Hacker

John C. HackerNavy veteranJohn C. Hacker, a Navy veteran of World War II who worked for about six years as a guard at the former main Post Office on Calvert Street, which contains Baltimore City offices and courts, died Sunday of cancer at the North Arundel Hospital. He was 68.Services will be conducted at 10:30 a.m. today at the Singleton Funeral Home, 1 Second Ave. S.W., in Glen Burnie.The Glen Burnie resident retired as a guard in 1989. Earlier, he had worked for 17 years for the Maryland Glass Co.Mr.

"Swordfish" is a souped-up roadster of a film, a relentless action flick that looks great and moves with more grace and speed than seems possible. Sure, it's a bunch of high-gloss candy, but who's going to think about that when there's so much excitement? Top-billed among the cast is John Travolta, obviously praying to the cinema gods that audiences will forget "Battlefield Earth." Here, he's the mysterious Gabriel Shear, and the avenging angel analogy is absolutely intentional. It takes most of the movie for his motives to become clear, even longer to figure out exactly who he is. But there's one thing we're sure of from the beginning: He's in control.

My Great Uncle Bill ruined his mind struggling with deeply philosophical questions like why most socks end up single over time and whether cornbread should be salty or sweet. The question of whether a toilet seat should be left up or down nearly ruined his marriage. So it is with great fear and some loathing that I tackle a question that seems - based on the e-mail that I get - to be much on the mind of my readers: Is it better to leave a computer on all the time, or to turn it off at night?

For 33 years, Charles O. Hacker was a motorman and conductor for Baltimore's streetcars, stationed part of the time on the "26" line operating from the old trolley car barn at Lombard and Grundy streets in Highlandtown.The one-, two- and three-car trains that were based there, known as "Red Rockets," have been out of commission since the 1950s, when they were replaced by buses.Starting next year, Mr. Hacker and his wife, Ruth, will take up residence inside the car barn, which is being converted to cooperative apartments for seniors.

/etc./password.Those 15 keystrokes, flashing across a computer screen in an Ellicott City barn last month, put Jamie Clark and two co-workers on a cyberspace hunt for international computer criminals in the fast-evolving world of Internet crime."

My son the computer hacker broke into his sister's files and discovered the "TOP SECRET DALLAS COWGIRLS CLUB," printed copies and waved them under her nose with a promise to pass them out to his friends."

It was no secret that he was the second choice to start the 64th All-Star Game for the American League, but California Angels pitcher Mark Langston took no offense."

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.

In "Ghost in the Machine," a homicidal killer infiltrates a computer network and starts hunting people from the far side of the green screen.Question No. 1: Why didn't somebody just call the Ghostbusters? They ain't afraid of no ghosts!Unfortunately, the film doesn't make anyone else afraid of ghosts either.This end-of-year curiosity is so front-loaded with computer-generated special effects that its few microbytes of common sense got dumped. To begin with, it recycles the old stalker recipe with only minor modifications, the primary one being the universe through which the killer moves.

MASTERS OF DECEPTION. By Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner. HarperCollins. 225 pages. $23.WE CONTINUE our mindless stampede into cyberspace, despite the fact that few people can tell you what they're gaining, financially or otherwise. Mindful of the television boom of the '50s and not willing to be the last ones on the boat, companies have been plugging into the Internet in unprecedented numbers with little plan other than to follow the tide.This has understandably angered many of those who have been chatting happily in their obscure circles on the Net for the past decade.