Newbies: How to become a hacker.

Hello,

First, a message to the more experienced AOers:
Put those negs back in your pocket, this isn't one of those posts. :)

Ok, how to become a hacker? I found this REALLY good guide on the net on how to become a hacker. It's written by the editor of the Jargon File, Eric Steven Raymond. You can find it HERE. I pasted a part of it below.

Quote:

What Is a Hacker?
The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term `hacker', most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term `hacker'. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music -- actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them "hackers" too -- and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term `hacker'.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people `crackers' and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers.

Hope it helps to improve the "I wanna be a hacker" posts here on AO.

Greetz, and tell me what you think about it.

Cool post man ...This should help cclear things up for some peeps.

Later

Yeah, I thought so to. You'll never know with all those skiddies jumping up and down around the place. :)

I have got the whole file on my PC and i am gonna put it on the tutorials page if any one wanna see it

Very interesting read. There has always been confusion on the topic, and this sheds some good light on it.

Thanks

How disappointing, I was so ready to balance out my positives :D Oh, well. That snippet says exactly what I think we should be pushing and shouting from the proverbial mountain tops. Forget white hat, black hat, gray hat. Cracker = bad, Hacker = good. It is simple, segmented, and accurate.

I wish the news agencies would jump on the distinction. Let's face it, cracker even sounds bad unless you've just ordered soup.

Yes I agree. Although I'm more of a webdesigner, then a Hacker, one thing should be clear: Prejudging is bad. If we're talking about hackers or black people, its the same thing. A person may call himself a Hacker while he packs his computer with self-cracked software.

I got one message. Judge on acts, and not on words.

i think you have shattered a few dreams with that thread.

i have read that article, very good read, it got me into all this stuff awhile ago, its the real deal, good post, especially for all those people who don't really know what being a "hacker" is.

danis