On Sat, Dec 07, 2002, Eliran wrote about "Hebrew Lashon Academy": > Oh dear! > > Check this article http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-2296494,00.html > > It seems that the Hebrew Academy for Lashon had decided that > a Hacker is a "Computer Breaker"... Now it is part of hebrew... > > Shame on hebrew! Shame!
This "hacker vs. cracker" issue has nothing to do with Hebrew. They were making a decision on how to translate the *English* word "hacker". And what *does* the English word "hacker" mean when you see it written in newspapers, spoken by most people, etc.? I'd wager that 90% of the time, they mean a computer intruder, a cracker. So that's why the Hebrew Academy *had* to translate that (again, English) term that way, unfortunately. If you look for "hacker" in a m-w.com (a good English dictionary which I use all the time), you'll see 4 definitions. One of them is, amusingly enough, "a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity" (note *in*experienced). Another is the computer intruder: "a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system". They include the definition you want, "an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer", but apparently if you go and do the statistics, this kind is definition is rarely used - except by the hackers (in the good sense) themselves. -- Nadav Har'El | Saturday, Dec 7 2002, 3 Tevet 5763 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |I put a dollar in one of those change http://nadav.harel.org.il |machines. Nothing changed. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
