cracker n.
One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by
hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to
establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82 on Usenet was
largely a failure.
Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion
against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings.
While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some
playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone
past larval stage is
expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for
immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's
necessary to get around some security in order to get some work
done).
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and
crackerdom than the mundane reader
misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend
to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have
little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon
describes; though crackers often like to describe
themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a
separate and lower form of life.
Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who
can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers
than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty losing. Some other reasons crackers are looked
down on are discussed in the entries on cracking and phreaking. See also samurai, dark-side hacker, and hacker ethic. For a portrait of the
typical teenage cracker, see warez
d00dz.
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cracking n.
[very common] The act of breaking into a computer system; what
a cracker does. Contrary to
widespread myth, this does not usually involve some mysterious
leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the
dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that
exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems.
Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers.
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crank vt.
[from automotive slang] Verb used to describe the performance
of a machine, especially sustained performance. "This box cranks
(or, cranks at) about 6 megaflops, with a burst mode of twice
that on vectorized operations."
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crapplet n.
[portmanteau, crap + applet] A worthless applet, esp. a Java
widget attached to a web page that doesn't work or even crashes
your browser. Also spelled `craplet'.
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CrApTeX /krap'tekh/ n.
[University of York, England] Term of abuse used to describe
TeX and LaTeX when they don't work (when used by TeXhackers), or
all the time (by everyone else). The non-TeX-enthusiasts
generally dislike it because it is more verbose than other
formatters (e.g. troff) and because
(particularly if the standard Computer Modern fonts are used) it
generates vast output files. See religious issues, TeX.