Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 14:16:56 -0600 From: "Mike Meyer" <mwm-dated-1016137017.93980d@mired.org> To: Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> Cc: "Nickolay A.Kritsky" <nkritsky@internethelp.ru>, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Peter Leftwich <Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com>, Miguel Mendez <flynn@energyhq.homeip.net>, Cliff Sarginson <csfbsd@raggedclown.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Re[2]: http://users.uk.freebsd.org/~juha/ Message-ID: <15498.28088.976841.7441@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20020309144158.K32897@iconoplex.co.uk> References: <20020306191854.C2150-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> <3C86C11C.8A31C8BB@mindspring.com> <15494.52528.125952.145716@guru.mired.org> <3C86D7D6.C11D7E@mindspring.com> <15494.58407.33613.314390@guru.mired.org> <8457986570.20020307135407@internethelp.ru> <15495.57385.993281.469551@guru.mired.org> <20020308113108.G32897@iconoplex.co.uk> <15497.12783.643757.175742@guru.mired.org> <20020309144158.K32897@iconoplex.co.uk>
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Paul Robinson <paul@iconoplex.co.uk> types: > On Mar 8, Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1016056176.58706e@mired.org> wrote: > > Then you install Solaris and use it. BFD. > And what if you want HP-UX? Or AIX? Or VMS? In that case, you've got to purchase proprietary hardware to do it, and it's liable to be expensive. But wanting to satisfy your curiousity doesn't justify your stealing from other people. > I've only ever met a small handful of people who like me have used a > Cray without having worked in the scientific or supercomputer > industry. No problem. I was always curious about what it would be like to work on a Cray. I didn't steal time on one to find out, I waited until one of my employers decided they needed one. If that had never happened, I'd have never found out. The loss I would have suffered is relatively minor to the loss I would have suffered if I'd stolen cycles to get it. > > He forgot the third group - the ones who were talented enough to get > > hired to run or write OS's for those machines. Where do you think the > > people who wrote BSD came from? > That's a job, not a way of life, a way of thinking and something that > completely consumes your entire existence. Have you ever actually met any > proper hackers? Yes, I have. Most of them fit your description. Few of them felt the need to steal from others in order to get cycles. Unless you're using the word to refer only to hackers who are crackers, and not to hackers who manage to find legal ways to scratch those itches. > I'm not talking about script kiddies here - I'm talking > about people who live and breath it, and have real skills? > The sort that find the buffer overflows, I've known people who can timing nasty bugs in device driver by looking at the source. Compared to that, finding buffer overflows *is* script kiddie work. > write the exploits, have the choice to make money > out of it but who just want to have fun? No, didn't think so. You're right - everyone I know managed to find some way to make money out of their skills, so they could get paid for having fun, and stay on the good side of the law. Some of them might not have, as they were usually entangled with the law in one way or another most of the time I knew them - but never for having broken into someone else's computer. > Comparing people who enjoy their jobs and are good at it to people > who refuse to get jobs because they want to devote themselves to a > passion is ridiculous, I can't argue with that. One is a group of bright people who've managed to turn their passion into income, which is an extremely difficult task. The other is a group of criminals. They may well be very talented, and I admit that every time I talk about crackers who are also hackers. Some of them even have good social skills. But for most of the last 30 years, the industry has *desperately* needed people with those skills, and would put up with almost anything in order to get people to actually work on their problems. Finding a job that lets you play with cool hardware and is almost all play and no work wasn't hard. > > First, hacking isn't illegal. Using resources that don't belong to you > Depends on country. In the UK, hacking is itself illegal. Computer Misuse > Act. Where you are, things may be different. Please remember that I'm using the word "hacking" in it's original sense, of making computers - or hardware - do things the designer never intended. I'm not using it in the more restricted sense the press has given it, of misusing someone else's resouces. If the former is a crime in the UK, the UK is goign to be the poorer for it. It sounds more like the latter is a crime - and it should be. > Anyway, the point is, don't assume you understand the motives behind an > action no matter what it is, otherwise you may end up having to challenge > your understandings on huge swathes of society. My point is that the motives *don't matter*. If you steal a car to go joy riding in, to use as a getaway vehicle in a bank holdup, or to repaint and renumber, you're still a thief. The same thing applies to stealing CPU cycles. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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