Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC830713); site vu44.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!mhuxr!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!mcvax!vu44!jack From: jack@vu44.UUCP (Jack Jansen) Newsgroups: net.followup,net.books Subject: Re: Definitions of 'Hacker' Message-ID: <535@vu44.UUCP> Date: Wed, 26-Dec-84 09:19:35 EST Article-I.D.: vu44.535 Posted: Wed Dec 26 09:19:35 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Dec-84 02:52:26 EST References: <521@ut-sally.UUCP> <1188@cca.UUCP> Organization: The Retarded Programmers Home, VU, Amsterdam Lines: 21 It seems that the net is divided into two camps, one which says: "A hacker is someone without any sense of responsibility who breaks other peoples security systems for fun", and the others saying: "A hacker is a friendly, though slightly weird, person, who will solve *any* conceivable computer problem in no time, although the procedures he follows are unintellegible, and usually irreproducible". I think that these describe *the same persons*, only at a different stage in life. Is there *any* unix-wizard out there who didn't start his computer-life with writing password decrypters, acquiring super-user permission, breaking system-account database, etc etc etc etc? By doing all these kind of things, you get to know, for instance, the unix kernel so well (since you have to let it do things it wasn't meant to do) that you can usually trace a problem to it's source, and this is exactly what a hacker in the second sense of the word does. -- Jack Jansen, {seismo|philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack or ...!vu44!htsa!jack If *this* is my opinion, I wasn't sober at the time.