From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham)
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 14:40:40 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Hackers, Crackers
Message-ID: <9211232221.AB05926@smds.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>Let's cut out this elitist "crackers" crap altogether.  
>It's just a little bit too PlaySkool, a little bit too 
>"_I'm_ not a third grader!  I'm a _fourth grader_!"  The people
>who put so much energy into advertising how they're different
>tend not to know what the fuck they're talking about, in 
>my experience.

Well, I don't know about this guy, but there's something similar that 
occurred to me during the hackers conference.  Some of the people on this
list heard me express it badly, and I wanted to clarify.

We always used to distinguish hackers from crackers.
But cracking reveals the cracks in a way that nothing else does.  
It makes them real, sometimes laughably or painfully so.
Electronic privacy is currently a joke.  It's bad.
You need to know what kinds of attacks you're trying to defend against.
I used to think those arguments were rationalizations.  
Now I'm glad there are people who know this stuff, who are actually doing it.
Some of "them" are on what I think of as the good side, and "we" need that
kind of knowledge, if only as an occasional splash of cold water, a spur
(to switch metaphorical, er, horses in mid, um, stream).

-fnerd
quote me
fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham)