When I mouthed off about yet another customer misconception the other day -- an understandable misconception, but technically naive -- my entire department and I would like to know how in Sam Hill an SSL Certificate can protect you from a DDoS attack -- the Cranky Old Geek got a kind of light in his eye and asked me if I was a hacker.

I stopped talking, puzzled.

"Oh, come on, you're totally a hacker," the Cranky Old Geek said enthusiastically. "You can tell us. What have you hacked?"

I was torn between feeling flattered and lecturing on the differences between hacking and cracking. I settled for relating the tale of how I figured out how to duplicate a stealth bastard freaky in the domain registration cleaning process. That settled things, and the day continued.


Hacker. Hacker?!