The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term
‘hacker’, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight
in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to
become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.
There is
a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking
wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first
time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The
members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built
the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today.
Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are
part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in
it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture.
There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like
electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels
of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits
elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that
the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the
hacker works in.
There is another group of people who loudly
call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent
males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the
phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want
nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy,
irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break
security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire
cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists
and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to
describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
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Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:58 pm by webmaster
