Slashdot Mirror
Should Hackers Get Their Own Logo?
Ridgelift writes "Eric S. Raymond is proposing a new logo for Hackerdom. 'The Linux folks have their penguin and the
BSDers their demon.
Perl's got a camel, FSF
fans have their gnu and OSI's
got an open-source
logo. What we haven't had, historically, is an emblem that
represents the entire hacker community of which all these
groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one - the glider pattern from the Game of Life.'"
H4x0r3z
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
I figure a lot of people are going to say something along the lines of "to hell with this, we don't ALL need a logo", but IMHO it's just a cool little thing that could easily be embedded (or hidden) in things like logos or programs (being just a 9x9 matrix).
Though I think it would probably be best and easiest represented as pixels rather than circles on a grid.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You want a group that has been, historically, non-conformists to agree on something so singular as a logo?
Here's a cup, there's the hoover dam. You'll have better luck.
btw, I think it's more fitting that hackers do not have a logo, personally.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
0) why the heck does a disparate group of computer enthusiasts (excuse me, hackers) need any logo
at all? so we can "recognize each other"? I don't get it. seems creepy.
1) it needs color
2) doesn't need the grid lines, looks too much like tic-tac-toe. keep just the
dots.
3) how can it not be copyrighted or trademarked? if it's really in the public
domain, how can ESR assert that hackers (excuse me, crackers) and
advertisers aren't supposed to use it?
4) does anybody really care what ESR thinks any more?
In the chance that ten years from now hackers everywhere will refer to this slashdot article as the origin of their symbol, I just wanted to post in it.
...but I kinda doubt it.
I don't see the reason why you need one, as even the term "hacker" has been so badly butchered. But why not just a skull and crossbone? Maybe a nuke exploding behind a windows logo. But wait, then they would be in violation of IP, guess we'll have to sue those pesky hackers.
...a snatch shot with a bottle of beer embedded inside.
Woops, wrong group, sorry.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
A Black and White stripped guy with a Ball and Chain attached....
Die First, Then Quit
That glider is pointing downward and will eventually crawl off the bottom right corner of the screen.
The glider should be going up, to symbolize progress.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
From the page: "Here is a snippet of XHTML you can paste into a page.
' ></a>"
<a href='http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/'>
<img src='http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/glider.png
Note that this isn't valid XHTML.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
How about this:
A cowboy hat that is half black and half white.
Wouldn't this be better served as a slashdot poll?
Seeing as how certain people within government would like us all branded, all this seems to acheive is to further that goal for them.
While we're at it, how about a eye-patched Johnny Depp logo for any news related to RIAA, CD-R's, or DVD encryption? Or an icon for political matters with a Pinochio nose piercing through the US Constitution parchment?
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
This seems kind of ridiculous and pointless. Sure, it's an interesting idea, but it seems like a kind of needless branding of an identity/concept. Plus, you'll see all the least qualified latching onto it first, to prove that they're so plugged in to the culture.
And then in three months, it'll show up on peoples' resumes. And business cards. And we'll all die a little bit.
Speaking of which, time to update my resume, this may be the key to getting my hyper-1337 job.
I am not Herbert.
Look, there are 8 gliders like this - 4 directions, and 2 states, if I remember right.
Why on earth did he pick one that goes DOWN?
Why not pick one that goes up and right?
Crackers should have one that goes DOWN.
Education is the silver bullet.
Hacker's Logo
Right?
and the BSDers their demon.
That's a daemon for them.
The BSD Daemon
Daemon not demon
bash$
I personally think rule 30 would be a better logo, but may we should pick something from the Game of Real Life.
A giant statue of Mr. Eric Raymond out of Mt. Hood or something. It seems like this man has an insatiable ego that cannot be fulfilled.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Call me old school, (okay, a lot of you will call much nastier things than that) but I just don't like the idea of another logo. Notice that on Raymond's little proposal page there almost as much space devoted to who should *not* use that logo than to what the logo is actually supposed to represent. This starts to make me feel that the purpose is to draw lines on the ground and say "you can come in but you "others" have to stay out".
Cheers, Dcobbler.
Those of us that work on MS Windows would like something depicting lemmings going off a cliff or maybe lemmings landing head first on the rocks below.
I can get you in checkmate in one move - not what you want from a hacker logo.
I think that regardless of what we choose, goatse.cx should be stricken from the list immediately!
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Admittedly, the "glider" was cool. Everybody played life, everyone knew that crosses were stable and gliders would fly till they impacted - it's a universal identifier for a lot of people.
But the BSD logo and the Linux logo are brands, they're symbols for a codebase, not a loosely and contentiously organized group which most people off the street would mistakenly identify as a word for computer criminals. This really doesn't make any sense- what are you branding yourself as? Are you an ESR/hacker? What if by some fluke you just never played life?
Anyway if we are going to give someone the responsiblity of branding an entire MOVEMENT, I'm not sure it should be some gun crazed wack job that would scare most moms out of the day care center.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
It looks very similar to a portion of a go game diagram.
Since hackers and go players are an overlapping segment of the population, there is some room for confusion.
is what I thought was more traditional. But while on the subject, what group is this for? The original hackers? Crackers? Script Kiddies? Phone Phreaks? All of the above? It seems to me that before you can give a group a logo, you have to actually define that group first. On the site, they do seem to have a statement of beliefs or whatever, but I think the guy has a little bit big of a head to act like is the authority on hackers.
I have no
While this is a nice idea for someone to come up with after putting down the hooka...is it a joke?
A logo for hackers? Sure why not, these are the kinds of people just looking to attach themselves to some sort of social structure, because they care so much what other people think of their social standings.
Your kidding, right?
The hacker symbol will be this
The amazon.com shopping cart, inverted and appropriately rotated...
My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
a middle finger sticking up, or somthing very absured and not accepted by the masses, so it will appear on hacked computers, etc. Anything except the goatse guy.
Sig: I stole this sig.
You'll forgive us for having our fingers ready to pounce on alt+f4.
the need for a logo is obvious. After all, /. was forced to use the linux logo for this.
Hrm.......
I would sugest a cluttery desk with dirty ash trays, lots of empty half crushed soda-pop cans, O'reilly books of various pedigry and colors spewn around the room and book shelves. Pillow hair, coffee cups, the abient glow of a monitor, and half eaten pizza. Combine these things into one logo and it would rule all other logos.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Hey boys, The rest of the world has been using the Hello Kitty character as a semi-offcial "Hacktivist" logi for years. Here's a cute link where you can enjoy Neo-Jacobians Federales whining about the evils that dear little Hello Kitty bodes: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=19097
Enjoy!
--
J
501 Not Implemented
How about a finger above the "Yes, I'm sure!" key
or the "any" key?
or above a 2-key keyboard with a "1" key and a "0" key?
How about the caffeine molecule?
Now... who starts the organization and management of the votes?
-Not it!
You are not a hacker if you have not heard of the game of life.
I know what "game of life" is but that logo reminds me more of tic-tac-toe ... that's how it's spelled right? Toe?... aaah what ever, next post!
people will mod this down as cliche (it is, admittedly), but what other almost-universal symbol addresses the balance of the act of hacking? the project unmaintained rots until a new maintainer picks it up (balance). the interesting bits are explored until they are no longer interesting (balance). one hacker's romp on the net is another's security breach (balance). one anal admin's lockdown is another's challange (balance). and always, in the ashes of a {failed, successful} project is the inspiration for the next {success, failure}.
So how do you draw a virgin?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Here is a snippet of XHTML you can paste into a page.
' ></a>
' alt='Hacker logo' /></a>
<a href='http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/'>
<img src='http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/glider.png
The astute will notice that the above is not valid XHTML. It should be:
<a href='http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/'>
<img src='http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/glider.png
Take a look
Functional, yet stylish. It gives us a connection to those hackers who have gone before us.
(Note to the humor impaired: This is supposed to be funny. Laugh, or at least try to.)
Someone you trust is one of us.
If you don't know what a glider is, or why it would make a good emblem, or if you're dubious about having an emblem at all, read the FAQs page
The word "hacker" has become a shibboleth. It's a word that seperates people in-the-know from people who are not. Back in biblical times, a town was named "Shibboleth" which non-native people would mispronounce. If a guard or other authority wanted to know if someone was native to the town or a possible outside threat, he would have them pronounce the name of the city. If they could pronounce "Shibboleth" properly, they were in. If they couldn't, they were sent on their way.
Why the history lesson? Because the word "hacker" has gained a lot of baggage and is now a shibboleth. Once used to describe people who were true geeks who wanted to understand how things worked, it now carries the negative connotation of someone who breaks into computers.
I like the word "hacker" because true hackers understand what it means. I also think in that same vein the logo Eric's chosen is a good one, because people "in-the-know" will understand what it means. The fact that I thought the "Game of Life" referred to the Milton-Bradley game shows I still have more to learn. So now I'm reading up on the history of the actual game, which shows my desire to really learn and understand.
Which is what a "hacker" wants to do anyway...
Ruby on Rails Screencast
... you can't use the icon.
take RMS, a yammering looney with bad facial hair, a big ego, and a strong resounding belief in software and freedom.
now take away the "strong resounding belief" bit, and you've got...
ESR!
they were separated at birth, I think.
ya, I'm a graphic designer... and I agree. That logo's weak.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Hackers long to have something go down on them and this it there best chance? :)
You've never heard of the Game of Life? You're right then, a Hacker Emblem doesn't apply to you.
I think the nethack logo is too complex. Go compare with logos for corporations and other groups, they are universally very simple graphics that can be recognized from across the room.
Sorry that you missed the game of life, but for many of us it represents the first really interesting program we wrote when we were getting started. It was the subject of SA articles for years after its introduction.
Hmm.. I guess your right. And all this time...
Oh well, I guess it's time to find another hobby.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
If the first thing you thought of when you saw this article was this Game of Life, you are automatically disqualified. :-)
I don't see what's wrong with any of the existing logos?
Those of us who are geeks don't have a problem identifying them.. Sure, if you want to make yourself identifiable to non-hackers, a common logo is a good idea. But why would hackers want that?
I saw a GNU sticker on a stoplight the other day.. for me, it was obvious "There be hackers here!"-message. Naturally it's just a wierd animal-sticker to most people.. but that's kind of the fun, isn't it?
If your a hacker your probabally with a group or something that has a logo.
Hackers don't need nor want a logo. Does ESR really think that most hackers are just dying to put logos on their coffee cups, hats, shirts, etc? If a hacker wants to express himself, he'll do it through hacking.
If we do have a logo, I think it should be a vector rendered shilouete of a fat, unwashed, unshaven hacker sitting in front of a PC.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
"...that is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed."
Like that's gonna happen. If this does catch on, it will be plastered on every wannabe's website. It will be abused and misapplied, just as the name hacker is treated.
Perhaps hackers are unique, even among themselves? Perhaps a logo does not represent all (or most) hackers? Perhaps claiming to have a logo that represents all hackers (or hackers in general) is presumptuous?
"It's my job to think of these things."
Again, perhaps this is presumptuous? Historians (like say, of American history or what have you) don't tell us what our symbols should be. (Well, if they do no one is listening).
More importantly, hackers do not necessarily need a symbol. Hackers aren't all in the same group and they certainly are not out to advertise themselves and get people to associate an image or idea with them. I would say they probably don't care what the general populous thinks, let alone if they know what a hacker is.
I For one suggest that we take a vote on this preferably with Diebold Touchscreen machines. Thas way the truly determined hackers will win.
You want a group that has been, historically, non-conformists to agree on something so singular as a logo?
Sure. Even anarchists have a logo, for god's sake!
Hackers are a rich subculture, and it's been that way for decades. Hackers share common life views, activities, and experiences that are different than the mainstream. So they're distinctive and weird, not unlike peace-activists, republicans, christians, motorcyclists, masons, homosexuals, etc. They've all got their logos that some wear with pride and others choose not to. But if you do choose to fly the flag, at least there's a community understanding of what it means.
One problem I see with a logo though, is that hackers tend to hate posers (since hacking is more about competence than simply attitude). And it's easier to pose with a logo.
Since hackers and confused people are an overlapping segment of the population, there is some room for go playing.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Don't think so. The rules behind the simple game of Life are very easily enumerated. Every single "phenomenon" that arises is not emergent, it is clearly and totally predictable from the rules. Emergent phenomena are those that cannot be predicted. It's even better when they violate the rules that start them in motion to begin with.
Just because some things happen that are really cool when you smear a bunch of bits to "on" and start the game up, does not mean you're witnessing emergent phenomena. It just means you lack the brainpower or patience to follow the rules through and predict the outcome of your smears or shapes, before starting the game up.
Can't open source hackers have ONE THING that goes down on them???
Geez, it's not like they're getting girls to do it.
my blog
Linux is a product, BSD is a product, open-source is a group of products...hackers are individuals .
Besides, everyone knows that this will only be used by script-kiddies, and other talentless hacks (funny how leaving out the er in hackers gives you an antonym of it). It's no different than the jackasses bragging about the CS program at their school...but couldn't even program their VCRs. Or the dumbass that puts 30 stickers on their car, but has never even opened the hood...you get the point.
A true hacker needs only to point to ones own work...they don't need some lame logo to prove they have skills.
http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.htm l
How long before the clothing is out?
Easy to draw too.
Blar.
worst. idea. ever.
Well the problem is, most hacker groups tend to make their own logo's, like Cult Of The Dead Cow used a ASCII picture of a cow's head with X's for eyes. Most groups seem to use a ASCII picture-istic version of their group name, or other ASCII images. Thing is with the use of hacker symbols is that different groups seem to want to make a name for themselves so each do something different to make their's stand out. I was going to post a few of the symbols but due to so many white spaces in the pictures, it wouldn't let me post them
I thought Hackers/Crackers were represented by "the hat" You can even buy one at thinkgeek
WURD!!
It looks like the international symbol for man attempting to perform autofellatio than the life glider. What system did ESR play on? All mine used blocks.
It appears that Perl doesn't have anything. O'Reilly has got a nice little logo for their Perl books and the fact that people believe the camel is the logo, can only help sales.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
No silly-willy that was supposed to be Diebold (No Text) not a merger between microsoft's old server software and a voting machine that is as secure as a paranoid scitzophrenic during a bad acid trip.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Part of being a hacker is being a rebel. It's about being unique, anonymous and non-conformist. Sure OSI has it's own logo, so does linux, and so does perl. Most of those logo's are trademarked. This is a bad idea that's going going to get laughed at...
cool
I'm willing to burn karma on this,
When they look back at slashdot, and talk about the point where it "jumped the shark"
this suggestion/news item/post will definitely be considered.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
You know, it really resembles a hand flipping someone off viewed from the side. Not bad
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I really want to make a sarcastic, scathing comment.
I really want to go on about how much this bothers me and why it's wrong.
I REALLY want to mock this.
The trouble is, I really like it.
Which makes me hate it even more!
I've searched my copy, but can't find that logo.
Are you sure you're using the same version as I am?
Is yours endorsed by Art Linkletter?
Well now. I didn't think so.
I can see where Eric is headed on this one. 1 logo which would unite the hacker community. A little bit like a new world order, instead of having BSD vs. Linux ect. But we already have one. its called /.
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
Brother Raymond doesn't need to make a logo for all of us. I wear a logo that nobody can see...the logo of Jesus Christ.
;-)
Didn't anyone learn that the federal government (aka United States, a corporation) will only usurp the smaller man-made institutions? Eric S. Raymond's proposition will only do the same. You don't see state flags anymore, just the corporate United States flag. It will be the same way with Hacker flags.
Eric, you're brilliant as Thomas Jefferson, but please don't feel rejected if a number of "hackers" don't organize under your flag. Most already have a flag. If we were all aware that the original 13th ammendment to the "Constitution for the united States of America" was still in effect, then the by-laws overlayed by the "Internation Hackers" flag would only ussurp the many already-existing "Hacker" flags that many already hold-dear.
Again I ask, has everyone forgotten about the Federal ussurpation?
Become one of the freemen!
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
So thaentix, you need to get with the GNU program because you can't oppress us. We are free both idealogically and in price. ESR is a great wise man who will lead us to greater freedom.
Why? What's the point?
I like the idea of having a logo to represent the community, but the glider from life? It's well, a little lifeless. I'm a bigger fan of animal type logos, and something with some damn color! That's just my 2 cents though.
Later,
Phil
Three troll replies and one intelligent one. Good thinking. :-)
Hackers? gimme a break. To most of the world, hackers are still a bunch of people who try to destroy websites and commit VISA-card fraud.
You.. hell.. WE don't need a hacker-logo. We don't need a bloody company profile or unified PR campaign. You know why? Because we aren't a unified unit. Nobody can say "hackers think that..." because no two hackers are alike.
A logo implies a common good. The penguin-people are all Linuxfans. The apple-people are all arty-farty designfreaks (I can say that, I'm writing this on my iBook from my bed on wifi). The problem is that Microsoft has hackers. Linux has hackers. FreeBSD has hackers. Apple has hackers. And there is no way any one of those groups can represent any (far less ALL) of those other groups - hence - a single unified logo is a bad idea.
Haje
The Mini Repository - more links
Mod me down as redundant if necessary, but I HAVE to say it: I LOVE the idea, and I love the logo.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Do I want to be known by a logo or known by my works? my work is my logo.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
We need a symbol...! I suggest the middle finger salute.
An official motto: Up yous, too...!
An official OS: Linux or maybe one of the BSD's.
An official enemy: Micorsoft/Bill Gates/DCMA/The Patriot Act.
And an official title: geek.
Anyone read that crap? What a fucking cock.
This is a proposal that we adopt one - the glider pattern from the Game of Life.'"
Since I could really care less, I say we adopt your idea. Make sure it's an opensource/ copyright free graphic though.
all i got to say is.. NERDS!!!!
but...the logo is rather unimpressive.
;))
;)
:( (See Java)
:) Naughty ESR, practise what you preach.
;o) but it would seem the best (and most appropriate) course of action.
((Disclaimer - I am an amateur graphics-artist/designer, and I have done a number of courses on design, including design of logos. I consider myself a hacker and nearly fell of my chair when I read 'A Portrait of J. Random Hacker'
1) From a design point of view it simply lacks...impact. It's lost on a page. Compare it to the penguin or the bsd daemon. It just doesn't have the same appeal or impact. A bit of colour could make a big difference. Perhaps something a little less abstract.
2) I can understand ESR's reasoning, and I known what the game of life is, but I do not associate it with hacker culture. I'd say that freedom of choice, a can-do-attitude, and enormous diversity are more symbolic of hacker culture. Oh, and late nights playing games/coding/swigging coffee
Whenever I think of the game of life, I see little bacteria and virii crawling allover the place, taking over the world. Not a good thing to be associated with.
3) A caffeinated beverage? Dammit, already been used
4) My suggestion would be to come up with a number of alternatives and let people choose for themselves. Don't say: "Here it is, let's all use THIS". Giving people only one choice contradicts hacker culture IMHO
5) Don't like it? Make your own then. I know that programmers/hackers are generally speaking not artists (and from experience -> good artists loathe programming/hacking
Oh well...just my 20 cents.
Yeah, but that is not a very strong go position.
Perhaps Life from Go:
+++++++ This line is all blank
++OOOO+ This line is the top
+O+O+O+ This line is the middle
+OOOO++ This line is the botttom
+++++++ And the board goes on
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Why don't we just mash them (gnu d00d, bsd's charlie, linux's tux, etc) all together, or just switch out body parts, or something....
Legos are geek toys too, right?
do() || do_not();
But no, there's really no point, and it's a silly idea.
..
OTOH, yes, the Game of Life was cool. But still no thanks.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Also: If you tiled them (with no extra space, or even with a one-cell margin between, probably), they'd cease to glide. Which brings up a great, though CPU-draining, and possibly annoying, possibility: a huge life-game running as your wallpaper.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Could hacking even be institutionalized or a coherent enough group to be given a logo? I propose a black flag with a white system font "10101" centered on it. That is a lot closer to what a hacker would really understand... these are not the cool, clean-logo wearing poser hackers that need a logo... it's the ones that are really actually interested... the ones that used a TRS-80, that deserve the pirate flag logo. BUT, who could decide who gets to use the logo? A super-hacker consortium of some kind? If so, I hereby claim juniority: I am not at all the best hacker, but I have used a TRS-80 for evil...
stuff |
The Hacker Element
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Yay, let the social acceptance of 'hackerdom' as he puts it, begin! Any real hacker would not want to be associated with an emblem or symbol of any kind, especially one that signifies 'chic'ness of any kind. It would find it downright offensive. Let the 'culture' stay counter, kthx.
Perl Hacker -> Camel on a Glider
:-). As far as the glider in the game of life goes , it pretty much can mean anything and everything. In that sense that might substitute for a Hacker logo. On an imaginative day, I can make it sound cool. The idea is good but I bet, there will be a hundred more out there before you can say Glider !
Python Hacker -> Python on a Glider
BSD Hacker -> Demon on a Glider (not that it would do him/her too much good)
Linux Hacker -> Penguin on a Glider
Well yeah you get the idea. The point is you are a hacker when you wear a camel T-shirt or for that matter any of those logs above and a thousand more! Hacking is a frame of mind.. more like zen and like zen, there are so many ways of expressing this. Hence so many symbols. Well it makes some sense to call yourself a "generic" hacker. But today I might be coding away on my mac and voila tomorrow I am a Linux hacker or a clueless wannabe hacker looking at my car's 710 lights
--> Your Wisecrack Here
No confusion necessary -- it's a damn strong Go position, as well, so even the mis-interpretation gives a positive impression.
The caffeine molecule, a substance that permeates hacker culture.
It even symbolises some of the humour that hackers are known for.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I would rotate it 90 degrees clock-wise. That way, the 'L' stands for "loser" and the extra dot represents hackers' malformation.
Otherwise, great idea.
I would have thought 5ux0rz would be more appropriate for most people that call themselves hackers, especially ones that think it would be c001 to have a logo :-p
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Hackers are hackers because we like to hack. We want to be isolated unless playing a different role (like a normal person going to movies and stuff...) We like to be on the bottom of technical things - not beeing part of elistic society with a logo of his own.
So ESR: go stuff your glider up you "# and shut up.
I see your point of view. However, what I consider "hacking" IS tinkering with computers. Having skills is a side effect. As with the "newbie" aspect, I would consider a lot of non-hackers to be newbies in the software world. Tinkering with computers does make you understand them, and that makes you pretty much adept. I wouldn't say that everyone that considers themselves a hacker is skilled, but I would respect that claim. "Hacker" is just a group that people like to place themselves in. I personally don't care if the media interprets that as malicious, or if that automatically gives people the idea that I'm lower than trained "professionals." More and more of people that aren't really hackers as I view them are calling themselves that. I'm not sure I want hackers to turn into some big organization. Sorry about the disorganized writing, I'm kinda tired.
I don't use Emacs; it uses me.
you mean to tell me that this flying window thing isnt the hacker logo?
<ObAppleDis>God, I hated the Apple's hi-res graphics mapping. I think that must have been the catalyst for a lifelong hatred of Apple, and a tendency to nitpick on their crap, even when they might otherwise have a "mostly good" product.</ObAppleDis>
Anyway, yeah, Life was teh bomb.
John
Not that I think its required.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
its all in the subject
The fault with the GNU, Linux, FreeBSD, and Perl logos is that they AREN'T FRIGGING LOGOS. They're mascots.
Logos should be much, much simpler than that. The OSI logo is good in that regard. The only reason you have no idea what the OSI logo looks like is because it never gets used, because OSI people are not zealots, and they don't have advertising dollars (</flamebait>).
This logo is almost simple enough. I like the glider idea. Ditch the grid around it. Just the five dots is fine. If you like the reference to pixels, then make it five pixels. But no grid. Think of the CitiGroup logo. Or Nike. Or Amazon. So simple that they could go anywhere, in any ad, and all of a sudden you know that it's for Citi, Nike, Amazon.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Hackers can have their own logo/animal once O'Reilly publishes a book on hacking.
-Magiluke
Earl Grey, Hot.
Sure. Even anarchists have a logo, for god's sake!
Are we talking about the "peace sign"? If we do get a logo, it will become trendy, probably in a way worse than all-your-base and "profit!" and the like and then...
One problem I see with a logo though, is that hackers tend to hate posers (since hacking is more about competence than simply attitude). And it's easier to pose with a logo.
Exactly. It will become like 1337 speak -- something that people who think they're on the inside often use, something posers flaunt.
Penguings and Devils aren't about some obscure, fleeting concept as a movement or culture. They belong to some useful pieces of software. They're different than the obscure concept ESR wants to give a visual brand to.
(Although I'll hand it to him, if there was anything that'd do it, that'd be it.)
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
WTF is that she's cramming in there? Muff Dive Barbie?
Although I read ESR's How to Become a Hacker, it wasn't until I read his post on the new hacker logo.
I think I'm finally starting to think like a hacker. My wife asked me to stop programming for awhile and help her make dinner. So while helping her make Stroganoff Meatballs, I was able to keep thinking like a hacker.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
It may also be called the "brown orifice" to honor goatse.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
seems like most hackers here already voted for the goatse logo.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's not cool. It's commie bullshit!
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Best design so far!
And if you're pretending to be SEAL, you go around humming but refuse to sing.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Well, the L SHape is not considered too strong. You are right in that it would takea bit to capture. I guess the relative strength or weakness would depend on the rest of the board. To me it looks like "Thickness"
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Since ESR decided on it, it's white-hats. (Read "How to Become A Hacker" - he HATES crackers being called hackers.
I'd like to post this redundant and useless comment to say that I'm just one more person in support of this.
-Tim Louden
How long before Thinkgeek makes a T-shirt?
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
buy I think a "Cat Herding" logo would be in order!
I think if you concoct it through Slashdot, it automatically becomes as uncool as can possibly be, but go ahead and sport the logo if it twists your cinnamon bun. Ignore the snickering.
OBEY HACKER
http://infidels.ath.cx/obey/obey-hacker.gif
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
Think Geek would like a unified logo so they can sell the crap out new t-shirts with a new logo.....
I see what your thinking OSDN.....
if common sense was common, wouldn't everyone have it?
*
*
*
**
I g07 t3h h4ckz.
(I'm kidding. If you think this post is motivation enough to flame me, go right ahead.)
====
Crudely Drawn Games
...a chair in the process of being carved out of a solid block of wood, with an axe embedded in it, a la the original definition: "someone who makes furniture with an axe".
That meme is well ingrained, myself being familiar with it before ever using a modem, and lends itself well to imagery and iconification.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It should be
GNU / *
*
***
[This comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Therefore I added this useful gibberish at the end.]
-Dave
I've often wondered if a cellular-automata program of some kind would be an effective Go opponent. There are some interesting (if trivial) similarites between the two.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
But when they said "the game of life" I instantly thought of the Hasbro Game of Life that I played as a kid. Did anyone else ever sell their family members at the end of the game for extra cash?? Anyone?? Anyo... Maybe I have bigger problems than just not being geek enough.
I planned on inserting something witty here but never got around to it.
GNU have their own logo!
If you wanted to have a logo for only the true hackers, those that fulfilled all the ideals that hackerdom is supposedly based around, then you wouldn't post it on slashdot. As soon as something is on slashdot it is torn apart and disseminated to every wannabe and poser on the net for them to regurgitate any time they want recognition.
Sir Timbly of Cannatuna, offical Knight of the Heptagonal Table
Foo is pretty much the canonical metavariable, it predates the "life" symbol by decades, and it's something that any hacker (that really is a hacker) will instantly recognize.
All we'd need is some stylized rendition of it (which in itself would be another challenge on par with herding cats) but I think it captures the hacker membership a little more cleanly...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
The big question is, would you tattoo it on your arm like Charles Petzold and his Windows logo?
Chip H.
Is a Hacker's Union. God help us all when that happens.
Look out, Ma, those boys are from Local #0xf00f...
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word "Frisco," which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
#|O|#
-+-+-
O|#|#
-+-+-
O|O|O
I thought he meant the board game. :(
Personally, I think a better logo would be quite simple, but sum up hackerdom nicely.
All you need to show is a round hole, a square peg, and a large mallet.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Kind of like this?
By the way, don't click on that link.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
I'm not convinced about this. While I may not always agree with ESR, I think he's innocent here. From memory, Aunt Tillie was originally coined by David Woodhouse on LKML. ESR picked it up and ran with it, sure (adding a nephew, Melvin, his girlfriend Penelope, and other characters for no apparently good reason), but he didn't originate the term.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The fact remains that ESR is wasting a lot of time trying to control his environment and prevent "Hacker" from taking on the negative meaning that it has today. Sorry, Eric, but it's time to move on to more meaningful debates instead of spinning your wheels on an issue that is next to meaningless. Let's just call ourselves "developers" or something be done with it. It sure would help with the marketing of OSS.
Connect Four
This is what she's using.
he talks about if you use this brand you are giving a gang sign, but don't think you are in the gang till your peers tell you your da coolist.
yeah there is a hacker culture and ESR comes across as one of it's hoary hanger on embrace and embicile.
this isn't coming off as a rant is it? I mean, I'm a hacker, I wouldn't want to lose my standing by upsetting my peers. What is the status quo, I need to be with that.
Over the years ESR has gone from maintaining a funny and slightly correct jargon file to creating a mythos of hackers so complete and fucking rigid it's like a god damned GURPS module.
Hey... I know, how about a bison logo!?
-pyrrho
If the Life theme is desired, why not a glider gun instead of just a glider. For example, Gosper's -- seems more apprpopriate. The logo could be a depiction of a state where a new glider was just emitted.
Yeah, go for it. Maybe you'll even get an interview on NPR.
'Hackers' all have their own individual logos. A 'unified logo'? Only lamers and script kiddies will use it, and that might not be a bad thing. At least it will mark that group for immediate exclusion.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
stfu godboy
go smack your head against some concrete.
repetitively.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
perhaps 317, --wx--xrwx, or 10.1.111 would be more appropriate|weird as text.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
if he doesn't know, how would he know.
besides, you enjoyed it didn't you?
-pyrrho
You can't be a winner if you've ever played Conway's Game of Life
Yea...I'm pretty much a jerk.
WKRP?
-pyrrho
aack. Ignore the ipaddr, I'm an idiot.
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
It would be a great idea, except:
/>
1. "Hackers" do not operate as a "group". They're just people who like to pick things apart and learn more. "Hackers" are disenfranchised people with different goals.
2. ESR is false in thinking that he can be the mouthpiece for the "Hackers" of the world.
<esr mouth="shut"
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
From http://www.catb.org/~esr/hacker-emblem/index.html
Who should not use this emblem?
If you either promote somebody's product for money or break into other peoples' computers
WTF?
Isn't it good enough to be able to flaunt your support of something? Even if you're not particularly good enough at it to be considered a useful part?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
It looks like the zeros win again! ... hey, is that supposed to illustrate something?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You mean like the punk haircut and the punk bands? Of course they'll take the logo and be commercialized, they're all just looking for the same thing, belonging. Even if it costs their individuality, they will do it.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
How about this whistle I just dug out of a box of cereal? I don't need it for anything...
I don't think we need a logo to prove who we are.
I've been hearing "emergent phenomena" used to describe behavior of systems that appears to be systematic but arises from the simple rules that govern the system in a non-obvious way.
So the emergent aspect has nothing to do with "violate"-ing the rules that start things in motion and more to do with the fact that the behavior comes about because of those rules, but is not something that an observer would easily anticipate or derive from considering the rules at a low level. (See, for instance this page in which "emergent phenomena" are defined as those best predicted through simulation. )
But, its always possible that the phrase has taken on a different meaning in the last few weeks, so I'll have to go find out.
You cant make a logo for "hackers" because most of these "hackers" dont even know what a "hacker" is!
:D
I dont know, I bet you dont know either! I hack code to make it work how I want, but am I a hacker because of that? I guess not since some people say I have to break into stuff to hack. Maybe I'm just being stupid but I really think a logo is quite a stupid idea. No one even knows what hacking is anymore so it would be pointless to "unify" them if they each have different goals and ethics.
Anyway! TROLL ME
Anybody notice that ESR's suggested logo is a lot like braille? It could be "AZ" for instance.
http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/index.html?id=VThen all they see is the side of my hand. Oh wait...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I'm not entirely sure there was a hacker career either, although it's a while since I've played it. There's possibly an updated version which features the FBI cybercrime squad, instead of the police officer player.
More complex certainly, but more fun to watch.
Then too the glider gun might be a better logo for the GPL, expressing the "viral" nature of the license by showing it firing "infectious bullets" around at all and sundry.
The day we all start following a flag is the beginning of the end folks. The strength of the 'community' of computer/electronic geeks comes from its diversity, not its 'branding'.
Besides, is this _really_ the flag bearer you want? Not for me...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
...ThinkGeek starts selling "glider" tee-shirts, caps, and coffee mugs. Maybe a brand of highly-caffeinated beverage bearing the glider logo. That's how we'll know it's been accepted as the logo of hackerdom.
It isn't ugly, but it isn't pretty either.
Interntional Hackers Logo.
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
I hate ESR. I think hes a pompous windbag. I have no interrest in his suggestion for a logo. His interview in "Revolution OS" explains it all as far as I'm concerned, and lest we forget the insanity with the jargon file. A year from now he'll start promoting a new meaning for the logo and say everyone who has the old interpretation is out of touch.
ESR may have some technical skill, but his "Cathedral and Bazaar" paper is woefully overrated. Simply put it seems like all he does now-a-days is run around trying to act like a "leader" or some amorphous group. He writes things as if he was this great genious that invented the concept when all he did was put it on paper (see his Unix progamming crap)
Quite frankly every time I see something by ESR I get a little taste of what other people claim to see in RMS (pompous, doesn't do anything but stump for his on promotion anymore... etc) While I admit I do not agree entirely with that assessment of RMS, I would gladly take Free Software over "Open Source Software" any day.
Looks like a go board to me. Cool. Love the game. --Tim
Don't click on the link, huh? Well, since you said not to, by default, I have to.
*click*
AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!! MY EYES!!!!!!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I think the reason hackers don't have a specific logo is that they are a diverse group of people, who aren't the type to want to hang out in crowds.
I think the reason for the lack of one is there isn't a large company/organization behind hackers, and thus they'll never be able to adpot (as such) a formalized figurehead. At least all of the logos mentioned in the first post had something backing the logo.
The original post should have included it. I'm not sure what a Gimp is, but they look playful, like they would make good pets. Then again, one would think the cute Nibbler would make a nice pet, until it started to swallow things.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
How can you say that about all the hard work ESR put into designing this amazingly wonderful logo? I for one hope it gains the same level of popularity as the term "Gandhicon".
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
Don't think it's dotted (yet) but here's the text anyway..
Frequently Asked Questions about the Glider Emblem 29 Oct 03
Glider pattern from the Game of Life
What is the emblem?
The graphic at the top of the page is called a glider. It's a pattern from a mathematical simulation called the Game of Life. In this simulation, very simple rules about the behavior of dots on a grid give rise to wonderfully complex emergent phenomena. The glider is the simplest Life pattern that moves, and the most instantly recognizable of all Life patterns.
Why have an emblem at all?
To some hackers, having an emblem might smack too much of groupthink. But the hacker community is, in fact, a community, knit together by trust bonds over the Internet. One thing we've learned since 1991 is that visible emblems of community are just as valuable to hackers as they are to other kind of human beings. They help us recognize each other, help us affirm common values and cooperate more closely. They're useful social engineering.
Using this emblem means something a little different from just presenting yourself as a Linux fan, or a Perl-monger, or a member of any of the hacker subtribes that have become so successful since the mid-1990s. These are relatively recent developments in a tradition that goes back decades.
The hackers, in the broadest sense, are the people who built the Internet, and Unix, and the World Wide Web; our dreams of freedom have changed the world everybody lives in. See How To Become A Hacker for an in-depth look at what that means. If you find yourself nodding in agreement as you read that document, you are one of the people who should be using this emblem.
Why this emblem?
The glider is an appropriate emblem on many levels. Start with history: the Game of Life was first publicly described in Scientific American in 1970. It was born at almost the same time as the Internet and Unix. It has fascinated hackers ever since.
In the Game of Life, simple rules of cooperation with what's nearby lead to unexpected, even startling complexities that you could not have predicted from the rules (emergent phenomena). This is a neat parallel to the way that startling and unexpected phenomena like open-source development emerge in the hacker community.
The glider fulfils the criteria for a good logo. It's simple, bold, hard to mistake for anything else, and easy to print on a mug or T-shirt. It could be varied, combined with other emblems, or modified and infinitely repeated for use as a background.
Why from you?
Because I maintain the How To Become A Hacker document, A Brief History of Hackerdom, the Jargon File, and am more or less the hackers' resident historian. It's my job to think of these things.
Amatuer Radio enthusiasts have logos, though.
What is your problem?
ESR agrees upon the constitutional "...consent of the governed" clause.
As much as I may sound like a thorn in somebody's side, ESR has not provided any oath of office or Supreme Executive Power(TM) to provide any form of logo to be representative of a union of organizations.
Why are you militant? I don't mean to offend anyone. If anyone is willing to unite to ESR's logo, for which he is the Master and Creator (God, Father, etc) of such logo, then by their voluntary and willfull act you choose ESR's logo. I hope that logo does not become an obligation...
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
Now I suppose you'll want a logo for designers who are also hackers. And maybe another one for hackers who are also designers.
Get back in your tidy category, dammit!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Hmm... that could work, seeing as that symbol is most often on power buttons of computer equipment than anything else (most other stuff uses I / O)...
First thing I thought is, "who the FUCK would come up with such a lame, pathetic, anti-hacker mentality idea as this?" I missed the ESR reference.
Can't say it surprises me though.
A logo? A LOGO? Hey Eric, how about everyone who meets qualifications (do you need to qualify to be an official hacker? ) get team jackets? Oh, oh yeah, and we could all listen to the same hacker music, and play the same hacker games, and and...
Last I remember, any non-derogatory definition of hacker included (or at least implied) a strong sense of independence. Let's all show our independence by wearing a logo!!!
Bah.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Take it easy on the kid, he most certainly mistook the all-singing, all-dancing bomb-throwing gangsta-crews roaming his 'hood for anarchists. Go figure. ...faintly heard in the distance... "Peace, brotha!"...BLAM, BLAM!
Anarchy != Chaos (contrary to common indoctrination)
Anarchism == Cooperation
--
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
It looks like someone badly attempting to cheat at tic tac toe
"It's my job to think of these things."
I can't think of a worse way for a group of people such as hackers usually are to pick a logo. Sure, Anarchists have a symbol, but i doubt it was dreamed up by the self apointed "Anarchist Historian" who ran the idea past a few focus groups before prclaiming it to the community.
What exactly does a penguin have to do with Linux? Or a cammel with Perl? Donkeys and elephants with Democrats and Republicans? No think tank sat down and analyzed what would be the most symbolic logo to represent those things. Some guy thought it was cool and used it, and other people agreed and went along. Symbols really _should_ be groupthink, not personthinkandgroupgoesalongwithit.
If hackers really want a symbol, a real symbol will fall out of the collective. If they want to promote such a process then there should be some kind of forum where hackers can suggest all kinds of symbols that they think would be cool as a method of priming the pump. Instead of then voting on said symbols, everyone should then sit back and see which survive best in the enviroment.
The best symbols are the ones that survive competition with other symbols, not ones that are created with the intent of being "meaningful." A committee could come up with a more "meaningfull" symbol than the Darwin Fish, but the Darwin Fish is what you see plastered on cars all over the place.
Maybe the glider would survive best in such a process, but the arrogance of the way in which it was proposed really annoys me.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You're missing the point. Many people (such as ESR, at the linked story) say that "hacker" isn't a title you claim for yourself, it's the way that other people describe you.
Therefore, it's not to the point whether you're a programmer or not. The vast majority of programmers aren't Hackers...nor even understand what it means.
Consider the term "cool" (which goes in and out of style, but never mind that). People who think they are cool may or may not be; it doesn't tend to really be true unless other people think they are cool. Otherwise it's just egotistical.
It's even partially true that "Hacker" is the "cool" of programming, but that doesn't capture it completely and is not entirely correct. It's also partially a community thing.
Here's another example. I have worked with professional programmers who never heard of Turing. I was stunned, but they certainly were programmers -- they also certainly weren't hackers. Nothing about Turing came up in their CS degree program. But a hacker would have found out eventually after leaving school, you see. Or lets say it's very likely, anyway.
Hackers tend be familiar with a lot of the contents of The Hacker's Dictionary that ESR maintains because they "learned it on the street". Wannabes learn it from the book. :-)
Anyway, despite what jumpingfred said to you, is it possible to be a hacker and to have never heard of the game of life? Sure. It's just vanishingly low probability. And since you haven't heard of it, how could you have an informed opinion one way or the other? :-)
On the positive side, although some hackers have lives, it's more likely in the case of people who are just programmers but not hackers, so count your blessings.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
well there is a flags for nations not logos but i think a symbol would be good and finaly show there is a diffance between hackers and crackers but i dont aggree with some of his points he has in "How To Become A Hacker" like the not useing " Don't use a silly, grandiose user ID or screen name." IDs are away to show its a one person. but that is just my opion
Why not actually learn how things work? Why not learn the difference between "hacker" and "cracker" ? :-)
Sig out of date
The discs could easily be replaced by (or contain) other logos, allowing hackers to identify their own personal hacking predilections. For example, someone into LAMP hacking might include a penguin, a feather, a dolphin, and their choice of a camel, <?>, or a python. A Win hacker (yes, Virginia) might color four of the boxes RBYG. An old APL hacker could substitute glyphs from his favorite programming language. Etc.
For that matter, if anyone doesn't care for the particular pattern ESR chose, they can select one they prefer, without losing the essence of the design.
So... any IP hackers want to volunteer to do the trademark search?
So, why do anarchists (or some of them if you want to argue) have a logo?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
This is the use of Hacker as applied to a culture, NOT the elitist group of untouchables also given such a title. Sure, the 'hacker' himself still falls into the category but it should be said all 'h4ck3rs' (whatever, l33t-speak should be banned) are Hackers. Not all Hackers are 'h4ck3rs.' Whatever though, give it an icon. While we're at it let's make an icon for me too. I'd like it to be a can of guiness being poured over a woman's exposed breast. /schild
schild
editor, f13.net
And don't forget Apache's rainbowed feather. That's among my favorite.
Truly, though, what the heck is the "hacker" group? There's no such thing. Way too amorphous a group to have a logo--that's why there isn't one. I feel kinda stupid responding to this actually, because it seems like a joke.
It's all going according to
I'm a lamer, i must warn you.
But my advice is that the hacker community, even though it was certainly one of the most generous of its time, was built upon the feeling of US and THEN (tx Pink Floyd for the trick) ; that means exclusion of the others ; that means crude web sites with tiny green fonts on a night blue background. That means too that hackers were thought as a community that would have gained some momentum from the ever growing criticisms aimed towards it ; some kind of martyr, if you want.
Careful ; i'm not insulting nor trying to offence anyone. I have such a deep respect for the hacker community. But it took me some time to understand that, paradoxically, hackers were known just because they were unknown. And one can't be allowed to believe that the logo (unlike anarchists, there are tools, which have been designed by you, internet and the likes, and that will be used against you... don't tempt irony) will not be exploited by fucking crackers or teenagers willing to find a brand new identity.
"Wow, look man, i'm a hacker, i'm fucking your mummy!!"
The goal of deposing a logo can be praised ; but it will not be used as its author wants it to be.
I've red somewhere that hackers were ordinary people. Of course they are. But if you show the face of the ordinary people, you'll become talented programmers ; and the hacker community will become void.
This doesn't imply the personal feeling of being a hacker ; this is just that the hacker community depends as much on the internal ties than on the public image it generates.
Again no offence ; it doesn't jeopardize the goals, only the way you want to communciate who you are. I think it has always been that way with communities, even hidden ones. Anarchists too went trough it.
See you guys,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
try this:
++++++
+OOO++
+O+O++
++O+O+
++OOO+
++++++
Fewer stones, easier to achieve.
Read, L
Isn't that obscure and/or leet enough?
That or a shit throwing monkey.
I saw the movie, "Hackers"; do I qualify? I figure if I can attain some "nappy hair" (preferably dreadlocks), squat in a place that happens to be fully wired and score a "chick" who's really -groovy-like-, I'm more than halfway there. Dude.
How many hackers have done this: while sitting on the john comteplating what the next generation of the floor would look like? I spend a lot of time doing just that at work. Fortunatly I just have carpet in my office, so I get work done - it is only while nature calls that I can see a floor with those little tiles...
A penguin and a daemon playing frisbee (with the shape of the OSI logo), and an image is captured when the frisbee breaks through a closed window.
Eh? Eh?
No?
Ok.
For those who are curious, here's the reference.
Please don't read my journal
Personally, I prefer this one.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
But I don't think I can prove prior art. Oh, it was derived from Pascal's Triangle, changing odd to a dark spot and even to a light spot. I wonder if Wolfram came up with that explanation?
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
After all my company wants me to fly pigs on a regular basis and I seem to manage some of them :-)
I can't really dispute the validity of the glider logo since, even if I never really got into the whole Game Of Life thing (my personal early-hacker obsession was fractals) but I don't really like the logo itself.
I'd go with a design that replaces the circles-in-squares with rectangles, about twice as wide as high and with the "dead" sectors completely empty. Something like this.
For black-and-white media, the red squares become whatever the foreground colour is supposed to be and if there are lots of colours available, the brightness of each rectangle could be adjusted to indicate the "aliveness" of that rectangle during some stage of the glider's life cycle.
It's:
Maybe some of you would agree with me that this works better.
that's pretty cool, but how about something original and slightly homorous, as the hacker comunity has a good sense of humor. How about a symbol kind of like the Anarchy symbol, but with an 'H' in a circle. That would be pretty sweet!
~Chris Hammond
We could pin them on our team jackets, n' stuff!
I MUST BELONG!!!!
-FL
For two reasons:
1. If you think it's cool now, wait until it gets embedded into the latest spread-by-Outlook email virus that's bringing the internet to its knees.
2. Didn't anybody here see Grosse Pointe Blank? The whole thing about the main character not wanting to join the Hit Man's union that his friend is starting up? And he points out that it's the lone gunman lifestyle that he likes, that it's unnatural for the rogues to band together.
Seriously, this is just silly.
Yes, that form of the letter "H", crapily formatted to not look like one, due to the assumption that HTML "knows what you mean", is the perfect logo for incompetent and ignorant hacker wannabes!
I'm putting it im my sig lines and sig files right now, since, well, I'm not just the incompetent hacker club president, I'm also a client.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
It seems to suggest that hackers go flying off spontaneously....
People will think we're fans of Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"... Basically he claims that "everything's a cellular automaton" and Life is the best known example of those.
Why not learn the difference between "hacker" and "cracker" ?
h4x0rs don't concern themselves with differences like that, yo.
You are mistaking script kiddies and crackers for professional, talented, dedicated coders.
Hey relax fella, you need a rest, guy.
This story IS a joke, right? It's April out there, right?
If you don't know why this idea is a top runner for the most ridiculous proposal EVER, then you would do the world a favor by falling on your sword. Logos are the pinacle of everything a true Hacker exists to defy.
There is a balance, you see. .
When Chaos reins, the Hero is called upon to bring order. But when it is Order which threatens life, as it does today, it is the Thief, Hermit and the Vagabond we turn to for salvation, or we will surly perish.
Heros don't use open source.
-FL
A "cellular-automata program of some kind" could be Turing-complete -- that is, the right kind can compute anything that can be computed, so yes, there are theoretically some that could play perfect games of Go (not necessarily fast enough to finish before the universe dies, though; that's a different question).
In a more down to earth sense, the similarities are not necessarily trivial. I would guess that a Go game played on a large enough board according to very complex rules governing each choice of moves might also be Turing-complete. I'm only guessing, but it seems possible, even likely.
The game of Life can be set up to simulate a Turing machine.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
A white hat (for 'bad' cr^H^Hhackers)
The actual type of hat could be modified geographically. Americans get a stetson, the English a bowler, Canadians a deer hunter, with the flaps, Moroccans a fez, etc etc. Us Aussies will take either an Akubra or a beanie.
Another idea is just a big machete, or possibly an axe. ie: 'hacker' maybe put it in the hands of a maniac, like the guy from here
Yay me!
Sorry guys, but well the icon is well to put it mildly boring, ugly and unappealing.
I don't claim to really be an expert but I imagine that Tux and the bsd daemon are some of the best icons out there because they are cute and good looking as well as because they stand for good stuff. This glider icon, while I do get the significance is just too simple in my opinion. It uses three colors has no shading and just isn't easy on the eyes.
A mascot works best if people want to look at it dangit!
Gerzel
When we are rounded up and shipped to death camps in box cars we they will make us wear pink triangles, yellow stars or "glider" patches.
Trolling is a art,
image for your own server, add size info so it renders more quickly, add an alt tag for accessibility, and voila:
--Neal
Go IETF!
Like the happy-sad masks of the comedians and actors.
I dunno, seems more appropriate than some random graphical element from some program.
You can't take the sky from me...
perl -e 'print "010\n001\n111\n";'
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
It's already being used by someone.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Absolutely 100% true.
I'm a young one (21), yet I've known what the game of life is since I was about 6 or so. This doesn't even have anything to do with age, which is why I think it's so cool. If you're a hacker, you know what the game of life is. (And probably at some point in time spent hours figuring out how to produce super-gliders).
I, for one, think I'm going to go put this on my webpage right now. I like the idea, and it'll only catch on if we start using it.
Here I go!
Sig.i>
I AM different, you insensitive clod! Just like everyone else.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
See, the thing is, in the long run logos work because people LIKE them, not because someone comes up with them and then says, "This is what our logo is going to be." The BSD beastie is cute. Tux is cute. The perl camel almost has a cute expression that's at least a little bit interesting. Even the GNU has a smug expression that you can at least appreciate even if you aren't a Stallman fan. But this? A tic-tac-toe board with 5 dots? Wow, blow me away, I mean, shit that speaks to me on such a--<snoooooore>
Think it should be in pixels?
I agree. Made a 60x60 version in square blocks for everyone. Feel free to grab here.
I'm putting it on my webpage right now.
Sig.i>
Are we talking about the "peace sign"?
No, this. [image search]
http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.htm l
The R-pentomino is the first pattern Conway found that defied his attempts to simulate by hand. In fact, the pattern eventually becomes "stable" or easy to predict, but this does not happen until 1103 steps have passed. Some of the earliest computer programs for Life were written to determine the fate of this small pattern. This was a challenging problem for many computers of that time, but a modern PC can run the complete sequence of steps many times in one second.
Exactly why I would never associate myself with that logo.
I wonder what John Horton Conway thinks about this ?
It is unfortuante that Raymond chose to appropriate that symbol without appropriate attribution.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Oh no , the first hack will be for obscure programming languages like Brainfuck to create the shortest program that produces the logo as ASCII art.
But it doesn't validate as XHTML transitional, either.
It doesn't validate as any sort of XHTML I'm aware of.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Even though I don't like the round cells in Eric's version (I made one with square cells) I have to admit the glider itself is a great choice for an emblem.
However, it's not an emblem for all the hackers, and that's the beauty of it. Only those who want to gang up and work as a team should adopt this emblem.
Individual hackers won't feel the need to use logos. In the Game of Life individual cells die anyway.
The glider represents the effort of hackers that work as a team with the same objective. Remember, the previous cells of a glider also die as the glider moves forward (just as old hackers 'retire'), but the point is that new cells are created (new hackers joining in), in a cycle that makes an entity move forward (hackerdom itself if you will). Can't think of a better choice.
A hatchet... I've got one with a hammer head opposite the blade. It's my generic-all-purpose hacking tool. I can hack anything with it: hack my pc, hack my car, hack your pc, hack the phone line, hack robots, hack trees, hack tree-huggers, hack friends, hack enemies, hack dogs, hack cats.... HACK THE PLANET!!!
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
"Sure. Even anarchists have a logo, for god's sake!"
Thank you for pointing out to us anarchists how the capitalists have taken our symbol and sell it to teenagers who think "anarchy - ya cool - blow shit up.".
Anarchy for Sale!!!
As an anarchist myself I can barely identify with the circle A. It has lost it's meaning since so many people who are not part of the culture have appropriated it.
Just wait til a fad takes off and anyone who made a webpage using Frontpage, or anyone who has made a Flash animation calls themself a hacker.
Bah - fuck the logo. If we're truely libertarian in thought a logo would just compromise that belief.
"Today a flag to unite our rich culture. Tomorrow we federate and form a nation! Self-Determination for Hackers everywhere!"
Peace sign? Well I guess we know that you were a total dork in high school, and after it as well.
You expect one to be an anarchist in high school...to be cool?
May we never see th
Yeah, computer hacking really needs your support. It wouldn't happen without you.
Eh. When ESR finally starts his own religion, let me know and I'll sign up. Until then, I'm going to ignore this sort of thing.
I want my Cowboyneal
Reminds me of a kuro5hin fiction piece:
8 22
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/9/224310/1
Summary:
Business decisions modeled as a game of go, solved by a near-dead angel.
No, really, it's worth reading.
A luser logo?
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I've always preferred
OO
OO
O
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Proposal Denied. Try again.
The logo is great, it fits, and its easy to subliminally put into things.
I love this.
Looking at that glider brought back so many memories. I remember reading about Life in Scientific American, many years ago-- I think 19 years. I remember typing in the text version on my Apple II, out of "Basic Computer Games" by Dave Ahl and Creative Computing, sometime in maybe 1983 or thereabouts, and being amazed.
I remembered a program I wrote in the mid 90s where you could evolve rulesets, and all the bright colors and optimism that went along with the "Long Boom." All that came out of hackerdom, you know.
I remembered my personal experience with Wolfram. (Overwhelmingly negative, by the way...)
I think this is an excellent idea, I think it's a simple and graphically effective logo, and I can see it catching on. For me this was an iconically powerful image. Surprising what memories it evoked, taken in the current context.
It's an icon of simplicity and stubborn singleminded progress.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
There is something like a black bar covered in velvet on the floor, or some other sort of obstacles, which is partially obscuring her dangling pussy-lips.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Think how much money ThinkGeek is absolutely *certain* to reap from this one. Suppose they offered ESR $10K to suggest a new logo? :-)
May we never see th
Rimmer would be proud...
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
We should all be lucky that ESR has been gracious enough to appoint himself as the official spokesperson for the hacker community.
Now, where do we build the bikeshed clubhouse?
It implies that he's envious of Linus. Linus (who didn't even *make* Larry's penguin logo, but gets it plastered all over him) gets all the glamour and media love. RMS and ESR are jealous as hell.
The best thing is that Linus does an amazingly convincing job of not wanting media attention, and not using it as a soapbox to spout his opinions of the month. RMS couldn't do that if his life depended upon it.
May we never see th
Uhm, hate to break this to ESR and company, but the Jolly Roger is the traditional hacker emblem...
What is the emblem? A glider. Duh.
Why have an emblem at all? What Eric says about community is true, but hackers recogize each other by their hacks (and posers, by the lack of). Not as easy as a logo, but authenticity is guaranteed.
Why this emblem? A glider isn't appropriate. A glider is "startling and unexpected" for about ten seconds. But nothing new spontaneously emerges from a glider. It just monotonously churns along - no change in speed or direction - until it vanishes over the edge of the screen. Hell, why not use lemmings!? At least *sometimes* they don't jump.
"Social engineering?" "mugs or t-shirts?" 3.Profit! anyone? I don't need a logo - I'm not being marketing. I don't need a "resident historian" - I don't care who used to live here.
They help us recognize each other, help us affirm common values and cooperate more closely.
Cooperate? To do what?
It's not that there aren't lots of good causes and good reasons for cooperation, but why this and why now? I feel like there'a another shoe coming.
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
Hippies used the peace sign.
Anarchists use a stylized A in a circle.
Yeesh, doesn't everyone know this?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I might even use it. But it wouldn't take much for me to decide to ignore it. .
. x
. . x
x x x
Logos brand entities. Products. Corporations. THINGS. Logos don't brand lifestyles alone...they can't.
There are some fascinating parts to game of life, but to claim that it has some special place for hackerdom is laughable at best. I can think of one recent good work on GOL worthy of hackerdom brownie points, and that is eppstein's searching for spaceships. Rest of hackerdom's fascination is negligible enough not to warrant the basis for this logo.
Why not the ship from ancient spacewar, which was the reason for Ken's hacking unix? Why not something as imaginative as PJW face from Bell Labs? (oh no, bad suggestion: ESR may decide to deploy his own face as logo...)
Hm. I have been designing logos on and off since 1976. Hacking since 1978. I suppose I have learned a thing or two about both over the years. Here is my somewhat educated assessment: I consider ESR's logo to be unimaginative, poorly balanced, devoid of energy, and not at all representative. In other words, It is really boring, one thing hacking is most certainly not. (one of my friends thought it was a stylized person sitting with his back against the wall, head down)
ESR should have had enough respect to ask the community for input...
(a remedial course on logo design may also help)
nous.
The 8-arrowed symbol on the shield here. Michael Moorcock used this as the symbol of the forces of Chaos in his Champion Eternal series. There's a lot of really weird parallel universe and time travel stuff in there, but I enjoyed it anyway. What I read of it at least. I'm still not quite sure how many books there are and in what order he thinks they should be read. It... keeps changing.
I've seen a few anarchists wear the Chaos arrow, but they mostly have the circle-A.
"Wannabes and their imprecise language..."
Elitists and their insistence on pointing out how wrong everyone else is...
Why don't you take it up with the W3C, who used the word valid repeatedly on their html validator?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
...a black hat.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
...and the decoder ring, and the "Top Sekret: No girlz allowd" sign to put on the clubhouse?
Note that I'm leaving the above sentence unvarnished and open for the obvious jokes for the rest of you wags to come in and riff off of at your convenience.
http://cafeshops.com/gliderlogo
CafePress is amusing. Buy products with ESR's logo before everyone forgets about this!
Move 'sig'. For great justice!
Just this:
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Beaker from the muppets ;-)
Beaker
ok ppl, are you tellin me that somebody can't be sarcastic? this guys says one sarcastic thing, and NONE of you took it that way, maybe you should think before you go blabbin about things.
It isn't ugly, but it isn't pretty either.
Interntional Hackers Logo
Secured Party, Without Prejudice, UCC 1-207: Creditor
why? Why not this then:
% cat
Hello, world.
^D
source
You can't handle the truth.
I had no idea what the Amazon or CitiGroup logo looked like, so I pulled up thier website. I did recognize it, yes... but that I can't pull it out of my head based on the name shows how much I really pay attention to logos.
Ignore the ipaddr, I'm an idiot.
Which ipaddr?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
In other words, it'd be a goofy thing script kiddies placed on their websites and would bring horrible, negative publicity every time the evening news picked up one of them who'd just written MSBlaster 2.0 and was going to jail for it.
"Next on Fox... teen hacker in latest virus scare apprehended... his website bore the famous "Hacker" logo that also appears on notorious "hacker-friendly" computer operating systems like Linux and *BSD. And now, a word from our sponsor, Microsoft! Proudly hacker-logo free since 2004!"
IAALS.
I think it's cool!
grib.
maybe
I put this icon together in some 20 minutes or so. How's it look to you?
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
It's not even remotely close to April 1.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Slashdot had jumped the the shark, and it's not pretty.
That's right, move alond. nothing to see here. move along. Dont' worry. We'll be sure to notify the next of kin.
Jesus Christ, ESR just got his book reviewed here, and now he's offering a fscking 'hacker' logo to the community? What next, a 'preferred' OpenSource(TM) coffee blend?
That's it, I'm outta here...
yep
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ http://www.YellowDogLinux.com +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Thats what I meant. I stuffed up.
Yay me!
How about a wrench? (Although physical hacking probably has more in common with a Dremel than a wrench...)
actually there's a saying that goes like this:
:)
Someone who isn't a communist at the age of 18 has no heart. Someone who still is at the age of 30 has no brain.
you could probably say the same about anarchists
Free as in mason.
I want my hacker logo to be short, skinny, socially awkward and dressed in jeans and greasy t-shirt
....and quit posturing like he speaks for 'The Hackers.'
Good god, that guy has ego.
A Good Intro to NetBS
well lets flip a coin then :)
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Hey. It looks fine in Lynx, logged in on my VT-220 on serial port A on my SparcStation 10....
It's not necessarily incompetence to not care what something looks like on a fancy bitmapped display...
A Good Intro to NetBS
Of course hackers are in need of a logo. We are a disparate group of loosely knit geeks who all have a common passion.
I believe also that any true hacker will readily admit ESR's contributions to our community, and possession of the title of "hacker" himself, perhaps I'd even go so far as to call him an "Alpha-hacker".
What's to prevent us from clinging to some logo that we can use to at least superficially identify other people as like-minded. If I'm sitting at a cyber-cafe and see a glider taped to some guy's laptop as he surfs some C, I'm going to recognize that I'm looking at someone who just might be a hacker. This is not a "status symbol" in the real world, in fact most people in the real world will never acknowledge ESR's hacker logo unless someone does something Really Big And Stupid while publically displaying it.
And why not the glider? We're hackers, we all know who JohnConway is, and what fun his Game of Life is. I'm willing to bet half of us have had an infatuation with it at some point or another, and half of that has even written their own little implementation of the thing.
If you don't like the logo, go for the spirit and choose a Up-Left glider, or a Cross (although that might be taken religiously), or you could be really cryptic and slap a 3rd-generation glider on the back of your T-Shirt (a 6th-generation "pump" looks pretty good too).
Sure there will be posers, but as they say, "You will know them by their works". If the code doesn't back up the glider, then just laugh and show them what real "elite" hacking looks like.
Just my 2 cents worth, I like ESR's logo, and will probably be putting a glider of some form on my website in the near future. Just to set myself apart that little bit more.
Am I the only person who seems to think hacker is a derogatory term now? Hackers and crackers are too often confused in the press, so to save confusion on who is the most evil, I suggest software hackers in the traditional sense (ie us) change our name to Fairy Godfathers. Both mob-like, and safe. And crackers? Maybe change their names to morons. Just an idea...
I'm not sure I would call it a 'logo.'
Maybe a 'tag' or what-not.
A Good Intro to NetBS
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>" > /> /> /> /> /> /> /> />
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd
<svg width="64.0" height="64.0">
<g fill="none" stroke="#808080" stroke-width="1">
<rect x="0.5" y="0.5" width="63" height="63"
<rect x="0.5" y="21.5" width="63" height="21"
<rect x="21.5" y="0.5" width="21" height="63"
</g>
<g fill="#000000">
<circle cx="11" cy="53" r="9"
<circle cx="32" cy="11" r="9"
<circle cx="32" cy="53" r="9"
<circle cx="53" cy="32" r="9"
<circle cx="53" cy="53" r="9"
</g>
</svg>
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Hackers don't travel in herds that can be easily labeled or logo'd. The moment some will decide to slip under the proposed abstract banner, will be the same they will be derided for being posers by others who refuse to wear the designer tag. Who will be correct? Neither, and the purpose of the logo (to categorize and unite under) will have failed.
Only one response appears to be appropriate, and it was first declared by an earlier 'hack'er. In addition, other witticisms can be found here.
= 9J =
My idea of hacking is effort amplification. I would suggest...
1) a fulcrum, denoting leverage. The MiG-29 was called by NATO "Fulcrum", and the Soviets liked that so much they use that name themselves. [They didn't appreciate the Ka-50 Hokum, though]
2) a glider gun. It's a life pattern that makes an infinite number of gliders. It's a little more complex than the 5 cel glider, having some 200 cells.
3) the sorcerer's hat from Disney's Fantasia. Ok, it's stealing, but it's the perfect logo, isn't it? Get's both the power of hacking and the possibility for things going wrong.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Ah, when you put it that way, the picture is completely different! Now it looks to me like the upper half of, yes, a hacker, sitting by his/her terminal, facing to the left. The upper block is a head, the rest is the left shoulder-elbow-arm-hand.
This could lead to a whole new psychological science. Instead of showing us Rorschach ink blots, they could show us big 3x3 pixel pictures!
~llauren
Do you know many people not involved in IT who know what the game of life is? I wouldn't even recognize a glider.
This logo is better than others, but the Linux penguin had success because:
- he's cute (*)
- everybody knows what a penguin is,
- I can buy a toy which is like this penguin
- nobody cares that a penguin has in reality absolutely nothing to do with OS science.
(*) Drawing is important; I suppose ESR chose something so simple to draw because he's not a good drawer - I would do the same thing in his place, but I do not claim to give a common symbol to millions of people.
Having said that, the idea of a common drawing to identify yourself as a geek or nerd is a good one. It could percolate into the common knowledge. I'm hoping only that script-kiddies won't put it on every defacement...
Christophe (Don't hesitate to point out my spelling and grammar mistakes, I want to learn - Thanks).
I can already predict what the effect of this will be. The logo will be used by the halfwits and groupies; serious people will avoid it.
As such, it makes a good filter - anybody who uses this logo is clearly a moron, and therefore you know to avoid them and ignore whatever they say.
I think hackers should have an animated logo - and then it needs a bit of hacking to get it animated on cups/t-shirts/etc. !
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I'm sure some of us here would recognize this pattern:
.xx.x.xx
xx....xx
x.x...xx
x..x..xx
xx..xx..
xxxxx.x.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
I thought the universal hacker symbol was the little spy vs. spy guys from mad magazine, as seen here.
-dewhite
please see logo tour
Xah
xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html
I leave conclusions to be drawn from this as an exercise for the reader
No but, yeah but, no but...
WTF? So people who work on proprietary software can't be hackers? I don't think the hacker community is as fanatic as Eric. Tech jobs are low everywhere, and many of us couldn't find someone to give money for free software. It's not my case, but I know people like this who contributed much more than me to the community.
Not very "bazaar" style, huh? This guy really needs a dose of reality. His warblogification of the Jargon File was the most egotic thing I saw in a long time. The Jargon File should be in a Wiki, and a hacker's logo should be voted by the community in an open proccess.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
I have to say, your post made me laugh. Overall it wasn't very funny -- just a bunch of somewhat obscene and lame gay references, but here were the funny parts:
1. The subject "Surprised by cock". Heh. That's good. It made me click on it. It has a poetic (iambic) sound to it and could be the opening to an excellent piece of literature.
2. The part about your program "COCKSAY". Post a link, please, I'd love to make use of that. It sounds great
Yeah, and the rest of it wasn't that funny, just offtopic and obscene. You should try to focus on and expand the good parts and re-post it on another subsequent article in which it has no relevance.
Are we talking about the "peace sign"?
No, that's the CND logo (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament)
The Anarchist logo os also held within a circle, but is an upper-case A with the horizontal bar extended on both sides to reach the circle. The ends of each diagonal leg, and the angle at the top of the A also reach the circle.
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
Anyone else notice this oh-so-subtle jab at free software in the "How to be a Hacker" FAQ?
(We used to call these works ``free software'', but this confused too many people who weren't sure exactly what ``free'' was supposed to mean. Most of us, by at least a 2:1 ratio according to web content analysis, now prefer the term ``open-source'' software).
(*eye's roll*)
Amusing concept. I think the logo should have a version number, for the "hacker community" would never be able to agree on a final image.
A "hacker" is an "explorer of systems".
a "cracker" is a criminal.
Comprende?
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
T-shirts, sweatshirts and mugs with new hacker logo are available. This site is in Poland, but they ship worldwide. I make no profit from selling it. Have fun ;)
and the first time someone 'own3rz' a web site and leaves this logo? Maybe we should have a tarred brush as a logo (think about it)...
We already lost the word 'hacker' - let's not try and get behind a logo that we can lose too!
Mark
PS I like the glider idea though - just not the idea of a logo per se.
Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
a fat, greasy faced kid with his finger in his nose
for differentiating "hackers" from "crackers" and "malicious hackers" in the eyes of the mainstream press. It could be an important symbol for setting the term "hacker" free from negative connotation.
More strictly
Life emulates Rule 22
Rule 22 emulates Rule 90
Rule 90 emulates Rule 90 recursively
But you really did not want to know that.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
it's nice and simple and there's nothing to say one can't do something more with it.
I doubt the hacker community will ever settle for one logo. In this thread I've read comments about the direction it points, the lack of color in the intial design and a half dozen other things. Maybe what we need is a set of specs for hacker logos plural, as opposed to a single logo. Something along the lines of "it must be a grid of X by Y with no more than z colors.." After all, doing creative things while working within structured systems is a large part of being a hacker. Just a though..
silly me - that game of life... i thought he meant the board game from milton bradley, eeeh, i would have preferred scrabble, anyway.
A bunch of black dots in a grid? Come on.
...
I think it should be an animation of Neo on the roof, bent over backwards with his arms flailing, dodging bullets as the camera does a 360 around him in bullet time. Complete with sound effects.
Or maybe something with Natalie Portman
And it should be distributed as assembler code, which gets Trojaned onto your machine and displays in native graphics, and can't be turned off until you pull the plug. This is supposed to symbolize hackers, after all.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
It can fit in just 9 bits:
010
001
111
So, I you can say you're a hacker by signing your e-mails with "143". Or "0x8F".
It's bad enough that the word "hacker" has come to be used to refer to "crackers" and malicious coders, now we want the press to use a logo? Every unethical "hacker" out there will start using it to try to give themselve some legitimacy, then the next huge MS exploit that is created by these guys will be seen as coming from a "community" that is represented by logo X. How many times to we have to watch a company RUN from a brand and logo gone bad due to some glitch in marketing or implementation?
This is a BAD idea. I have a hard enough time trying to get people to make a mental distinction between "good hackers" and "bad hackers". Cracker doesn't really make it easier and now ESR wants to use what I assume will be a brand-recognizable like logo?
Count me out, brother!
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Glider's cool, but isn't this a more better expression of ESR's intentions?
It's '1337' expressed in columns like the binary desk clock @ thinkgeek.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
What's the collective logo for PHP? I'm a long time Perl Hacker, and I'm fairly new to PHP. So what should I tack after my penguin and my camel?
A dork is a whale-penis.
And a bitch is a female dog. But both have slang meanings as well.
May we never see th
and it looks like circle's winning... ;)
Just raise the taxes on crack.
You've got my vote if you drop the word `getting'...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It looks like someone navel gazing !
.*.
..*
***
God knows I've posted lamer things to /., so why not this?
Hmmm... I guess I should at least try to say something profound for the sake of posterity. Uh, er...
"All your base are belong to us!"
No, that's old.
"Natalie Portman and hot grits!"
That's even older.
"In Soviet Russia, Logo hacks YOU!"
Dear God, why do I even bother?
OK, obviously I'm drawing a blank here, so let me just apologize to everyone reading this message for the collosal waste of time.
BTW, I've always thought that Slashdot's broken Windows logo would be fitting.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
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making it appropriate for forehead application
If you want a logo, make your own!
That is the essense of a true hacker. It is about creation, individuality, tinkering... Build your own stuff.
If your logo is good other hackers will recognize it having never seen it before.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
The glider's left or the viewer's left?
A flag?
Conformist!
where I can go to take the certification test, so I can frame one of these babies on the cubicle wall.
I would have guessed that if hackerdom had a logo it would be some derivative of this.
(Hey - it's even under 3 lines!) -0- --0 000
Your Servant, B. Baggins
The same logic applies to viruses, worms, and spyware.
My first thought was that it would be a picture of a hand flipping the bird with the text, "All your bases are belong to us!" below it. Logic does not appear to be a part of hacking. A friend of mine hacked a women's clothing store a while back. Where is the logic there? Maybe there is something about him I don't know....
Sounds like a fine, fun idea. We can use it to educate the masses and reclaim the word. I stuck the logo on my own web site
Take a look at the Powers of 2 Clock and you'll know what I mean.
I think a lot of people here are overlooking the purposes of a hacker logo. Apparently a lot of those who posted didn't even bother to read ESR's 2 short pages about the emblem. Here are a few points on some of the goals:
All in all, I like the idea and the logo. I suggest to those who don't like it that they simply not use it and not make a fuss about it, so that they won't ruin it for the guys like ESR who are trying to accomplish some great (seemingly quixotic to many) goals for hackerdom.
Mi klopodas varbi por Esperanto.
IANAH, but: /.-ers in general don't find that post a troll, I know at least I will choose to not associate myself with the symbol.
e
How could the parent post get "Score:5, Insightful"? What is insightful about that mean comment? As I've been reading the discussion so far, I've been thinking about what situations the symbol would be used in. If the parent post is an example of that, and
A hacker would provide a link to more information about "The game of life". A hacker would not say "you are not a Hacker".
I haven't read the below link myself. But Wikipedia is usually good at explaining these sorts of things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's+Game+of+Lif
And to the original poster: Don't "change your hobby" just because some mean person tries to discourage you. If you enjoy hacking, you should continue to do so. Don't care about what other people call you. If you hack, you're a hacker.
That would be because there is no "hacker community" as such. Certainly some groups of programmers get together to collaberate of projects, but as a whole, hackers are by their very nature, splintered. Having a symbol would represent a unity which simply doesn't exist.
It's been a long time.
It should "move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom" -- Kodos
To understand recursion,
you must first understand recursion.
ESR, You are not the "hacker historian" or any sort of caretaker of a contrived "culture" either. You are a pigs dick who is incredibly self important. Check yourself.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
Think of how the term "hacker" was corrupted in the first place.
What makes you think the same won't happen with the logo. I can just see the same steps happening:
1. A couple of script kiddies, who don't even understand what those downloaded rootkits do, start placing the logo on defaced websites and such. Or placing it all over some warez sites, in between porn popups and l33t text.
2. A few retarded and clueless journalists clamp on the "hacking is evil, and this is the logo of these evil people" idea. You know, writing an article about a _real_ hacker won't rake in the readers. It's just a guy working long shifts to make some complicated program. Not many people want to read about that. Whereas doom and gloom journalism about these evil 'hackers', who'll bring our cyber-civilization to its knees, those sell.
3. Your average PHB clamps onto the journalists' definition. It's easier him to understand stuff like "wow, these guys are motivated by evil goals" than "whoa, someone actually likes computers and spends his/her free time learning and experimenting".
So anyway, think about it this way. Would you tell a random client nowadays that you're a hacker, or that you sympathize with hackers? Want to be that they'll instantly understand "cyber-terrorist" by that? You can try to educate them all you want, they'll just fall back to the definition that the media feeds them.
Now take the logo. Do you have any doubt that in a couple of years wearing that logo on a t-shirt will have the same effect? And what do you think will happen after the company loses a few contracts because the client saw you wearing that evil symbol? I can just see it banned at work.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sweet... Now we have a logo we can add to our screen savers to make them official h4x0r screen savers that we can play on our laptops as we hack into the gibson... before now we've just been un-officially retarded.
Laugh.. its a joke
...hackers who don't necessarily write code? There's plenty of problems to be solved and questions to be answered without the use of a computer. Would this logo apply to urban explorers, who often refer to themselves as "tunnel hackers?" What about body hackers? I, for one, have trouble accepting ESR's argument with a straight face. As much as he's contributed to the culture, he's got too large an ego and too wrong-headed a bunch of ideas for my liking.
You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout.
It will also be hard to add to it if you can't read it. Try opening something in vi that you can't read (or any other editor for that matter). Of course you can alwayseven if it is chmod 217. But that is a pain for long diary entries.
The really scary part is the 17. Basically you are setting up anyone you don't know to overwrite your diary with some script that says how lame a haxor you are, and then have people you know run it and laugh at you.
the Goat-Foot God?
Still, I think there is a place for something like this. Our community is under attack. By SCO, by Microsoft, by Sun even, by the proprietary technology industry. Eric's idea is great in that it seeks to unify us in a time of war, he is challenging us to adopt "battle colors" in effect, and I think that might be a good thing.
Folks, all that we've worked for and on these last couple of decades is being fiercely threatened. The rights and freedoms that RMS and the FSF have sought to protect are the targets. The SCO thing may seem outlandish, but this is the U.S. legal system we're talking about, anything can/does happen. The heavies are loaded for bear - the MSFT meat puppets like Darl McBride know they have a shot at destroying our community, to guarantee the survival of the proprietary "way" as the dominant mode of business in IT.
Think I'm just ranting? Perhaps. But have you noticed how much good press the monolithic vaporware Longhorn is soaking up? Have you read stories by people in power (who don't get "it") talking about how the whole Unix/Linux process is too complicated to succeed long-term?
Still, I hate the logo itself. I look at it and I don't feel anything. I haven't played Life since I had a DOS-only computer and downloaded a version from my local BBS. :-)
Certainly, there needs to be a more democratic process for this, but there is room for such a thing. We (the Open Source'ers, the Free Software'ers, the BSD'ers, the Perl'ers, etc.) are all comrades-in-arms these days.
--rc
I propose a Twinkie. So mysterious, yet so tasty.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
The Anarchist logo os also held within a circle, but is an upper-case A with the horizontal bar extended on both sides to reach the circle. The ends of each diagonal leg, and the angle at the top of the A also reach the circle.
I thought that was "A" for "Avril Lavigne"...
No they don't.
The idea of having a symbol is interesting. However, one person choosing that symbol is absurd. If a symbol were necessary it would already exist - therefore if a symbol ever truly captures the minds of "hackers" everywhere it will come about naturally and not through one pundit's proposal. BIAUWASJIM (But I am usually wrong anyway so just ignore me)
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
If mine is still a glider, I can say "that's just my style", the way that different programmers can code the same thing and have the source come out completely differently.
Impressive as it is, it requires a whole foundation (a simulator for Conway's Life), just like Linux needs the GNU tools to compile and to be useful. And, just like GNU/Linux, everyone will ignore or disregard ESR's contribution once it becomes popular.
If you put more than one glider, of different orientations, on the same Life domain, they will either interact to do amazing things, ignore each other, or anihilate each other - just like different hacker's code!
And, of course, different hackers will say "the default sucks", and change the orientation, make fancier gliders, etc., which will work for them but not for anyone else, bringing shouts of "diversity if good!" and "why can't everyone just work on the same logo!"
I think ESR might be on to something.
This also leads to the possibility of organic, evolving wallpaper, instead of just static imagery....
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I think we're all missing out on one important aspect of hacking: it doesn't necessarily have *anything at all* to do with computers. A Hack with a capital H is just a creative way to solve a problem. There's probably a better definition but I'm not going to waste my time looking it up.
MacGyver was a Hacker. And he surely didn't know anything about a silly little computer "game" called Life.
You fucking idiot. The historical revisionism of idiots like Eric Raymond and Steven Levy has you brainwashed. Do a little research yourself into the history of crackers and you'll see that calling script kiddies crackers is just as wrong as calling script kiddies hackers. In other words: Your ignorance is astounding and the hypocrisy of people who should know better, like Eric Raymond, makes me fucking sick...
Although easy to convert to life by Addin a piece at A or B
++++++
+OOO++
+O+OA+
+BO+O+
++OOO+
++++++
Either half can be captured:
++++++
+OOO++
+O+OX+
+XOXOX
+XOOOX
++XXX+
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
My example most certainly is life:
O X
;-)
123456
1++++++
2+OOO++
3+O+OX+
4+XO+OX
5+XOO
6++XXX+
O still has one "liberty" at 3,3.
Nice try, "kyu-boy".
(BTW, I'm not Shodan either.)
Read, L
So that's how trademarks will be enforced in the future??? I'm not sure what's the greater evil here...
thanks.
Read, L
Duh. and that is why I get my ass kicked at Go
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Try UliGo.
Nice life and death (plus a few, more ambiguous, "best move") problems for when an actual opponent can't be found.
Read, L
Sorry, but if you're old school enough, a hacker WAS someone that tinkered with shit to figure out how it worked....
AND THEY BROKE INTO OTHER PEOPLE COMPUTERS TO DO SO. (Or were known to from time to time.)
So quit your fucking bitching about how "Hackers and Crackers get confused". The reason the names are confused is because people thought being called a "programmer" wasn't cool enough, "Hacker" had a nice ring to it, and they didn't have the balls (or tits) to become a real one themselves. So they started a campaign to hijack the name, pinning "cracker" on the name of anyone that broke their code. (It's feature, not a bug.)
Too bad "Pirate" didn't have a nicer ring to it, otherwise you'd be bitching about "The Pirates of the Carribean" and how they stole the name from you and planted it on someone nefarious.
If more "hackers" worked at Microsoft, they wouldn't have the security issues that are going on now. Instead, we have a bunch of feel good, wannabe hackers, spending all their time whining that "hacker means programmer"!
Lester
Proud to be a hacker, back when it meant something.
If a bunch of you dorks decide to follow ESR and his ego and start wearing buttons and hats with a glider on them, I think I'd have to wear an eater in protest. (And as a show of geek superiority)
The first thing I thought of when I saw it: 153
Can't get more compact then that.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Personally, I love the two key keyboard.
close.
colour blindness is a funny thing. About 1/12 white males is colour blind, 1/100 white females (which is kinda funny because the women are the ones that carry the bad gene - thanks mom~), and 1/1000 of everyone else. Lots of people dont like to talk about those statistics though for fears of being racist.
~~
Except not quite the same thing -- Brights are trying to form a labelled community, whereas hackers already have one and are just getting a logo for it.
chuk
When I read the headline, I thought about the
... this one. ESR, way to go!
slashdot logo (I never see because I am using lynx).
When reading the first lines, I wandered from "uh,
why?" via "hmm..." to "mmh, but which one?"
But seeing the proposal, he gets my full ACK,
and I must admit I couldn't have come up with
a better one than (IIRC, from memory):
##
##
## ##
####
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Gotta doublequote the width and height attribute values.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
To explain it, I too have an experience of the "hacker" culture, to me it is not something I could or would try to organize or represent the whole of, but it does have something to do with independence, and independent personal power, for computer skills feel like power to those that see the power of procedural logic first hand, as "hackers" do. I guess I don't really like the name "hacker culture" idea too much anyway, but that term's extension is definately the same culture I learned computers within. I don't want to define it myself, but I don't like the idea ESR always uses about the culture. It's like some feudal pissing contest. Bullshit. That's what Microsoft won. That's bullshit. The cool stuff happens when they are all working together. There was Microsoft telling Apple "make Mac OS for Intel! it's cool!". That's the culture. It's cool, go for it. There is so much cool stuff, you don't worry, there is so much increasing network return that cooperating with your competitor gives you guys something such a higher factor more useful that suddenly promiscuous partnerships with competitors makes sense, and happens.
Hacker culture does respect a computer mastery, a guruness, but it's not a pissing contest... it's just that any discovery of Respectable Persons creates an opportunity for the pissers.
This is definatly not flamerbait. It's -1 Offtopic. Thank you.
-pyrrho
10.1.111 is a perfectly valid unambiguous representation for a single IP address.
Read the specs, doofus.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
... it stands for RPM: Package Manager (http://lwn.net/Articles/49665/)
(And who said "revisionist history"?)
henrik
A Logo.. for an underground counter-culture? Cool, I want one on a golf tee!
...
:)
As cool as a logo for the community would be, its got a few downpoints I thought I'd mention..
1. Tattos. Remember that dark angel show? Remember how all the cool kids went out and got bar codes tattoed on the back of their necks to be orginal? Picture that, but with this logo.
I don't know about you, but I'd really hate to see this logo on 'l33t scrript kiddies'.
2. Web Pages. Remeber that Free Speech/Blue Ribbon thing? Yea, that was annoying, just due to the fact that thousands of people thought theyd be cool and put it up, it at least served a point.
All the "cool" people will have a link to this image on their sites, and instantly become "hackers". Wasn't being a hacker an underground activity?
3. Business Cards. Same deal as the web pages, the l33t will definately need this logo on their cards, to show all other geeks that they're better then them.
4. Diseases. There's a special disease that is associated with this idea. Expert-itis. It's very common with people who have completed a 10 month course at their local college, and suddenly become Uber-Hackers. Expertitis - The disease associated with people who suddenly become experts on everything. They'd be -all- about this logo.
5. OMG, its ugly.
6. Legal Issues. Um, not to state the obvious, but isn't being a hacker a -very- bad thing to be in this world right now? Especially if you live close to the US of A ?
IANAL but I think that putting a flag up stating that I'm say, a neo-nazi, will not make the feds happy. While doing so is perfectly legal, it doesn't mean that the feds won't put you down in one of their nice tidy databases of urban terrorists.
Now, with the amount of negative attention showered upon hackers of recent, do you really think its wise to start handing out hall passes for prison?
7. More space for generalisation. Say we adopt this idea, "yay for us!", and we all get nice spiffy logos printed off and take pride in them. It's a hacker logo yes? Do you not expect to see it plastered over hacked sites? Do you then not expect to be looked at as unwelcome by people who dont know any better?
You could simply be a linux kernel hacker, and like this logo, but yet, to the uninformed, you're a liability to the company you're employed for.
8.
nah, I think you get the point by now, all in all, if you were looking for an idea that would have done better by not creating it, I think you found a very cool one, congrats
Welcome to the End
> The really scary part is the 17. Basically you are
:)
> setting up anyone you don't know to overwrite your
> diary with some script that says how lame a haxor
> you are
What kind of a lame haxor are you if you don't know that 217 does NOT give write permissions to anyone but you? (217 = -w---xr-x) Are you running FreeBSD or something?
Wow. A troll moderation is completely unfair. I'd love to hear the rationale for that by whoever thought this was flamebait.
What kind of a lame haxor are you if you don't know that 217 does NOT give write permissions to anyone but you? (217 = -w---xr-x) Are you running FreeBSD or something? :)
One that knows binary: 217 = -w---xrwx
The way this works is each of the three-bit pieces are looked at independently (something I think you grasped). The first number represents the permissions for the owner, the second for the group assigned to the file, and the last number represents the permissions granted to others. But they then are given their binary equivalent in order to know which bits to turn on.
In the case of 2, the binary for 2 is 010. Thus the read bit is off, the write bit is on, and the execute bit is off (0 means turn them off, and one means turn them on). Congratulations, you got that one right. Next, the binary for 1 is 001. Thus, the read and write bits are off, but the execute bit is on. Congratulations, you got that one right also. Lastly, the binary for 7 is 111. Thus, all three bits are turned on. This is where you didn't see the allowing of others to over-write your diary.
Since I'm not totally sure you understand binary (66% success rate isn't passing), I will try to explain how 7 is represented by 111.
You see, the right-most bit is valued at 1 if on, and 0 if off. The middle bit is valued at 2 if on, and 0 if off. The left-most bit is valued at 4 if on and 0 if off. So, if we turn the first and last bits on, we have a value of 4+1 which equals 5. 5 does not equal 7, so we must look further to determine what to do. If we turn the first and second bits on, we have a value 4+2 which equals 6. 6 also does not equal 7. But, we are getting close. If we turn on the 4 bit, the 2 bit, AND the 1 bit guess what happens?! You got it, 4+2+1=7!!! Furthermore, we know from first grade math, that 7 equals 7. Thus we have found our answer.
I'm a computer programmer/systems administrator, not a professional teacher, so if I have confused you let me know and I will try to explain it in more simple terms. In the meantime, trust me, if you have any files with **7 permissions, change them IMMEDIATELY unless you really want anyone to be able to write to the files and execute arbitrary code on your box.
It looks fine in Lynx, logged in on my VT-220 on serial port A on my SparcStation 10....
Whoa!!! Who the hell are YOU to talk about "incompetence"? Huh? What would YOU know about it??
One can only truly judge "incompetence" from the latest AOL/Netscape dial-up on WindowsME.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I find it ironic that you throw around diatribe like 'ignorant distinctions' and yet proclaim that 'hackers' are 'liberal losers'. In discrete mathematical circles this would be labeled a universal generalisation; The existance of which typically proves an argument tautologically untrue. I also noticed furthur in the thread that you label older coders as 'drug users', quid pro quo - furthur confirming that you are, indeed, the king of ignorant distinctions.
Nice work, poindexter. Good luck which the whole 'arrogance' thing.
Hey relax fella, you need a rest, guy.
What's wrong with :wq? It's already used by many geeks :)