Comments on: A Very Old Battle

By: Lazlo

Lazlo — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:22:59 +0000

“Hackers” was published 22 years ago, thank you very much.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 23:43:33 +0000

There is a great book called “Hackers”, published 10 or 12 years ago, that goes into the hacker culture from the earliest days at the Tech Model Railroad Club all the way to more recent times. a “hack” back in the 50s was an elegant solution to an engineering or computing problem. So a “hacker” was one who was able to come up with such solutions.

By: fuzz

fuzz — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:40:04 +0000

For the record:
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1986) (and that’s en-gb by the way) doesn’t contain ‘Hacker’, but it has three definitions for ‘Hack’:

1) To cut with heavy blows
2) A board for a hawk’s meat (?!)
3) from the 17th century, “in various senses of ‘Hackney’ (esp. ‘riding-horse’ and ‘drudge’), of which it is a shortening. Hence vb. make a hack of, etc.”

The ‘drudge’ it talks about in the context of hackney, is another way of saying prostitute, so, in the 17th century, it’s possible that the work ‘hacker’ meant someone who enjoyed prostitutes (or liked riding a lot).

And you thought the modern meaning was bad

By: Ryan Russell

Ryan Russell — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 12:44:48 +0000

Right, I also see no point in continuing the argue the definition of “hacker”, it means someone who breaks into computers. Just because you are a hacker, doesn’t mean you get to define the word.

So, I have an alternate question: Show me some documentation that demonstrates that the word “hacker” didn’t always also mean breaking security.