My point exactly. You can be arrested for merely posessing illegal substances or paraphenalia[sp] associated with them. Then there's almost no shadow of a doubt that you've been doing something illegal.
In the situation related to this slashdot story, though, the authorities had little or no justification for seizing his equipment, let alone proof that he did anything that was against any law, past or present.
Your (and the authorities') "reasonable grounds" argument doesn't pan out since the only evidence they had was of some minor (ie harmless) network probing only AFTER the attack had taken place.
In my opinion, the authorities that use such frivolous investigation tactics only do this so it makes them *look* like they're doing something with the case... and of course the numbed-brain media take it hook, line, and sinker.
Couldn't help but notice that the story first said "trojan virus" and then later, "worm virus."
Nice to see that these "techincal" jounalists are have been keeping up with the lingo.
JOURNALISTS: You must choose between the words virus, trojan, or worm. They have different, but related meanings.
Also I'd like to applaud the media for finally giving some attention to a *real* hacker, and not some script kiddie. And d00d with the t00lz can shut down a poorly-maintained website, but it does take a bit of time and skill to track down a Micro$oft employee, find his home computer, and go looking around from there. From the sound of the article, they don't provide any evidence that any code was actually taken or downloaded, just that there is a very high probability that he got to glimpse at some of it, which they remind their readership in every other sentence.
Stupid fingers, there is no telling what they will tipe next.
I'm assuming that was intentional... either way, it made me lol.:P
And I do agree with the rest of the points you made. I think what you're trying to get at, though, is that deterrents alone aren't enough. And I'm trying to say that deterrents will *have* to work and they aren't all we have anyway.
The heart of the matter is the defense of the people who live in this country. If China wants to bomb the shit out of New York, they shouldn't be able to. And I believe that with today's defenses, they cannot. The deterrents are there to prove that we *can* hurt someone *if* they hurt us. The defenses are there to make sure that we don't get hurt. The Airborne Laser project I mentioned is one example of that. It acts as a defense, because no globally-reaching missle can make the trek to our continent without getting shot down, and it acts as a deterrent because we have the ability to shoot down said missle before it even leaves their territory, dropping the payload on the ones who launched it.
The Airborne Laser is not going to stop every possible threat to our safety, but it is, like you wanted, a step in the right direction.
Thanks for doing your part to maintain the self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope you keep a bat or a gun under your bed at night, you never know who could be out to get you.
Ah, so I see that you've never had the pleasure of being depolyed to a hostile country where more than 60% of the population loathes Americans simply because of what we stand for. I have.
Most Americans find it hard or impossible to believe that there are military oganizations and terrorist groups that despise the idea of relative freedom and individual thought.
You seem to believe that if we were to just let down our guard, that certain eastern and middle-eastern leaders wouldn't take such an inviting opportunity to do what they might to further their political agendas. Do the phrases "US embassy bombings," "US Navy ship explosion," and "Yemen terrorists" have even the *slightest* bit of meaning to you? We're at an age now were the threat comes not from a single, organized, and internationally recognized country, but from almost a hundred different and somewhat-interlinked terrorist groups.
China (and others) are going to have a good laugh when we fall because blind citizens like yourself fail to support the military and our defense crumbles into dust.
No I do not keep a bat or gun under my bed, because unlike you, I have faith in our defense and it's ability to protect us. Even you, though you hardly deserve it. I do not believe in having guns in my household.
Meanwhile, next time you and your counterparts from other countries decide to go duke it out because your leaders think it's a good idea, I'll have changed my address to perhaps British
Columbia, though Alberta seems nice enough.
Hey, that's fine with me. You want to leave a country that you don't believe in, go right ahead, that is your right. You are only using up our precious resources anyway. Although with the kind of attitude you possess, I highly doubt Canada would want you either.
The question is, what is the exact mission of the Airborne Laser project? If it is indeed engineered (read: planned) to be used around the clock -- meaning that many aircraft are in the air at all times, then that is a step in the right direction.
I seem to remember reading that there will always be at least a couple planes in the sky at once. ICBMs are not quick, and the airborne laser is capable of shooting down a missle that is hundreds of miles away. In the worst case, I would expect that with few aircraft deployed, they will at least circle around or near the most "dangerous" regions of the globe.
Like many others have said since the 50's, "no country in their right mind would yadda yadda yadda". The flaw in this is that the statement is TRUE. No one in their right mind would launch a nuke against us, for fear of retaliation. But terrorists do not strike many, including myself, as being very rational or "in their right mind", rather they are cowards with weapons. I am for a real defense, and I simply do not see what we have as a defense, it is the threat of retaliatory offense, nothing more....
I'm afraid I don't completely understand... you first said that the "deterrence is defense" statement was true, then later said that you would like to see something better.
All I can offer is that in light of the fact that it *does* work, why not just let it? Besides, though it may be our *major* defense, it is not our only one. For example, the airborne laser blows up enemy missles over their own country. They don't even get outside of the borders. I would call that a pretty decent defense, even if the deterrent didn't work.
I like your idea of the space-borne system, but it's not even near affordable right now, let alone with a 50% military spending cut.
I am a geek in the military (education benefits), and I have to say that I take exception to two things said by these candidates.
McReynolds suggested he would give no tax cut, but more fairly distribute taxes (and tax breaks) amoung the different earning classes. I admire this. But he also proposes cutting military spending by HALF.
This is the worst idea I've seen yet. It is true that we are not at war, but as history will prove, you *always* have to be prepared for the slightest chance of conflict and maintain a realistic image of strong national defense. As it is right now, the US military is not even receiving close to what it needs to support our missions and excersises. Training, in particular, is in desparate peril. The Air Force (for example), is below 2/3 the size of what it was in the mid-80's and due to Operations Tempo, we are deploying twice far more, and in general, doing twice as much. All services right now are suffering large, looming retention problems and cutting member's benefits to make up for cut spending will be a direct blow to what they are trying to accomplish.
Later on, Browne noted that the nation has no global missle defense system in place. That is true, only to a very minor extent. First of all, we do have many monitoring stations and satellites to watch what other countries military forces are doing, missle-wise. If we get attacked, we may not be able to prevent it, but we know who did it and can decide what to do about it. In other words, no country in their right mind *knows* that they can get away with sending a missle towards us and expect no Americal missles to come back at them.
Second, the Air Force does have such a program underway. It's called the Airborne Laser program. Basically, it's a very high-powered laser system built into a 747 that's capable of detecting and shooting down enemy missles right over the country of origin. The prototype is still being built, but plans are for several of the planes to be in the air by late 2004. So far, everything is ahead of schedule and no roadblocks, apart from the work yet to be done, have presented themselves.
Hmm.. ya know, up until I read this comment, I was totally agreeing with everything people were saying about this Every guy being an utter moron.
But I have to concede here that UNIX is not an OS. Every is right that UNIX isn't an OS, but he assumes it for absolutly every wrong reason. It is accurate to say UNIX was an OS, but not anymore. At least, it is not one that a sane person would install on a modern machine. UNIX is not being actively developed. AFAIK, you cannot actually buy UNIX from any retail store or outlet. UNIX exists these days as a template for other (typically open sourced) OSes to follow as a good example of things done The Right Way.
The most important thing is, though, that the spirit of UNIX is alive and well thanks to the many derivitives and clones that walk in it's shadow. By saying "The UNIX OS," I'm sure Every meant "Any UNIX-based OS."
And that is where the confusion lies. Someone moderate the above comment up!
That probably wouldn't be the best idea... Political preference is a personal choice for some, and besides, if Malda were to stand up and go "I support Mickey Mouse" just imagine the hoarde of slashsheep that might follow him without any prior thought to their decision.
Are you saying you don't agree with the article then? And the integrity of the slashdot editors?Well don't force your opinions on us, buddy, we've got a right to think on our own! Troll! Booooo, go away!
Actually, the Tandy that I owned was bought in 1988. It was the Tandy 1000 TX, and among its features were an 8MHz 80286 processor, TGA graphics (Tandy Graphics adapter, I think it added one additional mode that never became standard), the 3-voice sound that you mentioned and a 3 1/2" double density floppy drive.
As for games, well I didn't play them much because Tandy games were only kicking for a very short time. The ones I had were Marble Madness, Thexder, and an arcade-perfect port of Sega's Outrun. Outrun was particularly neat, because it was a perfect arcarde-quality game even before Sega's Genesis had even been conceived. And my version of Marble Madness (complete with a real Tandy joystick) was just plain leagues ahead of the NES version.
Tandy could have been in a unique position to bring about a revolution in computer gaming, but alas, they screwed up somehow and we all had to wait until about 1994 or so before we saw good enough IBMs to bring back computer gaming in a big way.
(Note: I am blatantly ignoring the Apple, Amiga, and others because I never owned one and don't really know the history on them and gaming too well. Forgove me.)
it starts with the simple question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"
Which is, unfortunately, the wrong question. At least, if you're directing it towards *everyone*, and talking about *every* game. "More fun" is an almost dishonourably subjective phrase and one cannot just go ahead and ask it with a straight face and expect a logical answer. In the interest of proving this, I'll share my point of view.
Yes. The games that I play now are more fun than the ones that I played 10 years ago, and not because they are newer. I think the point of new gaming technology is to create new genres, not just keep rahashing the old ones with a higher polygon count. As an example, let's try Unreal Tournament. Admittedly, one of my own personal favourite games. The multiplayer FPS gaming genre has been around since Quake (okay: earlier, but it sucked then), but a game with the sytle, gameplay, and subtle complexities of UT have only been technically possible in the last two or three years.
Or how about racing games? I cannot imagine myself getting excited at watching little blocky cars whirr around a similarly blocky racing loop. No, something more is needed. In my case, I require a feeling of speed. No racing game will ever top the feeling of utter quickness of the classic WipeOut XL for the playstation.
Now, things like puzzle games (tetris), adventure games (zelda), and jumpers (mario) have their place. But that place is not for me. I never did like either Atari or NES when I was growing up. I had a far greater time tinkering with my Tandy 1000 80286. I just wasn't interested in something that looked so obviously fake. My first system was a Super Nintendo, but I didn't really start getting into serious console gaming until Squaresoft started releasing a few of their 16-bit classics (FF3, Chrono Trigger, etc).
Actually, what'd I'd really like to know is how "hacker" picked up the computer related meanings.
According to Steven Levy's book, Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution, the word is traced back from early 50's and 60's college pranks that involved things like putting cars on roofs and that sort of thing. From there it progressed to a model railroad club at MIT where the members (who are the first known "hackers" as we define them) worked on this very large and very complex (electrically) model railroad system. Whenever they devised something especially clever for a neat effect or to fix a problem, they called it a "hack", after the college prank meaning. Some of the members of the railroad club wound up being heavily attracted to the magnificintly huge and powerful computers on campus and carried the word over to that context as well. They became the hackers we know today.
Of course, this is the extremely simplified version and if you're interested, I suggest you go to the Gutenburg Project web site (don't have a URL) and grab the first two chapters of this book.
By your own admittal, you gave "ones who illegally gain access to a computer" the title cracker.
YOU did this. "You" meaning the geek community. I have not once heard a "cracker" actually call themselves that name. They want to be known as hackers, because that is what they do regardless of legality. Cases in point:
2600: The Hacker's Quarterly
Phrack (Phreak + Hack
You are obviously not a "cracker" so even under your own little argument up there you have NO RIGHT to be giving them that title.
I think it boils down to this: hackers make things work, crackers break things. Finding a hole in slashcode and bringing it to light is making something work [better]. Reverse-engineering software so you can use it in a manner it wasn't meant to be used (DeCSS, CueCat, etc., etc.) is hacking.
First off, let's analyze that last phrase. "Cracking," is wrong because it's illegal, Correct? However, if you talk to some well-paid lawyers, reverse engineering and distributing certain information (DeCSS, CueCat) is also illegal. Making it wrong.
Second, there's no such great divide between "hackers" and "crackers." Crackers are a SUBSET of hackers. Obviously they didn't come out of the womb breaking into servers, they need to have certain degree of skill to do what they do. Many extremely proficient "crackers" (not wannabes) have a FAR greater knowledge of computers and operating systems than your average celebrity "hacker."
But you don't hear about them because they can't afford to be popular.
I don't doubt that PC hardware is going to be cheaper price / performance wise, but it's not as expensive as you say. The Ultra 5 that I was looking at cost $2000, not $8000+. Throw in the PC card and you've got two systems for the price that I paid for my current Athlon setup.
I was just looking over their workstation lineup (got a few K to spend) and I noticed that the Ultra5 appears to have an EIDE hard disk and CD-ROM. Apparently it is supported.
I've played with Sonique on windows, and best as I can tell, it is Yet Another MP3 Player, although with prettier skins. In a way, I dislike XMMS for being so heavy on the superficialities (that a word?), but I can't ditch it because I like it's functionality.
Hey, I'll be porting my C-based wrapmail program to FreeBSD and Linux! Think that'll make it to/.? Didn't think so.
Hmm.. Well I was sure that I read in a couple places that it was based on Quake2. It's possible that they did begin coding with the Q1 engine and then added some of the enhancements from Q2?
Oh well, doesn't really matter, my original point still stands.:)
I would wager that OpenGL works better in HalfLife due to the fact that Halflife is based on the QuakeII engine, which was OpenGL-only. Direct3D support is more of a hack.
There's another instance this applies to also.. Unreal Tournament. Direct3D performance in this game is quite superior to OpenGL. In fact, the Unreal engine was originally worked only in software and Glide, but for reasons obvious, the developers decided to port to Direct3D as the main rendering engine.
Of course, OGL vs. D3D performance is somewhat dependent on your video card drivers, but with good drivers for each, you can see the differences between different game engines.
Slashdot Mirror
My point exactly. You can be arrested for merely posessing illegal substances or paraphenalia[sp] associated with them. Then there's almost no shadow of a doubt that you've been doing something illegal.
In the situation related to this slashdot story, though, the authorities had little or no justification for seizing his equipment, let alone proof that he did anything that was against any law, past or present.
Your (and the authorities') "reasonable grounds" argument doesn't pan out since the only evidence they had was of some minor (ie harmless) network probing only AFTER the attack had taken place.
In my opinion, the authorities that use such frivolous investigation tactics only do this so it makes them *look* like they're doing something with the case... and of course the numbed-brain media take it hook, line, and sinker.
One cannot (yet) be arrested for posessing a computer.
Couldn't help but notice that the story first said "trojan virus" and then later, "worm virus."
Nice to see that these "techincal" jounalists are have been keeping up with the lingo.
JOURNALISTS: You must choose between the words virus, trojan, or worm. They have different, but related meanings.
Also I'd like to applaud the media for finally giving some attention to a *real* hacker, and not some script kiddie. And d00d with the t00lz can shut down a poorly-maintained website, but it does take a bit of time and skill to track down a Micro$oft employee, find his home computer, and go looking around from there. From the sound of the article, they don't provide any evidence that any code was actually taken or downloaded, just that there is a very high probability that he got to glimpse at some of it, which they remind their readership in every other sentence.
Stupid fingers, there is no telling what they will tipe next.
I'm assuming that was intentional... either way, it made me lol.
And I do agree with the rest of the points you made. I think what you're trying to get at, though, is that deterrents alone aren't enough. And I'm trying to say that deterrents will *have* to work and they aren't all we have anyway.
The heart of the matter is the defense of the people who live in this country. If China wants to bomb the shit out of New York, they shouldn't be able to. And I believe that with today's defenses, they cannot. The deterrents are there to prove that we *can* hurt someone *if* they hurt us. The defenses are there to make sure that we don't get hurt. The Airborne Laser project I mentioned is one example of that. It acts as a defense, because no globally-reaching missle can make the trek to our continent without getting shot down, and it acts as a deterrent because we have the ability to shoot down said missle before it even leaves their territory, dropping the payload on the ones who launched it.
The Airborne Laser is not going to stop every possible threat to our safety, but it is, like you wanted, a step in the right direction.
Thanks for doing your part to maintain the self-fulfilling prophecy. I hope you keep a bat or a gun under your bed at night, you never know who could be out to get you.
Ah, so I see that you've never had the pleasure of being depolyed to a hostile country where more than 60% of the population loathes Americans simply because of what we stand for. I have.
Most Americans find it hard or impossible to believe that there are military oganizations and terrorist groups that despise the idea of relative freedom and individual thought.
You seem to believe that if we were to just let down our guard, that certain eastern and middle-eastern leaders wouldn't take such an inviting opportunity to do what they might to further their political agendas. Do the phrases "US embassy bombings," "US Navy ship explosion," and "Yemen terrorists" have even the *slightest* bit of meaning to you? We're at an age now were the threat comes not from a single, organized, and internationally recognized country, but from almost a hundred different and somewhat-interlinked terrorist groups.
China (and others) are going to have a good laugh when we fall because blind citizens like yourself fail to support the military and our defense crumbles into dust.
No I do not keep a bat or gun under my bed, because unlike you, I have faith in our defense and it's ability to protect us. Even you, though you hardly deserve it. I do not believe in having guns in my household.
Meanwhile, next time you and your counterparts from other countries decide to go duke it out because your leaders think it's a good idea, I'll have changed my address to perhaps British
Columbia, though Alberta seems nice enough.
Hey, that's fine with me. You want to leave a country that you don't believe in, go right ahead, that is your right. You are only using up our precious resources anyway. Although with the kind of attitude you possess, I highly doubt Canada would want you either.
The question is, what is the exact mission of the Airborne Laser project? If it is indeed engineered (read: planned) to be used around the clock -- meaning that many aircraft are in the air at all times, then that is a step in the right direction.
I seem to remember reading that there will always be at least a couple planes in the sky at once. ICBMs are not quick, and the airborne laser is capable of shooting down a missle that is hundreds of miles away. In the worst case, I would expect that with few aircraft deployed, they will at least circle around or near the most "dangerous" regions of the globe.
Like many others have said since the 50's, "no country in their right mind would yadda yadda yadda". The flaw in this is that the statement is TRUE. No one in their right mind would launch a nuke against us, for fear of retaliation. But terrorists do not strike many, including myself, as being very rational or "in their right mind", rather they are cowards with weapons. I am for a real defense, and I simply do not see what we have as a defense, it is the threat of retaliatory offense, nothing more....
I'm afraid I don't completely understand... you first said that the "deterrence is defense" statement was true, then later said that you would like to see something better.
All I can offer is that in light of the fact that it *does* work, why not just let it? Besides, though it may be our *major* defense, it is not our only one. For example, the airborne laser blows up enemy missles over their own country. They don't even get outside of the borders. I would call that a pretty decent defense, even if the deterrent didn't work.
I like your idea of the space-borne system, but it's not even near affordable right now, let alone with a 50% military spending cut.
I am a geek in the military (education benefits), and I have to say that I take exception to two things said by these candidates.
McReynolds suggested he would give no tax cut, but more fairly distribute taxes (and tax breaks) amoung the different earning classes. I admire this. But he also proposes cutting military spending by HALF.
This is the worst idea I've seen yet. It is true that we are not at war, but as history will prove, you *always* have to be prepared for the slightest chance of conflict and maintain a realistic image of strong national defense. As it is right now, the US military is not even receiving close to what it needs to support our missions and excersises. Training, in particular, is in desparate peril. The Air Force (for example), is below 2/3 the size of what it was in the mid-80's and due to Operations Tempo, we are deploying twice far more, and in general, doing twice as much. All services right now are suffering large, looming retention problems and cutting member's benefits to make up for cut spending will be a direct blow to what they are trying to accomplish.
Later on, Browne noted that the nation has no global missle defense system in place. That is true, only to a very minor extent. First of all, we do have many monitoring stations and satellites to watch what other countries military forces are doing, missle-wise. If we get attacked, we may not be able to prevent it, but we know who did it and can decide what to do about it. In other words, no country in their right mind *knows* that they can get away with sending a missle towards us and expect no Americal missles to come back at them.
Second, the Air Force does have such a program underway. It's called the Airborne Laser program. Basically, it's a very high-powered laser system built into a 747 that's capable of detecting and shooting down enemy missles right over the country of origin. The prototype is still being built, but plans are for several of the planes to be in the air by late 2004. So far, everything is ahead of schedule and no roadblocks, apart from the work yet to be done, have presented themselves.
(A link to the official Airborne Laser page.)
If anyone would like to debate me on these two issues, I will more than gladly prove you wrong.
Hmm.. ya know, up until I read this comment, I was totally agreeing with everything people were saying about this Every guy being an utter moron.
But I have to concede here that UNIX is not an OS. Every is right that UNIX isn't an OS, but he assumes it for absolutly every wrong reason. It is accurate to say UNIX was an OS, but not anymore. At least, it is not one that a sane person would install on a modern machine. UNIX is not being actively developed. AFAIK, you cannot actually buy UNIX from any retail store or outlet. UNIX exists these days as a template for other (typically open sourced) OSes to follow as a good example of things done The Right Way.
The most important thing is, though, that the spirit of UNIX is alive and well thanks to the many derivitives and clones that walk in it's shadow. By saying "The UNIX OS," I'm sure Every meant "Any UNIX-based OS."
And that is where the confusion lies. Someone moderate the above comment up!
My eyes aren't at their best after a full day of work, and for awhile there I was reading "Suits" as "Sluts." I was mildly confused for a time.
That probably wouldn't be the best idea... Political preference is a personal choice for some, and besides, if Malda were to stand up and go "I support Mickey Mouse" just imagine the hoarde of slashsheep that might follow him without any prior thought to their decision.
Are you saying you don't agree with the article then? And the integrity of the slashdot editors?Well don't force your opinions on us, buddy, we've got a right to think on our own! Troll! Booooo, go away!
And I'm stealing your tinfoil hat.
Actually, the Tandy that I owned was bought in 1988. It was the Tandy 1000 TX, and among its features were an 8MHz 80286 processor, TGA graphics (Tandy Graphics adapter, I think it added one additional mode that never became standard), the 3-voice sound that you mentioned and a 3 1/2" double density floppy drive.
As for games, well I didn't play them much because Tandy games were only kicking for a very short time. The ones I had were Marble Madness, Thexder, and an arcade-perfect port of Sega's Outrun. Outrun was particularly neat, because it was a perfect arcarde-quality game even before Sega's Genesis had even been conceived. And my version of Marble Madness (complete with a real Tandy joystick) was just plain leagues ahead of the NES version.
Tandy could have been in a unique position to bring about a revolution in computer gaming, but alas, they screwed up somehow and we all had to wait until about 1994 or so before we saw good enough IBMs to bring back computer gaming in a big way.
(Note: I am blatantly ignoring the Apple, Amiga, and others because I never owned one and don't really know the history on them and gaming too well. Forgove me.)
it starts with the simple question: "Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?"
Which is, unfortunately, the wrong question. At least, if you're directing it towards *everyone*, and talking about *every* game. "More fun" is an almost dishonourably subjective phrase and one cannot just go ahead and ask it with a straight face and expect a logical answer. In the interest of proving this, I'll share my point of view.
Yes. The games that I play now are more fun than the ones that I played 10 years ago, and not because they are newer. I think the point of new gaming technology is to create new genres, not just keep rahashing the old ones with a higher polygon count. As an example, let's try Unreal Tournament. Admittedly, one of my own personal favourite games. The multiplayer FPS gaming genre has been around since Quake (okay: earlier, but it sucked then), but a game with the sytle, gameplay, and subtle complexities of UT have only been technically possible in the last two or three years.
Or how about racing games? I cannot imagine myself getting excited at watching little blocky cars whirr around a similarly blocky racing loop. No, something more is needed. In my case, I require a feeling of speed. No racing game will ever top the feeling of utter quickness of the classic WipeOut XL for the playstation.
Now, things like puzzle games (tetris), adventure games (zelda), and jumpers (mario) have their place. But that place is not for me. I never did like either Atari or NES when I was growing up. I had a far greater time tinkering with my Tandy 1000 80286. I just wasn't interested in something that looked so obviously fake. My first system was a Super Nintendo, but I didn't really start getting into serious console gaming until Squaresoft started releasing a few of their 16-bit classics (FF3, Chrono Trigger, etc).
Oh hell, I'll get off my pedestal now.
I'll be sure to make a trip this weekend.
Are these barcode scanners still available at radio shack? (with the catalogs) I've been meaning to pick one up but thus far haven't had the time.
Actually, what'd I'd really like to know is how "hacker" picked up the computer related meanings.
According to Steven Levy's book, Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution, the word is traced back from early 50's and 60's college pranks that involved things like putting cars on roofs and that sort of thing. From there it progressed to a model railroad club at MIT where the members (who are the first known "hackers" as we define them) worked on this very large and very complex (electrically) model railroad system. Whenever they devised something especially clever for a neat effect or to fix a problem, they called it a "hack", after the college prank meaning. Some of the members of the railroad club wound up being heavily attracted to the magnificintly huge and powerful computers on campus and carried the word over to that context as well. They became the hackers we know today.
Of course, this is the extremely simplified version and if you're interested, I suggest you go to the Gutenburg Project web site (don't have a URL) and grab the first two chapters of this book.
You are a butthead.
By your own admittal, you gave "ones who illegally gain access to a computer" the title cracker.
YOU did this. "You" meaning the geek community. I have not once heard a "cracker" actually call themselves that name. They want to be known as hackers, because that is what they do regardless of legality. Cases in point:
2600: The Hacker's Quarterly
Phrack (Phreak + Hack
You are obviously not a "cracker" so even under your own little argument up there you have NO RIGHT to be giving them that title.
I think it boils down to this: hackers make things work, crackers break things. Finding a hole in slashcode and bringing it to light is making something work [better]. Reverse-engineering software so you can use it in a manner it wasn't meant to be used (DeCSS, CueCat, etc., etc.) is hacking.
First off, let's analyze that last phrase. "Cracking," is wrong because it's illegal, Correct? However, if you talk to some well-paid lawyers, reverse engineering and distributing certain information (DeCSS, CueCat) is also illegal. Making it wrong.
Second, there's no such great divide between "hackers" and "crackers." Crackers are a SUBSET of hackers. Obviously they didn't come out of the womb breaking into servers, they need to have certain degree of skill to do what they do. Many extremely proficient "crackers" (not wannabes) have a FAR greater knowledge of computers and operating systems than your average celebrity "hacker."
But you don't hear about them because they can't afford to be popular.
Ahem. I rest my case.
I don't doubt that PC hardware is going to be cheaper price / performance wise, but it's not as expensive as you say. The Ultra 5 that I was looking at cost $2000, not $8000+. Throw in the PC card and you've got two systems for the price that I paid for my current Athlon setup.
QOTD:
Hey, your box is stable, why not mix it up a bit?
HAHAHA! Famous last words, Taco!!
The only thing they DON'T support is IDE.
I was just looking over their workstation lineup (got a few K to spend) and I noticed that the Ultra5 appears to have an EIDE hard disk and CD-ROM. Apparently it is supported.
Time for me to suit up, it's troll time...
I've played with Sonique on windows, and best as I can tell, it is Yet Another MP3 Player, although with prettier skins. In a way, I dislike XMMS for being so heavy on the superficialities (that a word?), but I can't ditch it because I like it's functionality.
Hey, I'll be porting my C-based wrapmail program to FreeBSD and Linux! Think that'll make it to
Hmm.. Well I was sure that I read in a couple places that it was based on Quake2. It's possible that they did begin coding with the Q1 engine and then added some of the enhancements from Q2?
Oh well, doesn't really matter, my original point still stands.
I would wager that OpenGL works better in HalfLife due to the fact that Halflife is based on the QuakeII engine, which was OpenGL-only. Direct3D support is more of a hack.
There's another instance this applies to also.. Unreal Tournament. Direct3D performance in this game is quite superior to OpenGL. In fact, the Unreal engine was originally worked only in software and Glide, but for reasons obvious, the developers decided to port to Direct3D as the main rendering engine.
Of course, OGL vs. D3D performance is somewhat dependent on your video card drivers, but with good drivers for each, you can see the differences between different game engines.