User talk:Sephiroth storm/Archives/2012/April

Discussion at Talk:Mobile_security
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Mobile_security. Karl.brown (talk) 04:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

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misuse of word 'hacker'
I quote "current Wikipedia policy will prevent this article from ever being changed. The common name for a person who hacks computer security is and will be a Hacker."

Gee! Any such policy is, at best, silly. Would you mind pointing me to its wording? Over the last few days I have become to reason that there might be some vested interests, rather powerful, in the systematic misuse of the word "hacker" by the professional media. No need for paranoid or conspiracy theories here: just ask, who benefits? Bundling up honest hackers, such as independent developers, especially those devoted to open source and those not serving the interest of the Corporation as one and the same thing as criminals, benefits certain interests that are one and the same with the syndicated news outlets. Thus journalists DO have a vested interest (and likely are under orders) to keep feeding this misuse.

Now it turns out that Wikipedia cannot change being /part/ of that? (be it by entirely different motivations, it end up serving interests that are /not/ those of real, bonafide, honest hackers - totally to the contrary.

oh well... Yama Plos  talk  17:57, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:COMMONNAME is the common name policy. "The most common name for a subject, as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural." IMO, there is no grand conspiracy to keep hackers from claiming the original meaning, it is simple, there is not enough movement to influence a change, and people are slow to do so. No one really benefits, because all they would have to do if it did change would be to change their advertising. It is much more difficult to call for change when the security industry uses the word hacker. Its like calling a worm a virus. people knew the word virus as a bad thing that attacked your computer. it took enormous effort to get them differentiated, and by then they just threw all malware under the umbrella term. Now you have black, grey, and white hats, hacktivists, penetration testers, ect. The easiest thing for society to do is to call them all hackers. Sephiroth storm (talk) 18:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * well, don't want to waste your time, you've been most generous, and COMMONNAME does make some sense within the boundaries that people have to take what Big Media gives 'em :-( I would look for a strongly worded section that makes the misuse clear and evident, despite "prevalence", as we actually do in the "malware" and "virus" articles. This will make much more sense if someone is successful in finding some published source that *does* indicate there is a media policy regarding the use of this particular word.


 * OK, you say nobody benefits... let's put it the other way, who gets hurt? hackers, the honest kind, that's who. Is being computer savvy an additional item in profiling "people of interest"? I really don't know, and *that* would verge into conspiracy theory land, which I try to stay away from, so I will not push that one, but some others might.


 * BTW, I wrote some on this in my blog, http://atxinventor.com/2012/03/hacker-or-cracker.html


 * Thank you! Yama Plos   talk  18:28, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * IMO it is much less common for a real hacker to be harmed by the term. You have to look at the situations in which it is used. Most often in a buisness enviroment, where if you are saying you are a hacker, it is understood that you are a Penetration Tester, or security analyst, we have certifications that use the word, which are needed for jobs. Now you introduce yourself to some random people as a hacker and you may get a different reaction. The truth is, most professional IT Sec hackers grow out of the word, they move on to become PT's or Security Analysts or whatever the case may be. Now when you start looking at Hacker (hobbyist) or Hacker (programmer subculture), they still claim the word, but that is a different story. Sephiroth storm (talk)

Mobile security
Mobile security article translation complete. Your input welcome. --KarlB (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)