
over solder and accepted good engineering practice. Go figure
jk
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James S. Kaplan KG7FU
Eugene Oregon USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.rio.com/~kg7fu
ICQ # 1227639
Have YOU tried Linux today?
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