That's one thing I don't agree on. 'Hacking' is misunderstood anyway - what is useless (and harmful) is the scriptkiddie approach aswell as malignent cracking of systems. In such cases there's no quest for knowledge or improvement of security from a (possibly) altruistic and generalistic viewpoint, but one of malintended games, amusement at the cost of others or simply criminal activity. Turning that into a hype is counterproductive, much in the way in which it would be harmful to make it 'cool' to be an email-spammer.

That said, hacking - the way I understand it - is what intelligent and critical technicians do to test ICT security (in specific or in general). It is a known fact that many coders don't feel the need to subject their systems to rigorous testing, trusting in their conceptualization and execution of a project. Equally known is the fact that many, if not all, of the popular systems are riddled with flaws, and that most of the latter are found through the tests of 'hackers'.

Hiring some kid who may or may not be smart enough to have actually detected a flaw in your system, who may or may not have made a lucky guess, have ripped the work of someone else or have had access to inside information, is a moronic thing to do, and, IMO, is in no way related to the value of hacking. What should be questioned here, is the judgements made by corporations - should they spend tons of dollars on such lucky guesses? Or should they perhaps train their technicians to participate and follow 'hacker'-communities, and in so doing improve the systems they make and receive up-to-date testing results from the 'front line' of the security-industry?

It is an old mistake to shove all security-related testers in one big 'evil, dumb, useless, malignant' category, and it surprises me that this mistake is still so readily being made.

I agree - I simply don't trust the developers with the responsibility, and would always want to see active testing by the public, which will probably always do a better job at it. The reactive approach shouldn't be the only one, but it's preferrable over a defective (or worse; a seemably succesful) pro-active solution. What has to go is the 'let's make crap and sell it by monopolizing it' attitude, and better (intrusion) testing certainly would help there.

Actually, Apple does a pretty good job. I've worked with MacOSX for a wee while, and it certainly works great. I don't see how their products can be seen as outdated, unless you'd prefer something like 'Vista' on the nametag. My only serious problem with the Mac interface is that it is probably eating resources, much like the 'pretty modes' in Windows do - but without a really good way to turn them off. I've never been blown by a Broadway prostitute, but I won't take this as a recommendation then.

Anyone remember LINDOWS? I could have gotten into that, with a gental learning curve.