bc-programming.com

“Hacker”.

The word means something completely different today then it did 14 years ago. One can only guess that it started with some insipid journalist who had the shorthand skills of a gnat trying to wrap their barely lucid brains around concepts being described by a computer geek. Somehow they misquoted “cracker” to mean “hacker”, or, in the more likely case, they weren’t paying attention and they made it all up themselves.

of course, for some reason, everybody who didn’t know better latched into it like a barnacle onto a whale, and suddenly all the various news outlets were reporting “computer news” and using terrible metaphors to describe new technologies.

That is one complete media blow-up and misstatement of definitions that riles me quite a lot. I mean, when somebody dabbles in carpentry, they might “hack” together a cupboard. That’s EXACTLY what the word hack means, regardless of the context- a person who dabbles in programming might hack together a small program. It has nothing to do with what people seem to think it means, which would be breaking into other peoples PCs When did that definition come about? Burglars don’t “hack” into your house, they either pick the lock or use an open window or door. In the same vein, a person wouldn’t “hack” into a computer system, they would either crack the lock (password) or use an open door (vulnerability). Somehow, “hack” has now come up into the entirely new and unrelated definition that used to be “cracking”.

That being said, almost ANYTHING in the media even remotely related to computers is completely ridiculous, and they use so many literal devices that half the time any useful information is buried so deep in metaphor you may as well forget about it.

If you want to use similes and metaphors and synedoche and metonymy with reckless abandon, write a fucking poem. “a file is like a document on your desk” No, a file is like a fucking stream of bytes on a disk. a disk is nothing like a desk, the former is round and coated in magnetic material and data is stored by changing the orientation of magnetic particles whereas the latter is only good for screwing the secretary.

recently, I stumbled upon a ridiculous thread regarding system requirements for “Counter-strike: Source”. Well, I wouldn’t say stumbled, it was actually linked in a TheDailyWTF thread.

the Poster claims that it’s “Unfair” that they can no longer play the game using a system that fits the specifications of the original “boxed” copy.

They go so far as to claim that valve did this intentionally in order to force people to upgrade, which seems clearly ridiculous since upgrading doesn’t help them at all. Most of the people in the discussion (which, for reference, can be found here) have clearly acquired their entire understanding of the justice system and law on episodes of Law & Order, which, I’m sorry to say, wouldn’t help them pass their Bar exam. They have an equally deficient understand of anything remotely programming related.

They claim that Valve did this on purpose. First, Why? What do they have to gain? Sure, they did it on purpose, but I suspect the reason is that the API is almost completely different between all of DX7, DX8, and DX9, and they assumed that somebody who played a game as fad-inspired as Counter-strike would no longer be using a 11 year old video card.

From where I stand it sounds like a bunch of teenagers complaining about how they can no longer “pwn noobs” because their ATI Rage Pro is no longer fully supported. The cries to upgrade fall on deaf ears, because the have no jobs and rely entirely on their allowance to get anything at all. This is further proven by the fact that the complainant claims to actually understand anything about Law. Nobody understands anything about law. Nobody. Even lawyers simply pretend to understand. All “law” is apparently based on precedent (according to the law expert that is this particular CSS player, an oxymoronic statement I would rather not repeat) so it makes me wonder why they bother to write up all these other things. They quote a legal link as it it matters, with absolutely zero inference to the fact that A:) the product on their “box” is NOT the same product they have on their PC.

They are absolutely free to install the game form their original disks, and refuse all updates. They won’t be able to play online, but that restriction is clearly NOT COVERED by the law. So they can shove their links right back up their ass where they pulled them from.

This is one of the things that pisses me off. people pretending they know what they talk about when they are merely pulling arguments out of their ass or even out of thin air, and basing their entire stance on the subject on pure assumption. It really pisses off those of us who do know what we are talking about (hahaha)

I mean, for Possum’s sake, these people play COUNTER-STRIKE, and at the same time claim to have some sort of depper understanding of Legal issues. What a bunch of dumbasses. Hardly anybody who has an IQ higher then about 60 plays Counter strike, and those that do at least understand the basic premise that a software update changes the software in question and different software will have different requirements. Bitching and complaining because your 10 year old PC can no longer run a fully updated copy of a game you bought 9 years ago is like complaining to microsoft because the changed software scene has essentially antiquiated the minimum requirements they specified for nearly all their Operating Systems. When they were released they were minimum, and recommended, and they fit the description, but as software grew larger and adapted to the various changes the requirements became meaningless. Do we sue Microsoft because we can no longer run XP comfortably with 64MB of RAM? No, of course not. XP SP3 changed XP but the biggest factor is the different software being used.

And their constant cries “IT’S EEZEE TO FIX LOL ROXOR I GONNA {PLAY COUNTOR STRIKWERH NOW DUHG” clearly indicates they have no idea what they are talking about. First, unless they have actually seen the source code, what needs to be changed, the regression testing that will need to be performed, the layout of involved data structures, and so forth, they cannot make a claim that “it’s easy” and since they clearly have not seen any of that they are basing their claim entirely on their observation of what that code does, which is no indication of the complexity of the code itself. Besides, they couldn’t understand the code anyway, but like most teenagers they like to think they do, despite their absolutely lack of the proper cognitive processes to do so. (most of the appropriate brain cells died in a mass suicide while they played Counter-strike)