Wednesday, May 13, 2009

hacker

According to Wikipedia, a hacker is someone who makes substantial changes to both the hardware and software of computers. More precisely, hackers usually create or change software and hardware in order to improve them, make them work faster, add new features, or even make them do something completely new.

The word ‘hacker’ originally had a positive meaning but during the 90’s it acquired a negative connotation. In particular, 'hacker' started to be associated with the word ‘cracker’, which refers to a person who severely damages computers in different ways. It’s easy to understand why the two words have been wrongly mixed up: any good cracker needs to be an expert hacker first. This is the reason why people have been confusing the two words thus making a success of the word ‘hacker’ - with a negative meaning - in popular press.

References:
Further readings:
  • about the verb - To Hack -
  • hackers' taxonomy:

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