Are you a Hacker ??

from ReDragon on IRC, handed to newbies...

Are You a Hacker?

Take a little quiz for me today.  Tell me if you fit this description.  
You got your net account several months ago.  You have been surfing the 
net, and you laugh at those media reports of the information superhighway.  
You have a red box, you don't have to pay for phone calls. You have 
crackerjack, and you have run it on the password file at a unix you got 
an account on.  Everyone at your school is impressed by your computer 
knowledge, you are the one the teachers ask for help.  Does this sound 
like you? You are not a hacker.

There are thousands of you out there.  You buy 2600 and you ask 
questions.  You read phrack and you ask questions.  You join #hack and 
you ask questions.  You ask all of these questions, and you ask what is 
wrong with that?  After all, to be a hacker is to question things, is 
it not?  But, you do not want knowledge.  You want answers. You do not 
want to learn how things work.  You want answers.  You do not want to 
explore.  All you want to know is the answer to your damn questions. 
You are not a hacker.

Hacking is not about answers.  Hacking is about the path you take to 
find the answers.  If you want help, don't ask for answers, ask for 
a pointer to the path you need to take to find out those answers for 
yourself.  Because it is not the people with the answers that are the 
hackers, it is the people that are travelling along the path.

                                          -ReDragon