I upvoted you for the insight, but I disagree.
Even some geek friend of mine has defined anon's DDOS as a "revenge of the hacker culture". I think it doesn't hurt to remind people that 4chan is to hackers what a tagger is to banksy.
As for the sterility of the discussion around the world hacker, I don't see anything bad with it. In fact I find much more ridiculous the new fashion that anything is hacking. Hack your brain, hack your coffee, hack your wife and hack your dog.
To be honest, I even dislike the definition hacker for someone who is "simply" an outstanding programmer but that's borderline, I recognize it.
> I think it doesn't hurt to remind people that 4chan is to hackers what a tagger is to banksy.
Well I'm not saying that...my problem is when someone paints this as something completely removed from hacking....especially when it certainly falls within the realm THEY call hacking elsewhere.
I believe the solution is to add information....
Instead of insisting "this has nothing to do with hacking" when it pretty clearly does, we should come up with a name for this new phenomenon....not try to shoe-horn it into some less descriptive term.
This sort of digital vandalism quite clearly evolved alongside hacking and has ties to it....I think we should acknowledge that and then move on to explain the differences.
2600 refers to all sorts of completely easy (harmless) things as "hacking", but once it's something they don't like then all of a sudden skill is a requirement for hacking.
FWIW, I personally don't have such a liberal view on what constitutes hacking, but I think you should be consistent.
As for the sterility of the discussion around the world hacker, I don't see anything bad with it. In fact I find much more ridiculous the new fashion that anything is hacking. Hack your brain, hack your coffee, hack your wife and hack your dog.
To be honest, I even dislike the definition hacker for someone who is "simply" an outstanding programmer but that's borderline, I recognize it.