beaty@animas.colostate.EDU (steve beaty) (10/08/90)
well, i'm tired of people calling me a hacker when what they mean is cracker. i'm not a cracker; if i had that kind of spare time i'd spend it on a bike. i also don't like the term being spread about with such alacrity. so i think we should change what we call each other, so we at least know what we're talking about (-: i'm throwing myself in here with great alacrity :-) anyways, i'd like to make a modest proposal for a new term: grokker: one who is at one with (computers). one who groks the void type. well, there it is then. obl. hack: a 'tr' filter to change from my RatShack wp-2 wordprocessor format to generic ascii. simple, straight forward, and sure to draw blank stares from non-grokkers. steve beaty@longs.lance.colostate.edu disk-claimer: n. a small computer program that removes all traces of my employer's responsibility from all media containing these lines.
v116kznd@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (David M Archer) (10/08/90)
In article <10035@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, beaty@animas.colostate.EDU (steve beaty) writes... >grokker: one who is at one with (computers). one who groks the void type. Sounds more like a defintion for guru. Besides, I thought hackers never really cared what other people (except for other hackers) thought about themselves.
marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot) (10/09/90)
In article <10035@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> beaty@animas.colostate.EDU (steve beaty) writes: >well, i'm tired of people calling me a hacker when what they mean is cracker. > [ stuff deleted ] >a modest proposal for a new term: >grokker: one who is at one with (computers). one who groks the void type. Sorry, I don't agree. What you're doing is playing their game. This is from the Hackers Conference 6.0 invitation, and is reproduced here without permission: What's in a name? The media has been abusing the term "hacker" for so long now that it's been very tempting to change the name of this conference. One of my sons voiced my feeling quite well when he asked "Why do they say those things, we're not criminals?" The steering committee feelds very strongly that we're not getting together to discuss anything nefarious. Quite the contrary. At last year's conference Russell Brand conducted a role playing game where we were administering systems being invaded, trying to keep crackers out. In discussing whether we should change the name of the conference, Lee Felsenstein persuaded us to leave the name as is. Excerpting from what Lee said: The most precious thing you have is your name, your metaphors, your language. It has never been wise to change names, metaphors, lang- uage when under attack as unpopular. NO ONE, when they see the reversal, concludes anything but "aha! the rats really were as advertised! look at 'em run!" It's as old as blood lust. Many people were called before Senator Joe McCarthy. Some people never said they were reds, and sometimes their neighbors didn't abandon them. If these people had turned tail and said, "no, no, we're not what they say we are!", I doubt their neighbors would have supported them. Why, after all, support someone who won't support themselves? I'm a HACKER, and I'll tell YOU what a hacker is! -- Marc de Groot (KG6KF) |"The all-American boy prefers beauty to brains Noe Systems, San Francisco | because he can see better than he can think." UUCP: uunet!hoptoad!noe!marc | -Farrah Fawcett Internet: marc@kg6kf.AMPR.ORG | -- Marc de Groot (KG6KF) |"The all-American boy prefers beauty to brains Noe Systems, San Francisco | because he can see better than he can think." UUCP: uunet!hoptoad!noe!marc | -Farrah Fawcett Internet: marc@kg6kf.AMPR.ORG |
jxxl@huxley.cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke) (10/09/90)
In article <> marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot) writes: > The media has been abusing the term "hacker" for so long now that it's > been very tempting to change the name of this conference. I prefer "Hacker-Americans."
hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (10/10/90)
In article <39489@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> v116kznd@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu writes: }... I thought hackers never really cared what other people (except for }other hackers) thought about themselves. I'm afraid a fellow hacker has done us in. Cliff Stoll referred to the crackers he tracked down as hackers on his PBS special. He even made a point of defining hackers as people who break into computer systems. Given that kind of publicity, with the credibility of PBS and Stoll behind it, I think the battle is well and truly lost. )-: Obligatory hack? I'm not allowed to talk about most of what I do around here. Sorry about that. -- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, M.A., CDP, aka: hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Head Robot Wrangler at Citicorp(+)TTI Illegitimis non 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, x2483 Carborundum Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
wcs) (10/10/90)
In article <1521@huxley.cs.nps.navy.mil>, jxxl@huxley.cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke) writes: > In article <> marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot) writes: > > The media has been abusing the term "hacker" for so long now that it's > > been very tempting to change the name of this conference. > I prefer "Hacker-Americans." Ahem! Sailor:-), there are a lot of hackers here who *aren't* Americans, and have no plan to be. (Yeah, it _was_ a good line, though.) You Government guys are supposed to be sensitive about internationalization and non-parochialism and open-mindedness and such. The mere fact that my ancestors have been hacking here for 350+ years (furniture-with-axes, newspapers, chemicals, algorithms, whatever) doesn't make me any better or worse than somebody who's never been here and likes where he or she is living. Ob.Hacking: What I've been hacking recently has been bitmap viewers for my 630 terminal; I started by asking if anyone else had done so, (a couple people had done viewers for PBM) so I've mainly been contributing to feeping creaturism rather than new ideas, but it's been a good way to learn the machine's innards. Some of the interesting results have been that the 630 documentation is occasionally wrong, pnmcat needs some care on 3B2s, and that compression is less of a win than I'd expected on the graphics I've snarfed from expo.lcs.mit.edu. (Part of this is a name-too-long-for-.Z problem, but overall compression has been not high, given P4 to start.) It may be worth doing a simple RLE for the simple pictures rather than build full uncompress or un-Huffman into the terminal program? Bill -- Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart 908-949-0705 erebus.att.com!wcs AT&T Bell Labs 4M-312 Holmdel NJ Government is like an elephant on drugs: It's very confused, makes lots of noise, can't do anything well, stomps on anyone in its way, and it sure eats a lot.
seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) (10/10/90)
In article <10035@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> beaty@animas.colostate.EDU (steve beaty) writes: >a modest proposal for a new term: > >grokker: one who is at one with (computers). one who groks the void type. *eeeeeekkkkkk* Not *that*!!! Don't you realize that the ultimate grokker was *gasp* VMS?! -- -----------------+ Sean Eric Fagan | "Never knock on Death's door: ring the bell and seanf@sco.COM | run away! Death really hates that!" uunet!sco!seanf | -- Dr. Mike Stratford (Matt Frewer, "Doctor, Doctor") (408) 458-1422 | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (10/11/90)
In article <20413@ttidca.TTI.COM>, hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) writes: |> I'm afraid a fellow hacker has done us in. Cliff Stoll referred to the |> crackers he tracked down as hackers on his PBS special. He even made a |> point of defining hackers as people who break into computer systems. I wrote to Stoll about this, and he sent me the following response, which I don't think he'll mind if I post. I pretty much agree with what he said. >Thanks for your note ... several people have written to me about >the use of the word Hacker on that Nova show. Amazingly, though, >almost nobody has complained about my use of it in The Cuckoo's Egg. > >Once, I was proud to call myself a hacker. Alas, those days are >finished: by 1986, Webster's New International Dictionary (3rd edition) >listed hacker as one who illegally accesses computers. The fight >was lost before I entered the battle... > >Cheers, >Cliff -- Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8495 Home: 617-782-0710 P.S. Obligatory hack? You must be kidding! I barely have enough time to sleep after my school work is done; who has time to hack? :-)
gl8f@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) (10/11/90)
In article <1990Oct10.170946.26477@athena.mit.edu> Cliff Stoll writes (as reported by Jonathan Kamens) >>Once, I was proud to call myself a hacker. Alas, those days are >>finished: by 1986, Webster's New International Dictionary (3rd edition) >>listed hacker as one who illegally accesses computers. The fight >>was lost before I entered the battle... Fortunately, Webster's does it like this: % webster hacker 1 hacker \'hak-<e>r\ n (1620) 1: one that hacks 2: a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a tennis hacker> 2 hacker n (1976) [hack skillful repair of a computer program + -er] :an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer Such a shame that some people give up in the middle of the fight. -- "Restraint, hell. I'm just too fucking busy." -- Bill Wisner
jearly@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU (John Early) (10/12/90)
In article <921@noe.UUCP> marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot) writes: [body of article deleted; I agree anyway] Do you think someone w/ a redundant and repetitive .signature can REALLY be called a hacker? >-- >Marc de Groot (KG6KF) |"The all-American boy prefers beauty to brains >Noe Systems, San Francisco | because he can see better than he can think." >UUCP: uunet!hoptoad!noe!marc | -Farrah Fawcett >Internet: marc@kg6kf.AMPR.ORG | >-- >Marc de Groot (KG6KF) |"The all-American boy prefers beauty to brains >Noe Systems, San Francisco | because he can see better than he can think." >UUCP: uunet!hoptoad!noe!marc | -Farrah Fawcett >Internet: marc@kg6kf.AMPR.ORG | ObHack: A few years back Lehigh U. put in a digital PBX, which meant (among many other things) that students couldn't use their answering machines. Since I wanted a machine in my room I modified a vintage RadioShack model to talk to the A/D and D/A converter in the phone; the whole mod needs 1 relay and 1 transistor, solder and wire, and takes about a 1/2 hour to do. The problem is that our "office of telecommunications" doesn't believe me that it works, even though I used mine the entier second semester of my freshman year, apparently beacuse they think that the ENTIRE phone is digital. (something about square sound waves sounding like round ones...) Sorry, this is the best story I can tell; anything else might cost my degree :) John. ---------------------------------------- John Early | jearly@lehi3b15.csee.lehigh.edu | I was just a child then; JPE1@Lehigh.Bitnet | now I'm only a man. [pf] JPE1@ns.cc.lehigh.edu | LUJPE@VAX1.cc.lehigh.edu | CCCC181@VAX1.cc.lehigh.edu |
marc@noe.UUCP (Marc de Groot) (10/15/90)
In article <1191@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU> jearly@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU (John Early) writes: >Do you think someone w/ a redundant and repetitive .signature can REALLY >be called a hacker? Hey look, I'll be straight with you: I work at VPL Research. I'm working full-time at work on an unannounced hardware project. I'm working full-time at home on a 3-D graphics editor that will allow editing of virtual objects from inside of VR. I have a third software project for VPL and nobody can figure out where the time should come from. I'm helping to build the ham radio TCP/IP network; the custom e-mail gateway I wrote to route mail between Internet and the hams has bugs and I don't have time to fix them. I'm running on Microport Unix for the PC-AT (16 bit ints, 32 bit pointers, no "huge" model, and a broken copy of adb) and I'm lucky B news runs at all. IT IS BENEATH MY FUCKING DIGNITY TO HACK OLD VERSIONS OF NEWS. If you want to come over and hack my copy of B news, send me e-mail, OK? P. S. I once tried to write a replacement for adb, back in my kernel- hacking days at Microport, but ctrace() is both broken and undocumented. -- Marc de Groot (KG6KF) |"The all-American boy prefers beauty to brains Noe Systems, San Francisco | because he can see better than he can think." UUCP: uunet!hoptoad!noe!marc | -Farrah Fawcett Internet: marc@kg6kf.AMPR.ORG |
okunewck@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Phil OKunewick) (10/16/90)
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes: >hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) writes: >|> ...Cliff Stoll referred to the crackers ... as hackers... > > I wrote to Stoll about this... > >>"Once, I was proud to call myself a hacker. Alas, those days are >>finished: by 1986, Webster's New International Dictionary (3rd edition) >>listed hacker as one who illegally accesses computers. The fight >>was lost before I entered the battle..." For ordinary mortals, it would be. But we are hackers. So what if Webster thinks we break into systems to get our jollies? He's no hacker. Half the fun in being a true hacker is being misunderstood by the general public. Kudos to Noah and his good book, for helping to further this mystique. But a pox on Cliff - he's a hacker, he should know better. (On the other hand, how many of you can honestly say you've never referred to crackers as "hackers"?) (Be truthful, now.) As far as I'm concerned, leave the speling to Webster and leave the hacking to us! ObHack: On an fried Okidata disk drive, I found a mass of burned components and a 1/2" hole burned completely through a driver board. This would normally be a good excuse to write "For Parts" on the board, and leave it on a shelf. Which is one of the main reasons I repaired it - just to prove it could be done. First, remove all the charred componenets, and test everything else that was connected to the crispy critters. Next, scrape away all the charred areas of the board, along with curled-up traces. I now had nothing left but good board and componenets, with a massive hole in the middle. Now, the hack: Auto body fiberglass. I first made a fiberglass/epoxy bridge across the hole to support the new "board". When this dried, I put a couple layers of fiberglass on, and pretty soon I had a complete (though slightly uneven) board. From there, it was easy - drill new holes, and point-to-point wire the new components into place. And it worked again. (It blew again 9 months later; I think this was because of a part being weakened in the first burn. It needed repair, but no reconstructive surgery this time.) ---Phil