"Hackers" Really are Anti-Social Geeks

deflect sent us a National Post Story that has a psychological profile of "Hackers". Lots of terms flipped around and lots of blatant stereotypes- although most of them are fair (umm, of course we spend most of our time behind computers- very few people get to be hackers by hanging out in a dojo).

cracked

- he's talking about "crackers", not "code hackers". [deal with it, the h/cr debate is never going to die, sort of like "GIFF" vs. "JIFF". :) ]

- he's a nut. Do any of you remember the controversy over the paper he originally wrote? I remember a slashdot article linking to it - it was ridiculous. It said that crackers were sexually abused people from broken homes... huh? When I was younger (around 12/13 years old) I dabbled in that stuff, but it was because it was interesting, not because I was abused...

- He's doing a grad student, and was a former cop. A little biased.

also

his definition of "coder" is the funniest thing I've read... Nice to know that all the "coders" working for Microsoft are "devising evil hacking methods.."

What's a dojo?

A dojo is a martial arts training hall. Technically this only applies to Japanese martial arte (in Korean it's dojang, in Chinese I believe it's kwoon, and so on) but it has become a generic term.

By the way, I am a hacker, and I do hang out in a dojo (have since long before I became a hacker).