Archive for May, 2009

About a week ago I received an e-mail from a good friend mentioning that his website wouldn’t work. Someone had hacked it, and instead of displaying his normal blog it showed a message describing what a hacker was and why they do what they do.  Yesterday, Simplistic Thoughts was also hacked. No serious damage done (as far as I can tell), but it did cost me time to fix it. So here is my question to hackers.

Why not use your talents to do something helpful?

The message that was put on my friends website went on to describe that hackers were people who found school boring and too easy (though the article was full of grammatical errors and misspellings). People who don’t want to succumb to the ways of a capitalist society or maybe feel rejected by society altogether. Instead, they find refuge in their computers. Manipulating or creating programs, and testing their skills by breaking into others computers. Which doesn’t really sound much different to me than any other teenagers excuse for breaking the rules because they were bored.

However, this is only one person or one group’s opinion or ideas of what a “hacker” is. I would guess there are many hackers that would not want to be classified into this category. Hackers are generally classified into a “negative category”, but in truth I don’t think that’s always the case. Hackers have also done a lot of good. For instance, someone who wasn’t satisfied with what their iphone decided reprogram it to do more. Not hurting anyone and not trying to sell anything. In fact it has helped a lot of people get features they want. I am able to use Ubuntu (a free operating system I feel is superior to Windows) because someone decided they could write better operating system.

As a child I thought it was really cool to pick locks. I created my own set of tools and after some time was actually able to get simple locks open. It was a great feeling because I felt I was smarter than the system. I was about 10-12 at the time and only picked locks I owned. But what if I decided to keep going? I would have been faced with two roads. One were I used my skills to break into other peoples locks or the other where I used my skills to make better locks.

I personally believe that hackers are very talented and help push the envelope of what is possible with computers. Doing something because you are intellectually curious is a great reason. But there is a big difference between using your talents and intellect to create a better system, and destroying someones system and hard work just to make a point or to show that you could.

For instance, what if the person who hacked into my blog used his/her skills to help further develop the program to make it more secure and safer.

So I ask my question again, and I hope that a number of hackers and programmers will respond. You are obviously smart and have a lot of talent. So why not use it to make things better? If it is about making a point or standing up for something, then why attack the individual people or small businesses that are just trying to make a living?

Interesting article on hackers

Is most likely the thing you should be focusing your energy on. Often we choose to complete the tasks that don’t really mater much and so we are left feeling empty. Luckily, it is usually easy to find the things you should be doing. They are the things you are trying to avoid. They are also the things that will most likely give you the most rewards when done well.

The hard part is really getting started. Often the actual act isn’t near as difficult as we imagine it. In fact, sometimes it can even be fun. I have recently started studying kanji (Japanese characters). Getting started is always difficult because I know the time and energy it takes to study. However, once I get started I actually really enjoy it.

So what are you putting off? As for me, I’m off to study kanji.