Re: Is General Kind the harbinger of doom for the Mandate?

[bketcham@stein2.u.washington.edu (Benjamin Ketcham)]

Since nobody else has spoken up about this yet, I may as well mention it:

The term "hacker" describes a culture of programmers who program for
enjoyment, as well as, often, for work.  The hacker culture espouses the
values of robustness and quality in software, and eschews kluge artistry.

The term "hacker" has been imprecisely applied by the media to refer to
persons who break security on shared computer systems, and/or write and
disseminate software viruses.  The true hacker culture has nothing but
contempt for these people.

A new term has been proposed to describe these security-breakers, to
eliminate the current confusion:  "spiders".

Whether or not this term takes hold, it would be nice if we could preserve
the correct usage of the term "hacker".  Women and men who call themselves
hackers have written some (much) of the highest quality software that
exists, and are a driving force behind the evolution of the whole field of
software engineering.

--ben