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Compare to Sales. There are slimy people who sell products that don't work. There are great salespeople who transform businesses and people's lives for the bett

Compare to Sales. There are slimy people who sell products that don't work. There are great salespeople who transform businesses and people's lives for the better. I'm sure lots of salespeople cringe at the thought of being associated with the slimeballs. But yet... It's all Sales and they are all salespeople. EDIT: By all means call yourself "constructive." But it is not a requirement of hacking. How was stealing telecommunications services constructive for the telecommunications companies?

user24 16y ago
maybe they need to reclaim the word Salesperson from the slimeballs then ;)
- raganwald 16y ago
  Yes please! I suggest that the net harm to society from slimeball salespeople outweighs the net harm to society from black hat hackers by so many orders of magnitude that a comparison involves astronomical entities like red giants being compared to planetoids. I would ask you to think about the computer business if we could remove the enterprise salespeople, but my mouth is watering so much that I can't finish typing my comment...
user24 16y ago
This is worrying then. That's a good argument, that phreaking wasn't constructive. I once started making a Lego robot that could play my gameboy. That's not constructive at all either. But I'd like both of those to be great examples of hacking. Is the important distinction motivation then? That phreaks weren't motivated by an urge to crash the system but by an undying curiosity about how things work?
- raganwald 16y ago
  In the 1970s there were these hackers and they did certain things we admire today. I only fear that we will put them on a pedestal and say that that was hacking but what kids do today is not hacking. That's a little like saying that Jazz died with Miles Davis and that we should call it "African-American Classical Music" and when kids do something offensive today like slapping a saxophone reed or a tuba mouthpiece with their tongues (James Carter and John Sass, respectively), it's not Jazz, it's noise. I just don't trust myself to know how to say that subverting the telephone system by emulating tones is hacking but routing 15% of the world's IP traffic through your computers for military purposes is not hacking. I can only say that I admire the first and deplore the second. p.s. And yeah, Go Go Lego! I suggest there's an "air" of subversion involved with hacking, but just a whiff. If it makes you happy, Hack On!
fractallyte 16y ago
I wonder if 'lawyer' will ever be (re)claimed...

user24 16y ago

maybe they need to reclaim the word Salesperson from the slimeballs then ;)

raganwald 16y ago
Yes please! I suggest that the net harm to society from slimeball salespeople outweighs the net harm to society from black hat hackers by so many orders of magnitude that a comparison involves astronomical entities like red giants being compared to planetoids. I would ask you to think about the computer business if we could remove the enterprise salespeople, but my mouth is watering so much that I can't finish typing my comment...

user24 16y ago

This is worrying then. That's a good argument, that phreaking wasn't constructive. I once started making a Lego robot that could play my gameboy. That's not constructive at all either. But I'd like both of those to be great examples of hacking. Is the important distinction motivation then? That phreaks weren't motivated by an urge to crash the system but by an undying curiosity about how things work?

raganwald 16y ago
In the 1970s there were these hackers and they did certain things we admire today. I only fear that we will put them on a pedestal and say that that was hacking but what kids do today is not hacking. That's a little like saying that Jazz died with Miles Davis and that we should call it "African-American Classical Music" and when kids do something offensive today like slapping a saxophone reed or a tuba mouthpiece with their tongues (James Carter and John Sass, respectively), it's not Jazz, it's noise. I just don't trust myself to know how to say that subverting the telephone system by emulating tones is hacking but routing 15% of the world's IP traffic through your computers for military purposes is not hacking. I can only say that I admire the first and deplore the second. p.s. And yeah, Go Go Lego! I suggest there's an "air" of subversion involved with hacking, but just a whiff. If it makes you happy, Hack On!

fractallyte 16y ago

I wonder if 'lawyer' will ever be (re)claimed...