The Right 'title'

The Right 'title'

By ghost | 5855 Reads |

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While doing my daily routine of hanging out here at Hellbound i've come to notice that a lot of people here are annoyed, more so than usual, when someone attempts to define the term "hacker". Why should anyone be upset over someone else trying to define the word "hacker"? Repetitive questions on the subject i guess. Why should they have to define the word at all? In this "Age of Technology", as many call it, shouldn't people already know the definition?

Well, I'm not typing this to give you my opinion or definition of what a hacker is. Why would i want to write a flame post.(No Offense) I'm typing this because I just want you to take a trip into my subconciousness, my brain if you will, to see what it is that comes to my mind when this subject arises and to just allow me to vent a little on the matter.

I had time to think to myself about this topic. How could a word that use to have meaning and power ,in the computer world, as the word "hacker" now be tossed around and branded to any punk 15 years old who knows how to enter a few numbers into the latest "nuke" or trojan horse program? So why is the word "hacker" so vague and crime-related nowadays? Many would agree it is due to the portrayal of hackers or wannabe hackers i should say by different types of media such as television, newspapers, hollywood, and also by person-to-person word of mouth. Isn't it ironic that these same idiots who are getting caught and are portrayed as evil hacker geniuses in the news were born from watching movies and hearing about hackers on the latest news channel or documentary. I guess its a case of "mother concieves child, child follows mother, mother eats child" or something.

If I think of hackers its usually the well known ones or ones that i've known or ran across on the internet; ones that i've seen what their talent can do (talent meaning programming skills, knowledge of how computers work from the inside out, knowledge of computer security, etc.) Unfortunately, the media has given the name "hacker" to any idiot that gets caught for bringing down websites with denial of service attacks or defacing them with their little messages saying how 1337 they are and they want to "give shoutz to their friendz Zer0C001 an HaX0rGuY. Idiots.

One day while i was at school a question arose by someone asking, "Why do hackers want to hide that they are hackers?" It later spawned a long arguement with him saying that it wasn't necessary for hackers to do so and people arguing otherwise. Well, one main reason comes to mind why hackers stay in hiding is personal security. Let's take school for example. If your teachers knew that you were a "hacker" you would get "that look" (you know the one) each time they entered the room or passed by the door slowly if you were in the computer lab doing your own thing. You would probably be the number one person they blamed or suspected if something went wrong with anything computer related. You know, it makes me wonder how much freedom a "no-name", regular, average person has if he/she is open to everyone about being interested in hacking. With this new Anti-Terrorism Bill looming over the horizon, things don't seem to be getting any easier.

Ok i'll wrap up my boring rant now. In today's society, the term "hacker" has come to be asociated with criminal activities and has instilled fear or paranoia in the general public due to computer criminals with barely any knowledge running around online causing havoc and calling themselves hackers. I noticed that a few people on Hellbound and elsewhere have said that they either don't care for the term "hacker or they think of other more specific names to give themselves like a "Computer Security Analysist" or "Networking Administrator" or "Program Writer". I guess there is a price to pay to strive for and own "the title", or something similar to it.

So strive for the "title"- what ever it is