I am sick of the media saying "Hacker" when they mean "Black Hat"
shiporgetoffthepot.com
shiporgetoffthepot.com
Try to delight in the way people use language. Defining a word strictly and pedantically is showing off by demonstrating that you know more about a word's etymology and usage than someone else. Don't do that.
In a similar vein, when people say "hacker" they don't particularly give a shit what side the guy's on, and "black hat" as a term is only acceptable in IT communities -- everyone else smirks at the nerd shit and continues using the terminology accepted by the vast majority of human society.
You're going to have to get used to it.
Either way, in the business world, hacker has only negative connotations. Only within hacker circles does the term become a positive.
Some words just need to be retired.
And that's what the problem is. Calling a cracker a hacker is technically correct, but lead to the assumption that all hackers are black hats.
Everything else is a new definition (white hat etc.)
Language evolves, especially with created words.
Will your opinion win? Possibly, i dont know ( or care). I just get sick of people thinking their way of thinking is accepted fact.
Quite a few words in the "computer geek" lexicon were borrowed from the TMRC.
>This is the last one because it is the least accurate and has been created only in recent times by the media.
By recent times, you mean since the mid/late 80's when hacking sort of got known in the mainstream after phreaking?
>"Anyone that takes a look at a goal and a given set of resources then figures out an unconventional way to achieve that goal"
I want to be rich! therefore I choose to rob a bank (my unconventional way of achieving that goal), does that make me a hacker too? (Like a bank hacker)
Awesome article nonetheless!
The media doesn't understand that and now all the young people growing up have the term 'hacker' all confused and messed up and ruined for the rest of us.
> To me it is someone using their intelligence, to do something clever (or at least in a clever way) to disrupt or destroy something, make someone uncomfortable or piss someone off, or challenge something, for some result that satisfies them or someone else in some way.
All of those (destroy, disrupt, make uncomfortable, piss off, now subvert) except for "challenge" are combative things, especially if, as you keep doing, you relate it as being opposed to other people or entities. Hackers don't have to have the intention of undermining anything to be hackers. Making an HTTP server entirely in forth written entirely in assembly is a hacker thing to do, but it's not undermining anyone's authority, the closest it gets to your categorization (but not your apparent meaning) is as a challenge.
EDIT: forgot a word
"Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
Furthermore, the whole "hacker is the good kind, no the black hat kind" screams "no true scotchman" to me. Lots of black hat's self identify as hackers.
This is not the same thing as a person feeling that a particular word should have a particular meaning.