Hackers are great.  Check the slides, yo.

Transcription of David Winslow's talk, 2008/04/07:

First slide: "What Hacking Is"

jeff asks: Trinity from the Matrix - hacker or cracker? and is it required to wear PVC?

(this never really got answered; slinkp's gratuitous answers are "both" and "no, hackers generally prefer clothes that are more comfortable, less expensive, less flashy").

dw says: "hack" has contextual meanings:
1. hack: to use a system in a clever way diff. than its original intent. doug's example - gilligan's island - radio + coconut = nuclear bomb
2. hack : quick fix to a system, not really sustainable
3. hack: break into a system. hackers call this "cracking". non-hackers call it "hacking". hence, there is widespread confusion about these words.

jeff asks is it better to be "hacker" or "hax0r".
(no answer)

"The Hacker Attitude" - Eric Raymond:
too much to type, see the slide

"Going Meta"
= taking things to a higher level of abstraction: eg. a discussion about having discussions

Web Comics are popular.
examples: Penny Arcade, XKCD
DW says: don't know how to explain why Penny Arcade is hacker-friendly. It just is.

xkcd example: playing chess on a roller coaster.
xkcd example: saving lives with regular expressions
xkcd example: python... import antigravity

Other hacker-friendly stuff:
classic games - tabletop RPG, card games, text adventures, Nethack

Hacker Wordplay:
using coding idioms in speech, nesting parentheses in writing, etc
incrementing as a way of expressing support ... "lily++" might mean "i agree with lily'"
computer metaphors - if you have a lot on your mind you might say "I'm running out of RAM."

song parodies and geek music - e.g. "nerdcore"

cabraham points out re. hackers vs. crackers - we think of ourselves as hackers in the positive senses - what's the diff between hacking and cracking?

dwinslow says not all programming is hacking - just the really elegant stuff (related to definition 1 from the first slide).
(Paul notes that confusingly, it also can be just the really quick sloppy stuff - people often say "I solved the problem, but it's a hack" meaning that they didn't have time to find a good solution.)

cabraham says it's a point of view - you see the world differently.
dwinslow says yes, analogous to anything you do intensely -eg. a dedicated visual artist

also, "hacker" (in the positive sense) has a connotation of extreme competence.
jhammel points out that many who call themselves hackers are 13-year-old poseurs but many who are real hackers don't bother to point it out.

dwinslow brings up another song on youtube "Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)"
(no volume, we can't hear)

more on hacker vs. cracker... media almost always uses the negative cracker sense

tim says: some cracker-hackers are benign, eg. paid to do security testing

doug points out in the early days, cracking was often just out of curiosity - so real hackers did it for fun - maybe that led to the later ambiguity

jhammel asks who would win a hack-off: angelina or keanu?
dwinslow says it depends on whether they had tech from "Hackers" (the movie), or The Matrix.

jhammel asks if you can get a degree in hacking from STFU?
dwinslow says he's never met anybody with such a degree.

phil asks, how might the word hackign apply outside of computer culture?
arne gives example from Eric Raymond's "Cathedral and the Bazaar" - making mashed potatos in an electric kettle

dwinslow gives another example - using headphones as a microphone in a pinch

doug talks about being curious and finding solutions to eg. broken plumbing

the end!

i think i missed a lot.
and/or mis-paraphrased.
such is Really Real Time.