Re: Oops ... 'Survivor' secret published on CBS Web site

["Robert G. Ferrell" <root () RGFSPARC CR USGS GOV>]

> [You have to love it when blaming hackers is easier than admitting
> that someone at the network screwed up.

So, the popular media have decided to redefine the term 'hacker' yet again.
Let's see, it seems to have gone from 'someone who knows a lot about computers'
to 'someone who knows a lot about computers and uses that knowledge to break
into someone else's computer" to 'someone who breaks into computers.'  Now it
apparently means 'someone who sees something they weren't meant to on a
computer, no matter what the mechanism.'  I suppose the next stop on this
etymological death-spiral is 'someone who uses a computer.'

All this is evidence, I think,  that Lewis Carroll was a futurist:

     When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,
     `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

All the King's horses and all the King's men would have a difficult time
putting anything resembling meaning back into the term 'hacker,' I fear.
In keeping with this degradationist philosophy, I propose that we use the term
'dumpty' to mean anyone who recklessly and repeatedly misappropriates a
perfectly good word, gradually grinding it down to utter gibberish.

Death (or at least bad Karma) to all dumpties!

RGF

Robert G. Ferrell, CISSP
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 Who goeth without humor goeth unarmed.
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