RE: PEDANTRY: Hackers/Crackers

O'Regan, Emlyn (Emlyn.ORegan@actew.com.au)
Thu, 1 Jul 1999 11:52:21 +1000

> "O'Regan, Emlyn" wrote:
> >
> > If ever there was a noble job for the hackers of the world, hacking
> uploaded
> > corporate execs is it.
>
Eliezer wrote:
> I beg your pardon. "Hacker" is an ancient and honorable term referring
> to computer programmers supreme in their art. The vast majority of the
> losers altering people's Web pages are "kiddie crackers" armed with
> shell scripts.
>
You're hanging onto the past, Eliezer...

> Of course, I will admit that some crackers are hackers as well... the
> very, very few creative and intelligent people who, for some reason or
> other, focus their talents on finding wholly new ways to illegally break
> into systems. (One way to tell who these people are: They know how to
> spell. No real hacker, cracker or not, is going to be anything less
> than a fanatic precisionist.)
>
These are the people I mean, although I wonder if they are merely hype sometimes.

Although the kiddie-crackers might do some funny things - imagine an uploaded Larry Ellison or Bill Gates making an address to his legions of fanatic followers, and finding that all he could utter was "Phurry Phunky Phreakers Cracked Me, I am a big losser, U are all krap".

Emlyn, Phurry and Phunky