Am i reading right!?!?!?

[the bassinvader]

Hey all!!

I just been having a look over the project overview on opensuse.org and was shocked to find this amongst the goals of the opensuse project :

Dramatically simplify and open the development and packaging processes to make openSUSE the platform of choice for Linux hackers and application developers.

Linux hackers!!

Does this mean something besides the obvious?

[devils casper]

who are hackers??

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and freaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
check here if you wanna read more....






Casper

[the bassinvader]

wow....thanx DC. Thats really cleared up a long standing niggle at the back of my head.

hackers rock!!

[sandra_777]

i didn't know this. very informative and an eye-opener for me. thanx !