Hmm... I'm somewhat bothered by how the word hacker is used in the article, where it's used to describe criminal activities. Or am I misinterpreting it? I know in one part he uses the term 'cracker,' and in another part he says that perhaps his utility should have used 'preaking' instead of 'hacking,' but in general I think he's using the term hacker to describe breaking into a system.
I know the word in society has a double meaning. It could mean breaking into a system, or engineering an innovative piece of software. I personally wouldn't really care, except nowadays I'm finding myself promoting a hackerspace or a hackathon on the radio, and usually every time I start an interview I have to begin by saying "We're not criminals." It gets tiring after a while. Once we were trying to form a partnership with an organization, and the guy immediately threw us out of his office when he heard the word hacker. He wanted nothing to do with us.
> Hmm... I'm somewhat bothered by how the word hacker is used in the article, where it's used to describe criminal activities.
This culture war has been going on for like three decades.
I eventually settled on just calling "hackers" phreakers. Because the people who started the whole "break into computers" meme were phreakers, and called it such at the time.
Besides, actual whistle-into-the-phone phreaking isn't possible anymore, the community eventually morphed into computer "hacking".
In the 80s and 90s, the community toying with systems including gaining access to it referred to themselves as hackers. Those who broke ciphers and copyright protection were crackers, and those who hacked voice telecommunications systems were phreakers.
It's only outside of the community, in the media, that I first discovered that the term 'cracker' was used to refer to hackers gaining unauthorized access to computer systems instead of, well, crackers.
I think it was Eric Raymond's idea; he, like most hackers, was outraged at computer security enthusiasts calling themselves "hackers" and suggested calling them "crackers" instead. I think the fact that the computer-security folks already had a (different) meaning for "cracker" was sort of a coincidence.
I know the word in society has a double meaning. It could mean breaking into a system, or engineering an innovative piece of software. I personally wouldn't really care, except nowadays I'm finding myself promoting a hackerspace or a hackathon on the radio, and usually every time I start an interview I have to begin by saying "We're not criminals." It gets tiring after a while. Once we were trying to form a partnership with an organization, and the guy immediately threw us out of his office when he heard the word hacker. He wanted nothing to do with us.