does it take lot of time to be a computer genius

[el-half]

Oh, and what's wrong with being 18 years old?

That's a useless question since I never said that.

does it take lot of time to be a computer genius

That is wrong with it.

About ESR; I'm not saying he's an idiot or something, of course he knows his stuff. He just doesn't compare to all the people who made significant contributions yet receives as much or even more fame.

[sandeshtrivedi]

i wanted to know whether i can make a good career with internet and by choosing the thing i want to .like i wann a be a programmer and make really cool things outta them and make lots of money.do hackers have any scope.
by hackers here i dont mean people stealing things but making some thing cool and helping out people and get paid for that.a nice pay.really big pay.


half knowledge is very dangerous

[Trevoke]

Go read the jargon file. Learn about the hacker culture. Learn about what a hacker is.
You cannot become a hacker. You are a hacker, or you are not.
If you waited this long, and you are asking the question, there are two solutions: either you don't have the mindset, or you're too ignorant (the latter can be fixed; the former, no).
Read, read, read. Read everything you can get your hands on. Try everything you can try. Break things. Fix them. If you don't have the urge to Make It Work (tm), forget it.

[thehorse13]

ROFL.

The amount of inaccuracies in this thread is amazing.

Everything can be summed by one small statement:

get paid for that.a nice pay.really big pay.

He is looking for money. Because of this, he will never succeed as a programmer.

If all you want is a big paycheck, may I recommend bank robbery and real estate scams.

PS
Ankit Fadia is a fraud. If you'd like to see one of the books that he stole...err...published, have a look at the early happy hacker papers.

[Dcrypter]

Part of the hacker culture is not how much money you can make, but what new/weird ideas can you come up with that help people in some form or another.

You may make crazy amounts of money for developing something that is unique, that people need or want. But money shouldn't drive you in the computer field.

If it is the money that drives you then thehorse13 said it best.

[warl0ck7]

Remeber Genius is a state of mind, it cannot be measured or learned. You wish to
be a computer genuis we recommend the following :

1. Ask yourself do you really want to a be a computer genuis or hacker or it
is something out of your ego ?.

2. Learn computers, join a basic course and get started.

3. Now about the hacker culture but i warn you it is big black hole woth no end to it and if
you get addicted it might not be good for u.

4. Learn to program remember you are not a hacker if you cannot program.

Go to google god www.google.com and explore may the world and AO be with you and
we wish you best of luck

[Trevoke]

It's nice of you guys to tell him right now that he's going to fail; however, it is my experience that the people who are after money give up on their own after a short while -- and thus, the lesson is learned.

[nihil]

Oh, and what's wrong with being 18 years old?

................absolutely nothing at all............in fact, I wish I was................well "certain bits" of me at any rate

In reality, I do not think that there is such a thing as a "computer genius". Sure there are some very competent individuals around, but I don't see any Rutherfords, Oppenheimers or Einsteins.

It is all way too complex for single individuals to excel. It is teamwork?

Just my £0.02

[thehorse13]

Greed/Empty Desire != Cash.

While the rubes toil over the definitions/ambitions/motivations of hackers/attackers, the real security professionals are busy innovating. This eventually generates or destroys big money.

Need proof?

Card Services Inc. Market Value 2 Billion. Bankrupt (fell off the stock market) after report of internal breech of sensative data.
Juniper Networks. Small time HW vendor hires a few brilliant and technology hungry minds and embarks on a road of new innovations in the security space and today nips at the heals of giants like Cisco. These people were not in it for the cash but today sit on a huge pile of it.

[catch]

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionar...nary&va=hacker

English is organic... stop being elitist and deal with it.

There have been many geniuses in the field of information security... yet sadly they and their works are largely overlooked, because... like all geniuses they are too far beyond the general public (in this case the general community security community) to be appreciated much beyond their immediate peer group.

James Anderson (doesn't even have a wikipedia entry)
This guy was light years ahead of everyone, back in the early 70's he wrote a series of papers titled "Computer Security Technology Planning Study" that outlined the first concepts of a security kernel including formal methods to mathematically prove this kernel operated correctly, automated host based intrusion detection systems, buffer overflow attacks, and modifications required to create "safe" programming languages.
In 1980 he published another paper that addressed a structured approach to compromising computer systems (internally and externally)... with the intent of improving audit trails titled "Computer Security Threat Monitoring and Surveillance" that addresses quantifying normal use and the concept of secure subsystems.

David Bell (also lacks a wikipedia entry)
Along with Len LaPadula developed the first usable formal state transition model to deal with computer security back in the mid-70s.

Richard Bisbey (Oh my... also lacks a Wikipedia entry, guess I have my weekend cut out for me)
Along Dennis Hollingsworth developed what was essentially the first Capabilities Maturity Model back in 1978 (about 15 years before Carnegie Mellon came up with the CMMs) though it was specifically for operating system security.

Jonathan Millen (wikipedia has never seemed so useless to me)
Did a lot of work with Mathlab back in the early 70s and then was a pioneer in formal analysis of covert channels as well as trusted system evaluations.

I think any of these people compare quite favorably against someone who has done little more than maintain the Jargon File. (which he modies at will to support his political stance apparently)

Maybe I should write a tutorial... cause seriously, the list of unappreciated "hackers" goes on and on.

cheers,

catch