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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!
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.
...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.
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"
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.
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.
the need for a logo is obvious. After all, /. was forced to use the linux logo for this.
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.
You've never heard of the Game of Life? You're right then, a Hacker Emblem doesn't apply to you.
if a logo "needs colour" it wasn't designed well. If you're making a logo for something, first design it in b&w, make sure it look good, then add your colour. That way, the logo will still be effective when photocopied, faxed, or viewed by those with less than perfect colour perception.
You mean like this (from a 2001 conference)?
Some ideas just happen spontaneously, I suppose.
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
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.
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
However, this argument neatly sums up why you can't apply a logo to all of hackerdom, I think.
The ultimate argument against the usefulness of such a logo is that you aren't a hacker because you get recognition, you're a hacker because you enjoy hacking. If you're doing it for some other goal, you are a hacker in the sense of one who hacks, but not a hacker in the sense of one who would be most aptly described by 'hacker'.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
The big question is, would you tattoo it on your arm like Charles Petzold and his Windows logo?
Chip H.
#|O|#
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O|O|O
This rule can be broken and has in fact been broken many times in the past. Before you brake it, you need to know your audience and the channels that you reach them.
Example: Google. When you photocopy it, what you get is just the word in a not-very-exciting font (besides colors, the 3D effect and the shadows can vanish too). But since the Google logo will be seen almost exclusively through color monitors, that's no problem.
Bascially, that's the old way of designing logos, like Paul Rand did it. This school of logo creation also means that a logo can have no direction (think arrows), because it would look strange when you print it on both sides of a truck and it inevitably points backwards on one side.
Anyway, to close my post: There might be rules for logos, but these rules are moving. And Logos that work only in color might be ok today.
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
"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
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
Are we talking about the "peace sign"?
No, this. [image search]
Actually, to be a true hacker, one would make it as efficient as possible. In this case, you'd make it a 3x3 image and enlarge it with the image tag in the web page. For example this page
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.
Aah yes, that well known hacker-fleet that drives around :o) Could cover war-drivers I suppose.
Get your own free personal location tracker
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
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.