Re: Hackers

----- Original Message -----
From: Dennis Lapcewich <Dennis.Lapcewich(at)unisa.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 6:43 PM
Subject: RE: Hackers

> > Again, this is CRACKERS, not HACKERS.
>
> Lauri,
>
> Actually the term differences may be considered irrelevant when you speak
> with the legal beagles.  It is my understanding in Australia the
> unauthorized access of a computer and/or data is a crime.  The intent of
> that unauthorized access is irrelevant.
>
> Dennis

What a hoot... hackers, crackers, yackers, script-kiddies and
probe-puppies.... sigh...

If a person reallllllly wants to get technical, the term "hackers" goes
waaaay back and has little or nothing to do with getting into systems that
don't belong to you.  To build, manipulate, modify, and execute programming
code is to "hack" it (as in "hack up").  The 20+ year programming veterans
that I work with use the word all the time, and it never has anything to do
with invading a system, machine, or program, but with manipulating code.

In fact, just yesterday, one of them sent me a modified page that I was
waiting for and the subject line was "The hacked page".  Other modified
pages/scripts/etc bear names like hack01, or hack_xj72o, or whatever....  I
was recoding and commenting some SQL scripts for a beta release of a product
and asked a guy what this particular script was and he replied, "It's a
personal hack to get my such-and-such out of the database, you can take it
out."

To these guys, "hackers" are people who "hack code" and who happen to be
very good at it.  Like Lauri and many others, they take exception when
people use the terms interchangeably.  Additionally, within that community,
to be acknowledged as a "hacker" is a compliment.  That's not to say that
"crackers" aren't hackers, just that they've chosen to take their talents
and abuse them.

Hey, I may not know much about some things, but I hear about this one quite
a LOT <G>, particularly when some college wiseguy starts a virus and the
media screams HACKER and the guys I work with scream back ;-)

Karin

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