They are NOT hacks!!

I hate it when Kipkay or anyone else mentions "hacks" to everyday life.

To me, a hack is something electronically bypassed or compromised to produce a different outcome than originally designed for. As in, hacking a computer game to give you 50 lives instead of 5, or whatever.

The way everyone mentions hacks nowadays makes them all seem like hipsters and middle aged moms who want something because it's in.

Am I just being sensitive here?

/endrant

uhm, turning a laser into a burning a laser would be hack under your own description

magmabeam said:

uhm, turning a laser into a burning a laser would be hack under your own description

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Find me a verb definition of "hack" that applies to turning something into something else, or modifying it. I'm with Le Quack on this one.

Your conception of the word "hack" is not a traditionally defined meaning of the english word. It is a colloquialism. As is that word's conception by Kipkay, LifeHacker, MAKER Magazine, etc.

Since colloquialisms evolve socially with informal speech, such a word is essentially (and admittedly circularly) defined as whatever a large number of people use it to convey.

So, a "hack" can mean making your window shades block more light with a neat grocery store item, OR making the windows firewall less effective at blocking your attempted intrusion, if a large number of people understand the word to be appropriate in either scenario.

rhd said:

Your conception of the word "hack" is not a traditionally defined meaning of the english word. It is a colloquialism. As is that word's conception by Kipkay, LifeHacker, MAKER Magazine, etc.

Since colloquialisms evolve socially with informal speech, such a word is essentially (and admittedly circularly) defined as whatever a large number of people use it to convey.

So, a "hack" can mean making your window shades block more light with a neat grocery store item, OR making the windows firewall less effective at blocking your attempted intrusion, if a large number of people understand the word to be appropriate in either scenario.

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Very well put

So, I hacked up a hack when I was hacking the other hack. It scared me to death! So I hacked the hack into smaller hacks in order to better hack them into different hacks and then hack the smaller different hacks all together into one large hack....























...Luckily I had some duct tape

I hacked down a tree once

bshanahan14rulz said:

so, i hacked up a hack when i was hacking the other hack. It scared me to death! So i hacked the hack into smaller hacks in order to better hack them into different hacks and then hack the smaller different hacks all together into one large hack....






















...luckily i had some duct tape

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hackception

While the definition provided by rhd is technically accurate, it's not the most widely accepted one.

Today a "hacker" instantly implies a computer hacker.

And giving yourself 50 lives instead of 5 is not technically hacking, that's just exploiting a feature of the game that was already there (the developers DID put in a command to give yourself lives at some point, for testing and dev purposes).

Computer hacking, in true sense of the word, means to constructively probe and test various computer systems, usually to search for exploitable holes and system weakpoints, and then reporting them to the one who hired you to do the exact same thing.

Crashing somebody's system, stealing information, goods, identity, virtual goods, hijacking profiles, or in any way obtaining anything without previous' user consent is NOT hacking. This is what most people mistake. "OMG I hacked his facebook" - I reply to that with a punch to the face. It drives me insane.

Doing damage to a computer system deliberately is cracking. Not hacking.

Hacking and hackers = good thing, good people worthy of respect for their technical knowledge

Cracking and crackers (sometimes called blackhats) = Bad thing usually incorrectly called "hacking" and thus giving bad reputation to otherwise respectable set of skills and business career.

Just thought you'd all want to know these key differences.

EDIT - Oh yeah, about Kipkay, I kind of totally forgot about him in all this talk. About him... uhh what was I about to say about him? Oh yeah...
Kipkay hacker?

^ I was feeling compelled write a long response but I see Eudaimonium summed it up nicely. :beer: rep

Eudaimonium said:

Crashing somebody's system, stealing information, goods, identity, virtual goods, hijacking profiles, or in any way obtaining anything without previous' user consent is NOT hacking. This is what most people mistake. "OMG I hacked his facebook" - I reply to that with a punch to the face. It drives me insane.

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Gaining 50 lives =/= hacking. Most game crackers are mere script kiddies anyway. That sense of the word came from major media & common idiots who fears & will even demonize anyone with computer or electronic knowledge. Its like evil dark magic to people who don't understand it. They wish to lump hackers in with crackers, script kiddies & basic criminals.

Eudaimonium said:

Hacking and hackers = good thing, good people worthy of respect for their technical knowledge

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Well, that's not entirely what I meant (to the 5 lives to 50 lives), but you get my idea anyway.

I don't know. It just sort of irritates me for some reason.

If you look up the origin of hacker it comes from someone who loves to learn and tinker with things to make them do things they weren't originally intended, or to expand on a area of knowledge.

It started in the MIT computer center back when they spent all night learning about new systems and trying to out do one another. Time magazine had an article back then that described them as misfits and obsessive in focusing on computers.

The common (connotation) of hacker is actually a "cracker" as noted above. Back in the late 70's and early 80's there were no laws about computers. It wasn't illegal to probe about and learn the system of some educational system or school. Almost all computers were tied in by dumb terminals and VT100 or something similar with a whopping 110 baud or 300 baud connection (10-30 characters/sec roughly)

If you want to know the basis for the hacker ethic look up a glider from life and explore that, it would be comparable to whitehats and greyhats, but true hackers are very OCD about things. And love to learn every detail. It isn't always a computer but it is always detailed.

Otherwise 2600 magazine is more "cracker" based and is more what people think of.

BTW, icecruncher is related to hacking. ICE is an acronym for Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. (Willaim Gibson - Neuromancer) cruncher not cracker.