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A comment on Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group. Parent comment

Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by txcwpalpha on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:58PM (#19401605)
Society glamorizes hackers hard. Have you ever seen War Games? The Matrix? Live Free or Die Hard? Mr Robot? Blackhat? Any recent spy movie? What about the multitude of other movies/shows where hackers aren't the focus, but are certainly glamorized, a la NCIS, CSI, Limitless, etc. There's an entire genre of film & television about hackers and they are almost always portrayed as cool, attractive, powerful people with the world at their fingertips.
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by myself248 on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:52PM (#19402283)
It's almost an exact copy-paste of the "spy / secret agent" mythos of the cold war.

They don't use their real names, they have gadgets and mysterious power, not from magic but from skill. They operate outside traditional power structures and governments, you don't know who's working for whom, and they never seem far from a trenchcoat.

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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by merlincorey on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:20PM (#19401895)
I'm sad that you failed to mention the original /Hackers/ movie as well as /Swordfish/ -- two staples of Defcon movie nights.
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by txcwpalpha on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:31PM (#19402028)
Ah! I had Swordfish in mind but my brain blanked and I couldn't think of the name. For Hackers, I have no excuse.
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by appleiigs on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:55PM (#19402318)
Sneakers with Robert Redford
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by merlincorey on Friday March 15, 2019 @02:05PM (#19402440)
Yes! Another great classic Hacker flick.
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by classichasclass on Friday March 15, 2019 @03:23PM (#19403257)
Sneakers worked well because it had A-list actors playing up the social engineering aspect, which an A-list actor can do. It had comparatively little meditation on the hardware and technical aspects and from a plot and longevity perspective I think that was a particular strength of the movie.
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by js2 on Friday March 15, 2019 @07:15PM (#19405212)
> Society glamorizes hackers hard.

Hollywood glamorizes hackers, like violence, crime, rock n roll, space travel, and just about everything else hard.

At the risk of hyperbole, if society glamorized hackers hard, Aaron Swartz might still be with us.

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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by barbecue_sauce on Saturday March 16, 2019 @04:09PM (#19409939)
This was what I was going to say. I'm not sure society itself has internalized Hollywood's glamorization of hackers, and the glamorization is more a product of trying to make something mundane seem more interesting in the context of a film.
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by saalweachter on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:44PM (#19402164)
... have you seen War Games?
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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by txcwpalpha on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:53PM (#19402287)
You mean the movie where a quirky-but-lovable nerd garners the attention of an attractive and popular girl who is fascinated by his hacking abilities and then goes on to kiss the girl, outsmart the FBI, and save the entire world from nuclear annihilation by typing stuff into a computer terminal? That WarGames?

Yea, I've seen it.

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Re:Beto O'Rourke's membership in America's oldest hacking group by icedchai on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:57PM (#19402348)
War Games is what made me want to get a modem, back in the 80's!
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