Geoff@SRI-CSL.ARPA.UUCP (05/05/86)
It was a sorrowful sight to see CommunicationsWeek pejoratively malign the image of hackers in your April 21st article on "Toll Carrier American Network Fears Being 'Hacked' To Pieces" by Brian Watson. You portrayed hackers as bands of juvenile delinquents and unscrupulous trespassers who are bent on ripping off the telephone system. This is not what hacking is about in the least. Hackers are individuals who take delight in learning about computing, seek to stretch a system's capabilities, write code for the sheer fun of it and appreciate the intrinsic beauty of software. Persons engaged in the theft of long distance toll service should not be erroneously labeled as hackers. There is not a jot of evidence of improper conduct in hacking and I wish CommunicationsWeek would not use the term as if there were. You're giving a lot of us hackers a bad name. Geoffrey S. Goodfellow Director, Technology Development, Cellular Radio Corp., Vienna, VA, Hacker & Coauthor, "The Hacker's Dictionary -- A Guide To The World of Computer Wizards." (Harper & Row)