[Wolves] Brumcon on Midlands Today

Ade adrian.bradshaw at gmail.com
Mon Oct 4 21:31:51 BST 2004


For those who missed it, you can catch it again here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/realmedia/midlandstoday/bulletin.ram

its about 9 and a bit mins in (after the binwoman story) :-)

Ade

On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 20:39:08 +0100, Andy Wootton
<andy.wootton at wyrley.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Philip Moore wrote:
> 
> >Hi
> >
> >There are many words that have been hijacked and misrepresented both
> >syntactically and semantically to the detriment of the English language - I
> >am sure we can all think of many examples but the term 'hacker' is a prime
> >example of the desecration of the English language by the ignorant and
> >misinformed (my view but there we go!).
> >
> >I will stick with the original derivation and meaning and ignore those who
> >choose to use the corrupted (and incorrect in my eyes) meaning applied.
> >
> >A correct term I would propose for those miscreants who attack computer
> >systems (if anyone is interested read the paper 'The Ethical Hacker') is
> >'cyber criminal'.
> >
> >Philip Moore
> >
> <old_fart>
> Philip is right. I can remember it changing. I was working in Cambridge
> in about 1982 with a couple of Cambridge graduates who still had good
> links with 'the Lab'. They were furious when the gutter press started
> misusing 'their' jargon. There were subtle differences from the MIT
> definitions. At Cambridge the term hacker tended to be applied to people
> who loved computers but were not studying them officially. A 'hack' was
> clever but probably also dirty (typical British self-deprecating
> humour.) I'd studied Computer Science so I'd heard of the Internet then
> but I'd never actually seen any remote connection faster than a 300 Baud
> teletype. The PC was just being written off as a toy that would never
> catch on by everyone but accountants so most people hadn't ever come
> across the original meaning before it was corrupted. The fact that most
> hackers were also crackers (it wasn't illegal yet and they 'needed' to
> steal other people's on-line allowance to supplement their inadequate
> allocation or get free phone time to feed their habbit) muddied the
> water a tad.
> </old_fart>
> 
> My misuse of language rant: "Methodology" is the study of methods. SSADM
> etc. are methods, not methodologies. The difference is useful.
> 
> 
> 
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