Hi all,

Just extending the FHM-Hacking thread...
I wondering if I should start a group for campagning the proper use of the term hacker.
Also start a petition to send to Media companies world-wide and select the correct terms to use when refering to computer offenders.
If there is a site that already does this let me know, I ain't found anything yet....

DW

Nobody here likes calling themselves hackers enough to do that. Although I think we most of us here are, afterall, we're all here for the love of coding and making stuff do other stuff.

Its annoying to see some script kiddie who gets AOL names and emails them asking for their credit cards to get labeled a hacker.

In the end though, its just four letters. We're not harmed in any way from improper use of a word.

I'd just e-mail the editors of such articles and politely remind them or something.

Might just make a hacker community website anywayz ^^

Well, I think the term "hacker" has changed in meaning. It used to be some one who lawfuly (But at that time there weren't a whole lot of laws to do with computers) explored computers, phone lines, internet, and especialy programming. Now the term "hacker" has atleast two meanings. Hackers, as the term was originaly used, are now more commonly referred to as "Old School Hackers" or "White Hat Hackers" while the more/less illegel hackers are called "Hackers", "Modern Hackers", or "Black Hat Hackers".

Language is controlled by the media. As they try to explain complex subject, they oversimplify. As a result they make it more diffcult for people to learn more, in depth info on those subjects. The hacker isn't their first victim, electricity is a good example of an earlier victim.

hehe, like people always thinking I'm making a bomb because of all the electronics in my basement and my desk strewn with stuff. Or covering their ears when I fix a little plug-in transformer.

Well, elco's can be detonated with a high enough (reverse) voltage. Or charging a elko to 300VDC (one that can handle it, ofcourse) and then short it (with a well isolated screwdriver). That's all it takes to scare innocent bystanders. (Don't try this at home kids)

I WILL :D

elco's ???

Electrolytical capacitors. capacitors with a large capacity.
Elco would be the english abbreviation, elko is the dutch one.

I see, we just call 'em caps

It's 'cause of the acids inside them that turn the metals into hydrogen and some other stuff really fast and make it explode or something like that.

ok... now i see. we had some fun with those too during chemistry :)

another fun thing to do is when you spill the ionized stuff on something and them "turn" the metal ions back into solid stuff... there's nothing worse than having to scrape of a 0.5mm coppar layer of something really big.

Never put a 7Ah lead accu directly on a copper trace. This not just a short, this actually removes the copper trace. Those accus are sure powerfull.

Another electronics blowup story:
2 years ago during class I was helping a few student with their graduation project. The part we were working on was a computer controlled dimmer. This one could handle about 100W per channel. One of the things that had to be controlled with it was a 600W drill. This went fine as long as the power increased gradually. Ofcourse we tried what would happen if we immediately applied full power to the drill. Ofcourse this was a bad thing to do and this was emphasized by a bright flash coming from the underside of the dimmer board. None of the components nor the PC were damaged. We actually succeeded to blow up a solder joint.

When I read the inro to hacking that I found, it quite clearly state that your hacking abilitys should not be used soley for monetary gain, it pretty much said, don't hack to be rich. The only way to stop the medias love of the misuse of the word hacker is to sue them for slander(this is a summary of the FHM HAcking thread). I've a simpler idea - lets come up with a new word for hacker, I'm not suggesting one - but then write, as a collective to Oxford university, and get them to add it to the official English dictionary.

Oh, and did anyone actually read the article in FHM?

Thinking of a new name *might* be a good idea. Any ideas? I guess it wouldnt necisarly have to be an english word?

"When I read the inro to hacking that I found, it quite clearly state that your hacking abilitys should not be used soley for monetary gain, it pretty much said, don't hack to be rich. The only way to stop the medias love of the misuse of the word hacker is to sue them for slander(this is a summary of the FHM HAcking thread)."

Right, but just because we sue them, doesnt make us want to get rich. simple solution, sue them, pay off the legal costs, then whatever is left over give to a charity, foundation or organisation. maybe one specifically for open source projects, or directly to deserving open source projects. That way we would knock down loads of birds with a single shot:

* Sue the media companies (deterant for not misusing the word again)
* correct the word 'hacker' back to its original form
* give money left over to open source to futher projects
and
* show the open source communities generosity towards each other (show that were the good guys)

simple

If you made an word for those script kiddies or stuff, that not only think hackers refer to those malicious people, but also think they are 'hackers', and label them as that. That would be a start.

Then find a word for people in the media who misuse the word.

I like the word hacker, and I'm not going to forfeit it.

I guess everybody has at least once seen those weekly bullshit newspapers (best recognised by the article titles in which the word "Elvis" and "UFO" are used in the same sentence). So some journalist write lies. Let's do the exact same thing they did and call people who tell lies journalists.

The problem is that all languages are dynamic. They change over time. The meanings of words change as culture changes. Some quick examples of this are the words queer, sex, discriminate, negroe, and hacker.

The people that write dictionaries are trying to document the language as it exists today. They are not in the business of trying to change or preserve language.

The only way to change language is to change the thoughts of the speakers. So perhaps some slightly more realistic suggestions would be:

* Become a best selling novelist, and use the word "hacker" properly.

* Write to all the best selling novelists and try to inform them.

* Give up on the word "hacker" and find a new sense of identity instead of trying to borrow one from the previous generation.

Correction: Living languages are dynamic. Dead languages like Greek and Latin don't change much.

Also, PERL is a living language so it's only right that PERL 6 change a bit from PERL 5. Or, by golly, the whiz bang automatic computer programming language could start to sound old fashioned and queer. Just look at LISP.

Wanna see if you're a hacker?

http://www.elfqrin.com/hack/hackertest.html

:( I only got Operator - TPU's mentioned in it(at least I think its this TPU)

Got operator too. The TPU mentioned is a sort of texteditor.

I didn't have the attention span to do more then the first 5436263463 questions.

A lot of the things there I havn't heard of, I wish I was around 20 years ago to know more of those things.

Now I want an Altair.

Me two. I'd like to learn how to wistle a phone number, and whats baud, I know its something to do with the modem, but how do yoou wistle it?

I am a hacker, apparently.

I wonder did anyone manage to get to Guru status

baud? It had something to do with bandwidth. as in 1200baud modem or 1200 bps modem.

/me gets preasured into taking it

That was kinda fun
I got 'nerd'. Figures, I'm too young to have seen anything they mentioned.

Hmmm, maybe someone should take the time and liberty to put together an FAQ on how to do each and every one of those things. I wonder what they'd suggest as a keep-yourself-awake method for a 36 hour computer session other than 200 cans of Red Bull, which would be quite costly.

when I flew to ottawa at night from vancouver, I didn't bother catching up on my sleep at all, putting my record uptime somewhere amongst 30 hours.

36 hours on a computer is nothing. The only thing you need is large volumes of coffee.

I wonder how far I could have gone if I had had used caffiene instead of napping that next day..

"Have you ever computed pi to more than a thousand decimal places?"

I have, my computer did 40 million digits in 2 hours

"Can you solve the Towers of Hanoi recursively?"

Yes, I am amazed at how much of this I know or have done. But, like mop, I'm too lazy to answer the eleventy million questions

[note from buzgub: quit making two posts where one will do]

How do you calculate Pi?

got operator too...

you can calc pi by approximating a circle using n-sided polygons. the higher n, the better

"# Do you have any defunct documentation? "

I have defunt docs and the software to go with it..RM/FORTRAN for DOS 2 and R:BASE or something (a database program for OS/2). Both come with 5 1/2" and 3.5" one sided floppies and large manuals. RM/FORTRAN is even in a really cloth box! My software with large boxes that actually have things to fill the boxes are more leet than all of you.

I still have a manual of MS-dos version 3. Half as thick as the book of MS-dos 6.22 and win3.11, but does contains usefull stuff.

i got operator :-((((. 67(decimal) was my score. But i think that stuff is outdated. no proper Web hacking(cracking) which i do a lot. i think i just wasted lots of programming time.
whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Crackers are lamers. Those who admit to it are even lamer.

Haave to agree with you there.

Luckily my cracking was nipped in the bud right at the start, I tried sending a HTML Srip to a couple of I-Mail adresses on the school network.

I did it on my last day of Christmas term, and the admins caught me as I sent it(We have 2 admins, paid by the school to keep track of exactly what we are doing, their both bitches and I hate the guts of one of them(The other one is not nice, but on the other hand she ain't bitchy)). I was immediately booted off the school network and I had to go grovelling on my hands and knees TWICE to them to get my privelleges reenabled.

I'll post it here when I get a chance to get it off the network.

It simply kept popping up alert messages on the screen so whatever user opened it had to log off. It was very lame.

Other lame things to do on a network terminal.

- When someones away, open up every file on each of their drives(all you have to do is open the drive, press ctrl+a, enter

- When someones away print hundreds of sheets with some critical comment of them on it(Someone remind me to give you's all the Chep song sometime, its funny)

- When your in another room, print tonnes of sheets to another room(This is funny, our form teacher is so dossy, that her classes are better than free periods, we just do all our H/W in them, so when we're in another computer room, we all print out hundreds of sheets saying free period : It must seriously piss her off, on the other hand I don't know what we'd do without her, her classes are so relaxing from the normal rigour of school life, she teaches Business Studies).

Press Ctrl + N in IE or M$hitty Word, : Hold it down for a minute whilst their away and hey presto they have to wait for two thousand windows to open, then close them individually(I'm the only one who knows you can just go file-exit in word and just hold down alt+f4 for IE.

Well there you have it, don't be a lame cracker!

oh gian wanna flame???

well cracking is kinda what u do when u are bored on the web. And well, unknown_lamer, pls take that personally :-). I program, I crack, sip a cup of ale. please tell me, aint my life gay.
whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

What? What did I have to do with this? And why did you post two messages? It hadn't been 20 minutes so you could have just edited the first (am I the only one that edits my post when I find a mistake or something I left out?).

wizkid never makes much sense

so codered, i have a question for you. why does everyone try to disgust me( u and gian). this must mean im disgusting. Lamer, was just attempting some humor. gian said any cracker must be a lamer. get it.
Didnt notice i could just edit. must have skipped my mind :-)
whizzzzzzzzzzz
i aint like codered who splits his posts :-)

huh?
Those crackers have problems.

"everyone try to disgust me( u and gian). this must mean im disgusting"

Eminem is a faggot, you didn't even quote that correctly

I liked without me, and bought his album, then by about song 5 I realised it was crap and switched it off. I ain't listened to it since - you know whats a good album though? Royksopp - Melody AM - Really good (try before you buy though - Kazaa) - a must buy for anyone out there who remotely likes music - Poor Leno and Eple are two particurally good songs.

ok... so im interested in knowing what people scored on that hack test... thats if ne one even took the time to do that shit.... I was computer illiterate!!... half of that shit i havent even heard of... however... I think im gonna use the stuff on there as a kind of study guide.....

Diego, that test really wasn't something you should base your knowledge on, as a lot of the questions where just jokes.

YEAH YEAH. NOTHING TO TAKE SERIOUSLY :-)

Shouting is rude wizzzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

yes i KNow... and yeah stop all that shouting....

http://www.armory.com/cgi-bin/purity-test

The Geek Test

My Result Was: You answered "yes" to 43 of 129 questions, making you 66.7% geek pure (33.3% geek corrupt); that is, you are 66.7% pure in the geek domain (you have 33.3% geek in you).
Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 31%, based on a comparison of your test results with 28706 other submissions for this test.
The average purity for this test is 79.4%.

Its way shorter than the hacker test

And the Nerd Test:

http://www.armory.com/cgi-bin/purity-test

You answered "yes" to 41 of 100 questions, making you 59.0% nerd pure (41.0% nerd corrupt); that is, you are 59.0% pure in the nerd domain (you have 41.0% nerd in you).
Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 35%, based on a comparison of your test results with 109450 other submissions for this test.
The average purity for this test is 71.8%.

well according to that test, im 66% nerd pure and i got 34% nerd in me.

I was already preasured into doing one test.
I'll save those for when I'm bored.

"66.7% pure in the geek domain (you have 33.3% geek in you)"

and what the HELL does that mean? Maybe it is not english friendly but to me that means you are 66.7% geek, and you are also 33.3% geek, WTF? Does "Nerd Pure" mean nerd free? Why do they even give you the that? Can't they just say your are 33% nerd? ANYONE can figure out that that means you are 66% non-nerd, and why is that even important? ALL you need to know is that you are 33% nerd. Sorry, but foreigners not making any sense really bothers me.

foo Pure = not foo. So yu are 66.7% normal, 33.3% geek.

I don't have a clue either.

I took it as meaning 66% pure nerd

Pure of Nerd, so that makes you 33.3% nerd.