What is hacking, and what is a hacker?
Movies like “War Games” and “The Matrix” have hacking as a major theme and although great entertainment these movies are just that, ENTERTAINMENT!!!! Hacking in the old school techno geek sense, is playing with all kinds of hardware and software to see what makes it work. For example in the process of learning how a computer works, often it is possible to screw up a computer configuration (so that it is unstable and prone to crash, by default Micro$oft Windoze is unstable and prone to crash so in this case ya have to hack a system to make it stable and useable), or access data by using a few simple tricks (i.e. in UNIX the default settings allow users to access everything, so to secure a network with UNIX you have to change the defaults in order to limit a users access). A hacker is someone who enjoys the challenge of making a computer do something cool, which is contrary to popular stereotypes in the media which depict a hacker as some sort of social misfit who breaks into computers t
Movies like “War Games” and “The Matrix” have hacking as a major theme and although great entertainment these movies are just that, ENTERTAINMENT!!!! Hacking in the old school techno geek sense, is playing with all kinds of hardware and software to see what makes it work. For example in the process of learning how a computer works, often it is possible to screw up a computer configuration (so that it is unstable and prone to crash, by default Micro$oft Windoze is unstable and prone to crash so in this case ya have to hack a system to make it stable and useable), or access data by using a few simple tricks (i.e. in UNIX the default settings allow users to access everything, so to secure a network with UNIX you have to change the defaults in order to limit a users access). A hacker is someone who enjoys the challenge of making a computer do something cool, which is contrary to popular stereotypes in the media which depict a hacker as some sort of social misfit who breaks into computers t
