Injustice in 2600

[Shmoo]

If any of you have got your latest issue of 2600 The Hacker Quarterly 19:1, under the Injustice section of Letters on page 37. There is a letter about a new show that PBSkids has called 'Cyberchase'. And it's got a group of characters as well as a villian, and villain tries to take over the world and is evil; and the good guys try to stop him. But the thing is...the villians name is 'Hacker'. Heres the website: http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/meet.html

Just like the author said "They are planting seeds I tell ya."

What are your viewpoints on this?

[jehnx]

Yeh, I was very pissed when I saw it on tv and then read it just a little later in the 2600. I wrote a letter to pbs, but of course I got no reply. I wanted to put it up as a "Red Mission" (some of you will know what that is) but the site's not up right now. Oh well.

[PhenZen]

Just another Media attempt to give the hacker's bad names. Like someone said before, the word hacker wasn't a bad thing until the media came and twisted the word like they do to everything else. Next thing you know, this show will have Kewan Misnick (Kevin Mitnick) as a character. Oh well, enough rambling on, just thought i would put my 2 cents in...

[Fakeboy]

I posted a thread about the show a few months ago after I seen it on PBS. It is nothing close to entertaining, and how many people watch PBS?

[jehnx]

A lot of people watch it, which is why it's able to be entirely funded by just viewers. This is something I brought up in my letter I wrote to them, and you all should as well. Say something about how your company donates 1000 or 10000 or whatever amount of money to them every year, and this horrible stereotyping is making you rethink where your money is going.

[MrT]

I also saw the show, it was notheing like real hacking not even close. The time I saw the show, the "Mr. hacker" was trying to steal this crystal to take over the internet. The show dosen't seem like it would hurt the hacker name, but besause little kids are watching the show....well the kids could be thinking that hacking is an "evil" thing to do. Im not so worried about less hackers in the Virtial world, but more about people hateing hackers.
I think everyone at AO should send PBS some hate mail...well what do you guys say?
reply to this post when you send some hate mail.
Include the following: The e-mail you sent, the date you sent it, and if they reply add that on too.

[billgates891]

i find that pretty funny....now if it was Disney then it would be another story....

[Juridian]

Well, this is not the only place this is happening. There is a new advertising campaign for the Digimon cartoon where (I never watch the cartoon so for me this is new) the badguys are hackers as well. They pop between different people on the street and ask the viewer the question if the person in the spotlight is a 'friend' or a 'hacker'.

I think it is probably best to just give up trying to associate the term 'hacker' with the good guys.....it's set in concrete in the public and the media's mind that hackers are the bad guys and most don't have a clue of what a cracker is (unless you're talking saltines).

And if you are in the workplace, dodge the label hacker altogether. Because of the association with hackers being evil, if you get tagged with that label it makes people nervous (and they watch you a whole lot more for evil doings), and should anything happen they will be looking at you before everyone else (I know from personal experience).

Maybe we ought to just stick to programmer, developer, security auditor, etc?

[jethro]

Read the definition of ``Hacker``

A pompous and power-hungry scoundrel

Sounds about right. I'll watch it if it comes over here, looks like a funny show. And I think some people need to pull the stick which is wedged firmly in their asses and chill out. It's only a cartoon, not media propaganda!

[Lady HaxX0r]

Thing is I guess the people who will actually appreciate the value of the term are also the ones who are doing it for real and aren't influenced into reassessing their values by media input. It doesn't really matter what stupid and impressionable people think, they're always gonna be stupid so you can't even try to be responsible for what they think ^^ Except I feel really self-conscious posting in this thread coz my nick by the same ingrained association makes me look like a skiddiot, but it's just meant to be silly!!

XXX