Hackers Good or Evil :: Essays Papers

Hackers Good or Evil Imagine this, you are driving along the road and suddenly you see something spectacular. Now imagine that you are not allowed to deviate from your course to check it out. This is what a so-called â€Å"hacker† faces. Just imagine that you saw an injured person on the side of the road. In this analogy you are not allowed to help the injured person. A hacker is not allowed to explore like everyone else in the world. A hacker is not allowed to help fix potential security holes. The term hacker can have many meanings. The most visible to the public is the person pirating software, and breaking into corporate networks and destroying information. This is the public misconception of a hacker. Back in the Unix days, a hack was simply a quick and dirty way of doing something. Hackers in those days were basically just computer experts. Nowadays hacker means the same thing as a cracker, a person who pirates software, and malicious hackers. The media, of course, never prints the good thin gs hackers do. Most hackers provide a service to companies, by letting the company know about security holes, before a rival exploits it. Most hackers want nothing more than to simply learn. A hacker has an extreme thirst for knowledge, but not in the traditional subjects. Technology, and anything new interest hackers. In fact most security experts start out but learning and â€Å"hacking†. The bad view of hackers is not completely false. There are hackers out there that will do there best to harm any system hey can, but most want nothing more than to find the beauty in system, or network. To hackers vast networks, and the inside of a firewall that was meant to keep them out, are the most beautiful sights on Earth. In every aspect of life there are people who exploit others. Murders, robbers, or any other criminals come from every walk of life. Even hackers have some, but like the general population, it is a small percentage. Most people would call the whole Linux community hackers, because anyone who has the knowledge to run Unix must be a hacker. This show what good hackers can do. The entire Unix GNU community is run by hackers. They all contribute toward a free operating system. They all work out the bugs, and then distribute it for free. Hackers got tired of paying for an OS that did not work well.