"...The principle engine of software development is the work and creativity of hackers. What induces them to strive and invent is a climate of liberty that leaves them in control of their own software. [...] To trust the hacker, to have faith in the hacker, is one of the elements of a value system that favours development.

"...The goal of the Hacker Space Festival is to bring together people from many cultural and technological backgrounds and from different Hacker Spaces and Autonomous zones in France and Europe (and from beyond, if they can attend) to share and show what's going on..." -- via http://artlibre.org/archives/news/315

In the beginning was... hacker culture and free Internet software. They existed as outsiders. They were really known by few. But some knew of them and an idea started to grow... it was first only in one person's mind, then two, then it spread to the hacker culture and further into the business world.

On this day in 2004, i made a post with the subject line “3… 2… 1.0!” to announce the release of libs11n, which had been in heavy development for almost 18 months at that time. A year and a day later, 1 January 2005, 1.2.0 was released.

And this New Year's Ever i'm releasing a hacker.

"It’s that time of the year again, when you take a look at your life, decide what parts of it suck and then make a proclamation of change. Sure most resolutions don’t work out and resolutions probably aren’t the best way to make a lasting change in your life anyway. But even you don’t stick to your resolutions, they at least make you think about the things that need improving.

If you ask me who's the proudest hacker in the world, I would say that it's Eric S. Raymond. ESR, as he is often called, is a computer programmer and open source software evangelist. He is also a well-known author and has been very influential in giving the term 'hacker' a positive image.

"Greenpeace is in search of an experienced, well-rounded systems admin for its Washington, DC office. This is a rare opportunity for an environmentally aware GNU/Linux hacker..."

"I noticed a discussion about Perl on Hacker News this morning. The linked article is about why the author likes Perl. As with all articles of this type, it attracted the usual "Ruby is better!!" comments.

Germany has just passed a new law that adds more "anti-hacker" provisions to the German criminal code. Although the new rules are meant to apply narrowly to hacking, critics are already complaining that they may prevent necessary security and network research.