[Putting on my mortar board as an assistant professor of computer science] In the beginning…[that sounds so much better than “Once upon a time…” or “In the old days…”] “hacker” was a disparaging remark for students who refused to design programs, but simply threw code together until they came up with an assumed correct answer, i.e. they “hacked away” with no clear path in mind. Then it was transferred to students who discovered, usually as result of an odd error from a program, that the computer would do some things that no one told them about and weren’t documented [the “white hat” hacking that was actually interesting and useful]. Then you have the mildly competent who believe they can become notorious by discovering new features, but actually exploit weaknesses for power.

Today “white hat hacking” is called “debugging” and/or “gamma testing”, or would if certain corporations didn’t release software that was still at the “delta” level of development, and never achieved truly functional status. [I have been a beta tester and have written too many bug reports to be happy about the unpaid status, but more about the non-disclosure agreements. There’s no benefit in getting an extremely reduced price on a piece of software that would be too expensive if it were free.]

If fireants are too extreme, how about an eternity [eternity is an attractive concept to humans for some reason] of filtering spam 12 hours a day, every day

(sigh)

No offense taken, Kryten. My career goes back to the days in which the word “hacker” was a compliment. I know a professor by that name at a local school of public health: in those days, he was pleased with his moniker; now, he has to suffer a certain about of teasing about it.

That said, rules don’t make language, usage makes language, and popular usage, whether we like it or not, makes “hacker” mean “black hat hacker.” I shall continue to use the short version.

As someone who has been known to generalize *cough* … I should point out that the term *hacker* is VERY general Steve. 🙂 It’s recent corruption (ie, last 10 years or so) to mean that all hackers are bad is kinda like the presumption that all Muslims are terrorists. 😉 Programmers were called *code hackers* for a LONG time before the term got it’s current bad rep. 🙂 These days, most coders tend to refer to themselves as *white hat hackers* (if they must use the *h* word), and the naughty ones as black hat hackers (who are in the minority). Even that though is not completely correct. 🙂 Some black hat hackers work for corporations and Governments. 🙂

Fact is, bad people will always find a way to do bad things. *shrug* using computers is just a another form of abuse for them, many probably were schoolyard bullies in their early youth.

Then, we have the *grey (or gray for Americans) hat hackers*! LOL They are kinda like the tree hugger, environmentalist, vegetarians of the computer World. LOL Oops! There I go… generalizing again! 😀

BTW Steve, not trying to have a go at you m8. It’s a common misconception that I thought I would take the opportunity to try to correct.

The next time people use their computers to read this or to type responses, may want to consider that it’s because of hackers that you can. 🙂

I remember the Andromeda Strain Bryan. I thought the book (by Michael Crichton) was better than the movie. 🙂 That’s usually the case strangely. I just saw a special preview screening of the new Iron Man movie (one of my fave Marvel characters as a kid!) And I was disappointed. Technically, the effects were quite good, but you only really got to see Iron Man in action for the last 20 min’s of the movie. 🙁 The rest was *character development* as if it was for a long TV series! So… expect sequels! *sigh* I hate Hollywood, speaking of using fireants! LOL

Cheers!