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From The Floor At Defcon 8
It appears that ZDtv is doing some fairly major co verage of Defcon. They've got the works - some text reporting, as well as streaming video from the floor and speakers, from what I can see. It's not being there, but heck, you're at least one less degree separated.
Your toddler raises an interesting point. He cannot see the objective differnce between chips and flakes. To him they are the same shape and therefore the same thing.
In this case the media and the general public are no better informed as your toddler. To them there is no objective difference between hackers and crackers. And there never will be. The differece is only useful to "technical types".
"Cracker" may retain use in the technical community, but it has no meaning in the outside world. To the media, they (hackers/crackers, we, you, whatever) are hackers. Period.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
Great, and I had to miss it. Vegas is always damn fun. Add to that a thousand morally-flexible, half-intoxicated geeks looking for fun and a good hack at all hours of the day and night, and it's too good to miss!
"One hotel ice bucket, three two liter bottles of Dew, a pound of mashed potatoes from room service, gaffers tape, and thirteen paperclips. Sounds like we have all the parts for world domination, boys! Let's get to work!"
.sig: Now legally binding!
It's natural, therefore it's good?
My 18 month-old knows the word "chip", but doesn't realize that flaked cereals aren't chips. So shen he wants some raisin bran, he asks for "chips". What if we all started saying "chip" when we meant either chips OR flaked cereals? We would lose a useful shade of meaning. Point: Words are not just labels, they are differentiators.
There is an objective difference between hackers and crackers. Calling both by the same name destroys the ability to talk about them easily. This ability is not much prized (or even noticed) by the general public (including the mainstream media), but it IS useful to technical types. That's why I, as a technical type, resist this change.
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It's natural, therefore it's good?
:), but realize that trying to explain to non-techs the difference between hacking and cracking is pretty pointless.
The post you are responding to was not a defense of the usage of "hacker" vs "cracker"; it was an exposition of the way langauge works. It is pretty common for technical terms to enter common usage. Often, the common definition is incorrect from a technical perspective. It works the other way to, with terms going from common to technical usage. "Hacker" is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Every old definition I can find suggests doing something poorly. A bad writer is a hack. A bad cough is a hack. Hacking at meat or wood or golf balls indicates the hacker's inability to do any better.
My own pet peeve is "imaginary," as in "imaginary number." There is nothing imaginary about them. They are just as real, and just as abstract, as the so-called real numbers. Yet the term, despite its incorrect connotations, persists.
Anyway, like it or not, "hacker" in its mainstream usage, means someone who cracks computer systems. Don't try to enforce technical definitions on people who have no need for them, and don't try to reengineer the language. Feel free to ignore me (I know you do anyway
I submitted this link to slashdot earlier today, but since they've posted this story they're not likely to post mine. So here it is. The article covers the Black Hat Briefing sub-conference and talks a bit about just how crazy the corporations are about finding decent security people. Definitely a decent article.
noah
For those of you that weren't there, I put some pictures up of our trip up. There's not a lot, I haven't updated it since sat night (I should be putting up some more pics after lunch). Also I should probably consider replacing the page with html that's written while sober. Hmmmm.....
Didn't this thing just end yesterday?
From the text of this post it looks like all this stuff is live.
<Drunken Undershirt Speech>Maybe if Slashdot wasn't owned by the damn multinational media and was still a small site like it used to be back when it sucked, then now it wouldn't suck as much as my pet pig on this here tree bark.</DUS>
Nice.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
That's not the way the english language (any language actually) works. If the media (and the general public) called mechanics "blacksmiths" and no one but the mechanics themselves mechanics, sooner or later the word for people who worked on cars would become "blacksmiths".
It's the same with hackers. The media calls them hackers, the general public calls them hackers; no one but the hackers themselves uses the term crackers. If this continues long enough (and I argue that it has) the word for people that do that sort of thing will become "hacker" whether or not they call themselves hackers. That's the way language evolves. Get over it.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
Is it just me or do Conferences go down hill really really fast as soon as the media starts hyping them and you get a severe influx of people that do not belong there. Look at Comdex for example, 3 years ago, it was a great place to go and actually learn about whats coming out. Last year and the year before, 99% of the people there were only there for free shirts and hats and other merchandise. I doubt I will ever go to Comdex again. I went to Defcon 6 and 7 and they were good, I just hope the media doesnt go nuts and ruin this conference like they have will all the other good ones.
Defcon 8 was certainly a good conference this year. It was estimated at about 5500 people. Most of which stayed at the lovely Alexis Park Hotel.
I'll try to be somewhat breif on my experiance there.
Pros:
Informative Lectures, speakers who knew what they were talking about
Plenty of neat stuff to buy.
Plenty of people that are well known in the "hacking" scene.
Fed spotting!
Free beer provided by the people at dis.org
From Thursday evening to Sunday morning (when I left) there were constantly people around all 3 pools drinking, talking. People at the LAN (wireless too this year!) to mingle with. It never got boring.
Cons:
Speaker room isn't big enough! You had to get a seat and keep it for hours at a time if you even wanted to be able to sit down.
Immature people doing random acts of lameness. For example: Cement down the toilet, Super smoke bombs in the pool, DoS over the LAN, and other lame things.
Luckily our favorite Hawaiian shirted enforcer Priest was there to take care of some of the kids.
Overall, I had a wonderful time. The Defcon site is usually very quick with bringing tons of information from the con within a couple weeks of it ending, so be sure to check back there.
On a side note, anyone willing to contribute to the "Air condition all of Las Vegas" fund? That place is so damn hot. 114 degrees (F) one day.
Good conf DT and the Goon crew, keep em coming!