This guy needs to recheck his intro. economics textbook! Let's think about a similar situation.
20 years ago, scientists said "We will run out of natural resources in 20 years!" Well, it's 20 years later, now what are they saying? "We will run out of natural resources in 20 years!" Huh? Did they miscalculate 20 years ago? No, it's just that as prices went up, there was more incentive for entrepreneurs to find alternate sources or to be more efficient in utilizing current sources. That's the beauty of that whole "supply and demand" thing. If Microsoft Windows all of a sudden costs $1000 per copy, there will instantly be 1000's of alternate solutions (linux/UNIX-based, PalmOS-based, MacOS-based, Windows emulation) OR, people will just not bother to upgrade the Windows version that they are currently using (you don't gain much except bugs anyways).
Come on, does this guy seriously believe that the current purchasing levels and consumer choices would even be relevant if Windows cost $1000 a pop?!?!?
I agree with a few of the things that were said here today:
1) The media commonly misuses terms anyways (ie: arsenal and clip). 2) No one outside of the hacker/cracker community really cares. To them, it's just geek-speek. 3) We've been arguing this hacker/cracker debate for (how many years now?) and the best that we've gotten is to define cracker as a sub-type of hacker. 4) Languages reflect the way most people use words. When the majority of the people in the world focus on the cracker definition of hacker (because it's more exciting to talk about a criminal mastermind (yes, I know script kiddies are far from criminal masterminds, but the general public doesn't know the difference -- to the general public, a working knowledge of DOS commands makes you a computer guru) than to talk about someone who just tweaked vi), then that definition becomes the accepted one. (Sorry for all the parenthases, I just finished coding in Lisp...)
Essentially, my point is that I don't believe that the term hacker will ever lose it's cracker connotation. The best we can do in this battle is to create a new term (coder? sourcerer?) that we can promote as a sub-type of hacker who follows a code of ethics and works to improve existing code. If we can do this, then hacker won't be incorrect, it will just be non-specific. It would be like saying "Mammal Held Up Convenience Store." It's technically correct, but there is a better, more specific term.
If we refocus our energies on informing the media that there is a more specific term (a *type* of hacker) instead of trying to convince them that all the dictionaries are wrong, then we will be fighting a battle that we CAN win.
Z'
PS: If someone has more time/money than me (a poor grad student), then creating a website like DefinitionOfAHacker.org (or whatever) to promote this idea would be a great start!
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This guy needs to recheck his intro. economics textbook! Let's think about a similar situation.
20 years ago, scientists said "We will run out of natural resources in 20 years!" Well, it's 20 years later, now what are they saying? "We will run out of natural resources in 20 years!" Huh? Did they miscalculate 20 years ago? No, it's just that as prices went up, there was more incentive for entrepreneurs to find alternate sources or to be more efficient in utilizing current sources. That's the beauty of that whole "supply and demand" thing. If Microsoft Windows all of a sudden costs $1000 per copy, there will instantly be 1000's of alternate solutions (linux/UNIX-based, PalmOS-based, MacOS-based, Windows emulation) OR, people will just not bother to upgrade the Windows version that they are currently using (you don't gain much except bugs anyways).
Come on, does this guy seriously believe that the current purchasing levels and consumer choices would even be relevant if Windows cost $1000 a pop?!?!?
Z'
Here's Pierre-Philippe Coupard's device driver, now all I need is the reader/decrypter... :-)
s /console/network/cuecat-0.0.5.tar.gz
n etwork/cuecat-0.0.5.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.tuniv.szczecin.pl/dsk4/Linuxberg/file
ftp://ftp.uakom.sk/pub/linuxberg/files/console/
1) The media commonly misuses terms anyways (ie: arsenal and clip).
2) No one outside of the hacker/cracker community really cares. To them, it's just geek-speek.
3) We've been arguing this hacker/cracker debate for (how many years now?) and the best that we've gotten is to define cracker as a sub-type of hacker.
4) Languages reflect the way most people use words. When the majority of the people in the world focus on the cracker definition of hacker (because it's more exciting to talk about a criminal mastermind (yes, I know script kiddies are far from criminal masterminds, but the general public doesn't know the difference -- to the general public, a working knowledge of DOS commands makes you a computer guru) than to talk about someone who just tweaked vi), then that definition becomes the accepted one. (Sorry for all the parenthases, I just finished coding in Lisp...)
Essentially, my point is that I don't believe that the term hacker will ever lose it's cracker connotation. The best we can do in this battle is to create a new term (coder? sourcerer?) that we can promote as a sub-type of hacker who follows a code of ethics and works to improve existing code. If we can do this, then hacker won't be incorrect, it will just be non-specific. It would be like saying "Mammal Held Up Convenience Store." It's technically correct, but there is a better, more specific term.
If we refocus our energies on informing the media that there is a more specific term (a *type* of hacker) instead of trying to convince them that all the dictionaries are wrong, then we will be fighting a battle that we CAN win.
Z'
PS: If someone has more time/money than me (a poor grad student), then creating a website like DefinitionOfAHacker.org (or whatever) to promote this idea would be a great start!
oblicuapunto.com