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The Vatican Lauds Hackers
angry tapir writes "Internet hackers have acquired a dubious reputation for piracy, sabotage and the spilling of sensitive secrets, but an authoritative Vatican publication appears to rehabilitate them and traces parallels between hacker philosophy and the teachings of Christianity. The charitable view of hackers was expressed by the Jesuit priest Father Antonio Spadaro in an article for the fortnightly magazine Civilta Cattolica, the text of which is vetted by the Vatican Secretariat of State prior to publication. Hackers should not be confused with crackers, Spadaro wrote, citing a definition penned by technology writer Eric S. Raymond: "Hackers build things, crackers break them.""
Hackers are more like heretics. Trying to uncover the hidden truths. The church has a long history of trying to hide the truth.
Religion stated it was good so naturally all these atheist hackers have to stop now or become mainstream.
So the Vatican gets the difference between hacker and cracker before the general populace...
We have entered the beginning of the end.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Software engineers build things.
There is terminology confusion because coming up with a quick fix non-ideal solution is called a hack, but in general hackers break into things rather than build things.
Vatican please stick to theology & leave the IT to those who know a little about the subject.
And Martin Luther wrote the open source version.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hackers are smart people, Christians are fucking dumb, i don't see the parallels...
is a hacker AND a Christian because his actions help BUILD government transparency.
Thanks in advance.
Yours In Chelyabinsk,
K. Trout
I'm satanic!!!!!
(y mi patrona dicen que es Santa Tecla)
The Vatican tends to be a fairly conservative in its approach to technology (remember the fight over the confessional iPhone app a little while back?) and there is no doubt going to be much quibbling over hacktivism and other related activities for the next couple of hundred years. Who knows, maybe in 2300 we'll hear the future Pope say, "Oops, we were wrong when we called the iConfessional sacriligious. Also, we've begun the canonization process for a martyred Anonymous member today for his contributions in the war against false religions. Miracles have been reported near the town of New Clearwater, FL, which was rebuilt in 2220 after Hurricane Michael smited it."
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
That's it, I'm starting a new church with an old name. Join me, won't you, for the first meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ, Computer Programmer. Free kool-aid and cookies this Sunday.
Smithers release the trolls!
Dude and how many people still don't get it?
Why complain when someone gets it correct?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thank you Captain Jerk. Slashdot can't even keep the difference straight using the terms interchangeably. Now you are criticizing a non-technical individual for actually pointing out the difference in the terms?
Why do you feel the need to be a jerk about this?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
No. your logic is incredibly week. Just because someone draws a parallel between the ethos of a hacker and the ethos of a Christian does not make them the same.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well the Catholic Church is a large organization and it is good to remember that there is a plurality of opinions in it, even among it's leaders. It isn't just a cabal of child molesters. The Catholic Church has in the past condemned both capitalism and communism in their extreme forms.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I really believe that the work of Anonymous and Wiki leaks has given hackers a bad name. The general public and the media are really foucsing on the negative things that some of us are doing. Most of us use our abilities to make things work better for us. I am glad that the Vatican sees that we all are not pirates.
FTFA
"To create the biggest collaborative encyclopedia of Internet it is estimated that it took around 100 million hours of intellectual work, which is the equivalent of the time the citizens of the United States spend watching advertising on TV in a single weekend," Spadaro wrote.
Dude, what?
Almost as weak as my spelling of "weak".
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...I don't think it means what you think it means.
I think it is good that he clarified. I mean, just look at the first line in the FA. If he hadn't, the media would have had a field day.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
This must mean the Vatican now prefers bazaars over cathedrals.
Anyone else getting a download dialog when clicking on the link?
And I swear it was an accident... I wasn't trying to read the article, honest!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I for one welcome our long-haired, beared, techno-guru saviors.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
It's Victory in Iraq day today. The good guys -- Western civilization, the Coalition of the Willing, the United States, and the people of Iraq -- won this war. The bad guys -- Saddam Hussein's regime, al-Qaeda's jihadis, all their allies and enablers -- lost it. The entire world will be a better place because of this victory. And that is a proper thing to celebrate.
In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.
I think all teachers, day-care staff, and other adults in loco parentis for groups of children should be required to carry firearms on the job. Maintaining continued proficiency at rapid-reaction tactical shooting should be a condition of their continued employment. Their job is to protect children; if they are not physically, mentally, and morally competent to do that job, they donâ(TM)t belong in it.
Iâ(TM)m what PUAs call a âoenaturalâ, a man who figured out much of game on his own and consequently cuts a wide sexual swathe when he cares to. Not quite the same game theyâ(TM)re playing, however. For one thing, Iâ(TM)ve never tried to pick up a woman in a bar in my entire life. College parties when I was a student, yes; SF conventions, neopagan festivals, SCA events, yes; bars, no.
Also, and partly as consequence of where I hang out, it has been quite unusual for me to hit on women with IQs below about 120 â" and it may well be the case that Iâ(TM)ve never tried to interest a woman with below-average intelligence. (Er, which is not to say they donâ(TM)t notice me; even in middle age I get lots of IOIs from waitresses and other female service personnel. Any PUA would tell you this is a predictable and unremarkable consequence of being an alpha male.)
and as an orthodox I demand the ecumenical patriarch to do the same.
It doesn't get any whiter than this, folks.
I had a nice clever put down for the vat and the pope, but fuck it. Why take the time to type it, when they won't see it, nor understand it if they did.
The Vatican is like the mentally ill homeless dude who talks to himself and shouts crap all day.
Some entertainment value, but nothing here, keep moving.
Be seeing you...
He meant that the logic took 7 days to parse.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You've got the Vatican's attention.
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
Eric S. Raymond and his mongoloid face and his retarded politics needs to shut up.
"tracing parallels between hacker philosophy and the teachings of Christianity."
See at Linux.com "Free Software's surprising sympathy with Catholic doctrine" (2005) http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/49533
Eleutheros Manifesto (2006) http://www.eleutheros.org/en/documents/manifesto/
I'm sorry Dave, you can't do that...
However, you can become an altar boy and get fucked _by_ high ranking residents of the Vatican.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So you've been trying to clarify the difference but you insult people who clarify the difference.
He has got no idea what he's saying there.
Hackers should make the church very, very afraid. We're the guys who don't accept the mantra from up high. We build our own stuff and we question things, including doctrine and even reality. We dream of a better world, but not necessarily your version of it. Most importantly, we know how to use our brains and aren't afraid of doing so.
Make a survey, and I'm sure you'll find atheism rampant among hackers, definitely at least twice the percentage as in the general public.
And our main thought regarding your gods and his son and his miracles isn't "wow, I believe!", but "I wonder how he did that and if I can copy it..."
You're definitely sucking up to the wrong people here, childfucker.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
From TFA: "Under fire are control, competition, property. It's a vision that is ... of a clear theological origin"
I guess it never occurred to Spadaro that putting control, competition, and property "under fire" might have had something to do with the origins of theology, rather than the other way around.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
"...Hackers should not be confused with crackers, Spadaro wrote...
Is someone tries to clarify the issue to some people that may not know the difference he is Caption Obvious?
Thank you there Captain Obvious. Gee, it's not like we've only been trying to clarify the difference between the two for the last decade or three...
Thank YOU Caption Obvious for you work in the last two or three decades!
Onward Christian Hackers?
So what is the difference between a religion and a cult, anyway?
The greater internet fuckwad theory.
Judging from (almost) all the comments thus-far.
I'm glad that we (techies) aren't running the world.
We, collectively are SO FULL OF SHIT.
It's sad that when someone mentions anything to do with the Catholic church, the first thoughts are not related to how much it has helped people.
The Catholic church is one of the most scientific religions out there.
The idea that faith and reason both are needed is one of it's fundamental tenets.
I'd say hackers are more like buddhists, in that they seek knowledge by "dissecting" reality and observing it as it is, without right/wrong prejudices. ...and with a little of dudeism contamination, which is just cool.
Tool of Satan or something? Yup. Here it is: http://slashdot.org/story/11/04/03/0252229/Vatican-Warns-That-Internet-Promotes-Satanism
Gee, I wish they'd make up their mind. Maybe they're too busy trying to stay relevant. Or take your attention away from the whole child molestation thing.
Which was an isolated incident!
Well, a couple of them, actually.
Maybe more than a couple, but *we* certainly didn't know anything about it.
Well, maybe we'd heard a few rumors.
But we didn't move priests around to keep things quiet.
Oh, yeah, we did. We're pretty much screwed, aren't we?
I knew it.
... I am an hacker and I don't give a shit about the Pope's opinion ?
A.
The Jesuits in particular have a long history of intellectual research, so it's not surprising that one or more of them may *get* the distinction between hacking and cracking.
True religion has absolutely nothing to fear from people who question things. Go ahead and wonder how Jesus did what he did, and try to imagine how you could copy it. Jesus' signs and works were given precisely so you would believe that he was really, truly God's son, because no one else could have done what he did.
The signs are pretty impressive: fed thousands from a handful loaves and fishes (twice); walked on water; calmed storms with a word; healed diseases at a touch, including the hearing and seeing of people born deaf and blind; and raised people from the dead (including himself), to name just a few.
You figure out how to do any of those, you let me know how that works out. At some point, you've got to decide whether these claimed signs are just hooey, or Jesus really was who he said he was.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Look up "affirming the consequent".
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Dude i think you need to find your nearest monastery and spend some time with the brothers drinking beer.
You do know that monks during their "free time" brewed some very nice beers (and wines btw).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Copernicus was also a Catholic priest. Georges Lemaître likewise (sure, Big Bang is convenient if one also dedicated his life to Abrahamic mythology, but...). Or Mendel, a Catholic monk... speaking of biological sciences, evolution and Vatican (emphasis mine):
How do the conclusions reached by the various scientific disciplines coincide with those contained in the message of revelation? And if, at first sight, there are apparent contradictions, in what direction do we look for their solution? We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth
...
...
the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences
new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Since he quoted me, I have replied to the report on Spadaro's article at Imprimatur me!
>>esr>>
I don't know, Catholic Church has couple of centuries of history of claiming to have all the answers.
The current vulgar definition of "hacker" is not what the original term meant back in the days. And it's also not Eric S. Raymond's definition either.
Most people miss the point that they're not comparing the church with the "hackers" that do DoS attachs on some major servers to prove a point, or those that crack into major databases to expose private intel.
See Eric's definition here: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
"What Is a Hacker?
The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term "hacker", most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term "hacker". Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them "hackers" too and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term "hacker".
There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people "crackers" and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word "hacker" to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.
"
When did hackers start molesting little boys?
I knew it, Richard Stallman is Jesus Christ !
These people believe in a book demonstrably full of forgeries, a religion that is full of contradictions and errors, and have chosen to work in an organization that has lied, defrauded, and murdered people for two millennia.
Their opinions and analyses of Catholic officials have neither moral nor intellectual value.
Really?
http://www.opensourcecatholic.com/
http://geeksandgod.com/
OH MY!
I forgot! The Catholics HATE the internet!
O_O
I thought crackers were pasty white people without tans, where a small percent of them were hackers?
...to all men? The Roman Catholic Church (tm) has only in recent times got round to the notion that the Earth goes round the sun. This is only several hundered years AFTER is was proved by various Astonomers, Physicists etc. Science 1, Religion 0. As for the whole "child rape" stuff, more is coming out pretty much every week. Religion, (esp. Roman Catholicism) better watch its' back if it is to be taken even slightly seriously in the Western world.
In the US the political right (read GOP) has been propped up for years by the religious right in the US. A few months ago, they determined after close study..... that Jesus, besides being Jewish, seemed to be center-left politically, with all his charity, healing, loaves and fishes and whatnot. Here, not only do they declare haXors (and that likely includes those long-hair FSF and EFF people), to be their kind of people, they make a distinction between hackers and crackers (or crashers). Where a hack is someone who writes something on behalf of someone else, dashed off quickly, like a ghostwriter, and cracker is used in terms of breaking into something, not unlike a safe cracker. They actually got the terms correct. Praise and literacy! Wonderful!
presupposition that something like a theological truth exists in the first place.
Science says the truth exists, whatever that truth is. You may not be able to scientifically discern the truth because of one limitation or another but to say it doesn't is unscientific and not rational.
The idea that "postulations on those truths is useless" shows no understanding of similar discussions in the areas of the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and theoretical branches of certain areas.
Let me know when you're 100% reason.
(Emphasis added)
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Guess who goes to hell?
I particularly liked the last paragraph.
The debate reflects a growing attention within the Catholic Church to the evolution of modern communications technologies, which Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged his followers to harness for the dissemination of the Catholic faith.
What next? Catholics massaging the internet?
And the holy profit and teacher blogged: Here my brethren, witness as I have acquired Root, and Root I give unto you. He thus uploaded the Root kit unto Torrent for all the chosen people. There was much rejoicing and feasting. They ate of, Vienna sausages, jalapino poppers, pizza pockets, Cheetos, Pepsi Max, and Mc Donalds apple pies.
The purpose of all arguments, is to change reality.
Thank you Captain Jerk. Slashdot can't even keep the difference straight using the terms interchangeably. Now you are criticizing a non-technical individual for actually pointing out the difference in the terms?
Why do you feel the need to be a jerk about this?
In case the "Captain Obvious" wasn't obvious enough for you, I was being facetious with my comments here. There's no point in ANYONE clarifying the terms anymore, because we've been fighting that losing battle for literally decades now. "Hackers" will always be viewed in a negative light no matter what (fuck you very much mass media). Until the Government or the UN appoints someone as the Commander in Chief of Hackers with a very public and clear job description and let them create a positive impact for another decade or three, the clusterfuck between these terms will likely continue.
Linux smells like ascetic spirit, really.
I specifically said "Such a being could actively thwart scientific investigation and only reward blind obedience" and that's what I meant. You could still interact with the world so long as it was via prescribed "holy" methods. You could still have autonomy to choose from a well defined set of holy actions every day or suffer the consequences. Should I play my harp today or walk on the clouds? You would probably be required to wear pants every day, or they might just come permanently attached to your body. Only actions that were specifically disallowed would be thwarted. This does not make questions or information gathering impossible, it merely makes them superfluous because presumably all allowable actions would have already been instructed to you as you grew up. A simple form of science would still be possible though; attempt an action and if the result is incomprehensible then it's "unholy" or otherwise disallowed. Otherwise it's holy. In that sense, the set of holy actions is recursively enumerable. To fully destroy science would require either the destruction of sufficient intellect to recognize cause and effect or to eliminate cause and effect altogether. Science could, however, be reduced to "if you want an effect, pray for it." and it would be granted based on divine whim rather than comprehensible rules.
In short it would make human life extremely simple and one-dimensional; you could essentially dispense with all modern medicine and technology because bodies would either work or they would not and there would be nothing (short of prayer) that anyone could do about it.
I think you are incorrect about such an existence negating free will any more than a deterministic or uncertain universe does. At best, a naturalistic viewpoint can only grant random or non-deterministic free will; there's nothing magical about the atoms in our brains that lets them behave any differently than any other atoms in the universe. Dualists have a similar (generally unrecognized) problem in that free will ends up being just the mind of god causing everything to happen as planned.
I think suicide is probably the best option for such a world too, but now perhaps you understand why many christians are quite unhappy about the prospect of their worldview evaporating. To them it's a permanent and eternal suicide.