The game of life

[Darkvision]

I ran into this around a year to two years ago, had never heard of it. Then i saw through my browsing that it had become a "hacker" symbol, though their was some controversy surrounding it. However i think my feelings towards it are a bit different than the normal problems, and figured hey why not toss them out their, and see what people thought of the symbol itself, and my thoughts on it, because who doesnt love a good argument, i mean debate.


So i suppose i should start this with this for those who are unaware:
http://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/


While i think the goal itself is altruistic, my issue derives much more from the fact that our community, in general, tends to be at odds enough as is. (as ive already seen a number of people bashing Anon, i will use this as a current example) To me adding another thing to sub-divide our culture and community that is unnecessary  is simply not cool. Then again here i am being divided by the symbol so i am in fact living something of a self fulfilling prophecy, and could of course be colored by it.


so i guess my questions would be:
Do you think the symbol is a good thing or a bad thing?
why?




also the fact that this has spawned all sorts of merch makes it irking in a number of ways as well, but really id rather leave that whole rant out

[parad0x]

I think you are not familiar with the term "hacker".


Click here to find who an hacker is.


Then you'll come to know is it a good thing or a bad thing.

[Deque]

I didn't even know that this was used as "hacker emblem".
I am familiar with the game of life and I know that glider. I wrote a program for this too, because I found it fascinating. So I have only good associations with that glider, seeing it as a symbol of Conway's contribution to self replicating automata.
I think it is dumb to use a symbol without knowing what it means, what a few of these skids obviously did also in the false believe about the term hacking.

[NovaCygni]

Hackers are born, its a mindset not just a label or a sign, a hacker thinks outside the box in all aspects of life not just with computers, i.e. at 8yrs old I wanted to use a phone at my house but there was a call-bar on it, it took me seconds to work out to get my friends to reverse-charge the call at a set time and answer it myself to say I accept the call... a hackers mentality will affect everything they do.


The symbols are just another tool to divide our culture, be it Gliders, Cells or masks, not made to make us turn against each other just a classic example of large groups of humans needing to "Belong" to one side, faction, group, culture, team or  nation.

[Darkvision]

I think you are not familiar with the term "hacker".


Click here to find who an hacker is.


Then you'll come to know is it a good thing or a bad thing.

Im afraid its you who seems to be the confused one. This has nothing to do with the definition of a hacker, or good hackers or bad. but the community/society of hackers and the fact that we tend to fight amongst ourselves a LOT. so why add something that is unnecessary to further divide people. To me a symbol is just that:a symbol. Often it gets misused and abused. Also considering the general intellect present in our society such things tend to loose much meaning to start with. To me what has meaning and shows solidarity much more is when a group of highly intelligent people rally to someone's defense  When they put aside such petty things as a symbol, or labels like blat hat, or white hat and work towards a common cause. THAT is the part of the community i love. Good example for this:the community's response to sonys BS vs ge0hot.


In other words im saying as with all symbols it will eventually become a polarizer. It will force a side, and those on the "other" side will tend to be lumped together and a general view of wrongness/badness will begin to be felt towards this other "group" that isnt part of their group, and therefore wrong/bad/evil. Considering all the examples of this very thing that could be pulled from society, or hell the amount of papers written on the subject, i see this more of a certainty of human nature rather than a mere possibility.


all of that being said, i was asking what your views on that opinion were, and what your thoughts on the symbol were. NOT whether you think i qualify as a hacker or some crap like that. this was ment to be a discussion. not a forum for bashing others or reposting someone else's thoughts on the matter, let alone the guy who came up with the symbol.


also i find it funny that you think posting a different part of catb as a response, when ive already linked to it to be rather pointless. Obviously i know the site, or i wouldnt have already used it.   Im not trying to come off as an ass or anything, perhaps i shouldnt have put this paragraph in at all. but im still angry enough at having to downgrade my linux distro to have a hope in hell of installing on my new box, not to mention the fact that this project has taken 6 hours more than it should have already just to get a OS on that meh, im in a bad mood.




@deque yeah i wasnt really trying to get into the whole skid side of things with this, though obviously its bound to pop up with them. Like i stated till a year or so ago i had never heard of this, i ran across a reference to it in an article, so started reading up on it, then found out it had links to the hacker culture, because well some guy decided it should. while i think its a very interesting subject, i dont really agree with his rationalization that its the perfect hacker symbol simply because of the time frame of when it came out. but again even aside from such things my issues stem much more from the fact that it IS a symbol rather than what symbol is used.


*heh two posts while writing this...onto #2
@novacygni yeah i mention some more about humans need to belong above this, my issue isnt with human nature(then again it is!) but with a symbol being used. its much harder to abuse an idea, to twist and warp it, than it is an out and out symbol. A symbol becomes an automatic "oh your one of the GOOD guys, not like those other heathens." wheras without that symbol you have to actually stop and you know TALK to the other person to find out what kind of person they are. If you dont follow a symbol(to me) you tend to have a much more open mind, even about those following one. Id rather be connected and belong to someone(or something) because of a shared belief  or thought process than simply "belong" because we wear/use the same symbol.


Also i completely agree on the being born part. i was i think 6 when the wooden toolset my dad gave me for xmas got used to take apart our rainbow vacuum cleaner because well i wanted to see how it worked. Only issue was i couldnt get all the rubber bands back on it correctly. oops. But because my dad knew that he himself was the same way at that age so my only punishment was "dont take apart something if your not sure you can put it back together"