> But this made me think of another point: Who are we to assign connotations to "hacker"?
Hackers, and thus by definition the people with the most reasonable claim to define the term, having done so originally.
I do think that at this point attempting to stop the mainstream usage of "hacker" to mean "person who breaks security" amounts to tilting at windmills. However, an article specifically quoting someone who used the term with its original meaning ought to know better, and either carefully distinguish or choose an alternate term. I'd suggest that they almost certainly did know better, but intentionally exploited the ambiguity to push their agenda (namely, the pro-SOPA agenda).
That said, someone with as much PR experience as Mark Zuckerberg ought to have known better than to use the term in the first place. Quoting Linus: 'In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.'
Specifically, if you're going to use the word "hacker" in a context which mentions "testing the boundaries" shortly after widely-publicised boundary-breaching "hack attacks", people are going to connect the dots in their mind. Especially if their perception of you as an individual is largely based on a film portraying you as a wayward and unscrupulous genius with a penchant for pissing people off.
It's even more likely to get your position caricatured than starting a sentence with "As a classical liberal..."
> Hackers, and thus by definition the people with the most reasonable claim to define the term, having done so originally.
and in the first half of the 20th century the word 'gay' meant 'happy'. shall we insist that's still the proper meaning of the word because that's how it was defined originally, by people with the most reasonable claim to define the term at the time?
Hackers, and thus by definition the people with the most reasonable claim to define the term, having done so originally.
I do think that at this point attempting to stop the mainstream usage of "hacker" to mean "person who breaks security" amounts to tilting at windmills. However, an article specifically quoting someone who used the term with its original meaning ought to know better, and either carefully distinguish or choose an alternate term. I'd suggest that they almost certainly did know better, but intentionally exploited the ambiguity to push their agenda (namely, the pro-SOPA agenda).
That said, someone with as much PR experience as Mark Zuckerberg ought to have known better than to use the term in the first place. Quoting Linus: 'In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.'