Word: hacker
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Welcome to the world of the computer hacker. As midnight wears on to 3 a.m. and then 6 a.m., the hum of conversation dies and Wean Hall becomes very quiet. But the lights burn on, the soft-drink machine on the third floor continues to dispense 16-oz. bottles, and nocturnal computerniks still sprawl before green screens, clack-clacking their instructions into the memory of a DEC-20 system...
...hacker; it would be silly for me to deny it," MacLachlan says. "My grade-point average is higher or lower depending on how many computer courses I take in a semester. I'm really not that interested in other subjects." MacLachlan's longest stretch in front of a terminal so far this year: 32 hours...
...hacker, MacLachlan is a member of an intense, reclusive subculture of the computer age that has cropped up at the nation's top universities. The term hacker derives from "hack," meaning a subtle, sometimes elegant fix for a flaw in a computer program. Hackers spend hours typing commands on terminal keyboards to learn as much as possible about the strengths and weaknesses of a particular program or network. They tinker for the sheer fun of it, delving deeper and deeper into the mysteries of software...
Indeed, a good deal of pop psychology has been written about the tendency of hackers to sublimate personal or academic problems in the immediate thrill of answering a question posed on a terminal screen. In Psychology Today, Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo summed up the hacker's dilemma: "Fascination with the computer becomes an addiction, and as with most addictions, the 'substance' that gets abused is human relationships...
With a generous tailwind in the air, unseasonably cool weather, and thousands of cheering spectators, all of Boston seemed on the march for the fans, it was a day of fun and excitement. For the runners--both world-class and hacker alike--it was a day of accomplishment...