Bridging the Gap Between Hackers and Academics

Tal Garfinkel writes "There has long been a disconnect between academic computer security and underground forums like Black Hat and Phrack. A new USENIX-sponsored workshop called WOOT (Workshop On Offensive Technologies) is looking to bridge that gap by providing a high-quality, peer-reviewed forum for attack papers, with top reviewers from the academic, open source, commercial IT, and information warfare communities. Got a great attack paper? See if it makes the cut at WOOT."

A gap?

[saintlupus]

There has long been a disconnect between academic computer security and underground forums like Black Hat and Phrack.

Just because "academics" don't introduce themselves as such to the script kiddies, doesn't mean that we're not around.

--saint

There's your problem.

[mcmonkey]

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with hackers at all.

You want crackers. Two doors down.

English is not a programming language - context!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric S. Raymond and others like him (and you) like to pretend that there is one "right" word for people who engage technology creatively, "hackers", and another word for people who engage technology destructively, "crackers". This doesn't make you a bad person, but it's a flaming torch you shouldn't waste time carrying.

"Crackers" is a minority usage even within the hacker community.

Human language is context-sensitive. This notion that there is one particular word for one thing, and that it cannot be used for anything else isn't accurate or realistic. "Hackers" call themselves "hackers". The people you refer to as "crackers" also refer to themselves, predominately, as "hackers". Words can have more than one meaning, and instead of going language-lawyer every time someone uses the word "hacker" in a way you don't approve of, why don't you just accept the fact that the English language has words with multiple meanings?

Context is king, and linguistic proscriptionism is a dead-end for anyone interested in how language is actually used.