Hacker

Jewish experience, identity and history are explored in the 11th edition of the Jewish Film Festival, which begins tomorrow at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills."

This is an excerpt of a Los Angeles Times editorial that was published yesterday:THE MOST prolific family of biological viruses -- the one that causes the common cold -- evolved over millions of years by way of gradual DNA mutations. By contrast, Melissa, which since Friday has become the most prolific computer virus ever, appears to have been written hastily by a young computer hacker.And yet, despite its humble origin and primitive design, Melissa's crashing of corporate Microsoft-based e-mail systems has undermined worker productivity as handily as any winter bug.Corporate information system managers say they have now cleaned up most of Melissa's damage, but the virus has raised anew some tough questions.

SAN ANTONIO -- He was standing on the Riverwalk yesterday, his teeth brown and broken, his stringy dark hair tied in a ponytail under a blue baseball cap, smiling and waving to anyone who passed by. "Go 'Cats!" he yelled, over and over again.He looked like he was straight from the coal mines.He was a Kentucky basketball fan.A few minutes later, he walked up into the mall attached to this city's most famous attraction and into a group who looked like they were straight from the horse crowd in Lexington.

A FUNNY THING happened during the tasting of this year's Oktoberfest beers. Some of last year's beers sneaked into the competition and won it. When expiration dates of the winning beers were checked, it turned out that this year's victors, Oktoberfest offerings from Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr, were actually leftovers from 1997. The old beers had, according to the code on their labels, officially expired a month before last week's sipping session.I saw many morals in this outcome. One was that the old-and-out-of-it sometimes have more to offer than the young and the fresh.

"Money: Who Has How Much and Why," by Andrew Hacker. Scribner. 254 pages. $25.Andrew Hacker gives campus-based intellectualism a gooname. He uses numbers to enlighten instead of obscure, making sure the statistics come alive by illustrating their inexorable messages with cases involving real people.His prose is filled with active verbs and metaphors, instead of the passive voice and jargon frequently churned out by academics. He is willing to tackle a topic across disciplinary lines, conducting research from the Queens College political science department to shed light on a topic usually left to economists.

WASHINGTON -- A computer hacker vandalized the home page of the Department of Justice on Friday night, posting obscenities and anti-government graffiti, a department official said yesterday.The Justice Department's site on the World Wide Web was shut down early yesterday after members of the public called to report the electronic break-in, said a department spokesman, Joe Krovisky.The site will remain shut while the department's technical experts assess its security, he said.Krovisky said the system the hacker broke into was separate from the department's internal computer system, which contains highly sensitive information about criminal cases and investigations.

IF YOU OWN a computer, odds are you don't use it for financial transactions. Only a tiny fraction of us are shopping, investing or banking on line. What transactions there are tend to be over private lines rather than over the Internet.All that is going to change. The Net supported an estimated $200 million in commerce last year. Five years from now, that's going to look like pocket change. Already, there's a bank that exists entirely on line: Security First Network Bank (www.sfnb.com) -- and it offers attractively high rates on certificates of deposit.

"Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw - By the Man Who Did It," by Tsutomu Shimomura with John Markoff. Hyperion. 324 pages. $24.95Kevin Mitnick is no John Dillinger. When FBI agents burst into his Raleigh, N.C., apartment a year ago, Mitnick didn't pull a gun. He threw up.That anticlimax reflected the nature of his crimes - stealing software, tampering with telephone systems, reading other people's electronic mail. Though his scams required skill, they were seedy and sophomoric, never grand or terrifying.

WASHINGTON -- He called himself "griton," Spanish for screamer, and allegedly used stolen Harvard University passwords to sneak into U.S. military computers from his home -- in Buenos Aires, Argentina.He hacked his way into NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, poked around the Los Alamos National Laboratory and even tried, but failed, to invade the Army Research Laboratory's computer system.Yesterday, federal officials announced an arrest warrant for Argentine Julio Cesar Ardita, 22, who was described as part cybersnoop, part cyberspook, and was unmasked in an international crime hunt carried out with the first-ever computer wiretap order.

LOS ANGELES -- Kevin Lee Poulsen could tap your telephone.He was so adept at manipulating Pacific Bell computers that he was able to spy on FBI agents while they spied on crooks.And before his 1991 arrest, he won a Porsche and some $21,000 by using computers to rig phone-in contests at three Los Angeles radio stations.Now just out of prison, this 30-year-old computer wiz finds himself stuck in a computerless world. Having spent a record five years behind bars for hacking, Poulsen is barred from getting anywhere near his beloved machines at home and on the job for the next three years.

The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream By Jacob S. Hacker Jacob Hacker argues persuasively in The Great Risk Shift that America's middle class finds itself living with far more risk and income volatility than it did a generation ago. "Problems once confined to the working poor - lack of health insurance and access to guaranteed pensions, job insecurity and staggering personal debt, bankruptcy and home...

It was 2003, it was Vegas, and Johnny Long was a rock star. He slung the blue speaker badge around his neck - careful to make sure everyone could see it - and strutted through the DEF CON hacker convention with his nose in the air and his ears set to whisper mode, listening for the buzz. Too cool to make eye contact, the 32-year-old cut a path through the crowd, which was mostly made up of men wearing some variation of a black T-shirt, the unofficial uniform for the three-day conference.

You don't need to play golf with the boss to get a raise. Just share a beer with her. Drawing on a large national data set, two economists argue in a study to be released today that social drinkers tend to have more charisma, a fatter Rolodex and more friends than those who abstain or drink alone. That garrulousness, they say, translates into higher income - 10 percent more for men and 14 percent more for women. The research, published by the libertarian Reason Foundation, based in Los Angeles, and the Journal of Labor Research, takes aim at efforts in several communities to crack down on college binge drinking as well as proposals to raise alcohol taxes.

On April 20, 2006, ROBERTA MAGDALENE HARTNETT-HACKER; loving mother of Michael G. Hartnett of Baltimore, MD, Patrick J. Hartnett of Baltimore, MD, Maureen Koppelman of Mineral, VA, and Kathleen A. Rupert of Catonsville, MD; devoted sister of Elise Yeakle of Towson, MD and Cora Pencek of Aberdeen, MD; grandmother of 13; great-grandmother of four. Visitation will be held on Sunday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 at the Hardesty Funeral Home, 851 Annapolis Road, (Rt. 175) Gambrills, MD. Funeral Services will be held on Monday at 9:00 A.M. at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1238 Odenton Road, Odenton, MD. Interment to follow at Holly Hill Memorial Gardens, Middle River, MD.

On December 3, 2005, RICHARD EUGENE HACKER SR., beloved husband of the late Charlotte M. Hacker, devoted father of Norma Crouse, Richard Hacker Jr., Sandra Croy, and Jeffrey Hacker, dear friend of Lorena Gaydos. Also survived by ten grandchildren, three brothers and one sister. A funeral service will be held at the family owned Duda-Ruck Funeral Home of Dundalk Inc., 7922 Wise Ave. On Friday at 11 A.M. Interment Holly Hill Memorial Gardens. Friends may call on Thursday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M.

On January 2, 2005, CHARLES WALTER "BUCK" HACKER, beloved husband of Susan Jane Hacker (nee Buck). Visitation Tuesday from 4 to 8 P.M. at the Cvach/Rosedale Funeral Home, 1211 Chesaco Ave. Funeral Service Wednesday, 11 A.M. Interment Bel Air Memorial Gardens.

On May 21, 2004, DOLORES E. (nee Bergman); beloved wife of the late Peter E. Kairos; loving mother of Christine Hacker, Jennifer Viola and the late Carolyn Kairos, George and Wayne Kairos; mother-in-law of Joseph Hacker, Jr.; beloved daughter of the late Esther Smith; grandmother of Steven and Sherry Hacker, Melissa Cruz, Nicky Kairos, Olivia Truland and Alisa Kissinger; sister of the late Carolyn Andrew; aunt of Nicholas and Dimetri Andrew. Services at Kaczorowski Funeral Home, P.A., 1201 Dundalk Avenue, on Tuesday at 9 A.M. Interment Glen Haven Memorial Park.

On April 13, 2004 DOLORES M. (nee House); beloved wife of the late H. Nelson Ray; devoted mother of Lynne Collins and Nelson Ray; loving grandmother of Diana Hacker, Lisa Budnichuk, Benjamin and Katie Ray; dear great grandmother of Christopher, Abigail and Kirsten Hacker and Nicholas Budnichuk. Relatives and friends may gather at the MILLER-DIPPEL FUNERAL HOME, INC., 6415 Belair Road, on Thursday only 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 P.M. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Friday 9:30 A.M. Interment New Cathedral Cemetery.

Keno - not the Mega Millions $100 million jackpot - generated all of the excitement yesterday afternoon at the 8 Days A Week Convenience Mart in Parkville, where Bonnie Hacker walked away a $20,000 winner. And it couldn't have happened at a better time. "I just lost my job," said Hacker, a Parkville resident. "It seems I've had a streak of bad luck for seven years." Holding tight to the winning ticket, Hacker left after verifying with a store clerk that she had the correct numbers for the payout.

With fall's youth soccer season starting up, Tony DiCicco and Colleen Hacker have two words of advice for coaches of female players: Play nice. "You have to ease them into it," DiCicco says of grade-school girls. "They may not be ready to mix it up on the field. You have to make it OK for them to compete and dominate." DiCicco and Hacker know a thing or two about getting female soccer players to perform. DiCicco coached the U.S. Women's National Team that won the 1996 Olympic gold medal and 1999 World Cup and now serves as commissioner of the WUSA, the women's professional soccer league.