More on BS affair. Do read the starred paragraph!!!

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

 Folder List   

 INBOX  
 Outgoing  
 Junk Mail  




 ~/Mail/save  




 Other...  





 Address Book   

 View Contacts  
 Add New Contacts  
 Import Contacts  





 Spam Filters   

 Spam Filters are Off  




 View/Edit Spam Filters  





 Autoresponder   

 Autoresponder is Off  




 Edit Settings  





 {INBOX} : Re: [IP] When is access unauthorized? -- "John S. Quarterman"
<jsq () quarterman org>





 Current Mail Folder: {INBOX}
Message #: 19/24
Message Size: 6.3 kb 



To:  
dave () farber net

Date:  
Sat, 12 Mar 2005 08:59:33 -0600

From:  
"John S. Quarterman" <jsq () quarterman org> 

Subject:  
Re: [IP] When is access unauthorized?

Cc:  
ip <ip () v2 listbox com> 

Tim Finan's message is the first I've seen in this thread that referred
 to the original meaning of the word hacker: someone who enjoys stretching
 the capabilities of a system and solving hard problems.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

 It's true that many people who pick up scripts and use them to
 attack systems (script kiddies) and others who do nothing but
 try to break systems (crackers) and others who systematically
 exploit system weaknesses for financial gain (organized crime)
 may call themselves hackers, but they're flattering themselves.

 Eric Raymond's article about ``The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture''
 makes clear the difference:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ar01s06.html

 Real hackers have given us Unix and Emacs and the Macintosh and apache
 and BSD and Linux and sendmail and numerous other high quality gifts,
 because that's what they enjoy and that's how they build their reputations.

 Given the results, it's useful to distinguish between real hackers
 (whom I'd think Harvard Business School would want to encourage,
 considering their activities benefit the economy) and crackers.

 *******Also, as an admissions consultant noted in the original article:
 "Kreisberg said some applicants may had inadvertently tried to access the
 files, without realizing they were looking for confidential information,
 after they were e-mailed directions from other students who had copied
 them from the BusinessWeek message board."

 If that actually happened, some of the applicants may have simply
 thought they were participating in the gift culture when they and
 HBS were actually victims of a rogue patch, resulting in reputation
 damage to them and HBS of the sort described in Eric Raymond's paper.

 Maybe HBS should spend a bit more resources increasing value offered
 to students by getting up to speed on present-day online culture rather
 than pursuing cost-cutting too far by outsourcing critical functions
 such as applications to a company that failed to keep them secure.
 The former might result in better improvements to the bottom line.

 -jsq
 John S. Quarterman <jsq () quarterman com>


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/