From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Jul 8 06:39:51 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id GAA20590 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 8 Jul 1995 06:39:51 -0700 Received: from mpp.minn.net ([204.157.201.242]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id GAA20361 for ; Sat, 8 Jul 1995 06:39:32 -0700 Received: (from mpp@localhost) by mpp.minn.net (8.6.11/8.6.9) id IAA05416; Sat, 8 Jul 1995 08:36:46 -0500 From: Mike Pritchard Message-Id: <199507081336.IAA05416@mpp.minn.net> Subject: Re: Proposal to change name of this list to a less embarrassing one To: jhs@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de (Julian Stacey) Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 08:36:45 -0500 (CDT) Cc: dufault@hda.com, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199507060852.KAA02604@vector.eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de> from "Julian Stacey" at Jul 6, 95 10:52:03 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1251 Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > - there's a Hackers Handbook, > `Hacker' is an un-necessary liability to our fine Op System. > > I guess people in the business of providing Unix like OSs to students & > motivated individuals don't encounter much resistance, but I'm trying to > venture into new markets, where the people are less `op. system literate'; > here the word `Hacker' is a superfluous danger signal. I don't really care what the group is called, but I thought I would pass on something I just saw recently in comp.lang.c. Some guy in there was ranting about how "hackers" produce bad code, and went on to list various C constructs that hackers use that are bad. He had some good examples of bad programming practices, but I would simply say that the person using them was a poor programmer, not a "hacker". The Hackers Handbook is a good example of something some of the less technical types may see/hear about and cause them to have a less than a warm fuzzy feeling about the operating system. I always try to point out the correct word to people when they misuse "hacker" to describe people breaking into systems. Get it right and call them a criminal. -- Mike Pritchard mpp@legarto.minn.net "Go that way. Really fast. If something gets in your way, turn"