First Recorded Usage of "Hacker"
duartes.org
duartes.org
Exactly. Specifically, Linus' name for Linux was "Freax"
By himself he referred to it as "Linux" but thought it was lame. Only after the name being suggested by others did he agree. I got this "first-hand" from Revolution OS ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_OS You can watch it here ~ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409
"Are you a good hacker, or a bad hacker?"
The techniques and thinking styles are the same, either way.
I don't think there's a script-kiddie equivalent for phone systems.
To paraphrase John Draper (aka Captain Crunch), "A system is a system, whether a phone network or a computer."
"'brute force techniques' - mass dialing until something 'interesting' is found"
Sounds an awful lot like war dialing. Not sure what was on the other side though and what got done.