On 03/15/2013 09:09 PM, McCrina, Nathan wrote:
________________________________________
From: users-bounces(a)lists.fedoraproject.org [users-bounces(a)lists.fedoraproject.org] On
Behalf Of Richard Vickery [richard.vickeryrv(a)gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 4:30 PM
To: Community support for Fedora users
Subject: Re: Has my fedora 18 installation been hacked?
On Mar 15, 2013 9:39 AM, "Greg Woods"
<woods@ucar.edu<mailto:woods@ucar.edu>> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 2013-03-15 at 08:25 -0700, Richard Vickery wrote:
>>
>> It is not really my intent to be rude, but each of us "hack" out own
>> systems and the kernel all the time.
>
> Unfortunately, this battle over the word "hack" and "hacker" has
already
> been fought and lost. The media, and just about everyone other than
> hard-core geeks, uses the word "hack" to mean breaking into systems.
Not in my circles; I refuse to let people alternate the term.
Indeed, and we have to accept that the meaning of words is context-
dependent. For example, the word "narcotic" is used in very different
ways in pharmacology and law-enforcement circles. The
pharmacologists would no doubt point out that their usage of the word
is technically and etymologically correct, and the law-enforcement
professionals would claim popular usage. That usually happens when a
word with a meaning in technical circles gains popular usage. I'm
sure we can think of many similar examples.
users@fedoraproject is halfway between and an "insider" and an
"outsider" group, so the different groups have to try to communicate
despite not having a common understanding of what words mean.
Andrew.