"Warchalking it up to hackers"

[masaki]

Source: Calgary Sun. August 26, 2002.

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSTechNews0208/26_chalking-sun.html

It's an article about warchalking. Is it me or do you also think the journalist didn't do much homework before writing the article?

[transient]

Do they ever? :-\

Edit:



-a copy of the email I just sent-

Please do some research before you write something like this. Articles such as yours stray the ignorant public into thinking that anyone even remotely interested in computers is a “hacker” and out to steal company information or destroy their computers from the inside out. This new incarnation of War Chalking is based around the idea of free access to the internet and has nothing to do with stealing company’s secrets. Just as Vagabonds in the 30’s, this is all about people helping each other out. Before it was looking for a meal, now it’s looking for internet access.
Many businesses have actually started putting symbols in their windows displaying that they have an open access point to the internet. If people were just stealing company secrets I seriously doubt that this would be the case. As with anything, these techniques can be misused, just as the internet is by cyberpunks* that break into companies over the now worldwide network. What you have to realize is that it’s the minority that often misuses such things and not the majority. Most people are just looking for a place to sit outside in the sun and chat with their friends on AIM or maybe just surf the net. Now if that’s a crime, law enforcement agencies are going to have their hands full, don’t you think?

I hope this email has at least stirred up some thoughts. If so, then maybe I’ve done my part to keep stereotypes at bay for the moment. If not, then at least I tried. Also, please don’t regard this as a flame, because it is most definitely not intended as such.

* P.S. notice I said cyberpunk. True hackers are computer programmers, not the idiots that spend their time breaking into companies’ private information.

[Skummet]

aw thats just plain mean...

Now you probably made the guy stay up all night scratching his head looking frantically through his dictionary trying to figure out what "flame" means... ;)

[jayman]

8O

I know I will get shot down for this - but what exactly is 'Flaming'

I only know what a 'Flamin' Moe' is!

[Skummet]

I would have explained it myself, but im lazy and i guess Dictionary.com (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=flame)'s definition is as good as anything i could have written.
I like their background info as well... interesting stuff. :)

From Dictionary.com (http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=flame)

"flame:
<messaging> To rant, to speak or write incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude or with hostility towards a particular person or group of people. "Flame" is used as a verb ("Don't flame me for this, but..."), a flame is a single flaming message, and "flamage" /flay'm*j/ the content.

Flamage may occur in any medium (e.g. spoken, electronic mail, Usenet news, World-Wide Web). Sometimes a flame will be delimited in text by marks such as "<flame on>...<flame off>".

The term was probably independently invented at several different places.

Mark L. Levinson says, "When I joined the Harvard student radio station (WHRB) in 1966, the terms flame and flamer were already well established there to refer to impolite ranting and to those who performed it. Communication among the students who worked at the station was by means of what today you might call a paper-based Usenet group. Everyone wrote comments to one another in a large ledger. Documentary evidence for the early use of flame/flamer is probably still there for anyone fanatical enough to research it."

It is reported that "flaming" was in use to mean something like "interminably drawn-out semi-serious discussions" (late-night bull sessions) at Carleton College during 1968-1971.

Usenetter Marc Ramsey, who was at WPI from 1972 to 1976, says: "I am 99% certain that the use of "flame" originated at WPI. Those who made a nuisance of themselves insisting that they needed to use a TTY for "real work" came to be known as "flaming ******* lusers". Other particularly annoying people became "flaming ******* ravers", which shortened to "flaming ravers", and ultimately "flamers". I remember someone picking up on the Human Torch pun, but I don't think "flame on/off" was ever much used at WPI." See also asbestos.

It is possible that the hackish sense of "flame" is much older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's "Troilus and Cressida", Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's called "the fleminge of wrecches." This phrase seems to have been intended in context as "that which puts the wretches to flight" but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as "the flaming of wretches" would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet. "

Hope this helps,
/Brian

[Ravenswing]

-a copy of the email I just sent-
* P.S. notice I said cyberpunk. True hackers are computer programmers, not the idiots that spend their time breaking into companies’ private information.


Actually, since we're into dictionaries, 'true' hackers are people who manufacture furniture with an axe. :wink:

[ctmagnus]

This produced a very large stink on the netstumbler forums. If I'm not mistaken, a couple of guys there offered to take the writer on an actual wardirve.