Web Design – Wannabes Are The Cancer That Kills Everything
Our favorite blogger who specializes in the human side of technology, Jeff Atwood, has brought to light the distressing story of how many candidates who show up for programming job interviews can’t program. He, and many of the comments appended, marvel at this phenomena.
But it’s not so surprising, when you stop and think about it. They’re wannabe “hackers”.
Nobody wanted to be a hacker at first. Then trashy movies like “War Games” and “Hackers” came out, and people got the idea that hackers get to have sex with Angelina Jolie and start their own nuclear wars, so hence must be “cool.”
It’s a phenomenon older than civilization itself. It’s the same mentality that leads people to call themselves “geek” because they saw “Star Wars,” or call themselves “gangsta” because they wear their baseball cap backwards, or call themselves “bikers” because they wear a leather jacket, or call themselves “bi,” “poly,” or “kinky” because that’s the kind of porn they download.
Here’s a key to telling if you’re a wannabe: If you’d never heard of the “hacker” subculture, would you still be interested in writing computer programs? Because natural members of a subculture or lifestyle have the tendency first, then wander the Earth thinking of themselves as a misfit until they discover that there are other like them. Then they fall with relief into that culture or lifestyle, saying “at last I’ve found my place!” If this is you, then you’re not a wannabe.
But: If it never occurred to you to be interested in what makes computers work, until you first heard the world “hacker” and got curious and then saw some hacker culture and thought it looked and sounded cool and then you started calling yourself a “hacker” and got more into it until, perhaps even in the future, it finally comes to your attention that at the center of this subculture is the career of programming computers. If this is you, we have some bad news for you…
Peter Brittain
Why The 17-Year Flaw in Microsoft Windows Is Dead Serious
In case you didn’t catch the buzz going around, the story of how an ancient Windows flaw was found after 17 years is pretty-well explained at the Inquirer. The news was particularly shocking because it was a simple hole that has been in existence since Windows 3.1 all the way up to the latest Windows 7! That’s a serious bug.
Quite a few commenters on that site and others have down-played the vulnerability, saying things like “Meh, who uses 16-bit anyway?” Which goes to show that the home user doesn’t think like a hacker. Guess what? Most of the programs to exploit Windows security holes are 17 years old, too! In fact, if you were a hacker (we know, the correct word is “cracker,” but English is changing) downloading security-cracking software, you’d have more of a real problem getting updated software than you would getting legacy software.
Old software never dies in the hacker/cracker community. In fact, it goes back to the pre-Windows era, from BBS and IRC systems and Usenet archives. Back then it was covered under the blanket term ‘warez,’ and you could find vulnerability scanners, packet sniffers, rootkits, viruses, worms, and key loggers free for the download – complete with instructions! This stuff gets passed from generation to generation. There’s no doubt that a lot of it exploited DOS.
If you’re a corporate IT admin with Windows boxes under your charge, you should be taking this with top-priority seriousness.