> >If employment in your field is not so great where you live then organise -
> >I wasn't objecting to the notion of organised labour in technical fields
> >just that when Kelley says that we are all, including hackers, going to
> >have to do it I disagree because I know damn well we don't organise well,
> >and we won't have to.
>
>
> *professionalize* BIG difference.
Well, to some extent, it has already come and gone. There's CISSP. Plus MCSE and MCP and all that M$ garbage. Cisco certs, etc.
> professionalizing will simply be a way
> for y'all to separate the shit from the pony, to protect your good name
> from that of the script kiddie and ankle biter, so an employer can say,
> "ok, i'll hire this guy b/c he's a "professional" (signified by a degree or
> some test you've taken, one which includes command of a code of
> professional ethics (like not damaging company data or using your access to
> that info to extrot them) and that if you do something like that you'll be
> disbarred and shamed among your peers.
If your vision of the future comes true, then this won't be a bi-polar seperation, it will be tri-polar. You'll have the real low-level ankle biters, who read UNIX for dummies and think it makes them an admin, then you'll have the non-hacker IT workers, the ones who are going to LOVE those certs and guilds and what not, and then you'll have the hackers, who don't really give a damn. It won't be a case of the hackers trying to keep out the average IT worker, but of the average IT worker trying to keep out the "non-pros".
> like y'all shame carolyn meinel,
> john vranesivich (sp?)
VraneSNITCH I believe is the proper spelling. :-)
> script kiddies and so forth now but you do so
> informally, through the grapevine. employers are going to want that
> protection and they aren't going to want to give up their networks to
> people they don't know if they can trust. so the pressure will be on.
I think what you are describing is the average IT worker, not the hacker. CPM and JP are IT workers who wanted to be hackers and couldn't handle it, they didn't either have the intellect or the passion or the whatever but they failed, and they responded basically by slandering those with whom they could not associate. Their skills speak for themselves and anyone dumb enough to hire them gets what they deserve. Why would someone like me give a rat's ass whether CPM can get a job? I don't, I only dislike the fact that she slanders friends and acquaintenances. If she gets a job that I wanted well then there's proof that I certainly don't want to work in that place, if that's the type of person they desire. Plus I can change to a different career and still be a hacker - hell, my day job is only a job.
This is just a very long-winded way of saying "IT worker is not the same as hacker, even IT Security worker is not the same as hacker". If you want to say IT workers are going to professionalize more than they already are, then sure, no problem. But when this becomes something about hackers, and dc-stuff and other groups are pulled out as examples of who will be changing then I can't see the correlation. The average IT worker does not have the same "programming" as the hacker. Here's a story to illustrate:
I've got a win98 box at home, used basically for CounterStrike/Half Life/ etc. (plus the occasional pr0n (porn) downloads when my fetishest friends come over and want to abuse my bandwidth). I've had it unfirewalled on my DSL line for about 6 months now and, of course, last week someone broke into my box. Well in about 20 minutes I had tracked the little bugger down to an irc channel on a rogue (not efnet, dalnet, etc.) irc server and ended up chatting about how he did it for an hour or so. It was a cleverly hidden litle win9X hack and they had nailed a bunch of cable and dsl customers, including my box. So I was telling this story to some very well paid and quite talented co-workers and they freaked out - why didn't I notify his isp, call the police, etc. First of all, it was my fault since I had been too lazy to finish that linux firewall and get the dsl software running on it, so I kinda deserved it. Second, this wasn't a harmful hack - they hadn't caused any damage. No harm, no foul. So you can see how even the average IT worker doesn't think in "our" world.
Hackerdom is still basically an underground culture. A lot of us (but not all) have shed the pseudonyms and have no problem with using our birth names in public, but don't mistake that for totally going public and mainstream. Even though we build firewalls by day at night we are haunting those rogue servers and breakthrough new technology networks and the latter is the more important part. Entering the first world might take a cert or a guild but the second world, the hacker's world, is open to anyone who can find it.
I hate to use this since it is kinda cheesy, but oh well - The Matrix was a hacker movie, but not because it involved high-tech, but because it illustrated many parts of the hacker's world through allegory. Neo is searching for the Matrix, which anyone can find if they just open their eyes, similar to anyone entering and finding hackerdom. But you can't be TOLD about it, you have to experience it. And finally, in the end the key is to BREAK the rules, to blow down all the boundaries.
Well, that and the geek ended up with super-human kung-fu powers and having the hot chick fall for him. :-)
Matt
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ I cut my nails to the quick but still I was caught with my hand in the till red-handed.
-Fugazi