Curtis,
A guy that EXPLORED and REVERSE ENGINEERED things like
BIOS code ... and "how a .exe executable really worked".
Exactly.
Somewhere along the way, "hacker" got a bad (very bad)
connotation. And it irks me, when people ... and the
news media (etc, etc) keep on reinforcing that stereotype.
When I was young the only people could pick on were teen agers.
When teen ager did something bad, like 'parking' or mischief,
people got to use the term as though that's all they did.
What if someone saw an auto mechanic trashing a car engine
and someone asked who that was and the reply was, that's
a mechanic. It's a stretch but if mechanics were a bit mysterious
to the general public word could get out, Don't let a mechanic
near your car, they trash engines. That's they way it happens
I think. Just like ham radio operators used to get people angry
at them when they caused radio or TV interference. The people
didn't know about the other things hams did. And of course in
that case the interference was usually not intentional. In fact
most good hams worked hard to avoid causing interference and
usually helped to solve the proem when they did cause any.
Misunderstandings abound, mostly due to less than the whole
story. We can't blame the media people though, they get
their information from whoever is said to know and if that
person is a victim he will probably make it seem that damage
is all hackers know how to do.
Jim
