MK27

I was just listening to 2600 | Off The Hook on WBAI (local FM radio), which purports to be the "longest running broadcast radio show for hackers", predating the internet. They are partially responsible for my interest in C programming because of a fund drive book offer they had last year.

I don't consider myself a "hacker" in the sense of being affiliated with any groups, so I'm not trying to promote any philosophy. But it does appeal to me. Right now the host is at a hacker convention/camp in Holland, HAR 2009. These people seem to have quite a "sub-culture" going on; I was just curious if anyone at cboard had any observations, experiences, comments etc. about this.

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"A man can't just sit around." -- Larry Walters

Mario F.

My option of choice is not there:

"A great opportunity to rid the world of a great number of these idiots"

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

Thantos

Obviously they aren't that old of a group or they wouldn't be using the word hacker in that regard.

MK27

Hatefulness was not exactly a response I had predicated, but you are free to enjoy that.

I believe that is how the word is used, "Off the hook" really has been on air since the late 80's, and if you google "Hacker Conventions" you will find more; the largest one in the world:
DEFCON® Hacking Conference - The Hacker Community's Foremost Social Network.
just finished up in Las Vegas (I think they made the news because of some strange event involving a fake ATM machine). This is kind of independent of the damage it may do to Thanto's personal dictionary...

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"A man can't just sit around." -- Larry Walters

Mario F.

You don't read many NFOs, do you?

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

Thantos

Go read up on the history of the word. It meant something else in the late 70's and has morphed into its present form.

tabstop

I had to look up NFO, but I'm guessing that the people you're thinking of would be neither interested in going nor welcome at this event, just based on the program.

Mario F.

They are one and the same on many cases. From website hacking to software cracking, what's the... cracker... that doesn't do it all.

These are not white-collar hackers we are talking about here. And necessarily you aren't expecting their program to read as a criminal manifest.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

MK27

Au contraire.

(from On Hacking - Richard Stallman)

I imagine it was the exact same contention/dichotomy in the 1970's of Thantos (ie, about demonizing, scapegoating, finding a group of people to hate, etc) as it is in the now of Thantos.

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"A man can't just sit around." -- Larry Walters

Sebastiani

NFO - what's that?

MK27

Altho it would be impossible to prove, I would wager that "white collar" types employed in the software industry are responsible for far more nihilistic sabotage (from the inside), representing far more damage (by any measure) in the world of computers, than anything done by people like Gary McKinnon (qv), who is really a Lee Harvey Oswald style patsy. I don't know anything about McKinnon's connection to the wider hacker social movement.

But you are right. Malevolent "white collar" hackers are probably not interested in such conventions at all -- they probably target them in secret

__________________

"A man can't just sit around." -- Larry Walters

Mario F.

Forget about that. I have no interest in discussing your greensleeves convention.

I'm more interested in something else... did you just quote Richard Stallman as a credible source of information regarding the correct use of the term "hacker"? I mean... are you joking or is it for real? What's next? Stallman the food critic?

EDIT: This is even more ironic because, I don't actually need anyone's quote to know exactly what Thantos means. Because I was there when the terms hacker and cracker (Stallman's memories must be failing him. And here I thinking he stored everything on emacs) were used and had very specific meaning. And instead of it being the media concentrating on the security aspects of hacking, it was the media dropping the term cracker and adopting hacker to mean both. I can even name you some of the culprits at the time. And it wasn't in the 80s. It was late 80s at best, definitely early 90s. ZDNet and CNet some of the biggest culprits when paper magazine gave way to online computer "magazines" written by opinion makers who couldn't tell a cracker from a fireplace.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

MK27

LOL! LOL! ps. I don't hate you Mario F.

Well, since RMS was a programmer and physicist at MIT for decades before he started GNU and wrote GCC (which won the poll for most used compiler, remember?), I guess I would consider him a very credible source of information regarding the origin of the word -- I actually have no doubt that crazed nazi zealots* simply adopted the use of it because they hate hippies like Stallman for their own personal reasons, and then the media deploys it for sensational purposes**. People who believe there is some underground network of computer hackers bent on bringing the free world to it's knees*** probably also believe the commies want to kidnap their children -- or at least are eager to run around with guns and regulations using that as an excuse. The personality type is sociopathic control freak, which ending up a sociopath is probably a consequence of being a lifelong dedicated control freak IMO.

And, all things being equal, I have more respect for RMS than I do for crazed nazi zealots.

* eg, the people who would like to control the internet, your OS, set curfews, etc.
** ie, regarding your edit, you got suckered. I do remember BBS's; I actually knew someone who was prevented by a judge's order from using a personal computer for a year because of software piracy, pre-net. But those people were not malicious in any real sense -- they were just "hacking" and liked video games, etc.
*** excluding those organized by commie/non-commie national governments.

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"A man can't just sit around." -- Larry Walters

ಠ_ಠ

Hackers can turn your home computer into a BOMB! - Newspaper stories & ads - images - carcino.gen.nz

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Mario F.

I'm telling you Stallman is completely wrong on this one. By far!
He's actually completely wrong about many other things. But that's besides the point. He's a colorful character, I give him that. But everytime Stallman tries to write history in the first person, I tend to burp.

What do you mean? That the term cracker never existed? That it wasn't the de facto term used to defined malicious hackers for more than a decade until the early 90s? That somehow I constructed my memories of the 80s and invented a new term?

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Originally Posted by brewbuck:
Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.