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}.

:cracking: /n./ 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.

: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."

:CrApTeX: /krap'tekh/ /n./ [University of York, England] Term