Word: hackers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Hackers at C.M.U. like to test their tenacity by exploring ways of scaling the electronic barriers that protect computer systems or by engaging in protracted computer combat. In their wars, they try to block each other's access to programs or destroy those of their rivals. Recently a hacker created a program known informally as Lose Big; it looks like a game but actually is a trap that destroys the files of whoever runs the program. "Nerds," which is what hackers call computer dilettantes, are the chief victims of Lose Big. "You see a guy at the terminal," says...
...hacker stereotype is a pudgy male with a fish-belly-white complexion who swills soft drinks, lives on candy bars and spends most of his waking hours in front of a terminal, playing games or trying to penetrate Defense Department networks. (So far as is known, no one has succeeded in breaching a classified Pentagon system.) Dress ranges from the clean-cut, Ken-and-Barbie look to the torn jeans and tie-dyed couture of the Woodstock generation. Beards and glasses are popular hacker accessories...
Like all enthusiasts, hackers have developed their own argot, handed down from the first computer zealots of the early 1970s. To "gronk out," for example, means to go to sleep; to "frobnicate" or "frob" means to fiddle with the controls of a computer. Hackerese changes along with computer technology; even the term hacker is under revisionist pressure. At Carnegie-Mellon, some hackers contend that "wizard" is a more appropriate moniker for those adept at programming...
Like rock stars, hackers have their groupies. Angela Gugliotta is not a hacker, but she prefers the company of hackers. Says she: "When I started meeting hackers I said to myself, 'Gee, here are people who are interested in something.' I was unhappy here until I started hanging around hackers." Hangers-on are tolerated if they know their place; poseurs who spout hacker phrases but know nothing about computers are regarded with contempt. Says Wholey: "You learn to avoid those people. They have nothing...
...into Columbia University's computer system via an electronic link between the two schools. He could have damaged Columbia's main computer by exploiting a "bug," or error, in the operating system, but instead he quickly notified authorities of the problem. Two months ago a more diabolical hacker broke into C.M.U.'s DEC-20 system and misused an authorization code to destroy student, faculty and researcher files. It took university programmers 23 hours to restore the lost files from storage discs...