h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Saying "hacker" in such a context furthers the stereotype that all hackers are "blackhats". I can't agree with that under any circumstances because painting me (and all the other hackers) with the same brush as someone who uses the same knowledge for the wrong purposes (like willful distruction , stealing, or fraud) is completely unfair.

Regarding shopping carts, I don't necessarily mean purchasing software - if a large vendor is selling shopping cart hosting, that's generally better than creating your own if you're not a security expert. I wouldn't give my credit card information to a system I had created because I am not familiar enough with the issues involved in making the system secure. It's better to outsource to a company familiar with the issues but it is important to make sure their service is up to the task.

Down side, we are the hosting company, and the vendor

Am I not coming across as clear? If I'm not...
What I meant was, that I used the term 'hacker' to avoid confusion with using a proper term, because most people think 'government system corruption films' when they think of 'hacker'.

We're all hackers, on h2g2, because a 'hacker' is someone who (tries to) make[s] a computer do what they want - Hollywood has changed all that though, in people's minds.

Anyway, I'm not sure of the existence of a 'PayStamp' like service which removes all traces of the payment system not being on your own site (except the URL in the address bar, if you don't use frames), but PayStamp itself has also gone, for an unknown period of time

I wish it were just Hollywood. Living in Canada as I do, it's disturbing to watch how our hacker neighbors south of the border are being demonised by all the media. Considering that under some of the "Anti-Terror" laws that have been pushed through the U.S. legislative system you can now be handed a heavier sentence for electronic breaking and entering than for murder... What kind of a message does that send to people? Murder is okay compared to "cracking" a company's unsecured wireless network?

It's not right.

Well what you've got to realise is that in the US, big buisness comes before the comunity and any of the people that live in it. and scince hacking into a companies wirless network realy damages the CEO's big ego and he may not get that new MBW, he slps some money under the table for the govenment to introduce laws, if this wasn't the case, it couldn't be pushed though, because it heralds no benifts to the comunity.

-- DoctorMO --

It makes me glad I live in Canada where generally at least one level of Government actually represents the interests of the general population rather than the interests of big corporations.

I'm impressed with the representatives for the ridings I live in - I wrote a letter urging each of the politicians that represents me to push for the ratification of the Kyoto accord. I got a personal response from two of them. My Member of Provincial Parliament actually called me three times because he wanted to discuss the issue with me.

I'm much less impressed with the rest of the Provincial government - the ruling Progressive Conservative party just de-regulated our hydro-electricity system. When rates skyrocketed and seniors were being evicted because they couldn't pay the landlord for the increased cost of electricity, they backpedalled really fast, announcing a price cap. It's going to nail us in the long run because the Province is subsidising Hydro just like they were before, but now they're benefiting private shareholders and not the public. The system we had was great! The local utilities would charge base electricity rate plus a premium to cover operating costs, and if they ended up with a surplus at the end of the year they would credit everybody's account enough to bring net profit back to zero. If they'd just left it alone in the first place them we wouldn't be in this mess - there's now an electricity shortage so we're importing electricity from New York. Thanks Mr. Eves, I appreciate you lining some CEO's pockets at the public's expense.

Then again, initiatives like Government Online which is a program to ensure that every government department can be contacted and every government form submitted over the Internet give me confidence that the Canadian government actually has a clue about some things.

Some people have sujested that canada is like the sensible healthy country of the whole world, dependable, you often don't here of anything going on in canada here. but then compeared the USA, who has a population density far greater...

'Government inititives to give big buisness a chanch. it's a jhoke, and I would have capained for the reinstating of the publicly owned coutility.

I can't speak much for the UK (only being 18) but here almost everything is privetised, and the only thing I would even consider to be fair is the water, and just 'just' it's crule, electrity is realy expensive, yet it's ok to have a realy large coal powerstation stitting on your door step. and don't get me stated on public transport. Oh god.

-- DoctorMO --

The utility is still public owned, it's just that now there's two public utilities and Ontario Power Generation / Hydro One can't had to cut prices to deal with competition. The same thing happened when they deregulated the natural gas industry. HUGE price increases instead of the promised "initial rise, eventual fall".

What, it's the old 'buisness managment make it work better' thats a joke in it's self, because the interest of the buisness men is to make money, not to provide a service, if they could get you to give them the money, they would.

-- DoctorMO --

the canadian government often seem to have a clue about internitish ways of communicating with their populace due to a couple of unique factors not shared by most other countries.

1, a policy of genuine freedom of information (at least as far as government is concerned). I don't happen to know if it applies to business as well, or is jut an open government requirement.

2, in combination with this, a bilingual population, so automatic internationalisation of everything into both english and french is a desperate need.

3, a highly geographically distributed population, often quite far from major population centers. this makes improved communication technologies important, and canada early adoptors.

this combination puts a fundamentally different slant on the usual centralising tendencies of government. in a lot of cases, if you make it too centralised in canada it just fails to work at all.

yes, thats what I had learned too.

-- DoctorMO --

The word 'hacker' has been used to describe people who break into computer systems electronically for *ages*. Better get used to it!

For interest's sake, the relevant acts (for the Province of Ontario - these acts are provincial, not federal) can be found at http://www.gov.on.ca/MBS/english/fip/act/act.html.

I wish Canada were actually bilingual. Most people outside of the Province of Quebec only speak English. Government documents are required to be in French and English and the language laws are a little different in PQ but for the most part you see English-only signs and publications unless you're in areas of high concentrations of a given ethnicity, such as Greektown or Chinatown in Toronto.

The geographic distribution is responsible not just for communications technology adoption but (much earlier) for the creation of the trans-Canada railway that runs to every province. They had to put rails in through the rocky mountains. Many many Chinese immigrants died (the legend is one for every mile of track).

The country's population is distributed across a huge distance East-West but 90% of the population lives within a day's drive of the U.S. border. To get from where I live near Niagara Falls to the West coast by road would take more than a week stopping every night. Non-stop by train (from the Via Rail site) it takes 3 days 1 hrs 50 mins.

LOL... Which reminds me of some family we had visiting from the England. They decided they wanted to see Anne of Green Gables in PEI and then were planning on visiting us in Niagara the next day, then maybe popping by British Columbia to see the Pacific Ocean before they left. They wouldn't believe us that they couldn't make the trip. When we managed to find two maps that were the same scale and put England on top of Canada their eyes almost popped out of their head.

I refuse to get used to the term hacker being misapplied - I will do what I can to change it.

Well, typically of h2g2 this thread has suffered topic drift. Oh Well.

I'm with Ion, I don't like the term Hacker being used to mean malicious cracking. I class myself as a hacker, I sit at a keyboard all day hacking away trying to develop new stuff and fix old stuff. I don't go out to try and rip off some other poor schmuck.

An interesting point here is that journalists in the UK are also refered to as Hacks. I wonder where the term actually came from?

What a coincidence. I dug this link up on PerlMonks.org completely by accident:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

Berkeley is where computer hacking "officially" started.

To cut irregulary, without skill or definite purpose; to
notch; to mangle by repeated strokes of a cutting
instrument; as, to hack a post.

I think I'll class myself as a Programmer, and leave all you manglers and irregular programmers without skill to yourselves . J/K

-- DoctorMO --

Where I work, "programmers" tend to be more interested in the money than the programming. Computers are my hobby for which I happen to get paid occasionally, thus I am a computer hacker according to the original Berkeley definition.

It's not a misapplied term. Using the word 'hacker' to describe people who break into computer systems is a perfectly legitimate use of the word.

For example, take a look at http://www.phrack.org/

You'll notice it is described as "...a Hacker magazine by the community, for the community..."

Taking a look at the contents it is quite clearly full of hints, tricks and exploits designed to break security on computer systems.

Same for 2600 - "The Hacker Quarterly". Full of hacking and phreaking (phone hacking) advice.

When you write a letter, do you say you are communicating or do you say you're writing a letter? Technically describing someone who breaks into a computer system as a 'hacker' can be considered correct but do you describe a person as 'life form'? What about someone who has died? Are they still a life form?

All people who break into computer systems are not hackers, nor do all hackers break into computer systems so while it may be legitimate for some descriptions, it's very rarely used correctly, especially by the media. A better word for people who break into computer systems in order to cause them harm is "criminal".

I regularly read 2600. Do you? I suspect that you don't, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. The editors make it quite clear that 2600 is about knowledge and freedom, not about damage.

Just because you know how something can be broken doesn't mean you're out to break it. I know how a lock works. I could draw a manufacturing diagram for a lockpick. Does that make me a criminal? It could be that I'm using the lockpick design to assist with building a better lock. It doesn't matter. Knowledge is morality neutral. It's up to people how they use their knowledge.

'advice' dosn't this go against the ethic? of doing it to find out how it works? you might as well you read the articals and go to bed. the only simily I could see was the first description, sleep all day awake all night, programming, not going school the next day... that was me. before I got a job. and now I program all day.

-- DoctorMO --