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people tried cracker vs hacker, but it never caught on. Then techies reclaimed hacker as a positive, even if the media doesn't uses it another way. Now there
by bproper 15y ago
people tried cracker vs hacker, but it never caught on.
Then techies reclaimed hacker as a positive, even if the media doesn't uses it another way.
Now there is hacker, the compliment among engineers, and hacker, the computer criminal in the press.
- utefan001 15y agoI have thought a lot about this and think "computer ninja" is our best option.
- cema 15y agoOh no not that please. It sounds so cheesy and cartoonish.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoWell at least the bad guys can be 'computer pirates' and we can debate which is better pirates or ninjas. And if we somehow managed to get the pirate vs ninja meme into public debate then that would be a very clever hack indeed.
- cema 15y agoThieves versus robbers, sounds like.
- iterationx 15y agosounds about as bad as "code smell"
- cema 15y agoWell, that at least can be considered a term...
- peterwwillis 15y agoYep; the duality of words and their users. There's no way to "take back" a word if popular use dictates it's something else. It started as one thing, it ends as something very different. (ex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinhead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinhead) I know many people who have campaigned to try to make the word into a positive, to "take it back", but the majority of people don't care what we do or why. The media shapes the conversation and the people have it without us.