g7ahn@cc.imperial.ac.UK ("K. Krallis") (05/25/90)
In article <24833@usc.edu> A.J.Annala <annala@neuro.usc.edu>
makes some comments about the personality of a hacker, especially
the words "Intelligent. Intense. Abstracted" but I am afraid
the comments apply rather to the malicious crackers than to "hackers"
with the original meaning of the word.
The author of the original article uses the term "hacker" to describe
the creative, if a bit careless, programmer who enjoys spending
most of his free time on a computer.
Costas Krallis G7AHN
Imperial College
London, UK
E-Mail: Internet, Janet: g7ahn@cc.ic.ac.uk
UUCP: {uunet,mcvax,hplabs,ariadne,unido}!ukc!cix!g7ahngray@HPLB.HPL.HP.COM (Graham Higgins) (05/25/90)
Indeed, the term "hacker" has come in for a bit of distortion recently, I'd agree that "cracker" would probably be a good description of the type of computer user who tries to gain unauthorised access to computer systems. However, I find it a little strange that all the true hackers known to me appear to conform remarkably well to the bulk of the personality description provided by A.J.Annala --- but *not* to the motivational analysis which followed it. Obligatory Hacking report: (not mine, but a colleague's) Implementing a Lisp interpreter on a hand-held calculator. -- Graham ====== ------------------------------------------------------------------ Graham Higgins | Phone: (0272) 799910 x 24060 Hewlett-Packard Labs | gray@hpl.hp.co.uk Bristol | gray%hplb.uucp@ukc.ac.uk U.K. | gray@hplb.hpl.hp.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Disclaimer: My opinions above are exactly that, mine and opinions. ------------------------------------------------------------------
jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (j. eric townsend) (05/26/90)
PORTRAIT OF A HACKER did not reach this site. Could someone repost it or mail it to me? (Prefer the latter.) -- J. Eric Townsend -- University of Houston Dept. of Mathematics (713) 749-2120 Internet: jet@uh.edu Bitnet: jet@UHOU "If your neighbor doesn't want it, Skate UNIX(r). there won't be any peace." -- Russian proverb
trier@shasta.scl.cwru.edu (Stephen Trier) (05/27/90)
In article <GRAY.90May25172450@ghiggins.hpl.hp.com> gray@HPLB.HPL.HP.COM (Graham Higgins) writes: >Indeed, the term "hacker" has come in for a bit of distortion recently, I'd >agree that "cracker" would probably be a good description of the type of >computer user who tries to gain unauthorised access to computer systems. Bravo! Back in the old days :-), or at least, about ten years ago, "hacker" was a pretty honorable title to bestow on someone. Saying that someone was a hacker meant that he had that slightly bizarre love of computers--The kind of love for computers that made him or her collect Byte magazines and read them cover to cover, then write a Forth interpreter for their modified MEK6800D2 based on that magazine. I knew someone who did exactly this. Anyway, I did get a kick out of that "Portrait of a hacker". It seems to describe the old-style hacker quite well, except that I think that Greek cuisine needs to get added to the foods list. Obligatory hack report: If you take a 64K Color Computer 1 or a Color Computer 3 and load the ROMs into RAM, you can change the values in the drive-enable bitmask table to enable two drives at once. Why would anyone want this? For some reason, Tandy built the CoCo drives to use the normal side select line as drive 3 select. Because of this, changing one byte took me from two logical drives to three, with the third logical drive being side two of drive one. (From my upcoming book, Reminiscences of a CoCo Hacker, Volume 1. :-) ) <=> Stephen Trier sct%seldon@skybridge.SCL.CWRU.Edu {sun,att,decvax}!cwjcc!skybridge!seldon!sct sct@po.CWRU.Edu