Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

[kallahar]

The reason for this will become clearer later, but please vote in the poll :)

Which of these fictional hackers would be "the most recognizable" by people that you would want to party with?

Kallahar

[Agent X]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Lisbeth Salander?

[renderman]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

The reason for this will become clearer later, but please vote in the poll :)

Which of these fictional hackers would be "the most recognizable" by people that you would want to party with?

Kallahar

When you say 'most recognizable', are you meaning recognizable by us in the community, or by the public in general. Or is it a questions of "who would you want to party with the most"?

[Thorn]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

When you say 'most recognizable', are you meaning recognizable by us in the community, or by the public in general. Or is it a questions of "who would you want to party with the most"?

If he's lining up the one or more of the various actors who played those roles to appear at a party, I'm changing my vote to Angela Bennett/Sandra Bullock.

[streaker69]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

I don't agree with Martin Bishop being there. At the risk of being called a heretic, he was merely the leader and organizer of the group, the rest of them were real hackers. Even back in 1969, Cosmo did the work on the computer while Marty just sat there looking like a Pr0nstar with his mustache.

So if you're gonna add anyone from Sneakers, I'd say either Mother or Whistler.



I hear cattle mutilations are up.

[kallahar]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Think of it this way: You've got four parties to choose from, each one is filled with fanboys of that character. Which party would *you* want to go to?

I swear this will all make more sense after Jan 4th...

[streaker69]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Think of it this way: You've got four parties to choose from, each one is filled with fanboys of that character. Which party would *you* want to go to?

I swear this will all make more sense after Jan 4th...

Well, I was gonna say the young Angelina Jolie, but now I don't think I want to attend a party filled with her fanboi's.

[renderman]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

I really fail to see how any of these qualify for the 'hacker' title

David Lightman - Wanted to play games, lucky guessed a password and nearly started WW3

Dade Murphy - Convicted criminal, umpteen violations thereafter while showing off to a hot chick

Thomas A Anderson - No idea what skillset he actually has other than a warped sense of reality

Martin Bishop - As noted, did'nt do that much other than manage others and walk really slow

Angela Bennet - Recluse who found something by accident that others had built into a security system intentionally.

In the grand competition, it's pretty weak offerings. Outside of the above list and Lisbeth Salander, who is your favorite fictional hacker?

I'd have to say Flynn from Tron.

[streaker69]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

What about Stanley Jobson? He hacked the NSA while getting a blow job.

Or Lyle (Seth Green, who I think is a hacker IRL), ya gotta admit hacking the LA traffic system from a train station via Wifi was pretty cool.

[bascule]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Theora Jones can break my ICE any time

[shrdlu]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

There isn't a single fictional person listed that remotely qualifies for the term "Hacker" and in addition, where's the none of the above? I'd point out that I don't like parties, and all, but (having just barely finished the first book) would say that Lisbeth Salander would qualify, and isn't on your list. I'd also include Mr Slippery, from True Names.

"They had discovered Mr. Slippery's True Name and it was Roger Andrew
Pollack TIN/SSAN 0959-34-2861, and no amount of evasion, tricky
programming, or robot sources could ever again protect him from them."
True Names, Vernor Vinge

I love that book.

There's a wealth of actual hackers in books out there. Please, at least include a none of the above in your poll, for a more accurate picture. Three guesses as to which I'll choose (out of your current list).

[Thorn]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Lisbeth Salander?

... Lisbeth Salander, ...

... Lisbeth Salander ...

Am I the only one here who thought "The Girl" series aren't nearly as good as the hype makes them out to be? I read all three hoping they'd improve, but they kept getting worse. My final analysis is that I can't in good consciousness recommend them to anyone. They score a firm 75% on my Crap'o'Meter.

First, Salander's hacking was moronic. For example, she supposedly was pulling down images of multi-gigabyte harddrives over the Internet, and doing it in minutes, and that was probably the least glaring error. In the later books it gets reduced to the only the documents off the drives, but Larson's research was shoddy. Painfully so. Either that, or things like technology, ballistic physics, and physiology all function differently in Sweden. I won't even touch on the crappy crime scenes he wrote, accept to say that if in real life the forensics are even half as bad as he describes, criminals have nothing to fear from the police in Sweden.

Secondly, as a character Salander is damned near one dimensional, and is little more than a cartoon character. Anti-social, tattooed, punk, blah, blah, blah, <snore>. Gee, a cyberpunk. How freaking original. Bruce Bethke and William Gibson both wrote much more interesting characters based on that concept, and they did it over a quarter century ago. At least the idea was new then.

Thirdly, the ability of Mikael Blokvist's amazing ability to fall into the sack with any woman he meets was even less believable than Salander's hacking. When he's not being a journalist, his main attribute is to be a walking erection. Of course the female characters fare no better, in that their main function seems to be the depositories of Blokvist semen. For a guy who was writing a trilogy about how some women are victimized by a certain predatory men, Larson was strangely misogynistic in the presentation of the books' female characters.

Finally, Stieg Larsson should have been edited a lot better. He didn't seem to be able to put down anything less than a page where a paragraph would have done nicely. Yes, I know he tragically died just after delivering the manuscripts to the publisher, but that shouldn't have prevented the editors from doing their jobs. The plots dragged and stumbled all over the place, and the pacing was horrible. On top of that, the American translations also suffered from an unreasonable injection of unnecessary Swedish words every so often, apparently to forcefully remind you the books were taking place in Sweden, just in case the characters' names and the locations failed to remind you.

==================

Currently, I'm about a third of the way through Daniel Suarez's Daemon. So far, I'm impressed. Both the characters and the uses of technology are all believable, and it plot is holding my interest.

[shrdlu]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Am I the only one here who thought "The Girl" series aren't nearly as good as the hype makes them out to be? I read all three hoping they'd improve, but they kept getting worse. My final analysis is that I can't in good consciousness recommend them to anyone. They score a firm 75% on my Crap'o'Meter.

Well, I have no intention of reading the other books. I read the first one because it was recommended to me, but found it to be full of horrible descriptions of sexual violence. Not something that I want to read about, and I certainly won't be looking for more of it.

I just found her to be more believable than the people mentioned above. I had to laugh at your descriptions, though. My first response at her "mirroring" someone's hard drive, and from then on, every action was actually against the mirror rather than the drive, with a bare nod towards latency, was to choke with laughter, and set the book aside for a bit.

Neal Stephenson and Snow Crash will always be one of my favorites, and I will never forget how amazing it was to read Neuromancer (when it was first published, and when the whole field of Cyberpunk was just getting its start). I treasure my published in Britain hardcover copy of Mirrorshades. What a seminal book that was!

Okay, okay, I take it back. Salander's not really much of a hacker. I plead lack of caffeine, sir. I stand behind "Mr. Slippery" though.

[Thorn]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

Okay, okay, I take it back. Salander's not really much of a hacker. I plead lack of caffeine, sir. I stand behind "Mr. Slippery" though.

"Lack of caffeine?" You? What is the world coming to? Although, I see you were posting before 0700 PDT, so I suppose you were only on your first cup.

No argument on "Mr. Slippery." "True Names" is one of the books I always look for in used bookshops.

[bascule]

Re: Fictional Hacker Popularity (poll)

There isn't a single fictional person listed that remotely qualifies for the term "Hacker"

I'd suggest Bobby Newmark but he's more of a script kiddie. Maybe Henry Case though...