What are real hackers?

[souleman]

Hackers should hack for personal gain and not hurt any one in the process.

My brother has cancer and we don't have insurance. It costs $50,000 for the treatment he needs. Do I hack the bank to get it? No one will be hurt because the money is insured by the government.

Breaking the law is breaking the law. Violating system use policy is still wrong, no matter what your purpose. Hacking (originally) was done for knowledge, not for personal gain. It was to learn, not to make life easier on yourself. You need to save infromation at school, take a freakin floppy disk and leave the harddrive alone. You forget some information at work, go back and get it. Your examples showed hacking from being lazy, not for any other purpose.

Also, something not pointed out by Ennis (welcome back by the way). The term hacker didn't come from suberting systems. It came from an ingenius idea on how to get something to work the way you needed it to. If you need to add numbers to a list of 5000 items and write a program to do it, thats a hack. If you want your SW radio to pick up more frequencies so you modify it, thats a hack. If your muffler falls off your car and you wire it up with a clothes hanger...thats a hack. If you dl a program so you can break into your work system, thats just being a lazy script kiddie.

[bdhoff]

Also, something not pointed out by Ennis (welcome back by the way). The term hacker didn't come from suberting systems. It came from an ingenius idea on how to get something to work the way you needed it to. If you need to add numbers to a list of 5000 items and write a program to do it, thats a hack. If you want your SW radio to pick up more frequencies so you modify it, thats a hack. If your muffler falls off your car and you wire it up with a clothes hanger...thats a hack. If you dl a program so you can break into your work system, thats just being a lazy script kiddie.

Amen to that, brother!

[Simon Templer]

Hello Everyone,

Boy it's been a long time since my last post!

Has anyone read the book "The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen?

It’s not like an Internet text (Although I’m sure you might find some excerpts) it’s an actual book from the bookstore…and it’s not like a “how to hack” kind of book… it’s actually a sociological view of the “Hacker Ethic”. It makes a lot of comparisons to Weber’s essay on the protestant work ethic (Perhaps some of you might have heard about him in your SOC101 classes).

Anyways, the prologue was written by Linus Torvalds (I hope that name sounds familiar) and is REALLY good. And in fact if you do a little background reading on Weber and some of the other sociology topics discussed in the book, it will help you appreciate what the rest of the book has to say.

Happy Hunting!!

Simon Templer

[kingpinzs]

Ok hacking means to wrights programs or hack at the keyboard to it don’t matter what you think it means. It started at MIT by some geeks and that is all hacking is. But the way every one is using the term it means to break the law and there is no way around it. And to me braking stupid laws put in place by stupid old people is ok. Because it reality you are not really doing any thing and if any body actually trust a computer has to be crazy because you need energy to run that computer. So when there is no energy to run the computer or you cant afford to but that energy then all you have is a pill of crap that can’t do any thing. So reality the only thing that is worth doing is farming because that is were every thing is coming from because no food no people. And no people no reason to have computers. So you can say hay you hacked the power grid and shut all the electricity off. So what are we just a bunch of pusses that can’t handle anything? As for me I have lived with out things until I was 18 and I know that all this uha about this **** is just that ****.
I would hack a bank to save my bro I would kill the president to save my bro because I am no pussy.
By the way if you are wondering I have no recorded of any kind I have never got into trouble what so ever.
I think a real hacker is a person that just knows how to read and switch switches and that is all hackers are there not philosophers or “gods” there just people who want to get free stuff. You can accept or not but it’s true non-the less.

The freedom to express your self.

[allenb1963]

Damned good post, Ennis...easy to see why you have been so badly missed!

[Ennis]

Hey Templer,
Its a good read, its full title is The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. Its quite good especially reading about ethics from Linus' point of view but the comparisions to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism are a little overdone. Anyhow good book if youre looking for a read all.

[JCHostingAdmin]

I love that book. It is truly a very good read and I recommend it to loads of people.

[Simon Templer]

Wow,

I'm surprised that their were actually people that have read it!!

I remember I found it in the clearence section of a Walden Bookstore for like $5.

Ennis,

When I first read the book, I agree that Himanen's went a little overboard when compared to Linus' Prologue, but then I realized that, that was the entire point of the book (Or at least thats what I thought) I think the comparisons were neccessary to show the differences between the motivations of the "normal" individual and the "hacker".

[Ennis]

I got it as a present Simon for Christmas believe it or not.

Yeah I suppose it is a worthy comparision if not a little unorthodox.

[|The|Specialist]

Well personally I have always beleaved in the 'OLD SCHOOL' form of hacking. To me it was never about security. Back in the old days peaple made thier own computers and they made their own programs to run these computers and they would share info, code, & (ect.). But now days hacking means makeing and/or breaking security.