Taking a crack at the fuss over hack

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/hack.html

During the second week of the second month of the first year known as
much for letters as numbers (Y2K), some of the world's major Web sites
suddenly shut down. Yahoo.com, eBay.com, Amazon.com, CNN.com and
others were jammed for hours by assailants bombarding them with a
paralysing volume of requests for data. It was, in the sometimes
stilted vernacular of the Internet, a "denial of service" that shook
up many people's confidence in the Web in general, and electronic
commerce in particular.

After the attack there was plenty of outrage to go around. Businesses
wanted to know why they were targeted. Frustrated consumers wanted to
know why companies weren't doing more to fortify their sites. Nervous
investors wanted to know if they should start selling high-tech
stocks. The RCMP and FBI wanted to know who was responsible.

Some of the most fervent anger came from members of another group, who
wanted to know why most news organizations were referring to the
culprits as hackers instead of crackers. Here is a sample of their
complaints:

[...]


*-------------------------------------------------*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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