No, "hacker" really does mean "hacker"

I think more than anything this shows that the media has always used the word "hacker" to have criminal connotations. As LouLang mentions, it was used earlier within small niches, but the it seems the earliest, and certain the majority uses of it, by press and anyone in the mainstream is negative.

Coming from the infosec side of things its still odd to me that developers use the term so much. :)

I was under the impression that the term was coined at MIT in the model railroad club.

http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html

The term hackers was used in the 50s, well before. The 1963 quote.

The article specified the first use of the term as applied to a criminal act, not just in general.

I think we read this sentence differently.

>>The earliest known use of "computer hacker" described a criminal act

I read it to mean that the earliest recorded use of the term computer hacker was when it was used to describe a criminal act, Where as you seem to have taken it to say the earliest recorded use of the term computer hacker in the context of a criminal act.

Given the context of the rest of the article, I think I am more correct.