Coming up with a better way to fry an egg isn't a "hack".
Second one: "Disruptive technology". It seems that every new device or method these days is "disruptive". Including an as-yet untried robot to weed fields.
Hack writers who overuse the word "disruptive" should be shot with a disruptor.
Amen.
ReplyDeleteThe weeding robot is a fine concept, but it could probably wield a hoe just as easily as a spray and work just as well since being solar powered all it has to do is wander through the fields all day. And a hoe would reduce poison use by 100%
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, hack meant "a useful bit of programming" before it meant "break into computer systems"--that was crack. There was overlap, crackers often used hacks, and media confused the terms. So it isn't misuse of the word hack, it is an attempt to reclaim it.
ReplyDeleteBefore hack was applied to computing, it was part of the culture at MIT, at the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC). Clever use of relays segued into computers in the early 60s
ReplyDeleteIn the dark ages pre internet hack was how an inexpert or low knowledge
ReplyDeleteperson would more or less muddle though doing something computer until
it worked out the understood it. Also it was often applied to code that
was cleaver and took advantage of some characteristic to get a bit more performance.
As in hacking code for the 8008 (the first 8 bitter).
Later it would be applied to those trying to get past computer security but the competing term was crackers, the computer people called them crackers and
often like Sevesteen said "crackers often used hacks", the outside the realm
of computer speak would call it hackers. Then the movie... gah!
Disruptive technology made its appearance long ago with things like the Atomic Energy and in computers Visicalc was such a thing. Now its applied to stupidity and its misuse.
We have an evolving language and the stupids seem to munge it up more and faster
all at the speed of the internet.
Eck!
The others are all correct. Being a hacker was not a bad thing back in the late '70s. It just meant you knew how to get around stuff or force it to work. A cracker on the other hand was someone who broke in to systems.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is the news media screwed up the terms.