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You need to stop taking what the media spews about "hackers" verbatim and learn the true origins of the word.

Hacking has nothing to do with recognition or being 1337. Read the Jargon File, especially the glossary entry about hackers and you'll learn that its a rather innocuous term and has been completely blown out of proportion (and hence lost its meaning) by the media. Unfortunately, most people (yes... including a lot of Slashdotters) are Lemmings and don't seek the truth on their own.

pencil and paper: n.
An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based technology include improved 'write-once' update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse balls to deposit colored pigment. All these devices require an operator skilled at so-called 'handwriting' technique. These technologies are ubiquitous outside hackerdom, but nearly forgotten inside it. Most hackers had terrible handwriting to begin with, and years of keyboarding tend to have encouraged it to degrade further. Perhaps for this reason, hackers deprecate pencil-and-paper technology and often resist using it in any but the most trivial contexts.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/pencil-and- paper.html

Forking, mystified as the big bad wolf in OSS projects occurs only when the project seems doomed. Furthermore, I have no example of a fork that caused a project to fail. I'd like to know the real reason behind not releasing the OS as open source. Surely, it can't be the huge market out there for Yet Another Operating System.

Furthermore, keeping the core OS closed source makes it possible for me to control and change any kernel function as fast as possible without waiting for other developers to checkout/checkin due to different time zones and other considerations.

That's assuming they consider "waiting for other developers to checkout/checkin" an actual problem. There's nothing stopping him from making changes to a local copy of the code, testing it, and then checking the changes in to a central repository. It's good enough for virtually everyone else...

I really can't help but feel that he's either not really thought through the issue properly, or that these are surface level excuses for a deeper fear of what opening the code would do.

I think you've got the focus in the wrong place.

Finding and fixing security holes is the responsibility of the OS creators - you can say "oh, if nobody hacked into your OS here then how would we fix the security holes? The responsible OSs have people working on them that would STILL look for security holes, would STILL fix them, even if there wasn't a threat.

If a cracker wants to do good things, crack into a box and then tell the company in charge how you did it. Just being a cracker makes you no boon to the tech industry, just as being a virus writer makes you nothing but a nuisance.

In summary: If you are truly concerned about program security, go write code to make it more secure.

These are hacks.

Why? Simple. The pure value of simply hacking something together.

Hack Value.

"As Louis Armstrong once said when asked to explain jazz: "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know." (Feminists please note Fats Waller's explanation of rhythm: "Lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got it.")"

Does it run on Vaxen?

assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form "name@subdomain.domain;"

"Must have experience with a write-only scripting language" which we all know refers to Perl :P

Spoken like someone who has never programed Bourne Shell, yet alone C shell or JCL.

He should have to duel with Eric Raymond to defend Windows' honor.

What is it with these guys and their fvwm love, eh?

esr

I used to use fvwm2, and tuned my desktop design very carefully to get maximum use out of the screen space. (Now I use GNOME + Sawfish, which is just as effective but harder to bundle up a configuration for).

screenie

dotfile

D. Knuth

This Fvwm2 setup file provides the basic emacs-centered environment
that I have found most comfortable on my standalone machine at home.
Basically it gives me a big Emacs window at the left and a slightly
smaller XTerm at the right, together with a clock and CPU monitor
and a few buttons for accessing independent desktops.

screenie

dotfile

What is it with these guys and their fvwm love, eh?

esr

I used to use fvwm2, and tuned my desktop design very carefully to get maximum use out of the screen space. (Now I use GNOME + Sawfish, which is just as effective but harder to bundle up a configuration for).

screenie

dotfile

D. Knuth

This Fvwm2 setup file provides the basic emacs-centered environment
that I have found most comfortable on my standalone machine at home.
Basically it gives me a big Emacs window at the left and a slightly
smaller XTerm at the right, together with a clock and CPU monitor
and a few buttons for accessing independent desktops.

screenie

dotfile

I pluged it into my router and opened ports 25 & 110 for it.

Then I added Fetchmail .

And then the neatest thing since sliced bread; TMDA.

4 months now - zero spam, zero lost valid emails.

I didn't have to give up any existing (POP3) accounts, and gained as many as I want to create, because I now have my own email server.

This is easy and cures spam, period.

I'm on DSL, with dynamicly assigned IP, so I use a free DNS service no-ip.com.

This really is simple to do, all were RPM's and I mostly just took whatever default was offered.

I really am New To Nix, so if I could do this, then anyone can.

And it was free.

I am so happy - 40 - 50 spam emails a day, went to ZERO spam. And I still have and use my same email address! Plus some special occasion ones I create as needed (timed experation for usenet, etc.).

And the disclaimer - I have nothing to do with any program mentioned in this post, other then being a happy user of same.

NewToNix (668737)

Likewise "boxen" is a slashdot invention.

'fraid not. Think ox/oxen, then go read up on your history here.

Slavery? You're apparently living in the 19th century of Lord Kelvin, the antebellum good old days to radical Republicans. But since Bush Junior says he's "done more for civil rights than any other president", I think we sensible people living in the 21St century can also count Lincoln among those outraged by his lies.

BTW, from The Jargon File
"The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll."

While my post has drawn you out to look pretty clueless, and in fact has elicited a bona fide troll from you, my post merely pointed out the irony of the empty sarcasm of your post, to which I responded. And the greater hollowness of your aggressive apathy,and political naivete. You are the troll, by definition, and I will not feed you.

Doesn't this mean that the discussion is no over (and you lost), by Godwin's law?

Hell, why not just sue 255.255.255.255 and get everyone at once?

Remember that letter Eric Raymond wrote to Darl McBride? Man, I'm glad he did that.

Is a book review that wasn't for lavae.

It's like going to the local bookstore and hoping for something more to buy than Learn VB in 24 Hours.

Eric S Raymond (234230)
http://slashdot.org/~Eric%20S%20Raymond

Come on. Do you really think a guy who supports so many open source projects, and has his own online will to take care of those project would have a slashdot ID of 739458?

I really don't care what you say, it's even a bit funny, but quit pretending to be someone your not.

You cannot short circuit the SNAFU principle! Dire consequences await those who try.

Does Adium include Rendezvous support? I consider Rendezvous a worthwhile feature in iChat and I'm even considering switching back from Fire because of that (HHOS). (In due fairness to Fire, Rendezvous support is on their to-do list, though it hasn't been implemented yet.)

This page is plagiarized from:

(internal document)

turnitin.com: 403 Forbidden Access Denied / NDA protected page / Call Boies, Flexner, Schiller.

Did anyone else notice this ?, whats up with the relationship between the powergrid logo and the hacker logo, conspiricy ?

Shoot on site!!

That would be the Eric S. Raymond approach.

Fred Brooks described Second-System effect in his 1974 classic book, The Mythical Man-Month. I don't think there's a need to rewrite this book yet.

I was diagnosed with ADD (with Hyperactivity) as a grammar school child. I always had problems socially, in school, etc (probably why I became a hacker).

I have to say, I do NOT recommend medication. I took Ritalin for a little over a year while I was in 6th through the beginning of 8th grade. Certainly it made me feel (and act) calmer, but I also felt less creative.

I mean, think about it. You're giving your kid a medication which is chemically similar to speed. If you crush it up and snort it, you get high. If you go off it after taking it for several years you have horrible withdrawls. And kids who take Ritalin have much higher rates of drug addiction in their later years than kids who do not.

And one final thing: as some previous posters noted, ADD is not necessarily a "disorder" as much as it's a different way of thinking. ADD kids tend to be very intelligent and creative. They tend to have strong verbal abilities. Part of growing up, for me, has been learning to deal with ADHD. Yes, I'm easily distracted, yes, I have high test scores and a low GPA, but I've learned to deal with my condition as something that has pros and cons, but isn't necessarily "worse" than anything else.

I'm now a senior in high school, and all in all, I'm glad I never took Ritalin for any extended length of time. It's probably like Lobotomy(TM) for hackers to be.

What, the Scary Devil Monastery isn't good enough for you?

How about "let me try it with all goodies included and I'll decide if I want to pay for support, maintenance, training or other professional services "? Is that not how "commercial" distros keep the biz rollin'?

If I don't pay I don't get the source for the goodies now do I?

Of course, he used the word "bogosity," not to mention grep (albeit anecdotally) in the more-or-less canonical way.

If that ain't Jargon, then I don't know what is. Of course, I knew exactly what he was talking about, so I'll just shut up now.

Yeah.

Why are technical people so prone to it. There was that Paul Graham article (which made me lose all respect for him), not to mention ESR's notable ravings (eg, this "science" article, this "art" article, this lunatic fringe article), and of course the old chesnut of whether programming is art.

Basically, all these people are talking shit. They think that because they are technical people (perhaps even "scientists") that they are therefore logical, and since those outside the hard sciences are not logical, the techies are always right. Ignoring the fact that they rarely employ actual logic (read any of the articles linked to and find me a perfect logical argument in any of them), this totally ignores the contributions of those who are not hyper-rationalist. Certain people would like to enshrine this obnoxious, arrogant, Spock-like creature as the pinnacle of humanity. For them, I have only my greatest contempt.

Yeah.

Why are technical people so prone to it. There was that Paul Graham article (which made me lose all respect for him), not to mention ESR's notable ravings (eg, this "science" article, this "art" article, this lunatic fringe article), and of course the old chesnut of whether programming is art.

Basically, all these people are talking shit. They think that because they are technical people (perhaps even "scientists") that they are therefore logical, and since those outside the hard sciences are not logical, the techies are always right. Ignoring the fact that they rarely employ actual logic (read any of the articles linked to and find me a perfect logical argument in any of them), this totally ignores the contributions of those who are not hyper-rationalist. Certain people would like to enshrine this obnoxious, arrogant, Spock-like creature as the pinnacle of humanity. For them, I have only my greatest contempt.

Yeah.

Why are technical people so prone to it. There was that Paul Graham article (which made me lose all respect for him), not to mention ESR's notable ravings (eg, this "science" article, this "art" article, this lunatic fringe article), and of course the old chesnut of whether programming is art.

Basically, all these people are talking shit. They think that because they are technical people (perhaps even "scientists") that they are therefore logical, and since those outside the hard sciences are not logical, the techies are always right. Ignoring the fact that they rarely employ actual logic (read any of the articles linked to and find me a perfect logical argument in any of them), this totally ignores the contributions of those who are not hyper-rationalist. Certain people would like to enshrine this obnoxious, arrogant, Spock-like creature as the pinnacle of humanity. For them, I have only my greatest contempt.

Pull the mail in with fetchmail, or equivalent, and deliver it to local mailboxes.

The Jargon File has an entry explaining "I for one welcome our new X overlords."

For those like me who have no idea what a joe job is, here's the definition.

Remember the Halloween Documents?

I should also note that this is not a new concept.

A slightly more diplomatic comment, where he really does indicate there's no difference in end-philosophy except methods can be found here.

After the Netscape announcement broke in February 1998 I did a lot of thinking about the next phase -- the serious push to get "free software" accepted in the mainstream corporate world. And I realized we have a serious problem with "free software" itself.

Specifically, we have a problem with the term "free software", itself, not the concept. I've become convinced that the term has to go.

First of all, Open Source is a movement and Free Software is another. They have completly differents phylosophies and objectives as well.

"At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom."

ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!

Alles touristen und non-technischen looken peepers!
Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben.
Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken
mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das
pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.

couldn't help myself

Here is the Jargon File entry.

... tell me, HOW do you read any article that is mentioned here. I mean, have you ever read this at all?

Yes people, it's true. Eric S. Raymond is a genuine ugly motherfucker!

I don't understand how you fucking dorks can rally behind such a loser. Think about it. The man probably hasn't showered in days (if not weeks) and never uses deoderant. Do you suppose he's ever had sex? I think not! What woman could possibly sleep with such a hulking tub of greasy lard? He'd have to pay tons of money to even the most skanky prostitute. But then again, what money? He's all into free software so he's probably living off $0.50 bags of potato chips and Pepsi.

Seriously... what would happen if everyone here went rogue, said "fuck it", and just actively blew away spammers (online, mind you, we don't need any gun-toting geeks for the love of god)?

What about Eric Raymond?

On second thought, guns are too subtle.
How about we attack spammers with Trebuchets?
Or fling spammers into walls with a Trebuchet?

Is a network architecture for military command-and-control that could survive disruptions up to and including nuclear war, designed as a way to get most economical use out of scarce large-computer resources, (ARPAnet), a viable, civilian network architecture?

It's easily capable of representing objects, platform independent, encryptable (via SSL), compressable (via gzip [and probably SSL as well]), and textual.

The advantages of being textual in your protocols is well laid out in Eric Raymond's book The Art of Unix Programming. He even treats it as a case study.

From CatB (ESR):

5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.

As for Turing, mea culpa for including him in the list, although he was primarily concerned with computing theory rather than the specific architectural designs required to perform such computation
You will notice that I explicitly said that Turing laid the theoretical foundations. He published "On Computable Numbers" in 1936, way before he did any military work. And von Neumann certainly knew about Turing's work (he got a draft of the manuscript) and was influenced by it, so Turing had a big influence.
In fact, as Andrew Hodges writes in his Turing biography, von Neumann wrote letters to Alonzo Church and F.P. White, the secretary of the London Mathematical Society which published Turing's paper, arguing for publication of the paper (p112f.)
As far as Zuse is concerned, people like Eckert and Mauchly were well aware of Zuse and his work. In his autobiography, Zuse reprints a letter from Mauchly to that effect. Zuse's language Plankalkuel is well known in the programming language community. Saying that his work is irrelevant rather shows your own ignorance than anything else.

So what happens when an expert fixes something, then a non-expert 'unfixes' it to match what they 'know' and what matches popular perceptions

Then the expert realizes that in a document for the whole world, they must respect and engage their audience. They add a comment stating their point of view and engage in dialog to convince the other people maintaining that page.

Eventually a consensus will emerge. The consensus might be view A or view B alone. More likely, it will be some combination, perhaps A+B, or perhaps taking the congruent parts of each and agreeing to disagree for now on the parts that are contentious. This can seem like an insoluble problem too, but it's the same problem science has dealt with pretty well for a few centuries.

In the particular case you describe, where there's a common misperception, a good way to prevent regress is to add a note addressing the misperception. E.g., "Although many feel shaking a Polaroid picture helps it to develop faster, study foo shows it makes no difference. The misperception is thought to arise from cause bar." Including, of course, real links to external studies or other Wiki documents.

So what happens when an expert fixes something, then a non-expert 'unfixes' it to match what they 'know' and what matches popular perceptions

Then the expert realizes that in a document for the whole world, they must respect and engage their audience. They add a comment stating their point of view and engage in dialog to convince the other people maintaining that page.

Eventually a consensus will emerge. The consensus might be view A or view B alone. More likely, it will be some combination, perhaps A+B, or perhaps taking the congruent parts of each and agreeing to disagree for now on the parts that are contentious. This can seem like an insoluble problem too, but it's the same problem science has dealt with pretty well for a few centuries.

In the particular case you describe, where there's a common misperception, a good way to prevent regress is to add a note addressing the misperception. E.g., "Although many feel shaking a Polaroid picture helps it to develop faster, study foo shows it makes no difference. The misperception is thought to arise from cause bar." Including, of course, real links to external studies or other Wiki documents.