CityU Web Hacker - Goldfish

CityU - City University

Since its establishment in 1984, CityU has been endeavouring to provide quality education to the Hong Kong community and meet the needs of our knowledge-based society. During the past 20 years, it has grown from a small institution, housed in temporary premises, offering 9 academic programmes to less than 1,000 students, to a major University with an international reputation for teaching and scholarship, enrolled over 20,000 students on programmes of all levels from associate degree to postgraduate research. Dynamic and upward moving, CityU ranks among the best 200 universities worldwide and its social sciences departments/programs have been ranked 61st of the top 100 in the world by the Times Higher Education Supplement in UK, signifying the growing international standing of the University.

CityU is committed to fostering talented youth with a holistic development and an international vision, and preparing students for the workplace and to learn and adapt to changes in the real world. With our world-class teachers, well-developed educational programmes and wide-ranging learning experiences, including Chinese culture and information technology, we prepare our students to become well-rounded young professionals with confidence and competence. We advocate a student-centred learning educational philosophy, emphasizing the achievement of learning outcomes as the real measure of student success.

CityU is positioned along the axis that links professional education with applied research. Our research work serves many objectives. These include: “establishing a leading role at an international level in an area of research; nurturing promising new areas; applying research results to support economic and social development; and refreshing and enlightening teaching by scholarship at the cutting edge of disciplines and professional fields.” Principally, basic and applied research and R & D activities are concentrated in six University Research Centres, seven Faculty Research Centres, three Applied Strategic Development Centres and three Applied R & D Centres in the Pearl River Delta Region. A large number of groups and laboratories are active at the departmental and inter-departmental levels. We also collaborate closely with industry and commerce, producing direct benefits for society in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland.

CityU has become an international University with links to many high-quality institutions on the mainland and overseas. The University has embraced the philosophy of a broad student mix. We encourage student and staff interactions to create a multi-cultural environment on campus, to enhance students’ exposure to other cultures and stimulate “out-of-the-box” thinking. Through the exchange of faculty and students with mainland and overseas institutions, we form a cultural bridge between the mainland and the world. By working together and sharing ideas with people in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, our students develop global perspectives and gain exposure.

Hacker

Hacker is a term used to describe people who use computers. Hacker has multiple meanings. In some programming communities, the term refers to people skilled in computer programming, administration and security with legitimate goals. The word is also used in a derogatory way in some communities to refer to someone who is relatively unskilled in programming. Most people in the popular media and some in the general population use the word hacker to mean what is called in some programming communities a cracker, that is, a someone who partakes in illegal activity or lacks in ethics.

In computer programming, hacker means a programmer who hacks or reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to exploit or extend existing code or resources. In computer security, hacker translates to a person able to exploit a system or gain unauthorized access through skill and tactics. This usually refers to a black hat hacker. In other technical fields, hacker is extended to mean a person who makes things work beyond perceived limits through their own technical skill, such as a hardware hacker, or reality hacker. However, for some the word has a negative connotation and refers to a person who "hacks" or uses kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. The negative form of the noun "hack" is even used among users of the positive sense of "hacker".