I actually think "hacker" as used in a positive context is gaining some traction in mainstream. As you say, words often have different meanings, and I think the two can generally co-exist.
I've definitely used "hack" used outside of the geek community to refer to something that words but is "not quite proper". "Yeah it's a hack, but it'll work".
At the very least, it's probably easier to come up with a new term for the positive meaning of "hacker" than try to get it back. Just don't let the guy who came up with the word "cracker" do it.
Seriously.. cracker.. how the hell did someone come up with that and think it would go. I can just see someone on the news: "yeah, a team of crackers broke in and stole some credit card info". Maybe we could have saved our word with a term like... cyber criminal (ew, but much more media friendly).
In an ideal world, this wouldn't matter because with decent security these script-kiddie attacks shouldn't have any teeth. Things like "got in because they were using an unpatched version of..." just shouldn't happen.
The _real_ problem is that people said for years "well yes technically it's probably a vulnerability, but who is ever gonna target us and find it". For a long time this was true. People ran outdated software on public facing systems and left them fully connected to the internal network, fully aware it was a bad idea, because unless someone dedicated time and energy at them (and who is gonna do that to _us_), it wouldn't be a problem.
Now script-kiddies just run a (sometimes _graphical_) tool that scans an entire network for any of 10 bazillion vulnerabilities, and all these little holes suddenly get found.
"Cracker" was a lame attempt to regain our beloved word. It failed. The battle is lost. Hacker as used to refer to someone who breaks into a system with criminal and/or malicious intent has been absorbed by the masses and it's not gonna change. Saying "don't you mean cracker" at this point is just silly.
Most were already crippled, which is really what I blame for the problem.
For a _long_ time "this could get hacked" was a theory. Yes if someone dedicated resources at you and knew where to look they could get in.. but who is going to target _us_.
The availability of tools that can automagically find these vulnerabilities and exploit them is what I blame. All these little holes no one worried about because "no one will ever bother looking there" are becoming a big deal.
Hopefully companies getting hacked left right and center will put the fear of the great fire cactus to the suits, and they in-turn will invest in real security.
However, if they ever release version 2.0 which apparently may support "user defined blocks", a.k.a. functions, that would be a great help.
Oh that is _so_ not what we need!
Contained as a "learning language" where you can go so far and then basically have to go use a real language... it's great.
Start adding stuff to make it useful on real projects though, and you'll see it used in real projects. "Easy to learn, visual" and "good for long term maintainability" tend not to belong together.
Personally I think if you don't have the kind of interest in computers that drives you to "figure it out" and get past the "can't do a damn thing" stage, you are probably gonna make a crumby programmer. My intro to programming was on a TRS-80 (actually a dragon32.. which is essentially a TRS-80 clone) and I spent many months messing around with it. Most of the programmers I know who have found success generally have the same story.
But then times change. Maybe this is what we need now. A different set of skills and general mindset. Maybe the things that attracted me to programming are no longer as relevant.
Can always image the hard drive (using clonezilla or something similar) to an external, then re-image it to a virtual hard drive.
I've actually done this successfully. Warning came up that I had to re-activate, but re-activation worked and everything else (mostly) functioned normally... YMMV.
Software was always provided free to me (free as in, part of the tuition). Had some microsoft acedemic "shit tonne of software you just downloaded from this site" dealie. Milage probably varies greatly though.
Is that the deal where you had to spoof your user agent to a mac browser or it would think you were windows and try to make you download some connection client?
They won't go out of their way to help you set it up or anything, but they don't actively support it either. Same as the ISP you are probably using. You can use Linux at home, but if you call their support line because you can't get a connection, well, good luck with that (even if it's an obvious line/hardware issue being reported by the modem itself)!
If you read ignorant, ungrammatical, and misspelled messageboard postings all day I can see how it might become a problem for some.
Even including the well written material I read daily, the vast majority of the time I encounter the word "does", it's as a linking verb (or "copula" if you want to get all academic). This takes precedence over what punctuation surrounds the word, in my brain at least. If I read a lot of criminal reports or news articles about unidentified people this might change, however as it stands this is probably the 5th time in my entire life I've seen the word used as a pluralized noun. This is what jams me up.
The clue your brain is missing is there's no period after "filesharing".
I really don't generally pay much attention to punctuation when reading. Honestly in most cases, it's not really all that necessary. What gave me the mini-brain fart is that I was expecting some kind of noun after "filesharing" but hit something that my brain traditionally does not read as a noun. Yes, maybe my brain should say "oh, it must be a noun then" and proceed from there, but it didn't. The section of my brain meant for deciphering grammatically correct yet awkward (as evidenced by the number of people on this forum who also had difficulty with this) sentences is just not a part that gets much exercise.
It sounds like this isn’t the case, but I’d point out that “accidently” sending email to the wrong person is getting more traction as a spam and phishing technique. I’ve seen stuff recently (I have a fairly common email too) that goes way beyond the classic and obvious “hey man, here’s the projections you wanted. You were right, you should invest in SomeShitStock right away!”. Again, the stuff you talk about sounds legit and you probably already know this, but just incase, be-careful!
As to the actual post. I do much as you do. If it’s an actual person, quick reply sorts it out. If it’s automated and there is an _obvious_ support or admin email link (most businesses seem to have a “if you have received this in error” link now) I’ll do. But as you said, there is a point though where you have to draw the line at how long you’ll play phone tag for someone else’s benefit. I always figure stuff like that eventually works itself out anyway. I don’t want people going through billing nightmares, but unreasonable is unreasonable.
On that note I’d point out that any company _billing people_ over email should have one of those activation link via email dealies. Most web forums have that, you’d think a cable company could manage to confirm an email before sending out personal info (in fact, here in Canada I think they legally have to).
It's actually not. They are refering to "John Doe" in a plural sense.
And I really don't like it. It completely screws up whatever part of the brain does language parsing. I practically get like a mini-headache every time I see "Does" used like that.
Yeah, "pro-nuclear" was a bad descriptor as like you said, I think most pro-nuclear types (myself included) want to see the old unsafe reactors dealt with. Politians or even "nuclear power industry" might be better.
But here is some interesting mind food. Lets say you are going to build a new nuclear plant. You only get one! You have an existing (old) nuclear plant and several coal powered plants (which while statistics vary, I think are more dangerous in a less spectacular "kills you slowly and indirectly via mining and polution" kinda way). Would you rather that new nuclear power plant replace the coal plants or the old nuclear plant?
Personally I'd rather a mixture of old and unsafe nuclear plants and newer modern plants replacing all coal and oil produced energy, than a mixture of new nuclear plants and existing coal/oil plants replacing all old nuclear reactors.
Neither is ideal of course... just an interesting thought.
Everyone is fine with this until you tell them what it will cost.
I do agree that the top level should be personally liable though. And not just for large utilities, and even extending to things that don't directly result in loss of life. The threat of serious jail time and ineligability to ever be in such a position again if you screw up should come with the huge salary.
My understanding (and it's a thin understanding so please correct if I'm way off) is that in most cases, stopping the reaction in a fuel core pretty much ends the life of that fuel core. That's the reason I've been told why they don't just drop in the boron at the first sign of trouble.. because once they do, they can't just raise it up and get rolling again.
This is exactly what needs to happen. Older plants need to be decommissioned and replaced with newer, more modern designs.
This issue is that this costs a lot. Not only that but:
You have the anti-nuclear group that wants all nuclear plants decommissioned. You have the pro-nuclear group that wants all existing plants kept running and new ones build.
And what you end up with is the worst compromise. Keep the old plants, don’t build new (modern) plants.
And consider that placating the fears of millions of people who live near reactors doesn't have a quantitative benefit.
Public fear = governments move away from nuclear power = nuclear industry loses?
No idea if that makes sense in this case, but when there was a cost benifit to fear for large public things like this, it usually follows along these lines.
Aside from a relatively small group of geeks, most people wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about if you said "Sony root kit".
And you'd have to be pretty damn obsessive to not do business with companies who have ever done evil. Companies most people do business with on a regular basis have done far, far worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually think "hacker" as used in a positive context is gaining some traction in mainstream. As you say, words often have different meanings, and I think the two can generally co-exist.
I've definitely used "hack" used outside of the geek community to refer to something that words but is "not quite proper". "Yeah it's a hack, but it'll work".
At the very least, it's probably easier to come up with a new term for the positive meaning of "hacker" than try to get it back. Just don't let the guy who came up with the word "cracker" do it.
Seriously.. cracker.. how the hell did someone come up with that and think it would go. I can just see someone on the news: "yeah, a team of crackers broke in and stole some credit card info". Maybe we could have saved our word with a term like... cyber criminal (ew, but much more media friendly).
Wow, feels different to be the one using one of these silly made up words that everyone (usually including myself) generally hate.
Either way, words been around since perl (that's where I first heard it I think), so probably not going anywhere ;p
The issue is that ANYONE can crack these days.
In an ideal world, this wouldn't matter because with decent security these script-kiddie attacks shouldn't have any teeth. Things like "got in because they were using an unpatched version of..." just shouldn't happen.
The _real_ problem is that people said for years "well yes technically it's probably a vulnerability, but who is ever gonna target us and find it". For a long time this was true. People ran outdated software on public facing systems and left them fully connected to the internal network, fully aware it was a bad idea, because unless someone dedicated time and energy at them (and who is gonna do that to _us_), it wouldn't be a problem.
Now script-kiddies just run a (sometimes _graphical_) tool that scans an entire network for any of 10 bazillion vulnerabilities, and all these little holes suddenly get found.
Oh give it up all ready.
"Cracker" was a lame attempt to regain our beloved word. It failed. The battle is lost. Hacker as used to refer to someone who breaks into a system with criminal and/or malicious intent has been absorbed by the masses and it's not gonna change. Saying "don't you mean cracker" at this point is just silly.
crimping companies' IT security budgets
Most were already crippled, which is really what I blame for the problem.
For a _long_ time "this could get hacked" was a theory. Yes if someone dedicated resources at you and knew where to look they could get in.. but who is going to target _us_.
The availability of tools that can automagically find these vulnerabilities and exploit them is what I blame. All these little holes no one worried about because "no one will ever bother looking there" are becoming a big deal.
Hopefully companies getting hacked left right and center will put the fear of the great fire cactus to the suits, and they in-turn will invest in real security.
YES! YES!
Someone mod this up before I have a stroke!
This is _exactly_ what happens!
However, if they ever release version 2.0 which apparently may support "user defined blocks", a.k.a. functions, that would be a great help.
Oh that is _so_ not what we need!
Contained as a "learning language" where you can go so far and then basically have to go use a real language... it's great.
Start adding stuff to make it useful on real projects though, and you'll see it used in real projects. "Easy to learn, visual" and "good for long term maintainability" tend not to belong together.
Dunno how to feel about this really.
Personally I think if you don't have the kind of interest in computers that drives you to "figure it out" and get past the "can't do a damn thing" stage, you are probably gonna make a crumby programmer. My intro to programming was on a TRS-80 (actually a dragon32.. which is essentially a TRS-80 clone) and I spent many months messing around with it. Most of the programmers I know who have found success generally have the same story.
But then times change. Maybe this is what we need now. A different set of skills and general mindset. Maybe the things that attracted me to programming are no longer as relevant.
Probably can't hurt at least.
Can always image the hard drive (using clonezilla or something similar) to an external, then re-image it to a virtual hard drive.
I've actually done this successfully. Warning came up that I had to re-activate, but re-activation worked and everything else (mostly) functioned normally... YMMV.
Software was always provided free to me (free as in, part of the tuition). Had some microsoft acedemic "shit tonne of software you just downloaded from this site" dealie. Milage probably varies greatly though.
Is that the deal where you had to spoof your user agent to a mac browser or it would think you were windows and try to make you download some connection client?
* don't actively block it .. sigh
That was mostly my experience as well.
They won't go out of their way to help you set it up or anything, but they don't actively support it either. Same as the ISP you are probably using. You can use Linux at home, but if you call their support line because you can't get a connection, well, good luck with that (even if it's an obvious line/hardware issue being reported by the modem itself)!
If you read ignorant, ungrammatical, and misspelled messageboard postings all day I can see how it might become a problem for some.
Even including the well written material I read daily, the vast majority of the time I encounter the word "does", it's as a linking verb (or "copula" if you want to get all academic). This takes precedence over what punctuation surrounds the word, in my brain at least. If I read a lot of criminal reports or news articles about unidentified people this might change, however as it stands this is probably the 5th time in my entire life I've seen the word used as a pluralized noun. This is what jams me up.
The clue your brain is missing is there's no period after "filesharing".
I really don't generally pay much attention to punctuation when reading. Honestly in most cases, it's not really all that necessary. What gave me the mini-brain fart is that I was expecting some kind of noun after "filesharing" but hit something that my brain traditionally does not read as a noun. Yes, maybe my brain should say "oh, it must be a noun then" and proceed from there, but it didn't. The section of my brain meant for deciphering grammatically correct yet awkward (as evidenced by the number of people on this forum who also had difficulty with this) sentences is just not a part that gets much exercise.
It isn't spam, but it isn't my meat.
It sounds like this isn’t the case, but I’d point out that “accidently” sending email to the wrong person is getting more traction as a spam and phishing technique. I’ve seen stuff recently (I have a fairly common email too) that goes way beyond the classic and obvious “hey man, here’s the projections you wanted. You were right, you should invest in SomeShitStock right away!”. Again, the stuff you talk about sounds legit and you probably already know this, but just incase, be-careful!
As to the actual post. I do much as you do. If it’s an actual person, quick reply sorts it out. If it’s automated and there is an _obvious_ support or admin email link (most businesses seem to have a “if you have received this in error” link now) I’ll do. But as you said, there is a point though where you have to draw the line at how long you’ll play phone tag for someone else’s benefit. I always figure stuff like that eventually works itself out anyway. I don’t want people going through billing nightmares, but unreasonable is unreasonable.
On that note I’d point out that any company _billing people_ over email should have one of those activation link via email dealies. Most web forums have that, you’d think a cable company could manage to confirm an email before sending out personal info (in fact, here in Canada I think they legally have to).
It's actually not. They are refering to "John Doe" in a plural sense.
And I really don't like it. It completely screws up whatever part of the brain does language parsing. I practically get like a mini-headache every time I see "Does" used like that.
Yeah, "pro-nuclear" was a bad descriptor as like you said, I think most pro-nuclear types (myself included) want to see the old unsafe reactors dealt with. Politians or even "nuclear power industry" might be better.
But here is some interesting mind food. Lets say you are going to build a new nuclear plant. You only get one! You have an existing (old) nuclear plant and several coal powered plants (which while statistics vary, I think are more dangerous in a less spectacular "kills you slowly and indirectly via mining and polution" kinda way). Would you rather that new nuclear power plant replace the coal plants or the old nuclear plant?
Personally I'd rather a mixture of old and unsafe nuclear plants and newer modern plants replacing all coal and oil produced energy, than a mixture of new nuclear plants and existing coal/oil plants replacing all old nuclear reactors.
Neither is ideal of course... just an interesting thought.
Anything less than an A is unacceptable.
Everyone is fine with this until you tell them what it will cost.
I do agree that the top level should be personally liable though. And not just for large utilities, and even extending to things that don't directly result in loss of life. The threat of serious jail time and ineligability to ever be in such a position again if you screw up should come with the huge salary.
That was intelligent, well worded, and very helpful!
Also sent me on a nice wiki trip. Well done!
My understanding (and it's a thin understanding so please correct if I'm way off) is that in most cases, stopping the reaction in a fuel core pretty much ends the life of that fuel core. That's the reason I've been told why they don't just drop in the boron at the first sign of trouble .. because once they do, they can't just raise it up and get rolling again.
This is exactly what needs to happen. Older plants need to be decommissioned and replaced with newer, more modern designs.
This issue is that this costs a lot. Not only that but:
You have the anti-nuclear group that wants all nuclear plants decommissioned.
You have the pro-nuclear group that wants all existing plants kept running and new ones build.
And what you end up with is the worst compromise. Keep the old plants, don’t build new (modern) plants.
And consider that placating the fears of millions of people who live near reactors doesn't have a quantitative benefit.
Public fear = governments move away from nuclear power = nuclear industry loses?
No idea if that makes sense in this case, but when there was a cost benifit to fear for large public things like this, it usually follows along these lines.
I know this isn`t _exactly_ the same (or really even close), but isn`t it this kind of thinking that caused the disaster at Chernobyl?
Oh good grief.
Aside from a relatively small group of geeks, most people wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about if you said "Sony root kit".
And you'd have to be pretty damn obsessive to not do business with companies who have ever done evil. Companies most people do business with on a regular basis have done far, far worse.
It got less funny when they posted user details on the net.
You want to stab at Sony, go for it... but why punish innocent users.