Semantic shifts are so common they hardly deserve attention, far less condemnation. "Unscrupulous use by media..." seriously? Language is defined by usage, not by rules. Awful, cunning, crafty, villain, lewd -- degeneration happens all the time to words. (See how 'morphing' has gone from a motion picture technique of "changing one image into another through a seamless transition" to any damn manipulation of a still or moving image, including pixellation. It's too late to reclaim it, at least in India).
Given that the older -- and once fairly common -- homonym of 'hacking' means to cut or chop roughly (and thanks to you guys we are in danger of losing a perfectly good word), you should be a little more forgiving of the continued evolution of hacking. Sajan On 15 July 2012 10:15, Vickram Crishna <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jul 15, 2012 8:50 AM, "satyaakam goswami" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> But the FSMK people have decided to use the term "ethical hacking" for > >> "hacking + Activism" and possibly beyond. > >> http://www.fsmk.org/ethical-hacking > >> > >> Is this a good move? > > > > > > time will tell , so far the users of the term have had made money , also > the motive of FSMK is not clear may be they wanted to catch the attention > as in publicity since the spin web doctors and media have done so much to > register the term in people 's mind it makes it so much more easier to > sell something than just old philosophical and moral high ground points. > > > > etymologically speaking there is some research to be done to find how > this word came into being , a quick web search just could find one such > paper on the http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/facpubs/1451/ term but > alas that too was not accessible to me it looks like lots of terms like > spam,hacker which have made it to the urban language then to the > dictionaries , so may be this term will be as acceptable to you as spam is > over period of time. > > > > this was the most interesting one did not know that RMS was a whithat > till i read this http://www.protectivehacks.com/Ethical-Hacking.html , as > i said this one and many more like these ....have used and abused the term. > > > > so overall it speaks of changing times and desperation of certain > organizations to have themselves heard you should be writing to the > organizations and the individuals in order to understand what the motives > has been if you have an issue with them. > > > > but yes i agree it does make a case to study and publish something about > what the term really means wrt to free software , open source etc.. now i > think i am getting into an area where most people here are not comfortable > with like researching with these terms itself , i think it will soon become > OT :-) because of the etymological research we are talking about. > > > > I think we have to recognise that, just like air pollution, a situation > aided and abetted by deliberate action on the part of various stakeholders, > 'hacking' in India is a legal term that is taken to be equivalent to > cracking, which to any ordinary student of English, is a far more evocative > term. > > In this case, FSMK seems to be bowing to the inevitable, at least for the > purpose of this workshop, although it blames the media solely for this > situation. To quote the page ' To clarify this distinction two other terms > - ethical hacking and cracking are used now.' There is no attempt at > clarifying by whom these terms are used. > > C'est la vie! > > _______________________________________________ > network mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in > >
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