I'm not angry at Reuters for using the word hacker in the common way, since it is used by everyone that way, and they are not in the wrong for using a term with the definition the public uses. I'm angry that Reuters used Mark saying that he is a hacker to imply that he is associated with people who damaged Fortune 500 companies, especially when he (Mark) defines hacker to mean something completely different to the common, and they use that in the article. This entire article was a thinly veiled attempt to launch an ad hominem attack against Silicon Valley for opposing SOPA. The opposition of SOPA by Silicon Valley was even mentioned in the article.
I absolutely agree. This article is an awkward attempt by the author to take a subject which he is clearly opinionated about, and somehow tie the story-du-jour to it in order to draw attention. The two had nothing to do with each other, and the connections he attempted to make were nonsensical.
The article seems to be a better example of a potentially successful SEO strategy than of good journalism.
I actually think that mentioning opposition to SOPA was a good thing for our industry.
People should be reminded who the Silicon Valley companies are and their worth, otherwise you're losing the context: if people had to choose, what would be worse for the U.S. - losing Hollywood, or losing Silicon Valley?
MPAA keeps mentioning how many jobs and money are lost because of piracy. I'm not seeing enough of the opposite perspective: how many jobs and how much money is generated by companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple (yes, it's a little weird mentioning Apple considering that they haven't expressed opposition, but remember that the music and movies industries actually hate iTunes because it has been disruptive to their business and not in a good way).
Wait, what? He clearly quotes Mark saying, "In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done." Then he (the author) says, "That’s a spirited defense of a means of protest that has wreaked havoc on a litany of Fortune 500 companies over the last year." How is building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done, a means of protest, and how does that wreak havoc on Fortune 500 companies?
And I found this pretty insulting too, "Wall Street probably won’t mind all the idealism as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the stock price -- provided Anonymous isn't a featured speaker at the next shareholders meeting."
What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little bit of background research before publishing an article?
"What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little bit of background research before publishing an article?"
I doubt there are more than a few dozen real journalists left in the U.S. It seems like virtually all of the good longform articles I read are written by the same handful of people.
I think the author was not willing (or it did not strike him at all) that the meaning of word 'hacker' could be anything different than what he had in mind.
Once any one does that, the rest of the explanation can be used to support the definition already in mind. The "testing the boundaries..." could have left him with an impression that Zuckerberg is supporting "hacking" because it 'tests the boundaries of what can be done in general'.
What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little bit of background research before publishing an article?
It flourished for a few decades, from 1920 say to 1980, and they it declined, dying in the web era when people stopped reading newspapers, online media make just pennies and need to gather humongous eyeballs to view their ads even for that, and reader attention is lacking.
Just a note to everyone: this isn't "Reuters" writing this. If you notice the byline, "By Brent Lang at TheWrap", this is content syndicated from "The Wrap", which appears to be some Hollywood celeb gossip rag.
This story appears on Reuters.com with the Reuters layout and Reuters branding. Whether it is syndicated or not, it is Reuters-endorsed content that, in my opinion, should bear the same weight as the Associated Press. It's kind of sad that content of this quality has made it to their site.
I will definitely agree that Reuters missed Zuckerberg's point.
But this made me think of another point: Who are we to assign connotations to "hacker"? The only complaint we legitimately have is the corruption of language, if you want to make the argument that the definition of the word was originally 'tinkerer' and not 'exploiter of systematic weaknesses or loopholes' (or even more crudely, digital breaker-and-enterer).
If somebody is using a systematic weakness in IP to take down a website, that's within a class of thing, we can call it A. If somebody wants to take apart a device and re-purpose it, that's within another class of thing, we can call it B.
So you and I, more or less, consider A as a subset of B. Over here, we define "hacking" as B, while the media tends to define it as A. Meanwhile we get up on our high horse, saying that "real hacking" is actually B (which, again, encompasses A). But, apart from the corruption of the language, who cares? I think that our reaction to the media calling A both evil, and "hacking", puts us on the defensive, because we think of "hacking" as B, and as such, to us it sounds like the media is attacking tinkering as dangerous.
But that's nonsense, the media doesn't care about, or understand, tinkering. We could just as well change the name of B to "tinkering" and dodge any negative connotation. The only reason we stick to "hacking" for better or worse (I'm not saying we should run away), is that it's our legacy, in a way. So given all that, I think we're in the position of promoting a definition of "hacker" that is new to the media, rather than telling them that they're using the "wrong" definition.
In this article, the author clearly uses the hacker to mount an ad hominem attack on the entire technology industry, programmers etc. giving examples of Fortune 500 companies being damaged by individuals who illegitimately took down the sites of those companies. The author was basically saying "See, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook is a hacker. This is why Silicon Valley is wrong in supporting SOPA, since they are on the same side as people who damaged Fortune 500 companies."
In the general sense, I think it comes from the public's condescending view on people who are legitimate and call themselves hackers, like on hacker news. For example, if I'm on Hacker News on my phone on the way to school, and one of peers sees me on there, he gives me a weird look and assumes it's the illegitimate form of "hacker". Even my dad was worried when he saw me on Hacker News, saying "Stay away from there." Obviously he thought it was community for the illegitimate form of hacking. Even after I explained the real meaning to him, he was still quite suspicious.
> But this made me think of another point: Who are we to assign connotations to "hacker"?
Hackers, and thus by definition the people with the most reasonable claim to define the term, having done so originally.
I do think that at this point attempting to stop the mainstream usage of "hacker" to mean "person who breaks security" amounts to tilting at windmills. However, an article specifically quoting someone who used the term with its original meaning ought to know better, and either carefully distinguish or choose an alternate term. I'd suggest that they almost certainly did know better, but intentionally exploited the ambiguity to push their agenda (namely, the pro-SOPA agenda).
That said, someone with as much PR experience as Mark Zuckerberg ought to have known better than to use the term in the first place. Quoting Linus: 'In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.'
You're forgetting that non of this is accidental. It is the media that has deliberately redefined the word "hacker" to equal criminal.
They know what it means, and there is no clearer example than this article. Zuckerberg explains what it means in no unclear terms, and still the author chooses to bury it under unfounded accusations.
We use another word, they will just do the same thing. We can promote all we like, and they will ignore it.
Anyway, who cares. We will still be here long after "the media" is gone and these hacks are either unemployed or doing PR for some corporation or politician. This type of "journalism" is dying anyway.
It's always seemed to me that "hacker" is the only term that geeks can get defensive about without the anti-prescriptivist police coming in to ruin the party.
Yes the old MIT use of hacker has been superseded and arguing about it is like retired colonels writing to the Times complaining about the changed use of "the fine old english word Gay".
Not sure I saw Mark Z as either sort of hacker a DLF who you would need to check yor rings after shaking hands with but a hacker not real.
I actually don't think too many engineers are 'hackers'.
I certainly don't consider myself much of a hacker, and I don't think many here are either.
We are programmers. We build stuff. We need to know everything there is to know about security risks, but most of us stopped coding windows trojans and worms after high school.
I don't think many of us know (or care) how to write keygens and cracks for games, or invisibly extract cash from a bank via social engineering.
That's the definition I subscribe to. Hackers are highly specialized in computer security, whether they're white-hat or black-hat.
So Reuters is not using the wrong definition. It just feels like school kids giving new meanings to words, then laughing at their 'lame' parents who don't understand.
"Tinkering" sounds kind of lame, but it is what it is.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I'm posting on Hacker News! The new meaning is fine, but don't act like other people are stupid for not getting it.
I found it funny that the in-text "also read this" spam was about Megaupload. Might be something in my adblock, but it didn't show up any different than the article text and wasn't a link.
The key error the author makes is that he fails to Notice His Confusion. When something confuses you, you have to stop and figure out why you're wrong. You can't be confused and right at the same time. If you are confused, then something you believe is false.
So when a man known to be highly intelligent and very successful makes a statement which you find "bizarre", you don't write an article "Zuckerberg makes baffling statement", you think "Why am I baffled? Clearly I'm missing something about what's going on here", and you do more research. The concept 'I am confused' is not newsworthy.
4:28MEZ “The word ‘hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” Zuckerberg wrote.
YEP!
4:28MEZ “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. [...]"
Yeah, kinda...
4:28MEZ That’s a spirited defense of a means of protest that has wrecked havoc on a litany of Fortune 500 companies over the last year.
Seriously though, when I first found HN I was wondering what I had stumbled in to. A few days later I was hooked. Now over a year later, when I read the term hacker about someone doing something illegal I react weirdly to it.
Most people still don't know what silicon valley and HN mean when they say hacker yet.
This wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't included the part about Zuck actually explaining what he meant by the "hacker way". It's like they breezed right over it and started making references to Anonymous as if that has anything to do with what he was talking about.
I wrote a corrections request to both Reuters and The Wrap. Little good it will do, I'm sure, but it offends me to see a journalist spend so little effort trying to be correct. How absurd to use quotes which actually indicate the opposite of your conclusion? It's the equivalent of quoting "Many companies in our industry treat their employees poorly, but we're different.", and concluding "Mr. X and his company take advantage of the poor standards of the industry to mistreat their employees".
In all fairness, the word gets used in many ways. Further down the HN front page there's a story "VeriSign Hit by Hackers."
They don't mean that VeriSign was hit by people who built cool software over the weekend.
Reuters is a major news organization, and they should know the definition as Zuckerberg is using it... especially since he explains it in the quote. But they aren't making up a new definition out of thin air.
I note that that story also comes from Reuters. However, it is clear that the definition they are using is an established one. You can tell because our response when the word "hacker" is used that way is "You shouldn't use the word 'hacker' that way. Our definition is older", as opposed to "That's a bizarre and wrong usage of the word 'hacker'".
Just another pointless post upvoted because it has the word 'hacker' in it.
You don't have to give attention to every lame story that "doesn't get it." Even if this was a story by Reuters, which it is not, it still wouldn't matter. Welcome to 20 years ago when the media stopped giving a shit about giving hackers a fair shake.
I was going to leave a comment, but the comments are closed on that article. Reuters allows comments for a "limited period after publication" but the article has only been there for less than 3 hours. Smells a little fishy to me, maybe they were called out for their nonsense?
Fishy but not unexpected. Online publications always switch off comments when they see a huge traffic bump and realize they have made fools of themselves and are being told as much in the comments.
For example, a few weeks ago the NYTimes Public Editor made a blog post about whether it should be their policy to note in articles when public figures are obviously lying in their remarks. (They're worried about seeming like the liberal media and they think they should "fairly balance" truth and fiction on issues like climate change or what percentage of planned parenthood's money is spent on abortions.) This resulted in immediate outrage from the commenters and vicious comments. Not profanity -- articulate rebuttals that just made the NYTimes look like idiots. Comments switched off. Later they attempted to walk it back, poorly. Same articulate rebuttals, NYTimes look like idiots again. Comments switched off even faster. Not even sure why they enabled them on the second post to begin with.
> ... provided Anonymous isn't a featured speaker at the next shareholders meeting.
Not content with mere ignorance about what "hacking" is and conflating it with cracking and script kiddies, the author ices the article by demonstrating ignorance about cracking and script kiddies as well.
I bet Brent Lang from Reuters will really fall off his chair when he realizes his article has been trending second on -- gasp -- Hacker News! You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...
Obviously the author of this article has a bone to pick with the technology industry as a result of SOPA being shut down for now, but if we divorce ourselves from our knowledge of tech lingo, this doesn't read as a "thinly veiled attempt to launch an ad hominem attack against Silicon Valley." The author clearly is unfamiliar with the way we use the term "hacker" or even that it has another definition and, therefore, when Zuckerberg says that the term "has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers," he doesn't realize Zuckerberg is trying to say that the term has an entirely different meaning from breaking into computers. He clearly thinks Zuckerberg is saying that hackers (which he reads as "people who break into computers") are unfairly portrayed as people who break into computers to do bad, when in reality they sometimes break into computers for constructive reasons. He doesn't realize Zuckerberg is literally saying that the media mistakenly interprets "hackers" as "people who break into computers, period." Zuckerberg's use of "connotation" instead of "denotation" makes it sound like he's defending cracking philosophically as opposed to saying that hacking has a totally different meaning to people in the tech industry.
I've reprinted his quote of Zuckerberg with parenthetical glosses showing how the author and anyone not innoculated by knowledge of hacker culture would probably interpret it.
"In reality, hacking (breaking into computers) just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it (breaking into computers) can be used for good (to fight what you perceive as unjustice) or bad (personal gain or schadenfreude), but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people (hippies who hate corporations) who want to have a positive impact on the world (by getting rid of capitalism)."
With that reading, I think most of us too would be disappointed or even furious with Zuckerberg. I'm glad that wealth and fame haven't compromized Zuckerberg's view of himself as a hacker in our sense of the word, but I think he did a really bad job explaining to the media that the word is used completely differently by techies. That is unfortunate since he is one of the few people with enough influence to get the public to understand and adopt our usage of the word.
This was an excellent article, when looked at through the lens of making ad revenue, which is the only lens through which this drivel could flourish. Simply put, online content providers (I refuse to call this crap "news") need eyeballs, and writing crap like this causes eyeballs to appear.
Fortunately, about 50% of the eyeballs are protected by adblockers, but still a great day at the office, for which I suspect he will get much kudos, and be asked to write similar crap again.
Hacktivism is still a fairly big part of "the hacker way", and so it should be. I think the concept of wreaking havoc on fortune 500 companies is actually a fair representation of the hacker spirit, whether it is done by damaging their websites, or creating small startups to compete against them. I prefer the latter, but it is perfectly ok to associate the former as part of the same hacker ideal.
> I think the concept of wreaking havoc on fortune 500 companies is actually a fair representation of the hacker spirit, whether it is done by damaging their websites, or creating small startups to compete against them. I prefer the latter, but it is perfectly ok to associate the former as part of the same hacker ideal.
While that may be your opinion -- and I don't necessarily disagree with it -- the point remains that the author took Zuckerberg's comments about hackers to mean that he considered himself what we know as a "black hat" hacker, which he clearly did not.
Once societal mainstream embraces -- and misuses -- a word that a subset of society previously held dearly, it's time for that subset to let the word go, regardless of how much they romanticized or embraced it.
[+] [-] neilparikh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|14 years ago|reply
Unsurprising given that this was originally published in a Hollywood Biz rag: http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-mark-z...
[+] [-] downandout|14 years ago|reply
The article seems to be a better example of a potentially successful SEO strategy than of good journalism.
[+] [-] bad_user|14 years ago|reply
People should be reminded who the Silicon Valley companies are and their worth, otherwise you're losing the context: if people had to choose, what would be worse for the U.S. - losing Hollywood, or losing Silicon Valley?
MPAA keeps mentioning how many jobs and money are lost because of piracy. I'm not seeing enough of the opposite perspective: how many jobs and how much money is generated by companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple (yes, it's a little weird mentioning Apple considering that they haven't expressed opposition, but remember that the music and movies industries actually hate iTunes because it has been disruptive to their business and not in a good way).
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] LearnYouALisp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchung|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilparikh|14 years ago|reply
And I found this pretty insulting too, "Wall Street probably won’t mind all the idealism as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the stock price -- provided Anonymous isn't a featured speaker at the next shareholders meeting."
What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little bit of background research before publishing an article?
[+] [-] Alex3917|14 years ago|reply
I doubt there are more than a few dozen real journalists left in the U.S. It seems like virtually all of the good longform articles I read are written by the same handful of people.
[+] [-] rehack|14 years ago|reply
Once any one does that, the rest of the explanation can be used to support the definition already in mind. The "testing the boundaries..." could have left him with an impression that Zuckerberg is supporting "hacking" because it 'tests the boundaries of what can be done in general'.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] derleth|14 years ago|reply
That's always been rare. Deadlines, on the other hand, are never in short supply.
[+] [-] batista|14 years ago|reply
It flourished for a few decades, from 1920 say to 1980, and they it declined, dying in the web era when people stopped reading newspapers, online media make just pennies and need to gather humongous eyeballs to view their ads even for that, and reader attention is lacking.
[+] [-] lambda|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcurtis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luigi|14 years ago|reply
http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/thewrap-replaces-th...
[+] [-] orblivion|14 years ago|reply
But this made me think of another point: Who are we to assign connotations to "hacker"? The only complaint we legitimately have is the corruption of language, if you want to make the argument that the definition of the word was originally 'tinkerer' and not 'exploiter of systematic weaknesses or loopholes' (or even more crudely, digital breaker-and-enterer).
If somebody is using a systematic weakness in IP to take down a website, that's within a class of thing, we can call it A. If somebody wants to take apart a device and re-purpose it, that's within another class of thing, we can call it B.
So you and I, more or less, consider A as a subset of B. Over here, we define "hacking" as B, while the media tends to define it as A. Meanwhile we get up on our high horse, saying that "real hacking" is actually B (which, again, encompasses A). But, apart from the corruption of the language, who cares? I think that our reaction to the media calling A both evil, and "hacking", puts us on the defensive, because we think of "hacking" as B, and as such, to us it sounds like the media is attacking tinkering as dangerous.
But that's nonsense, the media doesn't care about, or understand, tinkering. We could just as well change the name of B to "tinkering" and dodge any negative connotation. The only reason we stick to "hacking" for better or worse (I'm not saying we should run away), is that it's our legacy, in a way. So given all that, I think we're in the position of promoting a definition of "hacker" that is new to the media, rather than telling them that they're using the "wrong" definition.
[+] [-] neilparikh|14 years ago|reply
In the general sense, I think it comes from the public's condescending view on people who are legitimate and call themselves hackers, like on hacker news. For example, if I'm on Hacker News on my phone on the way to school, and one of peers sees me on there, he gives me a weird look and assumes it's the illegitimate form of "hacker". Even my dad was worried when he saw me on Hacker News, saying "Stay away from there." Obviously he thought it was community for the illegitimate form of hacking. Even after I explained the real meaning to him, he was still quite suspicious.
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|14 years ago|reply
Journalist: "That's all well and good, but I define hacker as y and will now go on to attack you as though your definition is y instead of x"
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
Hackers, and thus by definition the people with the most reasonable claim to define the term, having done so originally.
I do think that at this point attempting to stop the mainstream usage of "hacker" to mean "person who breaks security" amounts to tilting at windmills. However, an article specifically quoting someone who used the term with its original meaning ought to know better, and either carefully distinguish or choose an alternate term. I'd suggest that they almost certainly did know better, but intentionally exploited the ambiguity to push their agenda (namely, the pro-SOPA agenda).
That said, someone with as much PR experience as Mark Zuckerberg ought to have known better than to use the term in the first place. Quoting Linus: 'In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.'
[+] [-] rickmb|14 years ago|reply
They know what it means, and there is no clearer example than this article. Zuckerberg explains what it means in no unclear terms, and still the author chooses to bury it under unfounded accusations.
We use another word, they will just do the same thing. We can promote all we like, and they will ignore it.
Anyway, who cares. We will still be here long after "the media" is gone and these hacks are either unemployed or doing PR for some corporation or politician. This type of "journalism" is dying anyway.
[+] [-] colonel_panic|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjwalshe|14 years ago|reply
Not sure I saw Mark Z as either sort of hacker a DLF who you would need to check yor rings after shaking hands with but a hacker not real.
[+] [-] nathan_f77|14 years ago|reply
I certainly don't consider myself much of a hacker, and I don't think many here are either.
We are programmers. We build stuff. We need to know everything there is to know about security risks, but most of us stopped coding windows trojans and worms after high school.
I don't think many of us know (or care) how to write keygens and cracks for games, or invisibly extract cash from a bank via social engineering.
That's the definition I subscribe to. Hackers are highly specialized in computer security, whether they're white-hat or black-hat.
So Reuters is not using the wrong definition. It just feels like school kids giving new meanings to words, then laughing at their 'lame' parents who don't understand.
"Tinkering" sounds kind of lame, but it is what it is.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I'm posting on Hacker News! The new meaning is fine, but don't act like other people are stupid for not getting it.
[+] [-] adrianpike|14 years ago|reply
http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-mark-z...
[+] [-] ricardobeat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve-howard|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hartror|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
It shouldn't happen, but it does - a lot.
[+] [-] robertskmiles|14 years ago|reply
So when a man known to be highly intelligent and very successful makes a statement which you find "bizarre", you don't write an article "Zuckerberg makes baffling statement", you think "Why am I baffled? Clearly I'm missing something about what's going on here", and you do more research. The concept 'I am confused' is not newsworthy.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/
[+] [-] mustardamus|14 years ago|reply
4:28MEZ “The word ‘hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” Zuckerberg wrote.
YEP!
4:28MEZ “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. [...]"
Yeah, kinda...
4:28MEZ That’s a spirited defense of a means of protest that has wrecked havoc on a litany of Fortune 500 companies over the last year.
Erm? Troll?
4:28MEZ Back on HN.
[+] [-] wtvanhest|14 years ago|reply
Most people still don't know what silicon valley and HN mean when they say hacker yet.
[+] [-] tdfx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daviddoran|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbecker|14 years ago|reply
They don't mean that VeriSign was hit by people who built cool software over the weekend.
Reuters is a major news organization, and they should know the definition as Zuckerberg is using it... especially since he explains it in the quote. But they aren't making up a new definition out of thin air.
[+] [-] clhodapp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterwwillis|14 years ago|reply
You don't have to give attention to every lame story that "doesn't get it." Even if this was a story by Reuters, which it is not, it still wouldn't matter. Welcome to 20 years ago when the media stopped giving a shit about giving hackers a fair shake.
[+] [-] john_b|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eck|14 years ago|reply
For example, a few weeks ago the NYTimes Public Editor made a blog post about whether it should be their policy to note in articles when public figures are obviously lying in their remarks. (They're worried about seeming like the liberal media and they think they should "fairly balance" truth and fiction on issues like climate change or what percentage of planned parenthood's money is spent on abortions.) This resulted in immediate outrage from the commenters and vicious comments. Not profanity -- articulate rebuttals that just made the NYTimes look like idiots. Comments switched off. Later they attempted to walk it back, poorly. Same articulate rebuttals, NYTimes look like idiots again. Comments switched off even faster. Not even sure why they enabled them on the second post to begin with.
[+] [-] Animus7|14 years ago|reply
Not content with mere ignorance about what "hacking" is and conflating it with cracking and script kiddies, the author ices the article by demonstrating ignorance about cracking and script kiddies as well.
[+] [-] EGreg|14 years ago|reply
LOL
[+] [-] dsrguru|14 years ago|reply
I've reprinted his quote of Zuckerberg with parenthetical glosses showing how the author and anyone not innoculated by knowledge of hacker culture would probably interpret it.
"In reality, hacking (breaking into computers) just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it (breaking into computers) can be used for good (to fight what you perceive as unjustice) or bad (personal gain or schadenfreude), but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people (hippies who hate corporations) who want to have a positive impact on the world (by getting rid of capitalism)."
With that reading, I think most of us too would be disappointed or even furious with Zuckerberg. I'm glad that wealth and fame haven't compromized Zuckerberg's view of himself as a hacker in our sense of the word, but I think he did a really bad job explaining to the media that the word is used completely differently by techies. That is unfortunate since he is one of the few people with enough influence to get the public to understand and adopt our usage of the word.
[+] [-] pbiggar|14 years ago|reply
Fortunately, about 50% of the eyeballs are protected by adblockers, but still a great day at the office, for which I suspect he will get much kudos, and be asked to write similar crap again.
[+] [-] MrKurtHaeusler|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david_shaw|14 years ago|reply
While that may be your opinion -- and I don't necessarily disagree with it -- the point remains that the author took Zuckerberg's comments about hackers to mean that he considered himself what we know as a "black hat" hacker, which he clearly did not.
[+] [-] rewind|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nessus42|14 years ago|reply
Except for the fact that's just not going to happen.
[+] [-] PaulAnunda|14 years ago|reply